February 27, 2015

8.50 am. Getting turned on at the School of Art, as it were:

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9.15 am. Back at homebase, I returned to my chapter on the wax cylinder project and to the process of uploading The Floating Bible tracks to the dedicated site. Rewriting is irksome. In my ‘breather’ breaks, I dispatched memos and emails about forthcoming teaching engagements. One industrious student (eager to keep abreast of future developments, no doubt) opened this message during a lecture, and thereafter wrestled with a fit of giggles. (Lesson: Don’t read either your emails or Facebook in lectures):

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The graphical display of the sound file of The Floating Bible tracks reminds me of a pair of large, hairy caterpillars:

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1.30 pm. Back in the studio, I tinkered with the ailing Handboard 1 and brought her back to life. (Any equipment related with guitars, synthesizers, and amplifiers is female in my books. Computers, on the other hand, are definitely male: tending to be functional, somewhat unreliable, slow to respond, and wearing on the eyes if looked at for too long.) Rewiring, I conclude, is more fulfilling than rewriting:

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2.00 pm. The Floating Bible upload is complete, and the album ready for release this evening, or whenever the search engines begin to recognize the forwarding address. On with the rewrites — adding endnotes and expansions, and speculating whether it would be feasible to extract chunks of the conclusion and hammer them into the introduction. Change can be (and, sometimes, needs to be) brutal and alarming. My academic writing is so flat-footed and leaden today.

6.00 pm. Practise session 1: Four-finger, left hand exercises synchronised with plectrum control while playing a demanding phrase of music from a John McLaughlin composition. It’s a cunningly intricate pattern that adapts the scale of a raga. 7.30 pm. Back into the fray, and further into the chapter. A clearer structure is now emerging, one which may be sufficient to resolve the final section of the writing. Old notebooks to the ready:

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9.40 pm. Practise session 2: the practise of gentleness — moving the string with the plectrum with minimum effort, the right hand relaxed; walking the fingers across the fretwork, as on tip toe, each finger the others’ equal.

Leonard Nimoy has passed away:

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