8.15 am: This week; this day; this hour; this moment, laid out before heaven. 9.00 am: There was an important letter of administration to post, several emails to consider, and a computer file loss problem to understand, before I could begin to move forward the business of the next few days. 10.00 am: I dug out my paper on the ‘Image and Inscription’ composition, which I’d been working on before the Christmas holidays. This needs to be completed and polished by the close of the month. In order to get back into something that I’ve laid aside for a period, my trick is to dust down some part of the text that I’ve already written reasonable well. It’s a limbering-up exercise of sorts. Time away from a project helps to bring into relief those integral problems and solutions that were not immediately recognisable, previously.

Over the weekend, I completed the effector array comprising Pedalboards III & V, a looper, and a pitch-bending device. All inputs and outputs are buffered:

I await, now, the return of several repaired power supply units in order to rouse again Pedalboards I & III. Then I can fortify the former and introduce the latter into the application system’s send and receive loop. ‘Something for the weekend’, as gents’ barbers were want to inquire.

1.30 pm: Following lunch, I read through several pages of a diary written in 1985, covering my life in Cardiff and Aberystwyth between the close of my MA Visual Art and the beginning of my PhD Art History studies. My particular interest was in the description of places from a visual and sonic perspective:

I waited [at Newbridge, in anticipation of a bus to Abertillery] for half-an-hour in the doorway of a derelict Co-Op … standing, watching the rain glisten on the amber-orange surface of the road, looking at children in Lowryesque poses, tracing the necklace of jewels around and through the valley … Such an experience may, in the future, represent that haziest sense of something which will compel me … to make it concrete and permanent. This is my home in a deeper sense than language alone can convey … The contours, the distances, the indigo and orange, the drawn curtains of darkened houses, the buses that drive into the distance (the sounds of which continue long after they go out of sight) (Diary > 8.00 pm+, August 23, 1985).

Diaries can make for fearful reading. The writer has no inkling of what is to come in their life: on the one hand, there were hopes dashed; fears and failures realised; mistakes repeated; debilitations, weaknesses, and indulgences left unchecked; love lost; loved ones, lost; friendships abandoned; misunderstandings, disillusionments and disappointments; foolish acts and words; dreadful revelations; ambitions thwarted; illusions and delusions; inabilities exposed; conflicts and questions unresolved; and the seeds of calamity sown. On the other hand, there were unimaginable changes of circumstance; unlikely opportunities; undeserved restorations; rich conversations; remarkable discoveries; and moments of joy, fresh insight, and dizzying clarity. But not one of these things (bad or good) was either unnecessary or wasted in the providential economy.

Aberystwyth (August 1985)

The present is too often too thick with uncertainty, predictability, and aching inertia, too barren of event, too mediocre and fruitless, to appear significant. However, from a future perspective, it may be possible to perceive a golden thread woven into this drab cloth. If there is, for me, a further thirty two years, how, then, will I reckon upon now?

3.50 pm: Slow but certain progress had been made on the article. I’m back in the race once again. I edged forward, paragraph by paragraph.

7.15 pm: Some postgraduate admin to shoo away. There was a turbulence in the night sky. Spirits drifting:

Spectral anomaly:

On with the article.