Rebirth may come, as from a woman
in travail, convulsing and,
through much distress
of thought and frame,
into a world made ready.

5.10 am: I stared towards the bedroom ceiling, wondering how long before the, for me, unfocussed silhouette of the chandelier above my bed would become visible. My mind was too alert to return to sleep. It turned over the issues of yesterday – its joys, achievements, challenges, and irresolutions – and grasped at the possibilities which lay ahead of me today, once my feet hit the carpet. 6.30 pm: Enough tossing and turning! Touch down. The air chilled my bare arms. (The radiators wouldn’t kick in for a further fifteen minutes.)

7.45 am: A communion. 8.15 am: Marking and postgraduate admin headed the morning’s agenda. The complexities involved in moving from one semester to another are staggering. However, the worst of the academic year is behind me, and there’s much to anticipate, before.

9.45 am: A review of the beat track that I’d concluded yesterday. It shifts from 4/4 to 4/8 and back. On with writing and email dispatching, with Penderecki’s Cello Concerto No. 2 (1982) playing in the background. Elevenses, with tea and a square of chocolate with 95% cocoa. How does this stuff cohere? Apparently, you can now purchase bars of 100% intensity. What does that final 5% offer a young man?:

11.30 am: A darkness of a different order descended. Strange weather today:

After lunch, I began building sounds off my spinal beat by inserting samples derived from the live capture and decelerated versions of Macmillan’s recitation of Psalm 23. In parallel, I extracted glitch-like samples from an improvised live extraction that I conducted several weeks ago. Together, this material represented my palette. And, like in the best practice of painting, it needs to be either limited or otherwise disciplined. Then began a period of playfulness in the absence of constraint; that’s to say, without any presuppositions, template, expectations, or definite goal other than that of making something of interest and appropriateness. The rules of the game will emerge in the playing of it. 4.30 pm: The character of the composition began to suggest itself. A sublimated ecstasy, perhaps.

7.00 pm: Onto the streets, and off to my other life: Holy Trinity Church Committee: