January 26, 2017

Who knows where the time goes (Fairport Convention).

8.30 am: Admin beckoned. The trick is to distinguish between what one should do oneself and what one should delegate to others. 9.30 am: Time is ticking; the article needs completing. Onward! It’s hard to write about one’s own artwork without sounding as though you really believe that the thing merits talking about at length. (Modesty and measure, risk compromise.) Conversely, in academic writing of this nature, one shouldn’t acknowledge any reservations about the artwork’s resolution, integrity, originality, and importance. (This is the realm of criticism — a pain that’s best inflicted by others.)

11.00 am: Warm-drinks time. Progress, paragraph by paragraph, was embarrassingly slow. Still too many wasted words, imprecisions, and ‘conferencees’ (expressions that sound fine when spoken and heard but awkwardly informal when written and read) to remedy. 12.00 pm: I wandered into the studio, to distract myself. ‘My Foolish Heart’:

In a small department, like the School of Art, individual staff assume numerous roles that, in a larger department, are dispersed among several members. (Like the biblical demoniac, Legion: ‘we are many’ (Mark 5.9).) As a consequence, there are times when one is called to attend to more than one duty and meeting simultaneously. And, no amount of due diligence and good time management can either forestall or reconcile these conflicts. Such times give me pause for thought.

1.40 pm: Over lunch, I made another attempt to fully eradicate a low-volume, 50MHz hum in my sound system, which may be hardly noticeable to anyone else. But, to me, it’s as intrusive as a vacuum cleaner’s drone at close range. I inserted an electrically isolated pathway between the amplifier’s ‘send’ channel and the input to Pedalboard III. Bliss!:

2.00 pm: A few new pieces of writing to bolster the connectivity between the paragraphs of the article were required. (Most everything in my life involves either making or reconciling connections, it seems.) 3.40 pm: After a brief trip to the GP — where, waiting, I solved a transitional hiccup between one paragraph/one idea and another — I returned to my study in order to implement the solution. It’s cold. The wind cuts like a razor.

6.15 pm: Practise session 1. 7.00 pm: Undergraduate and postgraduate module admin. This coming week, I’ll concentrate on seeing all my available charge (from PhD, through MA, to BA second and third year studies) for one-to-one tutorials.

8.00 pm: 1986:

The ceiling of grey cloud and the top and distant edge of the Arael fused, as though the mountain had been erased, like a pencil drawing (Abertillery, Diary > January 1, 1986).


The Arael Mountain, as seen from the lower playground of The British Infants’ School, Abertillery (November 1, 1987)

8.40 pm: I returned to the article for the work day’s final hour, searching for a New Testament Greek word for ‘thunder’ (βρέμω).

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