8.45 am. So much spam passes through the university’s email filter these days. 9.00 am. I reviewed an MA art history draft chapter submission. 11.00 am. The glued pieces of the 78-rpm record have held together well. My thoughts now turn to how each of the original three fragments can be played independently of the whole. 11.20 pm. The new book comes into focus this morning. As I continued with the draft proposal, an awareness grew that it could serve as the agenda for the conference too. Thereafter, I worked on both proposals in parallel. Once these were reconciled, one with the other, a conceptual clarity and cohesion — which had hitherto evaded me — began to emerge. I’ve often found that working on two or more related things either simultaneously or in parallel can be much more productive than dealing with them serially.

2.00 pm. The courier delivered two heavy subwoofers to my door before lunch. An unpacking and inspection were in order:

The smaller, Genelec 7050B, will provide a bass extension to my studio monitor active speakers; the larger, QSC K-Sub, will do the same for the performance PA system. Some study and tweaking is required in order to integrate the new devices into the existing sound setups and to accommodate the acoustics of the studio.

2.30 pm. I returned to the parallel proposals. A shape and a content began to emerge. One just has to just keep chipping away the excess to reveal the form. I worked backwards from the known and articulable to the, as yet, unknown and unanswerable —  questions related to the reasons for, significance and relevance of, and methodology underlying, the conference/book per se.

7.30 pm. I began installing the smaller of the two subwoofers. The instruction book looks like an airline emergency guide:

No sooner you begin rewiring one set of devices than there is, almost inevitably, a knock-on effect that requires a major reconsideration of the whole studio network. In this case, how to safely extend an additional power supply across the room to the large subwoofer. (In my scheme of things, and quite properly, all power outlets emerge from a single wall socket, at source, through a power conditioner, and on to every piece of mains-supplied equipment. This way, the risks of an earth-loop, a power surge, and electrocution are minimised.) Bring it on!

9.22 pm. Sundown: