June 19, 2018

7.45 am: A communion. 8.30 am: This week my postgraduate teaching was assigned to today. At the Old College: the residue of a either wedding or a Christening (including ‘The Arm’):

9.00 am: The first of the day’s MA tutorials. 9.30 am: My second appointment needed to be postponed to the end of the day. The occasion gave me an opportunity to catch up on the day’s admin at a local café. 10.00 am: Onward and backward to the mothership. There’re times when we must take time to talk together as staff about the vicissitudes and uncertainties of our lives. After all is said and done, we’re only human.

10.30 am: My email deposit oozed postgraduate admin. Some magisterial Jean-Baptise Lully in the background, to ease the passage. (Music is my caffeine.) 11.15 am: That set to order, I began the annual sift and jettison of paper and files that wouldn’t be needed on the journey into the next academic year. I enjoy casting off. (Practical housekeeping.) I was drawn into the Discourse: Reynolds to Rego exhibition in the School’s double gallery; the first of many trips, I’m sure, to enjoy the modernist prints especially:

After lunch, I held an informal discussion with a PhD Fine Art inquirer:

For the remainder of the afternoon, I conducted MA fine art tutorials at the School and Old College until 4.45 pm.

7.15 am: An evening of bitty tasks: emails, website revitalisation, computer problems, and further extractions from the Scourby recording. One day I’m going to play the discs from Genesis to Revelation.

Some principles and observations derived from today’s encounters:

  • To fail is to understand the nature of success.
  • No one can have given you the answer, because only you can formulate the question.
  • What is it about a black and white photograph that appears to cast the subject into a past that belies its historical moment?
  • We teach out of who we are, so that the student can be who they are.
  • Let the snow fall and lie, before treading through it.
  • You’ve been floating upon the pond, now go to the well and draw water from deep within it.
  • Sometimes a tutor, sometimes a ‘priest’.
  • It would be like cooking and never eating your own meals.
  • Confront the unknown.
  • If you have a sense of direction, don’t assume that you know your destination also.

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