June 25, 2018

Reach out!

Sunday. Following church and a lunch consisting of warmed-up leftovers, I headed to that part of the beach which is between the pier and the harbour wall. The sunlight reminded me of San Francisco. I’m sentimental about this part of the town; it summons some very happy memories:

I wanted to test the performance of two Røde microphones and their respective windshields while recording the lapping of water at the shoreline. My latest ‘toy’ is a miniature shotgun microphone designed specifically for video work. It’s unidirectional and monophonic. It’ll be incorporated into a portable iPhone/iPod based recording system for use when I’m in the move. This needs to be as versatile and easy to set up and operate as a digital camera: a practical means of audiography:

Before returning to town, I visited my habitual watering-hole. (I needed some perspective and hot chocolate.)

After dinner, I watched a pop-corn movie while simultaneously holding a WhatsApp conversation with my younger son about its merits and failings. As the evening light declined, my eyes and heart turned upwards to him who ‘is a very present help in time of trouble’:

Monday: 6.45 am: A little house work before a communion at 7.30 am. 8.15 am: A review of the week ahead, diarism, computer repairs, holiday notifications, and medical appointments. 9.45 am: I reviewed the grant application that I’d substantially completed on Saturday. 10.40 am: The Aural Bible III projects on my John Harvey: Sound website required further text to situate the works within the broader context of the project and to explain the biblical referents. In the background, I listened to the final masters of Nomine Numine.

I’d received some useful and immediate feedback in the morning on the draft submission of the grant application. The necessary extensions were drawn-up in response.

3.15 pm: Nomine Numine was published. I wrote in the notes to the composition:

The quartet felt as though it had been composed by a creative intelligence that lay outside of me. At the same time, it was clearly my work: the hymns had many hallmarks that were evident in some of my other, more deliberate compositions. The quartet expresses something of the intensity, happiness, consolation, desolation, and strangeness that was felt when the providence of God and paths of two people intertwined in a remarkable way.

The work baffles and intimidates me. I feel as though it has something to tell me … something that I’m not yet capable of understanding.

5.15 pm: I was on dinner duty:

7.30 pm: I continued writing additional text for the compositions while entering into correspondence with the convenors of the Visual Theology I conference. My paper is tentatively titled ‘”The Hearing Ear and the Seeing Eye”: Transformative Listening to the Biblical Image’.

Previous Post
June 22, 2018
Next Post
June 26, 2018