9.30 am. En route to Oxford to attend the Audiograft series of experimental sound performances and audio-visual exhibitions. (There’s never been anything like this organised in Wales. What to do?) Dr Cruise is on the same train. Back to scoping. My mind is preoccupied by the sounds of coalmines (or at least, as I remember them). Some were unearthly — in the sense of being both subterranean and suggestively supernatural.

2.15 pm. I arrived in Oxford. It takes me a good half-a-day to acclimatise even to a familiar city before I can see it, photographically. Oxford is too iconic (already framed) to offer easy surprises:

It’s not either as delicate or prissy as Cambridge: a jostle of towers and malls, churches and eateries, depth and surface. For the remainder of the afternoon, I was a tourist — poking my head into college courts, shuffling through back alleys, seeking out grassland, walking into the sunlight:

6.30 pm. Cheapo dinner at an Oxfordified Burger King:

Most things are Oxfordified here:

7.00 pm. I attended a performance of ‘Cutting into the Continuum’ by an ensemble called ‘[rout]’, at the Holywell Music Room:

Music like this doesn’t attract large audiences. It demands a great deal of one’s listening — in the most rewarding sense. The musicians performed as artists. (Whereas I, as an artist, perform as a musician.) In the opening piece, the squeaky floorboards of the converted chapel were themselves converted into a musical instrument for feet. I was hooked. The musicians deployed standing, moving, and gesturing alongside and, sometimes, instead of music. The music extended beyond the realms of traditional instrumental sounds in other ways, to embrace the almost inaudible noise of a face being stroked, the creak of a wooden chair, and a ‘pop’ made inside the mouth.

The performance ended after 9.00 pm. On the way home, I rethought my plans to stage the ‘Graven Image III’ event at the National Screen & Sound Archive. It wasn’t due to anything that I’d heard or seen. But the example of others can sometimes inspire determinations, confirm intuitions, and clarify one’s own intent. Which is one of the reasons why we should engage with the work of others.