8.15 am: A time to take stock, recalibrate, and reaffirm. 9.00 am: Having addressed incoming mail and reviewed Saturday’s notes for the Ego article, I got back into the studio. I’d been away from there for nearly a week. If the interval between engagements is too long, things often feel strange and disconnected from me when I return. (This is a ‘crisis’ of consciousness rather than of confidence.) One must work hard to achieve a sustainable continuity in creative practice. A little often is far better than much irregularly. I began by tidying the work space. In so doing, I ordered and prepared my mind too.
Commencing, I:
- made system check of the project equipment with a view to further optimising the whole;
- replayed something that I’d recorded and knew worked very well. (This affirmed the standard that I’d be seeking throughout the day.);
- considered the two record decks and every way I could play them, by variously integrating, disintegrating, synchronising, de-synchronising, switching on and off, stalling and enabling, and shuffling back and fore between, the pair of discs’;
- considered the two options regarding the discs’ respective points of embarkation: a) the tone arms positioned at the same point on both discs; b) the tone arms positioned a different points on each disc (although within the recording of the Epistle of James);
- reacquainted myself with the text of the epistle.
Of all the books in the Bible, the content of James is (in parts) most congruent with the method and nature of the means of processing. (Typically, form and content inform one another in my modus operandi.) In essence, the sound system is made up of two copies of the same record played on a pair of identical decks. This permits their content to be heard either in unison (synchronically) or unison (de-synchronically) or separately. The records can be played forward, in reverse, at their normal speed, and faster. (At 16 2/3 rpm, they cannot be played more slowly unless the decks’ drive motors are disengaged and the discs rotated manually). The records can also be played either normally or interrupted by strategies such as skidding, lifting, dropping, and bouncing the tone arm, and slowing and stalling the discs’ motion by hand.
The biblical text suggests a number of analogical concepts. For example: twoness, in complementarity and contrariness: the double-minded man’ (1.8, 4.8), ‘doing and hearing’ (1.22), ‘faith and works’ (2.17-18); a common source (the tongue and the fountain) and contrasting its expressions (‘blessing and cursing’, ‘sweet water and bitter’ (3.10-11)); reversion (or mirroring): ‘a man beholding his natural face in a glass’ (1.23); various physical motions: wavering, tossing, and turning (1.6, 3.3); and contrasting auditory speeds: ‘swift to hear and slow to speak’ (1.19).
During the afternoon, emails were responded to and non-research admin kept at bay. Today was a sacred space.
7.30 pm: Power down. A little Ego centrism. The trick of writing pithy popular journalism is to be concise and to know what you don’t need to say, is essential and interesting, and the reader needs to know, above all else.
