9.00 am. A ‘warning’ to my colleagues:

9.15 am. Completed the NSSAW minutes that I’d begun last night and cleared the desk for work on The Bible in Translation exhibition of visual and sound art works. 10.30 am. I’m investigating the possibility of developing a visual response to The Floating Bible sound work:

My initial intent is to digitally copy and then stretch each word (as I’d done for the audio processing of the material) visually. To begin, I need to abstract and index the text and discern the recurrence of words:

One of the hallmarks of professional integrity is a willingness to redo from scratch something which may have taken a very long time to achieve, on discovering that a fundamental error has been made — one to which, quite possibly, the audience would be entirely oblivious.  It requires courage and tenacity to do what is necessary.

4.45 pm. An apparition drew me away:

6.15 pm. Practise session 1. 7.30 pm. I continued making an inventory of the biblical text while listening to Captain Beefheart’s Lick My Decals Off, Baby (1970). Beefheart (aka Don Glen Viliet) was an abstract/figurative expressionist painter and a musician. You can hear that. His level of innovation and daring meant that he was largely unpopular and a commercial failure. Yet he’s considered to be one of the most significant songwriters of his generation, among those ‘in the know’. (That’s one in the eye for so-called public ‘impact’ ratings.) He exemplifies many of the principles and lessons of creative practice that I, too, stand by: be yourself; what you learn for yourself is more important than anything anyone can teach you; ignore public expectation; let go; don’t ape others; integrate your interests; collide opposites; learn to break the rules, and learn the rules to break; be ambitious and aim for the impossible sometimes, and attempt the difficult always; and don’t try to be an original — either you are or you aren’t. Live with it.

9.40 pm. Practise session 2.