October 31, 2016

All Hallows’ Eve/All Saints Eve

7.45 am: My habitual morning time of reading and prayer, and, today, an initial meditation on the Magi, in preparation for an Advent talk. Love makes light the load. 8.30 am: My weekly set up: tutorials, lectures, seminars; I’m endeavouring to rationalise and compress the timetable further, in order to fit more in. After the mild temperatures, sombre-grey tone, and torpidity of last week, the crisp sparkle of sunlight and tingling cold air uplifted and enlivened (like an Easter morning, full of resurrection promise):

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9.40 am: I returned to the conference paper to: cut and cull (mercilessly); extend and explain (rigorously); read and reckon on the writings of others (attentively); stutter and stall (haplessly):

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12.15 pm: Off to School to attend a meeting at which the marks for MA Art History dissertations were confirmed. Over lunch, I made some preparations for Pedalboard IV, and dug out my levelling pre-amp to place at the end of an effector strand on the Live Art: Dialogues 4 project rig.

2.00 pm: Back to the morning’s regime. 2.30 pm: The conference convenor fired a flare in my direction: ‘I’ve just heard that the person you were paired with can’t make it (visa issues) — would you like to do your paper as a longer talk (40 mins)?’. Yay! Twice the work, but double the canvas on which to paint. But no more time in which to do it. I sent a message to one of my knowledgeable sons, who I commandeered to serve as a topic-specific research assistant on this occasion:

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Out of nowhere poured emails in related to the forthcoming CD release and other conference arrangements. Some of these would have to wait until evening before they were batted back to the senders. 4.45 pm: Evening closes as though by stealth, now that the clocks have been turned back. The harbinger of Winter to come:

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6.30 pm: Practise session 1. 7.30 pm: Email responses lobbed over the net, I strapped myself back into the conference paper and drove off at high speed. Premonitory noises associated with Bonfire Night were heard in the far distance. Close by, children chatted excitedly in the street as they toured those houses that were most likely to relent under threat.

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