Thursday, February 4
Outside Arcada, 15:30
I spent the journey to work listening to a recent album by Mike Cooper called New Globe Notes.
I remember him from my student days as a rather earnest British blues player, of the sort I tried to stay away from. Since then he has been through a labyrintine musical journey that has taken him through free jazz to this. This is difficult to describe but it is created from field recordings, ambient soundscapes, studio manipulation and a steel guitar that conspires to sound fragmented and overheard.
It neither is nor is not music and, among other things, it made me want to dig out some of the old Negrava tapes and release them again.
This seems to be about to become the year of re-releasing. Hopefully this means that, once everything is out of the cupboard and in the world, 2017 will be a year of making new things again.
I spent the morning with the Structuring Information course, where everyone finished the first module on time and in good spirit. In previous years we have travelled more slowly with some people just failing to get it. This year this has not happened yet.
As soon as I got to Arcada I had cancelled this afternoon’s Games Theory session because I had woken in the night realising that it would not only be pointless it would actually be damaging. In the afternoon I wrote the students a long paper outlining the course and explaining why we need to delay the start, and extend the finish. I also booked another week at the end of the course so that we can do everything I have planned. This, of course left me with a set of headaches. I will have to rebook other groups, and shuffle classes from one room to another.
Now I am leaving in time to be first home. The others will be out this evening and I have to let Sunshine out for its afternoon rampage. The sun is out and the light is bright. The snow has melted and frozen but not (yet) into anything dangerous. It is hard underfoot but neither smooth nor slippery.
When I get home Sunshine will show no interest in going out until it is nearly dark. He will stay out 45 minutes.
Me, I will have a shower.