It’s more than a week since Hymn to London Bridge.  Yesterday was the first showing at the Thames Festival of Bevis Bowden's film of the performance, and this tight deadline meant we had to go straight into putting the film together the moment the event had finished and the theremin was packed away.  The irony of doing a 24 hour performance and then having to listen to the whole of it again, immediately, was not lost on me.  It reminded me a bit of that couple who videoed their front garden every day while they were at work, and then watched the video every evening in real time, hoping to catch the neighbour flytipping.  A self-perpetuated loop of unreality.

Despite feeling quite tired I couldn’t be any happier with how it all turned out.  The technology worked perfectly, especially the Soundbeam muting system; you really did feel the presence of the passing pedestrians above as the blips of silence occurred, and the character of the piece developed exactly as I’d hoped it would throughout the day.

In the middle of the night the theremin drones were almost continuous.  There was one 30 minute spell where no one walked across the bridge at all. These early hours of Thursday morning were very beautiful, a real memory to be cherished.  It was a warm, very still night, the river glassy.  I built up a rather beautiful, simple loop that I was happy to let run, unaltered, for the couple of hours until dawn.  I felt a genuine connection with the few solitary people who cut the sensor beam.

The dawn was really quite something.  It crept up on us quite slowly, and still no one was around.  Here's a view of dawn, looking towards HMS Belfast and Norman Foster's City Hall, next to where the film was shown last night.