Monday was pretty Monday-ish � hot railways etc. There was a decent workshop in the afternoon around the idea of organisational capabilities � they had already developed a set of these which was quite good. Each had to be placed in a space defined by a two dimensional grid � importance against performance. The capabilities which were most important but least well executed were subject to a more detailed analysis in terms of different areas for remedial action � structure, culture, processes, systems and people. The good thing about the method was its convergence. As we came to the end of a three hour process key themes started to emerge. But there�s not a lot more to say about the day.

I started to write about Ashley Hutchings � esp the one time he met Joni Mitchell when she was visiting Joe Boyd in the UK before she released her first record � must be sometime in 1967. She obviously made a big impression. Ashley relates how Joe is one of the characters in Cactus Tree - the song which completes her first album, along with David Crosby and whoever Michael from Mountains may have been. This made me laugh because it was exactly the kind of question that people of that (my) age did when they fell in love with JM through her music � which was very easy to do. One can be slightly less embarrassed about it now because so many different people of different ages are so attracted to it.

I am still thinking about Satie � for example his habit of writing text within the score. This is an idea which Nono takes up in the string pieces I have been listening to a lot recently. The text is there to help with interpretation but not as a lyric � maybe he felt that adding the texts compensated for giving up barlines.

Fortunately there was a copy of Philosophy Now in W H Smiths in Guidford which contains a raft of stuff much of which should interest James � deterrence theory and also a discussion of the current relevance of Marxism. Anyway here�s a tipple:

� Badiou distinguishes between situations which exist at the level of being � and events which do not. An event emerges from a void in a situation which means that it cannot be explained through the constitutive structures of the situation.�

One might think about improvisation as being made up of events and as improvisational structures being thinks which are a bit like Swiss Cheese. Or one might think of the Situationists as trying to trigger awareness of structures by perpetrating events � in fact this theory might well be invoked generally about Performances and Happenings.