I have started out on a major project with the USB interface � that�s all I have to say at the moment � is a big area � and reliability isn�t guaranteed at the end of the day.

The work now under development is Ad Bene Cubes. We will be playing it on Saturday at WATCH but the idea is that this performance will just be a sidelight on the progress of the piece evolving in Cubasis. I was talking to Eike about it and we got into the question of what the title might mean � towards the wellformed cubes? It might easily become this - because of the great associations that formulation brings.

In one Paul Wheeler�s magnificent songs he has the couplet �I may be easily led � but then I�m easily bled�. I think I may me easily led. I find it so easy to absorb a passing influence or suggestion. I heard some of Arvo Part�s St John�s Passion at Steve and Liz�s last Wednesday and I think this may partly lie behind my choice of material for the current piece. I need to lay off Adam P � although I see I could easily keep going in this way for a long while. The step comes from the thought that I should apply the method which I used on AP to some different material and see where it leads.

I had a thought today about where this method comes from in part. I had a period of doing covers of Lennon songs � I think I may have been provoked by Ian Macdonald�s comment that �I�ll be Back� was the best song that the Beatles had written up to that point � if that s not the truth then its pretty close to it in my view. I had already started out on something called an Alphabet of Beatles. And I filled in some more letters by doing pure Lennon songs � one of which was Happiness is a Warm Gun . I tackled it in a new way � as an assembly of motifs � or an assembly of motives? Some of this approach ended up in a set called 3 Rav Pavs � one of which wasn�t a Pavanne at all but a fairly fierce derivation from the opening of one of the dances in Le Tombeau de Couperin. Anyway I still have a soft spot for this 3rd Pav or pseudo-Pav.

Another idea in the current approach is that if TR�s In C is the work that launched Minimalism then it shouldn�t stand isolated and alone � especially the open-form aspect of it shouldn�t just be a one off.

I get very tired at the moment � I sleep a few hours a night for a while and then I sleep for ten hours or more. Last night was the big sleep. I had been listening to Meredith Monk � she is quite challenging I think. She sees herself in the US experimental tradition eg following Henry Cowell. I listened to the Prince mid 90s triple on the way to work. It always impresses.

I am pretty sure that my journey to work takes me over a watershed. First I cross the River Avon and drive alongside it for a couple of miles as it swings North. The Avon is a tributary of the Severn which flows into the Bristol Channel. I drive through Kenilworth and then Bolsall Common which is on a high plateau. Then quite soon another river appears to the West and develops a broad valley. This might be the River Tame. I think that it flows into Trent which drains into the Humber. That diagonal axis � from Lincolnshire to Devon is also the line of Fosse Way.