Robin sent me the URL for one of her new songs and I managed to download it. I really enjoyed it on a first listen through � it was spacious, and varied , had a great groove and was very atmospheric. Gilbert mailed about a really exciting new opportunity for his Nick Drake interpretations � he also mentioned an item he has seen about Jimmy Page�s musical development. I have now have nine of our collaborations outside the 10 Shortstories sitting in a file in Clean while I wonder about the soundscapes. I have recorded them out to MD so that I can listen in different surroundings and maybe try some different tricks on my MD postproduction rig.

Jake and I went and had a look at Dapdune Island � normally this is a name rather than a description but the River Wey has risen so high that it may well turn into a real island. There is a natural drama about the river surging through the centre of Guildford at speed overflowing the tow-path on the navigation.

We went to see the Quiet American last night � just squeezed into virtually the last two seats in the cinema. I must say that if ever a film deserved to be packed out that�s the one � it just flew by and at the end I was wondering what would happen to the characters next. Michael Caine is very credibly cast but the young actor in the title role is incredible. You feel like you have already met him . Not only that but is portrayal embraces a range of characteristics that don�t normally hand together � naivety, determination, courteousness, ruthlessness.

I think the international experience since the book was first written have slightly dulled the edge of the moral dilemma � we have become much more tolerant of expedient killing whereas just after the end of the 2nd World War maybe there was the idea that we had entered a new era where that wouldn�t be necessary or tolerated. We know now that the policy that the American is working towards � the third way between communism and colonialism � ends up in twenty years time with the helicopters on the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon and the traumatisation of the domestic scene. In fact there is an irony about how parts of the film echo images from the really huge Vietnam movies like Apocalypse Now eg when the hero and the QA go up country. That�s textuality talking that is.

An email came in yesterday from the discussion forum on the Global Fund. The GF is the largest international fund raising project ever in the history of the world and a group has established itself outside the fund to act as court of public opinion on behalf of the rest of the world � in the interests of positive accountability. There are risks in a �self appointed� group like this but it is exciting that anyone can sign up to the discussion and join in if they are interested or have a pint of view. Anyway I have posted the details on the news and links section of www.kwase-kwaza.org.

I was clearing out a pack of papers that I think formed itself in one of my briefcases. There was a copy of The Wire from November 2001 which included a series of postcards from Downtown and a long interview with Jim O Rourke � who formed his musical viewpoint in Chicago. He mentions how Ives has been an early influence. I thought about how I come at the composer from the other direction � so that it sounds familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

JOR also compares the ethos of the US improv scene with that in Europe � not very positively. He gives the impression that at one stage the US scene was more genuinely amateur. Anyway the finding this mag reminded me how it�s a good idea to archive The Wire.

I also came across that Robin wrote about Alvarez�s �The Savage God� � its really on the button. I wonder whether she still has it ? I am sure lots of people would enjoy reading it in her diary or wherever that line of thought has got to.

Like most people I have accumulated a lot of books, most of which were in the room tat already had shelves on the walls when we moved in the house. Now Vita wants that room � it is north facing and has a big window which is the kind of light that is traditionally regarded as best for a studio. But she doesn�t want the books on the walls and so they have been been stacked elsewhere. Churning them like this means that some �come to the surface� which I haven�t thought about for a bit. One of these caught my eye yesterday � a book of interviews of American artists mostly dome about 10 to 15 years ago. In the introduction there�s a reference to �the death of the author� which is transferred to the �death of the artist�. I guess a couple of sentences is the best thing:

�The late 60s were the precise moment when the idea of the artist as an originative, independent, litigious voice in the forum of cultural politics became intellectually discredited�At this point the work of art - which the high modernists chose to regard as a symptomatic representation of the artists individual consciousness � became an object which the postmodernists regarded as symptomatic of cultural consciousness variously construed as societal neurosis or class bias � or at best as embodying the consciousness of a marginal subculture with which the artist situated his or her identity.�

Something appeals to me in the idea that in making the work it is less a matter of plumbing one�s authenticity and more a matter of reconfiguring a social, semantic imagistic net � maths as symbolic play perhaps?