Smoking Too Long � go to Robin�s diary and take the link this minute! Its particularly good fun with the two very different vocal readings. The first seems to my ears to be very rooted in the tradition � it reaches back into the folk blues heritage very authentically. The second (this year�s) maybe says Peggy Lee for a nanosecond but the �auteur� comes through and kicks away any hint of Eisenhower Baroque. We are out beyond Blue Velvet in this soundscape � sparse but threateningly eccentric. Robin does deep chill deeper than anyone else I can think of . I immediately mailed the link to Paul W and Gavin G � the wires are still smoking.

That song and Byron�s Bed are reason enough to get the CD.

I got an invite to a party in Islington � the launch of Nick Totton�s new book. Nick is a poet and theoretician � same year same subject as F Frith and N Drake. He co-wrote some brilliant songs with Paul W in the early 70s especially Ghosts which is on the forthcoming Red Blues (which maybe will have some Gilbert too).

I mailed Nick the Short Stories link when I accepted the kind invitation. I wanted to get to Nick�s 50th birthday but flunked it. I can remember reading his The Water in the Glass in St Ives one Easter � I think that is a really really original piece of work with very wide implications eg for dance and the philosophy of mind. Nick is implicated in Careless Love which is still very much in my repertoire. It was a poem of his that made me start to engage with the tune.

I decided time was too short � so I took Bodyspace Lament across into a WAV and added some effects and then into Clean for a little more. I decided that this is definitely going to be a 10 issue only limited edition 12.min 30 second piece. Three copies are winging their way to what I hope will be a good home. Its writing about Dyp Experience alongside other big revelations from the 1990s that has pushed me this way. I mailed the Warwick Arts Centre and with luck I can see another lunch looming.

I am working on Night and Day as a guitar solo in E. That way you can see the jump from Cmaj 7 to F#m7 is the same as in the Dave Crosby song Triad which Jefferson Airplane did on Crown of Creation. There is an interesting way of playing Bb minor 7 with a flat 5 � on account of the fact that the flat 5 is the E � you can add a flat 9 in too to give some colour and then slide the Dd-Ab fourth down a half step to the Am9.I I have actually used this song as an unaccompanied flute solo � it will work because the harmony and melody structure is very definite.

I found transcription of the Trane solo from So What somewhere else in the pile.

I kept working on the head to Confirmation.