Bear started well with John Coltrane playing I�m Old Fashioned � I had forgotten that this is on Blue Trane, an album I have somewhere on cassette. It�s a great album including Lazy Bird which is a step on the way to Coltrane Changes and is also a development of Ladybird � this was recorded in 1957, two years before Giant Steps. It�s his only recording for Blue Note and involves 3 fifths of the first great MD 5tet � Trane, Paul Chambers and Philly Jo Jones. Gilbert has two concerts this weekend. The first Saturday without an AK bulletin.

There was a message about philosophy from Australia. Dr Z sent lots of ,messages from his conference which I think is in LA. Nothing on the pieces yesterday although I did set the U2 up � I am worried the Roland amp is developing a resonance fault. It�s still cold but the snow has started to melt. The bear is quite keen on the O�Jays� Love of Money which is less Philly sound and more Psychedelic Soul as per Norman Whitfield � and still sounds great. I have played Portishead�s Dummy a couple of times recently � it�s hard to imagine how such an angst filled album could be such a success � and I suppose it can be credited with helping to launch a genre. It sold a million copies in Europe. I seem to have a penchant for mid 90s EDM derived song-writing � there s also Lamb and of course EBTG. I wrote a bit on Linkedin about the public sector ethos. I still need to go out and buy some warmer clothes.

I see Dick Jones has written a poem which has been nominated for a prize � Sea of Stars

They will require,
should I return,
that I give name
to all the things I saw.

Even as I feed back
voltage, trickle chemistry
past their electrodes;
even as I share

my heartbeat with their monitors,
my blood with their microscopes,
they will question
in quiet voices,

seeking out new nouns
with which to corner
the ineffable, new verbs
to charge the immaterial.

As now their aerial voices �
filtered through ionosphere,
the shingle-clouds of asteroids,
across these tideless oceans �

whisper insubstantial, needle-thin,
scratching their need to know
the unknowable onto the mighty
silence. I trail interrogation

like a shower of sparks.
But from this eminence
I no longer heed
their eyes that scrutinize,

lidless, unswerving. This dark
accomodates a billion eyes, speculating
my parabola by day, by night, probing
for my tiny skidding light.

Implacable, incurious, I navigate
the brilliant wastes � long black
sargassos drifting, planet wrack
and flotsam, dereliction.

And beyond, always beyond,
the bright flying splinters of the stars.