Iain Cameron's Diary
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The Highveld Project

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2002-07-20 - 5:11 a.m.

Phewww�..another breathless episode.

Tonight Bishop David Beetge of the Highveld came to Gfd to meet some people including Yvonne and myself. The host for the event was Brian and his wife Anne who live over the hill from here � Brian is the head of admin at one of the London University Colleges. His wife Anne is PA to VC of Surrey U.

Just up the hill from Brian is a Voysey house � not a classic but not at all bad � and down the hill is a very interesting Lutyens � one of the last houses he did in Surrey. The epitome of the Georgian England of Rupert Brooke � the golden age before the First World War kicked off the 20C in earnest.

I invited Peter C along and we arrived early to set up the videocam. As soon as the Bish arrived we sat him in front of the camera and shot some questions at him. We got some really powerful stuff in the can. This will go with the other interviews that we shot at my house. I think we have enough to put on a CDROM which we can sell in Gfd. The Bish seems to be very positive about what we are doing. I gave him a couple of copies of Plundafonix � one to listen to in his car and one to give to someone.

Brian�s house faces south (mine faces North � the rabbit side of the hill). The view tonight over the greensand ridges from his balcony was amazing as the sun slowly sank and we ate and drank. You just can�t overemphasise the irony of a group of middle class people in SE England living in very attractive surroundings getting together to eat and drink and generally have a polite good time � because of millions of people in the other half of the hemisphere in very different circumstances. Utterly bizarre. Yet the Bish was very clear that for him this partnership is really important for him.

Gilbert Isbin�s new guitar piece is high in manuscript. Maybe this weekend I will be able to do some more work getting inside it. The bottom string of the guitar is tuned down a semitone. I have been listening to Begel Gilberto � such great Summer music.

For some reason it reminds me of Mark�s �quick� piece.

One of my ways of working is to have a minidisk from a while back on the Tascam and to play odd pieces eg when I am getting dressed or tidying up. I am listening to stuff from two Summers ago � some Webern, Schoenberg and Stravinsky arrangements. Also a series of my pieces approximately one minute long � some based on tonerows, others based on minimalist phasing algorithms. Somewhere in that lot is something I think might be the next step. Although maybe it�s a Fifths thing. One evening this week I knocked out another Fiths �cycle�:

Cmaj 7 C#m7 G#m7 Abmaj 7 Fm7 Emaj 7 � fifths persevere across enharmonic jumps � linked to Coltrane changes..

Paul Bell phoned about the Wild Oats reunion Richard Jones is proposing.

AK mailed about J Buckley. AK thinks Grace is the business but not the other stuff. For some reason I am a bit of a JB complete-ist. I have Live at Sine, some singles, Sweetheart and Mystery WhiteBoy. Live at Sine is interesting because it some "covers" and some original material. Actually to say that JB did "covers" isnt the right terminology eg with Hallelujah and B Britten. He took bits of music and made them his own - a strategy I utterly favour. Mystery is interesting because its another perspective on some of the same material - post facto - and much more "rocky" and "laddish". I think Sweetheart is the only clue we have about some of the bigger issues and Everyone Wants You is just it. Sweetheart like Pink Moon is "beyond the romantic youth" in a way that not much else is - a kind of postcard from the limit. Wittgenstein said (I think) that a limit is not a boundary - you can think both sides of a boundary.

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