Iain Cameron's Diary
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2002-11-26 - 3:15 p.m.

Contemporary composers from the former East Germany � not what you expect on a CD for �2.99 in a service area on the M40. Interesting music � still quite expressionistic � pre minimalist. There�s another Eastern European composer I came across � by the name of Baird who I thought was proti-min � and of course the Estonians are well and truly.

We watched the Big Cat diary on BBC1 � maybe its because we have a bigger screen now but it was very involving. Made me want to go back to South Africa and bounce around a game reserve in a Toyota Landcruiser with a pair of binoculars.

We took Jake to visit Barley and Zsu-zsa who is an aristocratic Polish dog, short haired. She can express anxiety on her face very plausibly. Fireworks make her anxious. Her owners are promoting their new book � which makes them anxious.

The River Wey is pretty full just now and has burst its banks alongside the A3. Patches of fog on the way back to Leamington.

Some case studies for www.kwase-kwaza.org from an organisation called USPG which I am posting. I think they say that the stuff Lynn and Grace are up to is much more ambitious.

Foggy all day � there was Management Meeting today and some anxieties about the year end. Also a more general discussion about areas of possible involvement with the Learning and Skills Council. I think Stefan is quite keen that we get ourselves in a position to assess Level 2. I did some more research later in the day on what the LSC buying strategy is � not the same between the centre and the 47 regions is my initial conclusion.

This week is suddenly more crowded � there is a meeting of the Academy Board on Thursday and a large meeting on a new national scheme first thing on Friday � plus I have been asked to make handle some enquiries from someone who claims to be acting for part of MoD.

I am having difficulty getting mp3s through to Gilbert � it may be because some of the files are too big.

There is a dinner in London this week � which doesn�t involve me. At first I felt miffed but then I realised that it would only be an energy sink and complication.

I am listening to something called Glassworks � with an attempt to be sympathetic but not finding it easy. Is there meant to be some meta-rationale for the bland surface of this music � I suppose there must be? Is one meant to look towards Minimalist sculpture for the key perhaps? It is hard work trying to find some justification � is it meant to be music for doing something else to?

I brought more books with me to Leamington. The suggestion is that I might throw some away � not necessarily those which I have brought along � just that there are in aggregate too many. Indeed there are a lot � and each one is looked at infrequently. But when I fish most of them out and look at them as individuals then the sentiment is affection rather than disengagement.

Lets try some John Zorn String Quartets as a counterbalance to Glass � similar time and place. I first heard these just after I had met Gilbert when I was concentrating heavily on David Stoll�s SQs � which are pretty stunning. But these are really good � fresh in their own way .

In the evening I did some work on Pascal � and then I bumped into Adam Postgate � I was trying to get further with the digital hub. I needed some song to play out on USB and then feed into an external MIDI � so Adam met one of my little Casio soundboxes and I thought the two got on quite well. I added some Dhorn driven MIDI lines and started to pull them about a bit.. Finally some phased Maya went on � maybe its that Reich piece that�s made we want to use humbuckers. I wonder if it would be over the top to call Adam Postgate �A history of becoming� � answer almost certainly yes.

As part of the set-up in a Beautiful Mind they drop you into the middle of the tale where the hero has been rumbled and they are asking him how on earth he could believe such irrational stuff � imaginary friends and the like � and his answer is that he believed these ideas because they appeared to come from the same place as the ideas as the ideas which win him acclaim. Which leads me to Pascal � one of his crackers is that the Argument from Design is wrong � had the world been the kind of place that by its very character was meant to reveal the hand of its author it would have done so much more directly. Rather it is the kind of place where the possibility of redemption may be discerned with effort � but not unequivocally. Pascal was also the first person to use the idea of expectation in the sense of multiplying a probability and a quantity together. To do this with ordinary numbers would be pretty good � he actually included some infinite numbers.

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