Iain Cameron's Diary
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2002-12-19 - 7:46 a.m.

I have been trying a new piece � it comes from some early experiments that I did with E-jay � software that is almost too good to be true � I think Mark and I agree about that. Anyway there was a short piece which I put on the CD to Gilbert and he added some guitar in a way which slightly took me aback. And now the piece seems to have expanded to around 6 minutes and acquired some new instrumental elements. This will make four pieces from the latest CD � the BBC500 which Mark wrote about, the Reich-derived piece which I think I have finished and a Fifths piece. I need to put these together and get them to Gilbert. I had been avoiding BBC500 since getting the nerve to mail it to Mark � but I did manage to listen and was quite pleasantly surprised.

It was a bright clear morning and I drove East from Leamington skirting round the side of Kenilworth and through the old town and Edwardian Village � wondering why I found that clean folksy architecture so attractive. Perhaps something to do with the illustrations that in the books I liked as a child.

I wrote a bit about �practical reasoning� as a motif for thinking about organisations � and then found a good summary article on the material that has been written in the last decade on the subject. I mailed the stuff to Laurence so that we could talk about it this evening. He is chasing work at the moment � which means that he didn�t arrive until 7pm .

Here�s a quotation from a book that he pulled out the last time we met:

�The most primitive experiences of shame are connected with sight and being seen, but it has been interestingly suggested that guilt is rooted in hearing, the sound in oneself of the voice of judgment; it is the moral sentiment of the word. There are further differences in the experience of the two reactions. Gabriele Taylor has well said that �shame is the emotion of self-protection,� and in the experience of shame, one�s whole being seems diminished or lessened. In my experience of shame, the other sees all of me and all through me, even if the occasion of shame is on my surface�for instance, in my appearance; and the expression of shame, in general, as well as in the particular form of it that is embarrassment, is not just the desire to hide, or to hide my face, but the desire to disappear, not to be there. It is not even the wish, as people say, to sink through the floor, but rather the wish that the space occupied by me should be instantaneously empty. With guilt it is not like this. I am more dominated by the thought that even if I disappeared, it would come with me.�

Another one:

"[Guilt] cannot by itself help one to understand one's relationship to those happenings [wrongs done, etc.], or to rebuild the self that has done these things and the world in which that self has to live. Only shame can do that, because it embodies conceptions of what one is and of how one is related to others.(94) The Ancient Greeks did not make of those reactions [that we associate with guilt] the special thing that they became when they are separately recognised as guilt. �

Barry Oxtoby mailed with some more leadership thoughts � he caught me just after reading some of this practical reasoning stuff so he got a fairly fulsome reply. I found an interesting article with a practical reasoning take on addiction.

I had another look for It Never Entered My Mind � this is a weird song � and to use the terminology is is quite �ontologically thin� for a song of that era. The harmony and the line both seem to be relatively fluid. There are certain fixed points though in the harmonic landscape. Indeed you could say that its being a 34 bar song also makes it stand out from the crowd.

I bought the BBC music magazine � there s an article about the whacky world of musicology in its pomo phase � anxiety about which way is up and how we know whether and when we have got to the end.

Laurence came to visit � he brought the Rolling Thunder double CD which we listened to � I must get this masterwork. We talked at length � on what activities and objectives there might be outside of paid employment � and how they might be grounded. I played him Alice Coltrane and realised what a big impact she has had eg on the piece that I started this entry describing. I gave him a copy of Serious Music and we played a bit � I still like the setting of Plath on that CD and Paul�s Frostie still sounds extraordinary.

Laurence said that his son�s band is still in the frame to work with the Foo Fighters.I lent him the book on Dylan by the Welsh literary critic that I got this Summer. We discussed Paul�s view that the Rolling Thunder phase was part of an extreme phase which came after Sara and that to haul himself out of it Dylan used a 12 step technique which is part of the reason for Slow Train Coming and the next three albums.

Laurence talked a lot about the management of different strands in his life � revenue generation and notsomuch reveue generation. I suggested that he needed to think in terms of having somewhere to write � maybe a publishing contract that wasn�t especially aimed at making lots of money. We tried applying John Rawls to certain issues which rather define our age � and getting a stunning result � when in doubt retire behind the Rawlsian veil might be the motto for 2003. Or if had to add a second thought it might be - don't overdo forebearance.

We strolled up to hear in the Gavin Band Band � just as well as the hotel has been sold and that�s the end of that gig. (I decided it would be bad manners to take a horn). Gavin has his PhD (linear and non-linear systems) viva today and then he is going to Tokyo in the New Year. I told him not to be shy about playing his style of jazz to Japanese jazz pianists and that they were likely to go for it in quite a big way. Then he has some kind of assignment in a Polish academic institution. His erstwhile peers from the Warwick Maths PhD team were in � I pointed up to Laurence the one who had said �symbolic play� and although L's main speciality is political philosophy he could see the overwhelming power of the thought in that specific instance. I think maybe she comes from central or eastern Europe.

I talked with John McCartney about my ideas on how we will record some standards in the New Year � starting with his bassline as a freeflowing and unconstrained solo and then adding other parts round that. The choice of standards would really be down to him. Then Laurence and I strolled back to the flat for more �reflection� � the process to which he is so deeply committed .

Laurence is the second visitor here - I am getting a sense that people quite enjoy this subterranean enclosure - a settee surrounded by books instruments and recording equipment. I explained to him that almost 30 years ago I fled from West London to Islington and secured myself in a basement in a house which Paul Bell was looking after. ( There is a relatively straight line from there to introducing Cathy's mum to Cathy's dad - and so to the recording of the Plath setting. I might have mentioned that it was in that room that I recorded the defining track of Ghosts - Manic in Munich. Paul Martinez of Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera played bass. At one stage the bassplaying Giles of Giles Giles and Fripp gave us some masterclasses in how to build up songs from the purest elements of chords and rhythm.)

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