I started to write a lot about the international situation � especially the stuff I put up yesterday on www.kwase-kwaza.org which I think throws some interesting light on issues. But its locked in my portable and I have left the mains lead and the disc drive behind.

The volume figures are getting better. Basically we had a launch in July and a kind of decay pattern - very common in promotional phenomena. There were some stats hassles in October which made it hard to follow. Roughly things were flat in November and then there was a holiday dip but it is definitely climbing into the new year. One ratio I watch is between the total number of distinct Ids visiting in the last 7 days and the total ids ever visiting the site. If this is constant then there is exponential growth. This is now edging back up to 10%.

Derek Ridgers is a big draw � his name is actually the most frequently used search item bringing people to the site. There isn�t much of his work on the web and we have some good examples.

I like to see the weird locations that come in � Nepal. The Vatican etc � and also I note when a country climbs over the �100� requests level. Poland has juts done that. Canada and Belgium are big visitors.

We are clearing out the front bedroom and I got down to the old harmonium I bought 30 years ago in Chiswick. I thought I might give it away but then I looked on the net � with Pearl Jam Harmonium.

Up came a reference to http://fringedigital.com/brook/

Sam Mills plays one of these instruments on a Michael Brook CD � MB studied with Lamont Young. Well you can imagine that has changed everything!! What was clutter is now a cherished asset! It seems to belong to the Cale Fripp Eno Sylvian world . I immediately started to think of a Fifths implementation using it.

This is Gilbert�s account of Shortstories. Its strange for me � I have thought a lot about these pieces � but not in these terms. Not in utterly different terms either � in related terms you might say. But in terms which come from the music itself � not from talk about the music. So it is a surprise to read Gilbert�s ideas and say � oh yes I thought about that � or � yes I get that stuff from a Stravinsky piece Andrew Keeling talked to me about � or yes I suppose I hear Berg in the way that one turned out.

�My approach to composing is always very intuitively, although there are mostly some ideas going round in my head before I start with recording or writing some sketches down for further exploration.

The ten short stories were developed in the same way. The orignal idea was to create spheres based on abstract, pure soundtextures. Later on I thought it would be great to also incorporate jazzoriented voicings and repeating melodical patterns or cycles. The latter idea was a result of my analysing African guitar styles . Most of African music is composed of repeated phrases, fitting into one another in complex polyrhythmic and polyharmonic structures.

Short Stories 1, 2,5, 6 are examples of exploring the possibilities of making sounds by purely using of what I call �Sound Techniques�, all excecuted by the hands only. Short story 3 is based on one repeated melodical pattern.

On Short Story 7,8 I went a step further and mixed different rhyhmical patterns together. On 9, I mixed a cycle with an abstract line,, something I like to do a lot. I like the frictions between the melodical and abstract. In ST 4 I used a lot of Bill Evans like jazzvoicings. I have been heavily influenced by jazz, especially by piano players like Evans, Paul and Carla Bley and classical composers who wrote for piano like Debussy, Satie, Charles Ives,...

On SS 10 I combined a rhytmical chordpattern with improvisational lines which are going in and out of the harmony.

When I listened to it afterwards I heard a narrative quality in them and decided to call them Short Stories Iain did on them a wonderful collaboration. The result a very creative, modern sounding, accessible music, full of , lyrism, humour, and poetry with influences of contemporary classical music, rock, blues and jazzinfluences. �

I wondered whether to take the last sentence out � stuff false modesty I say.

Meanwhile � an idea occurs � from the Travelogue � well from a parallel universe perhaps. For decades � in the time when Tao was really quite salient in how I saw things � the Hexagram of the wandering stranger was one I couldn�t shake off. I couldn�t say whether this is still the case

There are some related ideas in a review of a book by Richard Sennett is the Guardian:

- Treating people with respect cannot occur simply by commanding it.

- Mutual recognition has to be negotiated.

- The true psychology of autonomy means accepting in others what one doesn�t understand.

- By allowing of someone that you do not understand them you grant them their dignity.

Apparently quotes from Middlemarch � an epigram about the growing good of the world being dependent on unhistorical acts. One might develop this thought in terms of Victorian Utopian Realism � or Hockney�s rediscovery of unphotographic realism.

The traveler may be especially confronted with mutual incomprehensibility � with and without respect. The lack of respect � the search for it could propel the traveling. Or a taste for respect in mutual incomprehension equally might be the motor.

The diaries are down � except for Andrew�s. He raises the point that people offer him guidance � against taking on too much. Should he take this advice? I am often amazed at the rate at which he produces works. There could be an issue about the rate at which can incorporate ones own work in ones self understanding.

Another stance might be based on respectful incomprehension � he could say to himself � the last thing I want to do is to understand my own works � less I lose respect for them. The work is an autonomous other and my respect for it is rooted in not knowing what it means. In this sense the traveling stranger may be moving away from his or her own works.

James has the day off and is watching the director�s cut of Apocalypse Now � how much respect for strangers up river then?