Iain Cameron's Diary
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2003-03-13 - 10:58 a.m.

I am listening to what the current piece has become � it is a core CZ101 track with added Fr Horn, Piz strings and Hammond � also percussion. And it now has a part derived from Gilberts improv on the BBC500 trio. This is pushing �derivation� a fair way by any standards. Well we�ll see � I am going to use it as background music for a while and see what I make of it. I am thinking that I might offer Gilbert the Cz101 track, the whole mix without the guitar and the whole mix.

I was talking someone about by musical education � and what I fell into during my year off. I went to night school in Chiswick and took jazz arranging, jazz improvisation and improvisation. The latter was my first exposure to new music � and I can�t even remember what the teacher�s name was. I was saying that I was pretty sure now that what was being taught � this was 1967 � had come to Europe 10 years earlier when Cage visited Stockhausen and made a big impression � this is clear from Lamont Young�s account. Cardew was Stockhausen�s assistant and carried the ideas back to the UK � I imagine in the early 60s � our teacher for pure improvisation was definitely from a music school � a serious academic � and there were a group of music students who were very taken with this whole approach. I met a few through one of the attendees at the night school.

The extraordinary thing is that ideas of that vintage were offered in that way � in a west London night school. Anyway I can�t complain � learning this stuff three evenings a week and acid rock at the weekends. It was while I was studying all of this that I saw Miles and Arche Shepp live at �Hammersmith - so you could say it was new music on every front � plus Emile Spira�s links back to the Viennese behind me. A fourtunate foundation course before I met up with Frith and Hodgkinson.

On the subject of influence � I was reading just now from Edward Carpenter�s Towards Democracy � first published 1883. Carpenter is now regarded as a hero of gay liberation. He was also a big influence on D H Lawrence in a kind of un-Leavisite way. I can hear echoes of Whitman. He is a Utopian visionary which I suppose makes him an heir of Blake � I wonder if he has ever been big in Detroit. Anyway � here�s a sample

I arise and pass

I am spirit passing by , a light air on the hills saying unto you in death there is peace

Out of all the mental suffering, out of the bruised and broken heart, out of all the tears, tears � falling seen, falling inward and unseen � out of the withering flame of desire, out of all illusion

My spirit exhaled � floats free � my brother and sister � for you � over the world eternally.

I think its rather good if a bit upfront for these cynical times� and there�s 500 pages of it here. You can see � say in the flame of desire � and the offering of its cosmic relevance � ideas that can be traced in DH. You can hear a quasi biblical strain which maybe echoes Blake � certainly the idea that the experience of abused innocence is embedded in the surroundings seems to me to be Blake (and Hegel as a matter of fact). You can also see the impact of India religious ideas. I am pretty sure it was written somewhere in the Midlands. I suppose if one were up for a trope one could try to anticipate Drakean themes � Day is Done etc.

Looking on the net I see Carpenter died in Guildford in 1929 and is buried there in the same grave as his longterm lover, a former Sheffield steel worker� well I wonder why that place doesn�t make more of the gay utopian socialist visionary poet that is part of its heritage� the author of the revolutionary Edwardian work. The Intermediate Sex? I think he must be buried near Lewis Carrol. Whitman actually paid a visit � I think to the family home in Derbyshire. So the network of radical ideas between the old and new worlds has some antecedents.

I have been talking to Robert Cotton (vicar of Gfd) about his forthcoming world tour � South Africa and NYC. We spoke about using a digital camera to generate website material and I took the rather presumptuous step of buying an Olympus with a big memory card in NYC � I think at a decent price. It looks as if Robert is keen on this idea having talked to someone else who has been to SA recently.

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