Iain Cameron's Diary
"Click here to access the Fruitful Album" - Click here to visit Music for the Highveld Project


The Highveld Project

Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries

2003-03-23 - 7:38 a.m.

More mail to and James about Florence politics and his old school�s new found radicalism. Vita says she doesn�t share the views of the demonstrators.

There was a really good article in the Guardian by Richard Dawkins on the weaknesses in the US system of leader selection. A related article by Anatole K from the Times appears today on the social and economic consequences of Bush � they are both up on www.kwase-kwaza.org . Also a German poem forwarded by Robert Cotton which I put up together with an account of the protests in San Francisco.

Here�s a quote from the US middle market mag �Newsweek� which I bought when I was out shopping this morning:

�The administration is wrong if it believes that a successful war will make the world of a deep and widening mistrust of American foreign policy. A war with Iraq even if successful might solve the Iraq problem. It doesn�t solve the American problem. What worries the world above all else is living in a world shaped and dominated by one country � the United States. They have come to be deeply suspicious and fearful of us.�

Do listen to Radio Five Live to get closer to things. I had it on last night as I drove back to GFD and I caught Rumsveld explaining to the journos how one shouldn�t be taken in by the apparent ferocity of the attack on Baghdad - it may look devastating and terrifying but it was all unbelievably well guided. He went off into pure Baudrillard � the French philosopher who argued that the Gulf War had become pure image and spectacle � to support his case! Shock and Awe is the name of the image not the reality?

This must have given me the idea this morning for Wendy�s birthday president � I got her Baudrillard�s essay on America plus Tariq Ali�s book on the US and Fundamentalism. It is her half century. I have also given her a unique copy of 10 Short Stories and Four Fiftths � with the bonus track NYC-0303-HRD.

The CD comes with a copy of Foucault�s History of Sexuality Volume One � which is really about the exercise of power. (I read this first on my honeymoon.)

Gilbert and I have been emailing about Andrew K�s thoughts on 10SS � about where a composer�s conception of form/methodology fits into the process we are evolving.

I am not sure how far to open this one up.

I am listening to the recording of Gilbert�s broadcast ND concert � it�s a real glory. Very expansive in some respects � more so than the CD � it manages to sustain the introspective and enclosed meditative atmosphere present in the original music. At the same time he displays sustained virtuosity - all focused and subservient to the governing musical vision.

I suppose one has to go back to someone like Coltrane to get that combination. The other reference that has come to me is Davy Graham but Gilbert is able to let his musical ideas push up to the limit of his technique and then one step beyond � this sounds like a criticism but actually it�s a recipe for enhanced expressiveness. There was a tendency for the FB guitarist of the 60s to play safer than that. Also Gilbert uses a wider range of techniques eg some quite long passages of single string playing � together with a much wider harmonic vocabulary.

(He plays a Miles Davis tune � Nardis � and is kind enough to refer to my Jazz-ND article in the introduction � of course that�s all I understand and he may be saying that the article is a load of rubbish. Then he goes on to announce the Lullabyes project before playing a glorious original contribution . I have only just heard this � absolutely wonderful � I am quite overwhelmed. Must post something on www.kwase-kwaza.org. about this brilliant windfall.)

Letter in CAM from Richard Warren (Christs 1968):

�Christopher Andrews concludes that terrorists are calculating and round the bend with bizarre mindsets. Actually the few convicted terrorists that I have met including the Angry Brigade who learnt their ideology at Cambridge � have at least seemed like idealistic and thoughtful people, their methods not withstanding. Is this �thinking outside the box�? God preserve us from covert government by the intelligence community � or is it already too late�

Whoops � my generation!

previous - next