Iain Cameron's Diary
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2003-04-16 - 6:40 a.m.

A quote from Fred Frith

�and I�ve never thought of myself as a jazz musician, much as I love it. And so many of the kinds of labels you get stuck with don�t really tell the story; Progressive, Art Rock, Noise Music, Downtown - it ends up being a struggle to stay out of debates that other people are having around you. For example, a reviewer writes an article calling me avant-garde, and some other critic then attacks me for daring to imagine that I�m avant-garde, when I�m obviously a hack who stole everything from (fill in the blank according to the agenda).

All I�m trying to do is keep my head down and get on with it, whatever it is! I�m interested in lots of things: being bassist in Naked City was a blast, as was playing violin with Lars Hollmer , as is playing blues guitar with Aki Takase�s W.C. Handy project. It�s like learning a language; you can�t speak a language fluently until you find out who you are in that language, and that has as much to do with your body as it does with vocabulary and grammar.

As a musician I like learning �languages�, because it�s a way to find out more about myself. I think that�s precisely the area where Lol�s acting analogy is most pertinent. At a certain point I thought I was ready for another shot at being a composer, so that's part of what I'm learning right now. As an improviser I'm now pretty comfortable with trios, so I'm thinking of working up to quartets. There are always things to examine. What's great is not feeling that I have to refuse any of them. Maybe no good from a PR perspective, but from the point of view of everyday life, it keeps things interesting.�

I found a transcription of Giant Steps yesterday in the massive pile � a key element in this new algorithmic piece. I also bought an arrangement for flute and piano of the early Debussy piece En Bateau. I am thinking that the trio might do this � the line on clarinet and maybe some busked fills on flute

I listened to the radio 4 state of the world discussion. Maybe the period of economic growth through globalisation will not be so evident in the next decade. There was also a point about the nature of US democracy � that despite virtually unlimited power how the US deploys that power is conditioned ultimately by democratic control. Arabs apparently construct the events on an agenda which emphasises despairingly their lack of control over their own destinies. It seens that there hasn�t been a regime change for over 30 years in an Arab State. Everyone thought that the �not about oil� line was rubbish � that post 9-11 the USA wanted not to be so dependent on Saudi oil given the clear Saudi involvement in the attack.

On KK news I put up a piece about the page that the Samaritans for people worried about the events in Iraq.

While I was looking at the Sams a research report on the incidence of self-harm amongst adolescents caught my eye.This chimed with something I heard on the lunchtime news about the rocketing rates of STDs amongst adolescents in the UK � including HIV.

I visited something called the IoD hub in the centre of Birmingham in the morning � quite smart. I used the PC based presentation that I did yesterday in Solihull and felt OK about it. I was meeting a specialist in the establishment of in-house learning institutions � a bit of an issue in my CV � I decided that this guy needed to meet Richard and Stephen. After that I felt a bit bushed and didn�t get a great deal done except I managed to write some checks for some parking fines.

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