Three or four important stories on the global AIDS situation - which may well be linked - see the news section on www.kwase-kwaza.org. The US is pushing through the global AIDS bill at the same time that Mbeki may be finally lifting his opposition to ARV drugs. Meanwhile in the background the US and UK are pushing Mbeki and Mugabe - who are close political allies for regime change in Zimbabwe.

Jeremy Burne�s MBE party conflicts with Lou Reed at the Warwick Art Centre. That�s a hard choice � but I think duty calls and I will have to drag myself off to Sloane Square. I had a long chat yesterday with Tracy yesterday who is working like crazy to get her ankle back in shape. I hope we will be able to get together the week after � maybe on Thursday night. I sent her a copy of Slightly All the Time. I also sent a copy to Jeremy to read on the plane from Ohio.

There is a piece floating around � a kind of Coltrane changes thing (no surprises there) � maybe C maj7 or Am7 to start (or a switch between the two) and then sliding into a C#minor flat 5 7 11 and perhaps to a Eb7 #9. And then Abmaj7 � the Ab triad hangs on and a B7 slips underneath to go to an Emaj7 which then does the same trick � the E triad floating over G7 to cycle back. Yesterday I recorded the Crafter doing the changes and tried taking it into Cubase and adding some muted trumpet. I just wasn�t sure that this would get somewhere good.

Today I recorded the flute doing the changes out of time with quite a strong thematic emphasis � into a WAV on the PC where I could process it slightly. Then I played the WAV and used the U2 to put some electric guitar interjections and just recorded the mix straight into the MD.

I have been reading a bit about Rudy Van Gelder who is one of the towering geniuses of modern jazz recording. His rule is that you always have to be ready. His phrase is �When it happens it happens�. I think this means that you have the musos in the studio and you never know when the real business is going to start � but you just have to catch it. Teo Macero � Miles� producer had a related way of dealing with the phenomenon which was to record everything and then do lots of edits and mixing.

So then it�s a question of self �knowledge � when might it happen and how are you going to catch it? I have discovered that the ideas are there in the morning much more than any other time of day. I fall out of bed and start drinking orange juice and sparkling water to begin to feel human. Next job is to log on and put some stories up on www.kwase-kwaza.com - I am locked into this � trying to build volume by attracting people to the site via a particular angle on AIDS as a global phenomenon. So for example there is a good piece today in the New York Times which looks at how Bush is handling the conservative attempts to dilute his AIDS initiative. That is exactly the kind of story that my editorial policy should focus on.

Then maybe I will do some stuff on this diary � either start writing a piece or finish off one. The next thing is to try to do some flute practice. The main focus is a health one � believe it or not � the aim is to exercise my lungs and heart when I do so little else in the week. I am trying to find ways of doing more walking at lunchtime � but this does not come naturally.

The flute playing sometimes leads onto an idea on the guitar. Today I found myself doing even more on Poor Boy. Roughly the thought here is that having written a vision of what that piece is about there is a step which might follow which is rendering that vision as a played interpretation. If you think PB jumps about between genres within an overall narrative why not try to portray that?

Even though I wake early � the hard bit is pulling myself out of all that stuff to get to the office. It makes sense to go in after the rush hour � and indeed to leave the office after the rush hour. But it is always hard getting myself out of the cave into the car.

Just now I am listening to the Trane changes flute recording over and over to think about how they might progress in terms of additions. One approach is to use the technique which I have been using on 10SS and NYC0303 � into Cubase and think carefully about some targeted extra sounds. In the back of the mind there is a new �standard� � how would this go down in Sheffield.

Update on SATT � I have found some good quotes about what it was like to record Clapton and the Cream.

The postSATT vision is refining itself. There is a definite strand about Detroit as a pre-cursor. Everyone who gets into this says how strange it is that so many good bop players came out of Detroit in the 50s eg when there was no record label there � but no one gets to ask why this was.

One place to start is Milt Jackson who was one of the founding members of the Modern Jazz 4tet (40 years duration from 1952) along with John Lewis who worked with Miles on the 1949 Birth of the Cool and was part of the 3rd Stream movement. He starts working as a teenager just before the 2nd World War � including singing gospel. He is just the right age to notice that something is happening in NYC and so he majors in bebop on the vibraphone. Dizzy Gillespie notices him in 1946 when he is passing through Detroit and gives him a gig. He plays on the bop defining recording of A Night in Tunisia that same year. MJ is always seen as the roots element within the MJQ � the one who keeps the red blood flowing � he puts this down to his desire to be a vocalist and his gospel background.

But there is a subtext � as a teenager he learns many different instruments and (I need to check this) gets a lesson from a member of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. This is a pattern which recurs in many of the biographies. The grand theory is that the Motor City moguls patronise the high arts � through the DSO � and indeed through the Detroit Museums like the Institute of Art. This provides one ingredient which encourages emerging musicians to have a wider artistic perspective.

To link MJ back into MD story � Miles makes one of the first three or four defining hardbop recordings in April 54 in NYC � goes back to the city at the end of the Summer � and at the end of the year makes what Ian Carr thinks is his best recording a blues solo to date with three quarters of the MJQ including Milt Jackson. The tune is the MJ composition Bags Groove.

The other simultaneous strand is the gospel-blues tradition. I mentioned I think that John Lee Hooker settles in Detroit and his first release in 1948 � Boogie Chillun � is a national hit and makes him a star. This was electrified Delta Blues

When you look at the careers at some of the figures who emerge from Detroit and go initially into �hard-bop� it is amazing how far the musicians are able to take a jazz career � Curtis Fuller and Yusef Lateef are good examples of this. More about them maybe tomorrow. Lateef is especially interesting because of the way he gets to the same agenda as Davy Graham. More of this another day.

In Tesco this week they are doing three frames for �3. The frames are plastic to look like brushed aluminium which is fine by me. The important point is having cheap resource with which to carry out the activity of �putting something in a frame.�

I have used the 3 frames for � 1. an image of a selfportrait with digital camera taken on W 77th St � Paul tells me it carries its origins which is of course the intention. This may seem especially self-involved. The saving grace (I hope) is that it is intended to go alongside a charcoal sketch that I did of my father in the last year of his life � which people keep thing is a self portrait. So the other image is intended to say � no this is the self portrait!

2. a semi abstract thing that is a kind of homage to St Ives � it�s the sea plus some Festival of Britain style semi abstract bits.

3. a drawing of gateway and an arch is the cloisters in Westminster Abbey.

There is a link � I used to have an office close to the Abbey and I got to use the place � especially the parts outside the main church as a kind of lounge. There is one transition there between inner and outer � light and dark � towards a garden with a fountain that I like especially � its like something out of Narnia and so I tried to capture it. I was just getting into St Ives at that point including ideas about living with ones work. I have a fair amount of work up in my cave � some in my office � and a lot in the kitchen at home.

An appointment in Bristol gave me an opportunity to go down the Fosse Way. The route has a changing relationship to the main Cotswold scarp. As I picked up the road the scarp was two or three miles across on my left. By the time I reached the M4 I was right on the crest and away to the left you could see all the way to the White Horse hill between Swindon and Marlboro � a chalk hill on the Ickenfield Way. Between the two there s lots of straight road , some �charming� villages and towns and some spectacular scenery � not all the way but for about half the distance. Keith tells me that the villages along the top of the scarp include some where the old paganism has never completely retreated � so maybe its not all quite as nice as it looks.

I came back along the M5 with the Cotswold scarp looming on my right and then up the Vale of Evesham to Stratford passed Bredon Hill which was the subject of a poem Vaughan Williams set to music nearly a century ago.