The lethargy which struck me on Thursday came back yesterday and I ended up spending half the day slumped in a sofa. Friday had been positive � I went to the engineering design firm who did the engine and powertrain for the BMW mini who have offices on the south side of Leamington. That was a positive meeting and we agreed that I should go next time to the main heaquarters in Shoreham.

On Friday I also managed to get some birthday presents for Vita whose birthday was yesterday. The main success was a metre high plastic Coke bottle money box for her new room � which has two authentic US green plastic coke bottles on the mantelpiece. It was just luck that I went into Woolworths to get some wrapping paper and saw these. I also bought her a couple of frames � I can�t over emphasise how important I think it is to frame ones work and just have it hanging around.

We went out for lunch in Sheer � to the Victorian pub � where the food is interesting and reasonably priced. James phoned from Moscow where he sounded happy � he had been out for a boat trip on the Moskva. Yvonne is shifting her opinion on whether we should go and visit him at some point. My view is that it is a chance not to be missed.

I read an interiew with Rauschenberg done in 1964 when he was touring Europe with the Cunningham Dance Company � waving the lights around during the piece choreographed by Lm Young. In it he mentions that European coke bottles are clear rather than green. He needed some green ones for a project during the trip and found it really hard to get them.

Talking on LmY I have just posted on KK news a notice about a sound and vision experience at the MELA Foundation � every Friday night til June in Church St in Manhattan.

The same book with the Rausch interview has one with Cage and Roger Smalley (Frith mentor). I like Cage�s music more and more. When I had lunch with Colin Touchin � the Warwick U MusDir � he mentioned the way that Debussy and Cage had used the piano as synths/FX units. And in Cambridge this week I came a cross a really good value collection of unprepared piano music by Cage. I think its great stuff � but despite this I really cant see what Cage is on about in the interview. I have never really got the hang of his way of talking about things.

Towards the end of the week I started to introduce material from the Cambridge Gospel and Blues collection into the essay on Detroit. It gets easier and easier to portray the city as a �hub� � I have now found out that people identified a �Detroit� school of jazz piano playing in the 1950s. At exactly this point the Rev Cleveland was teaching Aretha Franklin � in Detroit � the essence of her gospel piano style exemplified eg on the glorious intro to her version of the Sam Cooke tune, You Send Me. Cleveland is amazingly important in the evolution of gospel � he moved to Detroit in the early 50s to be the MD for the Rev Franklin LA at the end of the 50s and started a group which gace Billy Preston his first gig.

The Rev Franklin is so important in Detroit that when he died in 1984 they named a street after him.

Anyway on the strength of this serendipity I mailed Prof Moore who edited the Cambridge volume and who is a grand theorist of progrock and who is at the same University as my neighbour Peter Buckle. It just feels like I am on a roll here.

http://www.kwase-kwaza.org/cds_new.htm has attracted 92 visits so far in its brief life. This is the page where Frakctured Diarists jam together eg on Fifths and 10SS.

I mailed Gilbert Colin Touchin�s comments on this stuff � the key word is �surprising�. I will settle for that.