I started to look at some left over pieces � mostly from 2002 � on the PC back in Gfd. A lot of this stuff was written when I was between jobs � but I thought it sounded OK. I found that I would sink into making music faux de mieux. I didn�t really think too hard about what I was doing � I just did it. Following lines of investigation without being too explicit about what they were. Then moving onto the next piece � filling time. And now I look back at it after an interval in which other pieces and episodes had intervened. I say to myself � oh perhaps I can make a piece like this � or like this.

I opened up Eno�s year with swollen appendices at today�s date in 1996. He is working on material for some Bowie sessions. He reflects that he works better when he is working within constraints. As he puts it � less exploration of all possible avenues and more determination to make something of something. � on a journey. �The big surprise for me when I work like that is discovering that myself capable of almost an �automatic writing� way of working�.

I can remember this discovery working inside an edit window in Cubasis The more one follows this avenue � places where automatic writing can happen � the odder the places one ends up.

I organised some of the documents on the Gfd computer and found some nice material � an interview with F Frith for example where he explains that ne no longer feels himself to be a UK citizen. One of the files was a usage report on the KK site � from around May. I did an analysis on the traffic between May and now and wrote to Peter with some conclusions.

Blogs pick up Derek�s pix and that brings traffic to the site. That traffic is equally likely to look at the three areas: the block of materials about the musicians and the music, the block about the projects and the block with the detailed pix.

I had decided that I needed to replace the Christmas editorial and I found a speech that I thought was 100% spot on. So I did a piece which introduced it, then there was a big quote from the speech. I added a small coda. Go and have a look at it � the Highveld link at the top of this page.

Peter was in Birmingham for a regular meeting this afternoon. We spent some time kicking around the implications of the analysis and came up with a proposal.

Peter has just completed an analysis of the information and knowledge management requirements of the Automotive Academy. It will be interesting to see what is made of this. I don�t go to these meetings, thank heavens. The politics is fairly intense and I don�t have the patience. We had had a management meeting earlier anyway.

It was the second week for my new way of doing a list. So far so good.

I didn�t sleep too well last night � the journey to Leamington was quite tiring. And I didn�t feel massively like starting the week this morning.

I am listening to the R4 documentary about the FCO � it�s a bit of a larf � well a bit of a tragic-comedy actually. I could go on about one or two tangles.

Yesterday Yvonne took James back to Hoggwarts. She was booked in to do the first reading at Evensong � so I agreed to do it for her � the first 11 verses of Ch 55 of Isaiah � who is (as my daughter might say) well weird.. The bit I was landed with is in sections and the last section in this case is a lyric which has been picked up for a frequently used shouty hymn.

Still very taken with SM3. Take Kind of Blue as a style of writing and Coltrane 4tet as a style of soloing and then mix-in some NYC innovations concerning how a piece may be put together. This way of doing electric music isn�t just a passing phase or an occaisional episode two thirds of the way through the 20C � it�s a recipe that can produce a great deal of varied music over decades. The obvious place where its picked up is Zorn�s 1980�s NYC endeavours. But there are other locales in the 1990s and something will happen out of this lineage in the current decade.

Now there�s a programme about the tango in Finland.