When I started this blog about 5 and a half years ago, it was with the vague intention of shedding some light on what it is like to do the job that I do. I wanted to avoid the kind of willfully starry-eyed and oblique accounts that I imagined other people might be guilty of writing; it’s a lazy way to define oneself – conjuring up something to be against.

Although I have always been very grateful for the kind comments of my modest readership, I must admit that maintaining the diary became somewhat self-serving – more a way to keep track of my scattered life than a contribution to anyone else’s understanding. A trail of breadcrumbs for those dark nights of the soul when I feel lost and need a way of tracing my journey. And a good way to keep my parents up to date with what I’ve been doing without actually having to tell them.

But last week I ran into a bit of bother. I wrote here that a new Brian Eno record was coming out on Warp – and I shouldn’t have done because the label hadn’t announced it yet. By tomorrow all this will be yesterday’s news, but unfortunately today’s news included a large feature in the Guardian quoting extensively from this blog – including information that, whilst not secret, I nevertheless feel very embarrassed about having been made so public. They even included bits that I’d hastily deleted (and the fact that I’d hastily deleted them).

Various words spring to mind re-reading that last paragraph, such as ‘naivete’, ‘confusion’, and ‘bugger’.

Warp have taken it all in very good humor, but I would like to apologise to them and to Brian’s managers for being careless, and for blithely underestimating the widely-known potential of the internet to disseminate information.

One of the consequences is that from now on, this diary is going to change a bit. No longer will it be a blow-by-blow account of what I’ve been doing each month. I hope that in the future it will be more reflective and honest, more open and revealing – but not in the wrong way.

Thanks for reading.

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