Ah, you youngsters and your thirst for precision... 

Tinly, I can tell you from personal experience that with programmes like that (i.e. magazine-ish round-ups) they fuss with the order/editing/timing right up to the last minute. Don't be surprised if you find yourself severely curtailed (ouch!) or misrepresented. Territory. Comes with.

Why do all my ‘breakthroughs’ feel the same? It’s as if I can never learn the few, basically rather simple rules of thumb that pertain to my ways of composing.

Anyway, this morning’s work has yet again revealed one or two blindingly obvious things about the piece I’ve been struggling with for a few weeks. All these pieces of related material. Which order do they come in? What are the salient levels of complexity that distinguish them such that the order they come in matters?

Solution: they need to co-exist from the outset – not necessarily literally, as in superimposition, but in a state of play between them, sometimes juxtaposed, sometimes integrated into a form of corporate identity. Sorry, that sounds naff, but to me it’s a simple (and, as I say, familiar) solution and makes me happy.

Anyone else recognise this kind of ‘Doh!’ moment?

(Perhaps it takes having a cold to create a breakthrough sometimes – you know, slightly weird and druggy-feeling mindset etc…)

One can achieve the latter without actually having the cold, you know...

Now I would have said that all the work of yours that I know has this "coexistence from the outset" quality to some degree or other, and that it's usually the changing balance between the materials rather than their succession which animates the structure. I think it's often easier to see such general things so to speak from the outside, isn't it?

God, I know that feeling, Strina. Except with me it's duvet covers.

Thinking about this thread yesterday, it occured to me that (quite understandably for a 'music' MB like this one) it's so far been inhabited almost exclusively by composers, plus a few performers.

It's pretty clear that other members here are poets, writers of various stripes, designers, illustrators etc. etc. and I just wanted to say that I for one would be extremely happy to hear from any of them too about matters creative... (In fact, in 'real life' I've had some of the most interesting and illuminating discussions of this sort with non-musicians.)

I'm sure we could all do with someone standing behind us who has the advantage of not being up to their eyeballs in whatever it is (composition, portraiture, duvet covers). What that person would say to me is something like "you appear to be sitting there doing nothing and that's because you are - you might protest that you're just wondering whether it's a good idea to do what you're thinking of doing, but all you're actually doing is waiting until it's too late to think of anything else and it has to be a good idea, or to become one."