Yesterday Tracy Vegro bought me a great Italian lunch - she is part Italian. Reflecting on what she said about the current state of the reputational market in the organisation I realise that my demise was inevitable. I have had very little interest in what my peers think of what I do - as I think they live in a world of their own and my interest has always been in understanding the world I am trying to impact. But the felt need to start doing something else grows even stronger.

Tracy lives half in the UK and half in NYC - her husbands firm has given him a flat between the Guggenheim and the Whitney. I cannot imagine why she sticks in the Department given her constant enthusiasm will chime well with her neighbours.

I sent off my "keynote speech" for the Brno seminar. I actually feel that it is a unique up to date view of potential growth points the future and that no one else is pulling stuff together in that way - I could take it a lot further. We shall see.

The big event was a "Universe Walk" in the evening. This is an established bit of practice - there is documentation, books have been written etc. You walk a distance which scales to the length of the time the universe has been in existence and you stop periodically while someone reads texts about how the universe will evolve over the next bit of history that you walk. Regan von Schweitzer organised. Only a few people did it but an interesting bunch - the daughter of a Lutheran minister who came to work in Britain, someone who used to lecture in aesthetics, a dancer, someone who works on crime policy. Two of these people are married, have the surname Marriage and are helping to organise a wedding in the next week.

We did the Walk along the River Wey going south. To start matters I premiered Fifths - I think it worked. I think I am gaining confidence in its integrity as a piece which is a combination of the drama, purity and universality of the track and the exploration of the freedom offered the soloist. I was so relieved that I immediately rather messed up the next piece which was much simpler - fortunately everyone knew the tune.

I have done the Walk in St Mary's but never in the open. It was that time of day when as they say in Macbeth "light thickens". I could write a lot about the experience - in perceived time it was much shorter than it was in real time. Looking at the bit of the universe against a framework of the complete history of time had a strangely Zen like effect - the fabric of experience seemed to thin out because in some way what was immediately there was standing proxy for all the processes which ever took place. To cite one example - although I had too few clothes on - the cold itself was not unpleasant but just one feature of how that bit of the universe happened to be. We sang a setting of words by Hildegard von Bingen - which is usually danced to. The music reminds me of the Jefferson Airplane and the Sibelius piece which went like a dream - they are a pretty good bunch of singers and everyone was well into the process by than stage - although I had reduced the harmony slightly with more "pedal" effects it seemed to be in the spirit of the piece. I didnt do the Nightingale for practical reasons - but I might have got away with it.

As luck would have we kept crossing the St Catherines, Sutton, Old Woking alignment. Sister Paula of the Vocation Sistsers said some interesting stuff on the way back about the post-millenial the need to reframe spirituality. We started to explore the implicit metaphysic that needs to be abandoned - dualistic with a recent once and for all intersection between the divine and the human worlds. That was a typical Sister P conversation - you wonder where on earth you would get to if it went on for say half an hour - or two ours. (The fact Sister P likes my setting of Psalm 22 is beside the point - actually I think it was she who originally chose that one about 30 months ago.)

Regan mentioned that someone we both know who works at the university is a specialist in environmental psychology - provides accounts of why people regard their environment in the way that they do. I dont even know there was such a discipline.

I was hoping Eike could play in the Taize band on Sunday - unfortunately this doesnt look likely. This is clearly my next priority. I think there will be John G on Fr Horn - if necessary we could do it as a duo. I remember once we did a D-Horn Fr Horn duo with the D-Horn driving a 12 patch Yamaha box and a delay loop. I thought we got away with that.

Nice e-mail from James. I have just realised that you can recontextualise allignments as conceptual artworks - its obvious once you think about it - then they come the locus for "happenings". Very Black Mountain College 1953.