Coming up in the next month there will be two workshop performances of Heart of Darkness, a chamber opera of the Joseph Conrad novella composed by Tarik O'Regan to a libretto and design by TP.

The first on 9th November 8pm at the Wolfensohn Hall, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton is a concert reading of scenes with Tarik O'Regan and TP in association with American Opera Projects. The performance is open to the public and tickets are free, but they should be reserved in advance. To request tickets or for further information about this event, please call (609) 734-8175 or visit the IAS website

The second concert reading will be on 11th November at American Opera Projects South Oxford Space, 138 S. Oxford Street, Brooklyn, New York, where Tarik O’Regan and Tom Phillips will take part in a panel discussion about the piece. For further information and to view an extract visit the Opera Projects website.

On the 5th November there will be a party at the Flowers gallery in New York for friends and patrons of American Opera Projects.

There are plans for a further performance in London next Spring in association with the Genesis Foundation.

Off to Princeton once more for a month of calm on Einstein Drive. I had hoped to reach the halfway stage in my painting but failed. Even the ground that seems to be covered contains quite a few provisional gestures that will have to be rehearsed again. Some tentative alterations have already been made, as may be noticed.

As the picture is now moving forward on all fronts each new manoeuvre questions the rhythm set up by the calligraphic elements as well as the overall territorial balance. Sitting and staring plays as large a part as the act of painting itself.

August and early September, empty of meetings and grim obligations, were perfect weeks for work, with only the distraction of an odd afternoon or so spent at the Oval watching cricket... it's nearly sixty years now since I sat there on the grass watching Bradman's sad, brief last innings.

Interim report 28.9.2007

Meanwhile I have got behind with Humument pages. Here is the most recent. It will appear in my exhibition later in the month at Flowers New York but has been done in time to mark the show that opens next week at the Keiller Library of SNGMA Edinburgh. A Humument can serve as a book of reptrospective prophecy. When reworking p4 I was taken aback by finding 'nine eleven' emerging from Mallock’s 19th century text. I have joined this to two images from A Postcard Century that were indeed prophetic, featuring as they do the towers being attacked by Saturn and King Kong. One of the things I enjoy most is the 'only connect' aspect of linking one work of mine to another, so that all projects can be seen as parts of a single enterprise.