8.30 am: Off to School to begin a day of MA fine art tutorials and seminars. Palatial palettes:

11.10 am: In the MA Vocational Practice module, we listened to one another read a short passage to an audience (us), with a view to better understanding the principles of public presentation. To a woman and man, they each performed above their own expectations:

2.30 pm: A final MA fine art tutorial before an afternoon of third year Personal Tutorials. In some ways, its rather like a GP asking you to come for an appointment in order to tell them what’s wrong with you … when, clearly, nothing is (more often than not). I took in Becky’s project exhibition The Yuj Series in between appointments:

6.15 pm: Practise session 1. 7.30 pm: The proofs of the cover design concepts for The Bible in Translation CD arrived today. I’ll need to scrutinise these of the next few days. Back to the conference paper.

9.30 pm: Practise session 2. 10.30 pm – 1.15 am: US Electionism:

Some principles and observations derived from today’s engagements:

• The subject will determine the manner of its representation.
• It’s sometimes useful to first write an essay in a notebook before committing it to a computer. By this means you can also divide the conception of ideas from their precise articulation in the finished submission. Separate out the problem into more manageable phases, in other words.
• It may not always be appropriate to ask of your work questions such as: ‘What do I want to say?’ and ‘What does this mean?’ Rather, inquire of it: ‘What do I see before me?’ ‘Where has it come from?’ ‘To what does it incline?’ And, ‘What has this to do with me?’
• Our own prejudices about our work — what it should, needs to, and can’t be — will hamper its ability to confute our expectations. Don’t short circuit the path to surprise.
• We often return to where we’ve come from in many departments of our life, art included.
• Our own sense of how we come across in a public presentation often bears no relation to how the audience actually perceives us, mercifully.
• If you know the direction in which your work is heading, might it suggest that you’ve taken that route before? Do you really want to go there again?
• The old church saints used to talk of ‘understanding with the heart’. In this way, thinking and feeling, mind and soul, were inextricably bound up with one another.