The title is made up from words from the titles of the three videos on which I had then collaborated
with Irit: LEAVING the Old Ruin, A SIMPLE Case of Vision and TRACES of a Presence to Come.

The first time I saw Irit she was lying in a hammock wearing a big hat.
Maybe because of the hat, because of the dazzling light, I could not see her face.

On my shelf there is a ceramic she made, with her face on it.

I cannot remember the colour of my lover's eyes, but I can remember precisely the structure and touch of his body, the quality of his smile.
I can remember precisely sounds that I heard forty years ago.

Perhaps it is possible to ascribe meaning to images; it certainly isn't possible with music. However, we understand it, so it must have meaning.
Where is it?

She called me from New York, she'd heard a record of mine; we had not seen each other for ten years.
We sent each other tapes, some arrived, some didn't. We passed through a period of silence.

The length and complexity of the "running man" music in Leaving the Old Ruin creates a hunger for the silence that follows it, a silence that is intense, powerful and almost unnoticeable.

So music enters us through the so narrow space between thought and feeling. It cuts both ways, into the left brain of patterning, into ...

I have a memory from when I was a boy of an episode of a television series
about the crusades : Richard the Lion Heart (O roi absent!). Richard and Saladin were talking and Richard, to impress Saladin with the power of his two handed sword, chopped some logs of wood in pieces. Saladin courteously acknowledged the force of the sword and then threw a piece of silk in the air, and as it floated down, cut it in half with his scimitar.

Each collaboration (partnership, friendship, love) is unique. There is no one way of working together, just as there is no one right conjunction of image and sound, and anyway, I'm not interested in total control.
When my daughter was three she found the reins with which we had futilely, for one day, attempted to control her in the street when she started to walk. She held them out to her mother and said : "I remember these. I used to wear them when I was a dog". At about the same time, after listening patiently to a lengthy parental discourse from me, she said "It's my life."

Is image in fear of sound? I recently saw a film, there were images in it that I resented being put in my mind, it was too late to turn away. This doesn't happen with music; is it because we cannot shut our ears? Because there is nothing to understand, to adduce?

Yet music can hijack, subvert, transform image. and image cannot touch music.

Irit is beautiful, her images are powerful. poetic, haunting, intelligent. The sound resonates with them, discourses with them, unfolds them, opens space around them, draws you into them.
I hope so.

Near to the end of working on Traces of a Presence to Come I had two dreams one soon after the other. In the first I was on a ship in a storm; Someone else was the captain, I was the steersman. I could see the map, there were many islands with narrow passages between them. The waves and wind were terrific. I managed to steer through and we entered a harbour. We went into a small low cottage, it was warm inside. The cottage belonged to a kindly old man. He cut me slices of bread to eat; beside me were some biscuits under a brick. I knew I was not allowed to eat them. In the second dream I was in cornfields that came right to the front of a very grand house. The corn was waving but it had also been cut and there were only a few stalks left. I picked them up. I only had a small bunch and some of the stalks were broken. I felt ill at ease and worried that I was doing something wrong. I looked up at the house: the queen was sitting in a window, she waved at me and smiled. I felt alright.

I never hear music in my dreams.