Finishing touches all round

Having planned the framework for Prism, I've been spending the day sorting out running orders, shopping for a good deal of the stuff we need in the zones and listening to copious quantities of dance and chill out tracks to serve as background and fill-in music when people are gathering and in zones. The bar will be open in our venue from 7pm, so we need to ensure a suitable atmosphere is created as delegates arrive.

We've had trouble sourcing 200ml cartons of red grape juice (any suggestions? we need 150 of them) but apart from that we've got everything we need to ensure the event goes with a swing.

The plaster is drying nicely in our bathroom ready for the tiler to come tomorrow and make it look fabulous. So hopefully we're on track for a Friday tea-time finish. I'll be in Plymouth, but the rest of the family will be able to spend the weekend moving between the shower and the bath, washing off a fortnight's accumulated grime.

Bathrooms, music and the nature of reality

We have a bath and a towel rail, shower tray and many holes in walls; the electrician has arrived to do the wiring for the down-lighters and tomorrow the plasterer will come. It's like a convention of the skilled here! And we're on track for a completion at the end of next week.

I've been listening to the debut album by John Grant. Queen of Denmark is simply gorgeous. I've been eagerly awaiting this release since I heard the first single, Marz, which you can download for free at his record label's site (here). On first listen, it seems to be a list of ice cream flavours, but it slowly reveals itself to be a lovely meditation on memory and simpler times.

I've been working on the opening session for this year's Prism. So far we're kicking off with Gorillaz Glitter Freeze, moving into the Grace section of the second 1 Giant Leap DVD, possibily taking a peek at Christian Falk & Robyn's Dream On before moving into the zones for story telling and conversation. The aim is to create uncertainty - even a sense of disorientation - about whether there really is 'one world' and even more uncertainty about the reliability of our perceptions of that world.

I will also be using some of Alan Roxburgh's insights on maps and the growing sense that the maps we use to tell us how the world is and therefore how we do 'one mission' in it are no longer in tune with reality - and basing it all on Epeshians 2:1-10.

It will all make sense when it happens (maybe)! Of course, it'll all change over the next week. We have a final team meeting on Monday at which I hope we'll nail down the framework for the five sessions.