From many points of view the project is an experiment. The music you just heard - in your Programme it is described as "Musicisum "  - is an experiment in music. The word "musicisum" is a palindrome: it's the word "music" forward and backward. What is not so obvious is that the music is also a palindrome. I encouraged Barbara to write that kind of music so that I would be able to talk about it - which is a demonstration of her commitment to experimentation, I think. The music was an exploration by her of a tension between two ways of describing what music is. From a musician’s point of view it is a structure of intervals and notes, and from a listener’s point of view I think it is mainly a compilation of sounds with rhythm that is either pleasing or not pleasing. Barbara's task was to find a way of forming a compromise between those two ways of describing music. You could define music in either way, and it has a kind of integrity viewed from either perspective; but to combine them in a way which is both pleasing, not too unusual, and also meets the unusual structural requirement of being a perfectly symmetrical object, structurally, was a compromise. 

   Another interesting feature of the word "Musicisum" - the word "music" forward and backward - is that it happens to have through the middle the letters "i c i", and insofar as the main theme of the Project  is a person's reflection upon themselves and their place in society, it seemed extraordinarily convenient that the word “musicisum” should have those letters - “i c i” - in the middle.*  The Project  was designed to enable people to speak in public about the way they view themselves and the struggles they have had in maintaining a happy view of themselves in public life. So it is reflection of a man upon himself and upon his career - in this case it is three men. From us I think it requires a suspension of our ordinary assumptions about what a man in the roles of the people here tonight would ordinarily be like, and about what their role requires of them. From the speakers themselves the project requires a special effort at candour, of course, and that is either more or less difficult for the individuals here.

   We tend, I think, to see artists and politicians as being very different. Artists have a commitment to being themselves, and presumably they have the social freedom to do that. It might not be as lucrative for them but they do have the freedom to be that if they want. Whereas politicians have to bend and make themselves agreeable in order to get on with the business of politics, and if there were a profession which required some kind of deception then presumably it is politics. I am just saying this because I think it expresses some of our conceptions, our assumptions, about what those people are like and what the role is like. But there are paradoxes in those roles. Artists are both selfless and also selfish and self-indulgent; politicians are also selfish and selfless. From one point of view these people are driven by an aesthetic vision, or an utopian vision; from another point of view it is pure self-indulgence and an expression of concern for oneself more than for other people - to put it very simply. So I think that one of the things that is being experimented with here is our perception of what these people are like. It seemed to me that in order to find out about the way in which these people carry on we should ask them themselves rather than project upon them our assumptions. There is in public life, I think, a continual need to negotiate some compromise between private wishes and what the public projects. And if from one point of view artists and politicians are self-indulgent and selfish, then from another point of view they are morally courageous, for making themselves sacrifices to the public's projections. 

   I am a philosopher, but the project is not a philosophical project; it is an experiment in applied philosophy. It is an attempt to find out, for me, what the philosophy that I have been doing for the past fifteen or twenty years has to do with real people. So it is not burdened with philosophical theory; it is in fact an attempt to undercut theory. It is an attempt to find out what people themselves say rather than what people who theorize about politicians and artists say. In this context, hopefully, as well, because it is an unusual context - I mean the Integrity Project  - it might be possible to evade some of the inhibitions and obstacles which are usually placed upon people in public life. There is a paradox in this as well, of course: it is very difficult, logically difficult as well as difficult with regard to performance, to speak in public as if one were speaking in private. But, hopefully too, the effort to cope with a paradox might show us something about the way in which these people try to survive. Survival is actually quite important in this. To me, survival in ourselves is more important than survival in the physical state, and, hopefully, by listening to what these people say in this context, we will learn something about survival in ourselves. 

   Finally I'd like to add a proviso, which is that in inviting these speakers I did not choose people who I believed had integrity and I am not in any way offering them as people of whom I would expect anyone to say, "Those are marvelous people and they have integrity, and we should learn from them." It is rather that these people, I believe, are sincere and serious, and interested in the subject, and I think they are perhaps unusually capable of making good use of this unusual context.

   I would like now to introduce Mr. Dennis Burton. It is very fitting that he should be the first speaker because it was immediately following a long discussion with Mr. Burton, a friend of his, Dr. Ssasz, and Barbara Fisher that I thought that my philosophical concerns and their concerns as artists could be brought together in a way that might have some public benefit rather than the purely private benefit of that private conversation. I give you now Mr. Dennis Burton.