For a few months I laid low And didn’t report or work on the wonder cabinet. It was important to let it all rest, and to give myself the space I needed to approach the final push.

The complexity of the wonder cabinet like some rare and enormous cosmic orchestral instrument was overwhelming. A great organ was poised for performance, yet the player waited in the wings, rushing back and forth to the bathroom, then standing again, awaiting the inevitable cue, the command to sit at the instrument and begin. The song’s melody was surprisingly simple, Just a pure evocative tune, like a folk song sung by one who had been to the fairy circle on a Midsummer night years ago and never forgot the dance. Then came the crashing of waves, over and over and over again, pounding sound in for open cluster cords. The horses ran in from across the sea, the concert had begun.

All the objects, symbols, feelings, events swirled in harmony together, singing, sounding, resonating in sympathy. From single voice to tremendous crescendo, spiralling up, spreading out or descending through a maelstrom, the music became more and more impersonal, until it reached an impartial arrhythmic plateau of abstract tone, a quantum fusion containing all, pulsing its message into the stars. Then silence. Enormous, potential powerful dark silence. An embrace.

And as if in reply, out of this tone song a single sweet voice in purity and sincerity. It was human. It was all human. It was my own voice. Responding. All the great music of the wonder cabinet organ was an accompaniment to my own very simple little song of life.

I thought my tears would ruin the mechanism but I could not stop them. The voice I heard that was my own was not coming from my throat, but it inhabited the room, the atmosphere. It created all the music, all by itself.

I was a child again, playing seriously in the living room by the radiant heater. I sat a tiny green bear on top of the thread spool and arranged other tiny things around it.

My kingdom. Mum wanted to clean up. “Don’t move my kingdom!” I cried. She calmly explained that I could put it on the mantle, just the way it had been before, and we could keep it there.

That was one wonder cabinet I had been sent to discover, and Project Wunderkabinett had brought me home.

The organ could also be a desk – one of those secretarial cabinets with drawers, drawbridge writing area, cubbyholes, decorations, secret cupboards behind doors, hidden drawers within cupboards, locked areas, open cubbies, polished wood inlay, miniature paintings on the facings, elaborated gold trim and wood carvings.

Begin by sitting at the secretary desk. And by sitting at the organ. An organic instrument.

Notes, screens, meetings, notebooks, calendars, all so much rubbish in the face of the real. Did I start by clearing out the desk – or by receiving the registered letter from headquarters? Did I go to the desk where I’d be writing the account of the woman Glynis, and the Huts? How do I separate It into sections that introduce each part of the narrative. A parallel world?

Sitting at the secretary is a vision as well, and from there, like that memex, I find the way to the headquarters which is also in the air. The screen etc. reveals. The secretary desk is my big metaphor for the civilized western world. The huts and tale of Glynis is the story of pagan early ways that give power to the current life. The tones of the organ are heard from time to time, but not throughout — only when she is nearer to breaking through.

The objects are classified in tones. The tones are sung by the women in the huts and gatherings. The cabinets are classified as to objects, purpose, materials, date, ownership.

Question: are any of them still in use, beyond museum?

Transformation of the secretary into a cabinet, the cabinet into an organ. The classification of the mind world – how does it work and how does it fit what I wish to achieve? For I am looking to find a truth of being in the grand colonial empires, In the renaissance creaking of the old voices, in the Greek statuary — what is past these corridors?

Why do I look for that particular hearth fire? In the huts, in the archivists home, and finally, my childhood kingdom. The wonder cabinet: my childhood kingdom. It is the immaturity of everyone, how to find heart.

The secretary drawer, behind the door, opens only with a particular key. Inside the small drawer is a desiccated organ – a heart. I’ll take it out and put it in a glass vase. And it expands, thirsty, drinking in water to every cell. As a tone plays in the atmosphere, the heart beats again. Pulsing in the jar. It is the organ of life. And of love.

As it becomes stronger, a white bird seems to hear its beating and matches its wing beats to this heart. Until it breaks the window and flies crazy around the room – sensing the heart but unable to find it. Still, sitting on the mantle piece, she spies the small heart pulsing in the jar. Flying to it, she picks it out of the jar and holding it in her talons, lifts it up to fly through the broken window. The heart stops beating, in shock. Still and inert. The bird’s wings beat in the heart rhythm until the heart begins to resonate slowly with this pulse.

Then the bird sacrifices herself to a magnificent transfiguration. The bird enfolds the heart in its wings, as the body of the bird takes the heart inside itself. Soon the bird is no more, only a winged heart remains, flying toward the sun. A memory of this magic is kept as a beautiful golden emblem, attached to the top of the secretary.