SEE where it has been suggested that we create a "new Annaghmakerrig" in a religious context, a sort of ecumenical centre where philosophers, scientists and theologians would be welcome and could find the time and space to dream and create. The aim would apparently be to regenerate faith and culture in Ireland.

I have never been to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, but reports from there are very favourable. By all accounts it is a great set up.

The basic deal is that if you, have any supposed proof of artistic talent, such as a published work, you contact the Centre and the next thing is you are (cosily) ensconced in the "artist's quarters", turning out work at your leisure (which seems contradictory).

There is no contractual obligation, but decency demands that you sit down to an evening meal each - well, evening, I suppose - with the other artists.

You are not bothered by family rows or the ups and downs of any "relationship" in which you may be involved. There is a roof over your head, a bed is supplied and so is your food.

You are expected to contribute a few bob according to your means, but the bills are mostly picked up by the Arts Councils North and South.

By the way, the nearest pub is 2.5 miles away. It is reputed to serve alcohol at peculiar hours - the joke is that it has a poetic licence.

Anyway. The idea of a similar centre for philosophers and theologians is sound enough, but the cost would worry me. Surely it would make more sense for the Tyrone Guthrie Centre to rotate the thing, getting rid of the artists and writers for a few years and letting the philosophers have a crack at things?

The business about them being "encouraged to dream and create" would probably have to be tightened up a bit because a complete lack of discipline is usually a bad thing, but otherwise the regime should be unchanged.

We could take a look at operations in, say, five years, to see if any faith and culture has been regenerated. If not, there is nothing much lost and we can let back in the artists, who by the way have included Eamon Dunphy and the Irish Patchwork Society, though not simultaneously.

But look. I was reading the other day about the Czech artist, Jana Sterbak, whose work apparently "suggests that Sterbak is moving towards a rather more optimistic view of the human predicament".

There are a lot of uncertainties here. I am not mad about work which "suggests" and prefer it to speak plainly if it has anything worth saying. If it is moving towards something, I would like some idea of when it might arrive. If it is rather more optimistic, I would like to know what it is rather more optimistic than.

This is what I mean by lack of discipline and the danger of encouraging artistic types to "dream and create" without any definite targets or parameters.

I take no joy in seeing indecision and obscurantism presented as virtues. Even artists should be forthright and clear in their aspirations without fudge, dilly dallying or fence sitting.

But I am up to something quite new (and original) in the art world myself. The thing is still at the planning stage, though I will start with something like a car, or a glittering intellectual argument, or perhaps an entire ordered ideology if I can find one. Whatever it is will have to be perfectly made that is the only criterion.

Slowly, painstakingly, I will (proceed to) take the thing apart. There will be no sentimentality involved, nor any pretence at sensitivity as I methodically dismantle the object, laying bare its inner make up. I will not stop till I have it all in tiny pieces.

At that stage I might take a cup of sweet tea or a glass of Guinness, but there will be no let up in the intellectual concentration.

Then I will proceed to take the constituent parts of whatever construct I have deconstructed, spread them about my studio in no particular order and invite in a small band of teenage delinquents to violently smash and scatter the pieces all around the place, their efforts to be rewarded with a few flagons of cider and perhaps a modest group credit in the subsequent catalogue.

I intend to make chaos out of sense no matter how long it takes.