At the top of a carpeted staircase in a Georgian country home a blue wooden rocking horse stands completely still in front of a closed window with a view out onto the green hills and trees and fields beyond. A child rides a stationary wooden horse and travels to faraway places without ever leaving the security of his room.

The movement of a rocking horse is similar to that of a cradle, or a swing, or a lullaby. Its about being quiet, its about balance, its about being at home and thinking of elsewhere The Horse Stories is the soundtrack to Going places sitting down, a film by Hiraki Sawa, commissioned by the Hayward Gallery and Bloomberg London, for Waterloo Sunset, the Dan Graham Pavilion at the Hayward in November 2004. It is a piece about make-believe journeys to far-away places (at the tips of your fingers, between the cracks in the floor at your feet, on the edge and behind the door, right here where you are, close-by...) For the soundtrack I used sounds belonging to the country house and garden in which Sawa filmed - water running in the upstairs bathroom; rain water dripping on the stones outside the kitchen door, sparkling water in a glass on the table, the wind-chime and the clock and the record player... And then the sounds of music boxes being played - one elaborate antique music-box with bells the shape of bees and a miniature hollow drum, and other simple music boxes, playing only one tune each, tiny naked metallic combs and drums and handles.

At the core of all my sound work lies a deep interest in ideas of aliveness, of space and the awareness of time passing, of breathing and being still and of listening. And of the possibility of grace.