I'm on an Isabel Marant kick. She does an amazing job of making things that are everyday-wearable but also special and a little bit different. I definitely like that she has a '70s western vibe. There's something that's very fun and vintage in what she's doing.

There's one Baldessari work I genuinely love and would like to own maybe because of my Midwestern roots and love of driving alone. 'The backs of all the trucks passed while driving from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara California Sunday 20 January 1963' consists of a grid of 32 small color photographs depicting just what the title says.

I don't know whether it's age or maturity but I certainly find myself committed more and more to the looser forms of Western democracy at any price.

There are signs that the age of petroleum has passed its zenith. Adjusted for inflation a barrel of crude oil now sells for three times its long-run average. The large western oil companies which cartellised the industry for much of the 20th century are now selling more oil than they find and are thus in the throes of liquidation.

But look I was born in 1956 the peak year for births in US history. I think I'm very representative of many of the thought processes my generation have been through and by and large people of my age have had their imprint planted on the consciousness of western society for a long time.

I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere when I was a very little boy and my father told me that when he was a boy about my age he wanted to be an Episcopal priest because he so admired his priest a black man from someplace called Haiti.