Born in 1954. Chequered career including Lecturer in English, Social Worker and Lecturer in Social Work. Had breaks related to mental health that also meant I worked in social care. Now retired.
Fun is a word I use rarely. I sometimes, I hesitate to add, wince when other people use it. Play is a different thing because play always leans into a task and makes it something that human beings feel to be ‘real’, a space, set of circumstances and other characters in which they feel an … More If fun were an exam subject I would have failed! Lol.
Oskar Kokoschka ‘Knight Errant’ c. 1914 https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/2224 The Guggenheim is very insistent on the meaning of Kokoschka’s painting, which it owns but which so fascinates me, though never seen in the flesh. They say in the record to their online entry to it it that ‘is to this day read as an expression of the … More ‘O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms’: Stevie’s returning to Kokoschka.
There are so many things that the figure of Jesus Christ in the New Testament says that even a non-believer like myself has to applaud. However, just as I do not accept that there is ONE God that is the repository of all truth whether I or anyone else understands it, I also cannot accept … More I admire those that are ‘careful and troubled about many things’ and do what they can as they can and try to be their best in many things.
‘These words that sculpt us from nothing but silent matter into monsters’. The art of Gary Indiana in To Whom It May Concern (2011) London, Violette Editions (still available it seems) a co-production with Louise Bourgeois. Louise Bourgeois with that phallic monstrosity of a sculpture, ‘Fillette’ (‘little girl’) she carried with her frequently, and Gary … More ‘These words that sculpt us from nothing but silent matter into monsters’. The art of Gary Indiana in ‘To Whom It May Concern’ (2011): a co-production with Louise Bourgeois.
Making an ass of myself: Playing Bottom (in ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ of course. When I taught English Literature at the Roehampton Institute I played Bottom in a perambulating production in the grounds of the then Froebel College, a constituent part of the Institute. It started off in a grove in the gardens and ended in … More Making an ass of myself: Playing Bottom (in ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ of course)
Pauline Boty once characterised female desire (on the BBC Light Programme in 1963) in the following terms: “… a glimpse of future delight, a suggested violent pleasure. A life full of promise, fulfilling all those vague longing wanting feelings. You’ll never feel lost, alone, unwanted again – …”.[1] This blog examines how that idea is … More Pauline Boty once characterised female desire in the following terms: “… a glimpse of future delight, a suggested violent pleasure. A life full of promise, fulfilling all those vague longing wanting feelings. You’ll never feel lost, alone, unwanted again – …”. This blog examines how that idea is reflected, as well as other things, in Marc Kristal (2023) ‘Pauline Boty: British Pop Art’s Sole Sister’.
Definitions aren’t always necessary but here I think they are, for the idea of the ‘wild’ has always has problematic associations because it only has meaning in contrast with its antonyms (words with an opposite meaning) and hence is easily absorbed into binary thinking. That is more obvious in contexts set by specialist synonyms of … More Ask yourself, not only ‘why’ do I want to see contained wild animals but ‘what’ needs in me does that covering need suggest.
That was a place. If I was a good-enough writer or painter I could recreate it in ways in which its ‘placeness’ found itself in a much larger context. But I am not an artist. <sigh>. (My title is an edited quotation from my text below, in want of other inventive power.) At first blush … More That was a place. If I was a good-enough writer or painter I could recreate it in ways in which its ‘placeness’ found itself in a much larger context. But I am not an artist. .
‘We are all Narcissus, we are all monstrous, in that we are trapped between various ways of seeing and being seen’.[1] A foundation for a queer left cultural commentary and history of ideas in art and writing. Some books cannot be praised enough. This is a blog on Matt Colquhoun (2023) Narcissus in Bloom: An … More ‘We are all Narcissus, we are all monstrous, in that we are trapped between various ways of seeing and being seen’. Some books cannot be praised enough. This is a blog on Matt Colquhoun (2023) ‘Narcissus in Bloom: An Alternative History of the Selfie’. @xenogothic
There could never be only one thing that I might wish to change in the conduct of my life but, to tell the truth, I think the notion anyway of doing it by changing something you think of as a unified, integrated and whole ‘self’ is, in part at least, more of a fiction than … More To mitigate the fact of being ‘born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves’.
‘“You mustn’t allow yourself to think like that … even when you’re depressed. And is everything really so bad?” She adopted a light tone’.[1]The saddest art is that in which you can only ‘allow yourself to think’ the worst. A blog on John Broderick (1985) The Rose Tree London, Marion Boyars Publishers. Irish history is … More ‘“You mustn’t allow yourself to think like that … even when you’re depressed. And is everything really so bad?” She adopted a light tone’. A blog on John Broderick (1985) ‘The Rose Tree’.
What are your feelings about eating meat? In the latest set of stories, The Pole, by J. M. Coetzee contains one of his favourite characters, Elizabeth Costello, who tells her son that as a committed vegetarian,as is Coetzee of course, her favoured project in her old age would be to support the building of an … More The glass abattoir in the centre of a city
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