The answer is, of course: ‘One, but FIRST the light-bulb has got to WANT TO CHANGE’. This story was told to me when I first trained as a social worker but it was not told in a spirit of antagonism or resistance to what therapy does in meeting the goals that a therapist might help … More How many therapists does it take to change a light-bulb?
First published in Open university blog Tuesday, 10 July 2018, 15:06 Visible to anyone in the world Edited by Steve Bamlett, Wednesday, 11 July 2018, 07:42 Fables for the age: The ambition of Tim Winton’s (2018) The Shepherd’s Hut London, Picador. I read every word of Tim Winton as it falls (in the UK) from the press. … More Fables for the age: The ambition of Tim Winton’s (2018) The Shepherd’s Hut London, Picador.
Of a ‘chert the size of an olive pit’, that travels with the narrator through the spaces and times of the novel Juice [2024] by Tim Winton, the narrator says that ‘… a stone is an expression of the earth, a signal of time. But it’s also a relic of experience. A thing propelled into the world. … More Of a ‘chert the size of an olive pit’, that travels with the narrator through the spaces and times of the novel ‘Juice’ [2024] by Tim Winton, the narrator says that ‘… a stone is an expression of the earth, a signal of time. … but its journey isn’t over, and neither is its destiny fixed’. In the dystopia imagined by Tim Winton whether destiny is fixed or not at any point in the globe’s political and environmental history is the central ethical problem of the novel.
Atlas shivered as he held aloft the frame he thought once held the weight of Earth.Not blown away by some drive from Northernwinds, but wasted by the flow of waterColder than the ice at its poles: FluidThat flows from inside her. Being in doubtOf lasting long,Earth spoke of their spiritBroken by heart-ache at how men … More “Inside me is an ocean like those tears / The just lock inside them when greed overtakes / The best of them, whilst worse men grow and thrive.”. The earth, which some call Erde, speaks to her abusers.
Philip Sledge pulls no punches quoting his own take on Robert Eggers new film Nosferatu (2024) in a MSN notice detailing the back catalogue of Nosferatu films [in one of which William Dafoe, playing the absurd Paracelsian vampire hunter Professor Alvin Eberhart von Franz in this film, played vampire Count Orlok himself] as “bloody, sexy, … More ‘Soon I will no longer be a shadow to you’. says Bill Skarsgård in an imagined thick ‘Transylvanian’ accent and within a dream fantasy to Ellen Hutter in Robert Eggers’ 2024 film ‘Nosferatu’. What’s added by the fleshly consummation of a vampire?
I am still attempting to catalogue my library and have just completed the section containing works by John Burnside, a writer who died recently but whose work I followed since I first read, in a whirl his The Devil’s Footprints, working my way backwards in his oeuvre as I and he moved forwards. I would … More Remembering John Burnside. All he wanted to do ‘was tell one story my own. … something that begins in the world, but ends up somewhere else, as an entirely mental event’.
It was okay once for Labour MPs to laugh at Liz Truss’ belief that stimulating production through decreasing barriers to the rich getting really and relatively richer benefited the relarively poor. Wealth, Truss insists, trickles down the economic structure – increasing private wealth increases the wealth of all and reduces the problem of scarcity of … More ‘Wealtherty’ : a new concept helps us to understand why poverty persists in the wake of economic growth, and why a Labour government should not silently accept trickle-down economics.
I first saw this painting painted about 1950 at an Eardley retrospective at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art in a Joan Eardley retrospective called ‘A Sense of Place’ in 2017. Though often reduced to statements of the ‘strong identification with the poor and deprived’ type, these paintings do not seem to me to call … More ‘Street Kids’ Joan Eardley (c. 1950): Townhead in Glasgow
The i newspaper collage above promises one minute with Jenni Fagan. It is a provocative statement. It’s almost problematic in its offering of the writer to any reader. This blog was stimulated as I was scanning my bookshelves in order to catalogue my personal library. The last sequence of shelves I have attempted has been … More ‘Never meet your heroes!’: An illustrative tale of the folly of engaging informally, for that’s impossible, with important writers
The song by Bros ‘When will I, will I be famous?’ with lyrics by Tom Watkins and Nicky Graham seems silly enough when it gets into your head like the ear worm it is. But I often find that seeing the lyrics in print rather changes how you read and interpret it, when not driven … More ‘When will I, will I be famous?’: A blog on the question of desired ‘fame’.
Many of Iris Murdoch’s characters feel they are in a drama not of their own scripting (which, of course they are – as Bradley Pearson and Hamlet are in The Black Prince and Hamlet respectively and both together in the first) that can only be changed by getting out from under the net of a … More Many of Iris Murdoch’s characters feel they are in a drama not of their own scripting (which, of course they are) that can only be changed by getting out from ‘under the net’ of a web of false relationships. This blog contains some thoughts on reading a play I had neglected by the great novelist.
W. Tecumseh Fitch, a cognitive biologist (and, of course, an animal) from the University of Vienna, giving his keynote speech at the 2017 International Convention of Psychological Science in Vienna: ‘we really need to … recognize a very simple biological fact: It’s a truism, but people are animals, too.” Available at: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/humans-are-animals-too-a-whirlwind-tour-of-cognitive-biology Forget precedence and … More Making and communicating decisions about our ‘favourite things’ are not exclusive to humans, who forget the truism, as stated by the University of Vienna cognitive biologist W. Tecumseh Fitch says: we really need to … recognize a very simple biological fact: It’s a truism, but people are animals, too.”
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