Perhaps there was no choice. the surname ‘Bamlett’ seemed to invite a sobriquet that was popular at the time when I was in short pants in primary school, when Mums took their boys, holding their soft hands, to the ‘fleapit’, as it was called in Holmfirth, where ‘the pictures’ could be seen. Bambi fitted in … More Being Bambi
What’s your favorite game (card, board, video, etc.)? Why? Let’s start with some social psychology. The theories of George Herbert Mead were collected together from notes made by his students and their attractiveness as a theory of child development to me might be explained by the way in which these theories seem to represent themselves … More On not liking games. A fanciful reflection on George Herbert Mead.
Should queer readers be interested in the queer coding of the recent past: The case of anticipating watching Noël Coward’s Present Laughter. The blog written after seeing this production is available now here: Next Tuesday, I will be going to see the re-streaming of a once live performance of Noël Coward’s Present Laughter with the … More Should queer readers be interested in the queer coding of the recent past: The case of anticipating watching Noël Coward’s ‘Present Laughter’.
Some prompt questions are difficult to answer without making assumptions that reveal injustice with which I am in effect in collusion. To travel is an exploratory state of experience of either body and mind, but it cannot be experienced, without an assumption of a secure base from which to travel, and to which you can … More To plan to travel is ‘an entitlement’ we cannot imagine not having. Yet we accept and ignore that for some that entitlement is stolen. Reading a little of Mahmoud Darwish.
In what follows I do not intend to exoplain the terms used to describe Greek ceramics. For a brilliant introduction, and if you do not want to read Robin Osbourne whose book is discussed, which i recommend most, see the new York Metropolitan Museum’s online piece (at this link). The ‘kalos’ inscription, a statement of … More The aesthetics and social culture of the admiration of the male body: discovering that you can say ‘ὁ παῖς καλός [the boy is beautiful]’
Early in Anita Desai’s Rosarita, a daughter remembers a family jointly (or so it seems) pondering, during a specific dinner where her mother broke the codes that hold together middle-class families with servants, and other revelatory incidents, that mother’s ‘unsuitability for a wife’. In a generalised point of view within Desai’s elegant prose, told largely … More This blog looks for what is truly revolutionary in Anita Desai’s (2024) ‘Rosarita’.
If you could host a dinner and anyone you invite was sure to come, who would you invite? Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party (above) is an iconic image from the history of feminist art and is replete with symbolism that suggested that women could create the imagery of their own world without evoking patriarchal traditions, … More The ultimate in controlling behaviour is the wish to be in command of a group to whom you are the perfect host.
Seeing in person Tate Modern’s retrospective Modern’s Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and The Blue Rider on July 21st at 15.30, with our dear friend Catherine. Geoff, Me and Catherine in the sun outside the BFI Café, photograph by Catherine. I have already written a preparatory blog (on June 19th, 2024) relating to my expectations of this … More Seeing in person Tate Modern’s retrospective ‘Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and The Blue Rider’ on July 21st at 15.30.
There is a tremendous blog by Anatoly Liberman in the Oxford University Press blogsite on the etymology of the word ‘bother’ that should give us pause before answering this. This blog shows that the oriigin of the word ‘bother’ itself bothers lots of people. He writes: Bother is a late eighteenth-century addition to the vocabulary of English. … More To be bothered is to reject the passivity that is actually COLLUSION with injustice!
Seeing in person the British Museum’s reconstruction of the elder Michelangelo in Michelangelo: The last decades on July 21st at 12.30 with our dear friend Catherine. Geoff, Me and Catherine in the sun outside the BFI Café, photograph by Catherine. Geoff and I met our dear friend Catherine at the café pf the British Film … More Seeing in person the British Museum’s reconstruction of the elder Michelangelo in ‘Michelangelo: The last decades’ on July 21st at 12.30 with our dear friend Catherine.
The prompt question today recalls the phrase used in English, ‘May you live in interesting times’? It is known, without much supporting evidence as the “Chinese curse“. In the LibQuote above, it is attributed in longer form to Robert Kennedy, and he elaborates it in seeing turbulence in history as the more interesting option. In … More So don’t ask if I want ‘security or adventure’! It is a loaded question, as I hope to show here.
‘This is not quite what I remembered’, says Susannah Clapp, the theatre critic of The Observer of mnemonic at the National Theatre who had also seen the original production.[1] Clearly she could not have said this had she read with understanding Simon Burney’s fragment discussing the genesis of this ‘revival’ in Complicité: Mnemonic [A Site], … More This blog is about eventually seeing ‘Mnemonic’ for myself in the Olivier Theatre at 7.30 p.m. 10th July 2024.
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