Evolved into a whorl, dead right forMe – my home, my world: my everything -It serves to save my flesh: preserve from gnawOf noxious beast, that satiate would flingMy shell away, its purpose done, then sleepA while and dream of how, so skeletalIn inner support, unseen things creepTo feed on it, falling like a petalBut … More A snail pays homage to its shell
It is almost compulsory to describe the effect of art as achieved ‘beauty’. We use ‘beauty’ too often in this respect. The words that come to me as I reflect on an attempt to reconnect with the art of Andy Goldsworthy are precarity, structural fragmentation or decay, fragility and ephemerality, so how has his lasted … More Look not for ‘beauty’ but ‘precarity, structural fragmentation or decay, fragility and ephemerality’. This blog is based on a visit to the National Galleries of Scotland’s exhibition ‘Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years’ on the 11th August 2025.
I should have worn out my dislike of “positive psychology” by now, but for me, it reeks of everything that is wrong with the core belief of the capitalist global North and West in ‘His Majesty the Ego’, as Freud calls the object of the narcissistically derived self, that central ‘I’ that feels itself the … More The last two deadly sins ought to be called (1) ‘defending my right to positivity’, and (2) ‘colonising the world with this replacement for ethical action’.
The point is to tell the difference between good and bad change for God is an ambivalent thing Change is happening without assistancefrom dubious me, happens whether Iam there to think I birth it, take a stanceupon it – tease its meaning or let liethe haphazard need of truth. Come nearme now – and let … More Read me kindly and I’ll change for you.
The word ‘carry’ derives originally from the idea not on the personal capacity to bear something along with you on a journey but on the use of a ‘vehicle’ (‘from Latin “carrum” originally “two-wheeled Celtic war chariot), although the Celtic use itself bears the more difficult to reconcile association of “run”. Maybe the later etymology makes it … More To carry is a moral task (not least because it demands nuanced and mature ethical grasp). Let’s hope I can be worthy of it in my remaining years.
The Electra suite of the Tyneside cinema at 1.10 p.m. on Friday 25th July The events of Friday 25th July are a fitting image of an ‘alternate universe’, so I’ll describe those. I had planned to see a new film, one just released in the UK at least,Sam Sahid’s biographical and art documentary of the … More An alternate universe is, for me, sitting in a cinema that is entirely empty but for your presence, waiting to see the end of a film that keeps freezing at the same place. Getting to see ‘The Hidden Master: George Platt Lynes’ less alternatively at home on DVD.
A recent article (July 2025) in Community Care magazine instanced the stories of three social workers, whose view of the support they received from within their practice setting as a social worker forms the basis of their stories. The stories vary but are anyway all instructive if read carefully. Note here my care in not … More ‘There’s this underlying belief that if you’re a social worker, you should just handle the pressure. If you can’t, then maybe you’re not cut out for the job’. So says a front-line UK social worker of her own profession in the magazine ‘Community Care’. Can you continue to admire such a profession?
Being curious about questions you never thought you’d ask! Can the ghost of an eighteenth-century Scottish liberal moral philosopher save capitalism from its own contradictions and from the reputation cast back on him by neoliberal followers from Margaret Thatcher to Fred ‘The Shred’ Goodwin, the notorious Chief Executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland and … More Being curious about questions you never thought you’d ask! A way of preparing to see a new play: seeing James Graham’s ‘Make It Happen’ at The Festival Theatre Edinburgh on the 9 August 2025, 2.30 p.m.
In truth, the blandness of my verse proves I can not sing, but the attempt from the basis of no poet’s deep knowledge, skill, or values is also a measure of totally unschooled love. However, I am going to give the book of Gillian Allnut’s poetry – so fine that poetry is – to make … More My father sang in a choir
Is desire measured by size? Is that the same question as ‘does size matter?’? The i newspaper’ tries to get us interested in the ‘lipstick effect’!! I probably would not have read this piece, in our daily i newspaper for Tuesday 29 July 2025 on page 5, were it not for the WordPress prompt, partly … More Is desire measured by size? Is that the same question as ‘does size matter?’? The ‘i newspaper’, tries to get us interested in the ‘lipstick effect’!
Only for the medieval monk is jouissance equivalent to his habit: a fantasy dirty ditty about the phallacy of institutional religion (I am thinking Of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, having just read Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ní Mhaoilcoin (2025) London, Manilla Press – blog on that coming soon) It clung to me that habit of … More Only for the medieval monk is jouissance equivalent to his habit: a fantasy dirty ditty …
What’s your go-to comfort food? I think C. Lewis thought he might go one up on Milton in describing the role of food in temptation. But let’s start with Milton. Here is Eve having tasted the apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden: …………., for Eve [ … More We ingest self-sustaining comfort so that we might forget our emptiness in a world that starves others.
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