I blog to keep my brain and heart ticking! And to read better – sometimes the latter aim fails. This blog takes as an example my planned blog on Susan Choi (2025) ‘Flashlight’.

I blog to keep my brain and heart ticking! And to read better – sometimes the latter aim fails. This blog takes as an example my planned blog on Susan Choi (2025) ‘Flashlight’. I feel I need to read to keep the synapses flashing in my brain, and my thoughts and feelings in evolution rather … More I blog to keep my brain and heart ticking! And to read better – sometimes the latter aim fails. This blog takes as an example my planned blog on Susan Choi (2025) ‘Flashlight’.

Why not ‘Muffin the Mule’ because ‘we love Muffin …’: TV was so different then; Received Pronunciation and Puppets on Visible Strings

Why not ‘Muffin the Mule‘ because ‘we love Muffin …’: TV was so different then: Received Pronunciation and Puppets on Visible Strings BBC: Annette Mills and Muffin the Mule in For the Children, 1952. Muffin was the first Children’s TV superstar, clopping along to his theme tune ‘Here comes Muffin’! Available: https://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/bbc-100/100-faces/muffin-the-mule/ Here comes Muffin, … More Why not ‘Muffin the Mule’ because ‘we love Muffin …’: TV was so different then; Received Pronunciation and Puppets on Visible Strings

The ‘Nostos’ theme absorbs all the energy we ought to have for thinking about our responsibility for creating ‘homelessness’

The ‘Nostos’ theme absorbs all the energy we ought to have for thinking about our responsibility for creating ‘homelessness’ I wonder if the magic associated with the film E.T. – The Extraterrestrial is not a version of the staple myth of the Western world – the Homecoming or Nostos theme. It is the stuff of … More The ‘Nostos’ theme absorbs all the energy we ought to have for thinking about our responsibility for creating ‘homelessness’

As always I searched for material to illustrate my blogs. Here is an example: Seeing Liz Duffy Adams’ ‘Born With Teeth’ in a production at Wyndham’s Theatre.

As always I searched for material to illustrate my blogs. Here is an example: Seeing (before reading) Liz Duffy Adams’ Born With Teeth in a production at Wyndham’s Theatre, Charing Cross Road, London on the 20th August 2025, 2.30 p.m. The photographs from the production are taken from: Photos: Born With Teeth starring Ncuti Gatwa … More As always I searched for material to illustrate my blogs. Here is an example: Seeing Liz Duffy Adams’ ‘Born With Teeth’ in a production at Wyndham’s Theatre.

It was Jenny Saville’s new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, ‘The Anatomy of Painting’.

In an interview with Sarah Howgate in the catalogue of the 2025 exhibition The Anatomy of Painting, Jenny Saville says that some part of her decisions and choices of method and technique as a painter is about freeing ‘up time to think about the way I’m applying paint – the mark-making, paint consistency and colour. … More It was Jenny Saville’s new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, ‘The Anatomy of Painting’.

The limits of telelogical thinking with or without the concept of personal agency.

How do you plan your goals? Let’s unpack the question today, for it is culture-defining. Behind it lie three assumptions about modern humanity: The study of goal-orientated thinking arise in the history of philosophy arise from rather mixed sources in defining the paradigm that we call teleology. Originally the issues it covered stemmed from core … More The limits of telelogical thinking with or without the concept of personal agency.

Art is a great motivator and a comprehensive one: my London trip today.

The answer must be that art motivates me. Here I am testing ideas and prejudices about the supposed rivalries between great artists! This might be the reason that I am here anticipating a trip to London today (20th August 2025) to look again at Jenny Saville at the National Portrait Gallery and to see a … More Art is a great motivator and a comprehensive one: my London trip today.

Somehow twilight at evening draws us to favour it. Why? After all it promises us nothing but the night, unless we hope to make the next day the first of the ‘rest of our life’!

Somehow twilight at evening draws us to favour it. Why? After all it promises us nothing but the night, unless we hope to make the next day the first of the ‘rest of our life’! When I was a student at University College London, I used to find myself walking through Russell Square to and … More Somehow twilight at evening draws us to favour it. Why? After all it promises us nothing but the night, unless we hope to make the next day the first of the ‘rest of our life’!

If I use the verb ‘to write’, do I really mean that what I write must or should endure

The best known quatrain of Persian Poetry, in stolid Victorian translation is that from what The Poetry Foundation calls the ‘Rubáiyát, his collection of hundreds of quatrains (or rubais), was first translated from Farsi into English in 1859 by Edward Fitzgerald’, attributed to Omar Khayyam. There are versions on versions of the quatrains translated, not least by Fitzgerald . … More If I use the verb ‘to write’, do I really mean that what I write must or should endure

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.

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.

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’.

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’.