What does ‘positive impact’ mean? A story from another life not mine. Daniel wound his arms around himself and squeezed. Usually this kind of pressure seemed a kind of unctuous thing that created a flow of flesh and fat quivering through his body, as if the flesh around him were coiled like a snake, ready … More What does ‘positive impact’ mean? A story from another life not mine.
As Israeli forces mount their early scoping attacks on Rafah that will lead to the death of vast numbers of displaced Gazans, asked to move there by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), Benjamin Netanyahu, a man who can teach Donald Trump how to defend himself against a proven case for corruption and abuses of power … More The legitimisation of state and military power as tools of genocide by Benjamin Netanyahu.
When do you feel most productive? “…,the job of remembering is to reassemble, to literally re-member, put the relevant members back together, But, what I am getting at is the re-membering is essentially not only an act of retrieval, but a creative thing, it’s an act, an act . . . of the imagination”.[1] Reading … More I feel most ‘productive’ when I think about engaging with art that matters, and will survive me. A blog on preparing to see ‘mnemonic’ at The National Theatre in July.
Nicholas Thomas performs on the stage, at Hexham Queen’s Hall Book Festival, the brilliant balancing act on Gauguin’s life and art written in his book. This blog is an update and follow-up of a preparation blog on Nicholas Thomas’ book available at this link. Its title: ‘This is a blog on Nicholas Thomas (2024) ‘Gauguin … More Nicholas Thomas performs on the stage, at Hexham Queen’s Hall Book Festival, the brilliant balancing act on Gauguin’s life and art written in his book.
Turn where you will for advice with regard to how to conduct yourself (whether in a formal job interview or life generally), you will, in the end, get advised that you need to ‘Be Yourself!’, or so some formula that boils down to the same thing. But ‘being yourself’ implies that you have one unitary … More About one thing the existentialists were surely right: freedom is angst / anxiety and that is why we require to be engaged / committed / bound to our own project.
What is your favorite holiday? Why is it your favorite? I think I may have said all the necessary prologue to this one in an earlier blog. You can find it here: A celebrant of the holy days of retirement. Some thoughts about the fate of ritual in a world defined by scheduled work. In brief, … More Some questions you feel you may have already answered many times! Lol.
Blurring out the voter in the interest of stasis and parties who want only it. Today there are we are told local elections. I cannot remember when I was last asked to vote for local Councillors and today in Durham the only people up for election are for Mayoral candidates for the North East region … More Voting might matter if the system of ‘first past the post’ did not favour a retrograde two-party system.
Thomas Hiram Holding, supposed to be the great populariser of the activity of camping, outside his camping tent. Whether it has sufficient academic credence (by which is meant referencing to authoritative evidence) or not, the Wikipedia entry on CAMPING fits with my thoughts, memories and, possibly, biases, in understanding what camping as a term means in … More Why is ‘camping’ just not classy? Or is it? Not for my class upbringing!
We do not need a list if we consider poets the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world’. This blog takes an encounter with the reading of a rather wonderful current poet, Kathleen Jamie at the Hexham literary Feastival, to try and explain what I mean, if (as is my wont) obscurely and, in another way, darkly. … More Why give a list? ‘Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’. Arguing the case using Kathleen Jamie’s new work. ‘Cairn’ (2024).
This blog is in sheer joy in having heard Jackie Kay read from her new collection, May Day, at the Hexham Literary Festival in The Queens Hall, Hexham, on 26th April 2024 at 8.15 p.m. Infer the answer to the prompt from this blog! However, this blog started as a preparation to see Jackie Kay … More Infer the answer to the prompt from this blog: The blog is in sheer joy in having heard Jackie Kay read ‘May Day’, at the Hexham Literary Festival.
If we are to discuss anything at all in our networked world of codes and symbols, where meanings lie in layers and sometimes in the knotted interconnections of things, subjects, objects and commentary thereon, is there any topic that can be excluded from the picture. In modernity, we are used to thinking of the world … More Quid tum. What next? So what?
I thought with this one, I might not want to interrogate the prompt question asked but I find I cannot do so with the question: ‘Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?’ In general I hate the idea of life quotes and their command on social media – … More ‘HERE the frailest leaves of me, and yet my strongest lasting’:
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