What tattoo do you want and where would you put it? Cut it into my heart, where there unseen A pictured heart, dagger-blooded resides. A little more to the right takes the life, Rather than declaring it worthless now Of the too brief abode he took of it. On my skin, tattoos like dragons hurled … More A fantasy verse about tattoos and taxidermy.
Let’s reshape this question, for ‘goals’ are not sacrosanct nor good in themselves but only in their ultimate purpose. and saying ‘no’ may be a defiance of what is good, true, and in the interests of higher principles than self-interest. Today, the self-help and self-care (in truth better named the self-interest) industry will be out … More As people in privileged positions respond to this question, the Israeli government is saying ‘NO’ to action against child starvation in North Gaza. Blunt tools aren’t good tools.
What is your favorite type of weather? Breeze blowing fresh olive leaves of dry mind. Whilst sun gilds blowsy daffodils, yellow to the core of artful sickness, but now lifting it above naming of colour; tonal chiaroscuro making mental shade, soothing, and brightness healing, softly down green to shoots and roots well embedded in hoar … More This spring day today in our Crook Garden
What do you wish you could do more every day? We all have our own crosses to bear – obviously I am pathetically trying here to make clever reference to the wonderful cover of the hardcover edition of Steven Berkoff’s book, I Am Hamlet. However, it is true that I often feel like Hamlet myself, … More I wish that I were more cued to ‘fight’ injustice (or act decisively at least). This a blog that reflects on seeing Jack Thorne’s play, streamed by the National Theatre, ‘The Motive and the Cue’ last night.
A variation on a prompt: New notes sounded in revisiting ‘The Mining Art Gallery’ and ‘The Spanish Gallery’: With thoughts on why influential teaching is not always good teaching. _______________________________________________________________ The 17th March was a very wet and rather depressing day in Bishop Auckland but walk Daisy we must and, given that she will walk … More New notes sounded in revisiting ‘The Mining Art Gallery’ and ‘The Spanish Gallery’: With thoughts on why influential teaching is not always good teaching.
If Judaeo-Christian thought gave us an obsession it is that of claiming a false integrity: the view that we are beings that can be summed up in one word – a thing that defines us. It has, in ways that monotheistic cultures must, made us prone to idealise the ONE. In truth this idealisation is … More One word? Why? Cannot ‘one’ say: ‘My name is Legion’.
What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain. It feels like a classic meme, that moment from Scorsese’s 2006 film The Departed. I try and represent it above with some of the symbolism that shows why, once it has been said from above and in a threatening manner to the cop played by … More “What’s the matter, smart ass, you don’t know any f##king Shakespeare?” Do not ask me: ‘What’s the Matter?’
Dedicated to my dear friend, Joanne. The world of the mind and mental health self-care is plagued by binary thinking – none more disturbing than the trend named positive psychology. This school of psychology claims to aim at optimising human happiness by addressing negativity in feeling, thought and action and, in particular, by reducing what … More The fallacy of positive psychology
‘Confidence ‘ is a word that must seem to have the most straightforward of etymologies, where notions of faith and trust derive straight from the Latin (and we are told Old French) to engineer the fact that it as about belief and trust. In brief, you can do things WITH (con-) FAITH (-fides) in another … More Meet the confidence man!?!
Write a letter to your 100-year-old self. Dear illusion, I do not (indeed I can not) know the entity to whom I am writing. You are an idea in my head evoked by some request to imagine you. As I read colleagues attempting the same task, they seem confident that the person they imagine is … More O, my centarian, I would like you to be a model of a better self than I am.
What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance? The world of given names is one where silliness runs deep; not least where associations between name and ‘special meanings’ are evoked. My middle name is DOUGLAS. It was given to me so that I bore my father’s first name as well as his … More Still waters run deep perhaps, but certainly dark! Douglas.
I have barely known but one Autolycus in my life, other than him who Shakespeare sung, then dubbed in prose: My traffic is sheets; when the kite builds, look to lesser linen. My father named me Autolycus; who being, as I am, littered under Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. With die and … More Singing a song for Autolycus
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