Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home. I am obsessed with Freud’s idea of the Heimlich I think. Being at home is a feeling of safety and security that doesn’t always correlate with a physical place and time in space. We can travel many miles and for many hours and carry … More If home is a construct made up of habitual behaviours, ideas , emotions and senses, so are the distances we travel from it.

What does your ideal home look like? The appearance of order and the reflection of what we would like to think of as our ideal image is relatively new historically and relates to the aesthetic of interior design. Nevertheless, it is there in van Eyck’s Arnolfini Marriage picture as much as any edition of Ideal … More The uncanny is the ideal as it looks to you behind the mirror of appearances!

What brings a tear of joy to your eye? A tear will show the feeling I hold back, Small signal of something I can’t disguise Or hide. Those feelings that can only crack The surface of reserve will not surprise With joy another that your love would hold In open arms. A smile’s more true … More Why shyly cry, you can openly smile

Why do you blog? If I stuck with Descartes in the foundational belief that ‘I think therefore I am’, life might be easier because, after all, there is a remarkably low threshold for evidence of having thought or even for continuing to ‘think’ in a continuum of supposed inner activity. But thought as a label … More I blog therefore I am!

Interview someone — a friend, another blogger, your mother, the mailman — and write a post based on their responses. We like to think ballet, like other arts, should be an expression of the joy of learning that art and be accessible at all levels of involvement. If we are to have impressive ballet dancers … More How do you integrate the aim of child education in an elite art like ballet with public production

How are you feeling right now? My real problem with this prompt is how to hone in on what the questioner might mean by the phrase ‘right now’. That’s because I cannot determine enough that’s static or detachable enough from the motion of time in all of its manifestations to fix upon a ‘now’ on … More Right now?

What daily habit do you do that improves your quality of life? If I cannot read, and that happens sometimes, I cannot easily reintegrate imbalances in my mental health. Modern versions of cognitive-behaviouralism stress a kind of mindfulness, which is, in my view, more truly named mindlessness, and praise being in the moment and possibly … More The regulation of the relationship of emotion, thought, sensation and action through reading.

What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it? In order to answer this I feel I ought to exclude any searching I do for my blogs, for I do this merely to source links. I used to prefer the term hyperlinks that we once used instead of just … More Excluding the blogs …

What TV shows did you watch as a kid? When Artificial Intelligence (AI) threatens the jobs of actors, special effect stunts persons and extras in TV and film, because of the realism achievable by simulated scenes and unlikely animated characters, I wonder why a string-puppet, with his strings obvious, and his nature as an inanimate … More Why, oh why did we love Muffin the Mule?

What’s your favorite time of day? If twilight were a person, they would fade From you only to become a dusk That merely exchanged their doubleness, made Soft and loving by its own scent – the musk That made me feel a love, though enacted, Had something true in it. In some ideal World, we … More Twilight piece

How would you design the city of the future? Augustine conceived a city of God Whose main pleasure was to view the torment Of the damned in Hell. Most cities since Replicate that idea, the many By the privileged few, are now downtrod In the city itself, long hours are spent Draining  life out of … More The City of God

Where did your name come from? “Stephen or Steven is a common English first name. It is particularly significant to Christians, as it belonged to Saint Stephen (Greek: Στέφανος Stéphanos), an early disciple and deacon who, according to the Book of Acts, was stoned to death; he is widely regarded as the first martyr (or … More Steven! Where are You?