Margaret didn’t like Walls, so why had she agreed to go walking with him in the mountains, and afterwards for a drink in a remote hotel bar? She had no self-control, she broke all her promises, she was weak and gormless. Flaws she contemplated, unlacing her boots at the fireplace. “You should take off your … Read more
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster… when you look into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you. Friedrich Nietzsche Day 1. On the question of the one against the many, as opposed to the many against the one, White was decidedly with the … Read more
Ger-mania… Extraordinarily, Germany appears on the brink of following the lead of Austria in mandating a vaccination against COVID-19, as segregation of the unvaccinated continues. We seem to have entered what Gore Vidal described as the United States of Amnesia, as all history is forgotten. So let us cast our mind back. I maintain the … Read more
Somatotropism My lungs were out of helium, so I wandered out of my anti-memory cell to buy some freedom vouchers. The land, its never-satisfied lips… I remembered every man was his dog (and a mad Englishman.) I remembered being a bumblebee in milk. Agony and honeysuckle. Was I vaccinated against imprisonment? Was I immune to … Read more
Of New Lands and Turning Points… “You can play! Just take it easy, play slow. Play for a few minutes and then give it a break… there’s no panic!” I was recently asked by one of my composing mentors to think about and summarise what I’ve done as a musician and composer so far. So … Read more
I felt myself still reliving a past that was no longer anything more than the history of anther person. Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time. I It got to a point that whenever I searched through a friend’s record collection when staying with them it stared right back at me: The Waterboys’ Fisherman’s Blues. … Read more
The Death By Drowning Of Twenty Seven Migrants In The English Channel on Wednesday It could have been twenty seven Cliff Richard fans who quite like that Boris Johnson really; twenty seven Noel Edmonds lookalikes whose wives stimulate themselves with The Daily Express; twenty seven former double glazing salesmen from Folkestone, Kent who blame everything … Read more
Dutch Masters An age away, the scented evergreens are still, a lucent wave commits to hush, the sun emits a breath, as the noon-deep labourings commence: the slender, severed necks are tossed, the throttled mouths are mounted in the heat, and inch by inch the fragrant earth is stripped of human foliage, an evacuated island … Read more
‘Where DID we come from?’ Coincidence? The Sahara was not always a desert. As evidenced by fossilized pollen, it was once covered by annual grasses and low shrubs, It was green, verdant, populated by antelopes, giraffes, rhinoceros, supporting all life forms including settled human beings. Cave drawings in southern Algeria (Tassili) testify to this lifestyle. … Read more
My work begins with a consideration of how one begins to look – an exercise of empathy with you, dear reader. When a work of art is placed in front of me, I have a whole range of responses as a viewer and I remember this when I start to make a new piece. I … Read more