Category: Arts
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Gravity – How Might Things Begin Again?
I saw Gravity earlier on this week, the much-heralded escape-from-space flick starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. But mostly Sandra Bullock. The problem with any Clooney picture is that his voice is now for me inextricably connected to the Fantastic Mr Wes Anderson version of Fantastic Mr Fox, so Gravity, with Clooney’s wise-cracking astronaut, does…
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Life, Writing and Being Useless
(soundtrack to this post: ‘Wasting My Young Years‘ by London Grammar) Posts here have been a little thin on the ground, mostly due to the fact that I’ve been work very hard on the manuscript for a novel – more news of which I hope one day to be able to share, but I’ll shut…
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Stillness Is Coming | National Poetry Day
My dear friend Nic died a year ago on Monday. Missed so much. This, on National Poetry Day, for him. Stillness A year in has not stopped our yearning, this anno domini we know dominates; still, stillness is coming. Your stilling broke levees of such Orlean, Orwellian turbulence rising angry Leviathan against this awful…
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Walt, The Wire and The Waltons – Thoughts on Breaking Bad and The Wire
As Breaking Bad draws to a finale (last episode airing on Sunday / Monday) I wanted to post some quick thoughts – clear warning, this may therefore contain spoilers. It’s become a bit of a truism to say that it’s the best thing on TV, but it really has been an immensely enjoyable series. I…
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Revolutionaries or Decorators? | Art, Brutality and Transformation
Been meaning to post something on this for a few weeks: on holiday this summer I read (recommended by an Italian friend) Michel Houellebecq’s novel The Possibility of an Island. He’s a very good but pretty bleak writer, with a very disturbing vision of humanity. The TLS describe the book as ‘a charging bull in…