June – Books I read this month

I’ve been on a Nietzsche, Heraclitus, Salinger, Thompson hype this month. I’m also most of the way done with Heidegger’s Early Greek Thinking but I will add it to next months pile. Also, sorry for the awful quality of this image. My phone is slowly falling apart

TV

I watch far too much TV . It is a distraction but also a remedy to the noiselessness that seems so daunting. Now I write about that distraction. There is a danger when a distraction is what you write about because everything then becomes wholly insular. It also allows you to maintain that behaviour while […]

Tea

A cup of tea in Britain, perhaps more so in England than Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, is a truly important thing. It is a cliché we are more than happy to buy into. Not in the sense of afternoon tea but a brew, a cup of tea you offer to someone when they come […]

Starving Artists

If aspiring artists know that artists suffer for their work there is a likelihood they will see suffering as a gateway toward being a ‘real’ artist. The problem however is that once the aspiring artist knows that suffering will get them what they want it is probable that the suffering is no longer suffering at […]

I Built a Table but I do not Dwell Where I Live

When I say built a table I mean a flat pack furniture that I assembled following very vague instructions. Throughout his work Heidegger talks of craftsmanship and closeness to beings. More specifically the fact that techne means knowledge that comes from being in the midst of beings. For Heidegger, it is through standing in the […]

Beyond Two Albums Revisited

In a post a while back I explored the curse of artists only making two good albums. I argued that artists who died after their second album have a far better legacy than those who surpass that number and have careers that span decades. In this post I want to explore the work of St […]

Resolutions

At this time of year many people are setting out to improve and to change themselves. We don’t often think about why this is. We often hear things about new beginnings and fresh starts but why is it a fresh start? Is it not the case that the New Year marks a death of sorts […]

All must have prizes by Melanie Phillips

In the last week I have read Phillips’ book on the state of education and its decline over the last few decades – beginning in the 1960s and ending in the 1990s (the book was first written in 1996. The fact that the book ends in the 90’s is no testament to the rise in […]

Tom Stoppard

I have recently read a number of plays by the British play write Tom Stoppard. If I am honest I had not heard of him or his work until watching the BBC Imagine… documentary about his work and life. His work is funny and absurd in many ways. My focus on Heidegger’s philosophy led me […]