Why we look to classics of midwinter literature in the dark months One genre of children’s literature is master of ceremonies at this time of year: those books we turn to in the hope they will throw wintry sunlight and lazy candle-flame on the mind. Christmas is traditionally a time for ghost stories, but these … Continue reading A Mind for Magick
Contexts for chaos, imagination past and present: “Memoirs of a Survivor” (1981) Somewhere in this blog I wrote about trying to capture the things I responded to as a child, the things which grew and developed into the portals of the imagination that have stayed with me, and how they shapeshifted over time, with different … Continue reading Frosty winds made moan
For anyone still moved by other times & places – a ramble on their role in the everyday Regular readers (both of you) will know I’ve tried to explore something which would draw together all the eclectic strands of those things which capture my imagination. They extend into my domestic life: each time I made … Continue reading Motifs in mind: daydreaming and escapist inspiration
Why we blog – escape portal, therapy or land of our people? I went back to my blog this morning, which is over seven years old. It’s bizarre to me that people still visit it… understandable, perhaps, because there are a few seemingly forgotten books and films on here that clearly live on in some … Continue reading Bloghead Revisited
Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold; New things succeed, as former things grow old. From Ceremonies for Candlemas Eve by Robert Herrick The rough winds of the last few days I can’t get enough of. I’ve learned that gales at this time of year were known as Candlemas winds. Just now, … Continue reading Candlemas
One of my Christmas presents was Miranda July’s book It Chooses You. Sometime last year I saw her second movie The Future (which you really need to see before reading the book, which is about the creative process in writing the screenplay, but to save time here’s the trailer at the risk of patronising everyone … Continue reading January, July, invisible artlessness
If you were born in a more distant decade of the 20th century, then you might have grown up with the sense that creative effort is not fully formed until it is printed, made into a record, hung in a gallery, or screened in a cinema. Until the advent of the ‘personal computer’ (a charmingly … Continue reading Needles in haystacks still shine
WHISTLES IN THE WIND 