Integration This little gem on Escher: he 'heard Bach’s Goldberg Variations [and] his mind snapped onto its own gift for rendering meaning through form. Enthralled by Bach’s music, by its mathematical figures & motives repeating back to front & up and down, by “a compelling rhythm, a cadence, in search of a certain endlessness”, Escher … Continue reading Music and art and Mathematics
Tag: writing
Pulpit Rock published
Maybe dreaming, time uncertain—Laylah 'The Rock is there; it’s always there, it always will be. Uncle says, ‘Look up there’ and we follow his pointing finger, bone thin, looking up at the Rock whitewashed by full moon. Cream and grey where the crevices are and with more than enough light for the full face of … Continue reading Pulpit Rock published
The Big Fat YES debate[s]
Excerpt from book soon to be released on Amazon; written for 10 - 13 year olds Art work by Brendan Tunks, unless otherwise specified (except the chickens)
On reading Horse by Geraldine Brooks
The cover of the book I read Click here to read my Historiographer site post.
Reading Annie Ernaux’s ‘The Years’
She's just won the Nobel (October 2022) for Literature so I've seen her name (for the first time too - so much happens in the world and no-one, no-one, can know even a smidgeon of it all) bandied about recently. So I leap this morning from The Guardian page to a note from Booker Prizes … Continue reading Reading Annie Ernaux’s ‘The Years’
THE ANTHROPOCENE
Mementoes set in stone, of stone read by the earth’s lithographers who are wondering where to set the golden spike for this age. Marking slow time: eons, eras, periods, epochs, passages once set by gods or no gods. Rocky signatures etched by the slow swing of something other than the swifter acts of Man/Woman.
Cawnpore dogs
This anecdote was found in the papers of Mrs Chandrapur Gohshe (deceased 2007), great granddaughter of the writer, Mrs Rani Bheikeji Cama, who had been at Kanpur in 1857. This is what I know of battles and war; that there is no order, no logic, no sense. It is fear and panic and hasty decisions … Continue reading Cawnpore dogs
Extract from TWO ROADS
A novel and novella Two roads is a novella (Pulpit Rock) and short novel (Malleable) of ~85,000 words. The extract below comes from the novel, Malleable. It deals with... Front cover ...And Norman has wondered, would I have the strength and will to walk with those black protesters? Would I face rotten eggs and muck … Continue reading Extract from TWO ROADS
Extract from: The Big Fat YES Debate[s]
Given the times and events it seems worth popping an extract in from my non-fiction book for upper primary students. War Hmmnn? YES to ‘that the world would be better if we only had peace’ Who'd have thought there would be people who say NO to peace? From a debating point of view, it’s certainly … Continue reading Extract from: The Big Fat YES Debate[s]
The reader as passenger
I am reading Dan O’Brien’s excellent The Contract Surgeon and making the odd note as I go along. Not in the book, I should add (it is not mine) but in a notepad. On page 23 this rather excellent little cameo is made by a female character – ‘an old woman’ who is tending a … Continue reading The reader as passenger
Inkstained fingers 