A Mind @ Play

Partly inspired by Linden ’s little snapshot of her life , and obviously a rip off of the film title, this is simply a mini-list of truths about myself that grate.

I write better when it’s dark

Not in the dark but when it’s dark. Whether it’s because that’s when I’m at my most lucid, or perhaps because the tiredness helps me overcome my inhibitions, the small hours have often been when I’m at my most productive. In fact, the idea for this very post was sketched at 5am one very idle night, when the neural aurorae kept me from dropping off. The ideas hop and flow and melt into one another like chocolate on a hot stove—and there’s never a pen around when you need it.

Tattoos are a fashion. Whilst I’m sure many may feel personally insulted by that statement, it would take a blind man not to see that it is true. But allow me to qualify that statement. The act of tattooing itself is nothing new, and as Ötzi recently proved , is probably an older custom than we once assumed. People have been doing it for millennia, and will continue to do so into the future, but there will always be a significant social layer to its existence. The social dimension of tattoos is an important factor in their prevalence and popularity, as a result they become a part of what we can call ‘fashion’. Which is no bad thing—social customs, styles, modes of intercourse, even our language evolves—and the rise of tattoos to their level of prominence today is merely a reflection of a society in natural motion. There may be clashes between old and young generations, between those who dominate society and those who will inherit it, over the acceptability of tattoos, but every generation must go through that process, and in turn the wheel may eventually turn full circle. Tattoos today can make employment in certain instances more difficult, for example, and can bring condescension from that generation which associates inking with particular classes or groups (e.g. the stereotypical trio of bikers, convicts and sailors). But in time those particular stereotypes will fade, those social values will die out, and today’s crop of fashionable, tattoo-sporting youngsters will inherit their place and complain about the next generation’s taste in bad music and disgraceful fashions.

So what exactly do I dislike in this state of affairs?

This is one the larger circulars out there, of a fairly arbitrary list of books to read. The source is a title of the same name that appeared in print, edited by Peter Boxall. It’s not a particularly bad selection, and with any such list it would be impossible to please everybody, but I think it is fair to say that the more recent decades were rather over-represented (in particular 70 books from the 2000s, despite the book only being published in 2006). However, the list does make a good starting point, and it’s nice to see Miss Rowling’s works were conspicuous only by their absence — just such a shame that the price to pay was that of excluding all children’s literature.

As for getting through the list, I doubt very much if I’ll even read 1001 books before I die, let alone fiction books, or the particular ones from this list. However, I have ticked off a few titles already, and no doubt as many of them coincide with titles on my reading list I’ll be able to whittle the list down a little further. Titles I’ve read to date are in bold.

Last update: 18th July 2024

Krystyna Janda

On Saturday I went to a meeting with Krystyna Janda presented by The National Creativity Centre Foundation , in the National Gallery in Dublin. The meeting principally took the form of a questions and answers session, conducted by the famous Polish director Krzysztof Zanussi, ahead of the Irish première of Krystyna Janda’s monologue adaptation of Vedrana Rudan’s Ear, Throat, Knife.

As a pacific type, I like to feel that there are few things that can get me enraged. Whilst I may oft quote the remark attributed to Voltaire, ((See this link.)) “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” you’d have to be saying something pretty damn meaningful. Indeed, being brought up as an Englishman, not only am I likely to stand and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, I’m liable to apologise for getting in the way of said arrows, and offer them back at the end for good measure!

Yet over the years I’ve discovered a couple of things in life that I’d be willing to bear arms for. The British Isles are not renowned for their cuisine, but some things have been honed to an art there. One of these is the pie. Now quite how the humble pie could come to be threatened is quite a stretch of the imagination. If something so base could be in danger of disappearing, then there are probably problems for its basic ingredients, in which case there are much greater issues to be worrying about. Yet the prospect of a pie tax or some other form of rationing has me sharpening blades in preparation for the event, a veritable cataclysm by any standards! But this is nought compared to my second item.