Thoughts and words

One night in paradise...

C.P. Cavafy - cosmopolitan, homosexual, fallen aristocrat whose best-known poem, "Waiting for the Barbarians," tells of a society which may be described by what it excludes. The poem resonates beyond any historical context, is timeless and universal like so many other Cavafy poems in general and the one below in... Read more →

Masking the truth

There is nothing new about face masks; after all, they were used by ancient cultures for sacred rites and rituals, and to connect with the afterlife. However, it was the Greeks who, apparently, first used them in their theatrical activities: comedy, satyr plays and tragedy. There were several practical reasons... Read more →

Censoring the past - making memories

According to Yuval Noah Harari in his book, Homo Deus, human beings make decisions based on the "conflict" between two separate inner entities - the "experiencing self" and the "narrating self." The experiencing self operates in real time but it is the narrating self, which later retrieves experiences and turns... Read more →

Inspiration - constructed reality

Reading about attitudes to flamenco in the 20th century reminds me of reactions to rock-and-roll in the 1950s. Until the outbreak of civil war in 1936, it appears that many Spaniards saw flamenco as the embodiment of Spain's political, economic and social ills. In 2020, flamenco is seen as an... Read more →

Inspiration: the flame that never quite dies

On 6 April 2020, I wrote: "Nonetheless, when I started writing, I noticed that my writing really came alive while stricken with the love-bug - not really love at all but merely an inspiration. And this inspiration must be separated from desire for sex because sex or the act of... Read more →

Inspiration through effort - par for the course

I just read an autobiographical piece by a famous writer. The piece, written in 2003, was published in The New Yorker magazine in October 2003 and I quote from it now so that struggling artists might see that their experiences are probably not unique. Can you guess who the writer... Read more →

Heroes and Gods - branded for life

It seems to me that human beings in general are very good at creating worlds they would like to be real. Writers, in particular, might argue that they are even better at this than non-writers! The hero, for example, may well be the ideal human of the sort that we... Read more →

A hero for today...and gone to hell tomorrow

I wonder how many of us writers include the hero figure in their books these days or is it simply that the hero has been reinvented as the "protagonist." Why might this be? Well, there is little we don't know about high profile public characters these days. These people may... Read more →

Corona in context

When we look back at a great historical event, most of us are aware of the major happenings: the riots, the deaths, the battles and so on. We know, for example, that WW1 had its high points and the low points and, above all, we know that soldiers fought and... Read more →

Inspiration from someone else

Even before I started writing, there were several people, people I only got to know from afar, who acted as a stimulus for dreams and creativity. These individuals were, and are, a great force - invariably consisting of the unattainable beauty or the godlike power - who create a sense... Read more →