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Don’t lead, don’t follow
“Believe me: It is no teaching and no instruction that I give you. On what basis should I presume to teach you? I give you news of the way in this man, but not of your own way. My path is not your path, therefore I cannot teach you. The way is within us, but not in Gods, nor in teachings, nor in laws. Within us is the way, the truth, and the life.Woe betide those who live by way of examples! Life is not with them. If you live according to an example, you thus live the life of that example, but who should live your life if not…
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The Vow
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On the hardships of writing
Stephen Fry, you sympathetic genius, you. “The rare words often annoy the punter, but they never think, they never stop to think about a poet’s life. A painter has oils, acrylics and pastels, turpentine, linseed, canvas, sable and hog’s hair. When did you last employ such things routinely? To oil a cricket bat or mascara an eyelid, perhaps. Come to think of it, you’ve probably never oiled a cricket bat in your life, but you know what I mean. And musicians: a musician has entire machines of wood, brass, gut andcarbon fibre; he has augmented sevenths, accidentals, Dorian modes and twelve-note rows. When did you ever use an augmented seventh…
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Enjoy the ride
If someone would have asked me ten years ago the most fundamental and most annoyingly complicated question in the world, who are you, I would have immediately started building a list of bulleted items, churning them out without hesitation. Since then, my convictions have evaporated as if they never existed. The Greeks kept repeating nosce te ipsum (know thyself) ad nauseum for centuries and Thomas Hobbes claimed in the introduction to his work The Leviathan that if you know yourself and understand your motivations, fears, and reasoning, you will understand and know everyone else. The list goes on, my favourite contemporary reference points to the tattoo on the arm of…
