The year is on the ebb The pendulum is low All is in retreat A few last leaves hang Unloosed by snatching gales Limp as sodden leather Languishing lifelessly Allies of dead summer Flapping on the gibbet To set an example The once-emboldened sun Slides dreary through the motions Shuffling low in bleary skies …
For more resources on smartphone addiction and coping with the digital age, see: Odysseus and the Age of Distraction Digital Prayers I hate Henry Following Christ in a Digital Age The Occupation It was a bloodless coup, a quiet revolution. There were no guns or bombs; no terrified shouting in the …
[The more I wrestle with digital technology, and particularly the synergy between the smartphone and social media, the more concerned I become for my generation. For the most part it seems the endless capacity for online self expression has enslaved us rather than improving us. How do we learn to deal healthily with an ever …
Imagine a world where language is dying. In this world, everyone you know is afflicted with a strange malady. Every day, each person forgets a random handful of words. One by one, once-familiar nouns, verbs and adjectives simply slip away. At first the effect is barely noticeable. Though the English language has around 200,000 words, only a few thousand …
The Greek hero Odysseus never owned a smartphone (or so the annals of myth record). The Trojan Horse ploy was not live tweeted, the escape from the Cyclops never streamed to Facebook Live, the bloodbath in Ithaca spawned no Instagram posts. Yet armed with a phablet, the Greek hero could have been the influencer to end all …
Some events are so unexpected, so momentous, they seem to distort the fabric of time. Expected patterns of cause and effect are so violated, it seems time must compress or dilate to accommodate them. On 15th April 2019, as Notre Dame burned, a near millennium of ancient trees, the ages’ gathered dust, and millions of …
The city has been aflame these past days. A quiet inferno on every street. Heavy-laden branches wreathed in the sublime. Wild and fleeting, irresponsibly abundant. A display far beyond necessity, asking deeper questions: Is all chaos? Did this exquisite artistry, and we who behold it, emerge from a blank void? Is life merely a dogged …
[“My Way” is by some margin the nation’s favourite funeral song. Yet the rank individualism, as old as Eden, which typifies our age, cannot save any of us from the end which awaits all of us. The dreary crematorium chapel scorns our attempts at self actualisation – we all go behind the dusty curtain in …
Icarus, Without the fated plunge, Is but a dreary grey-haired parable, Pragmatic unremarkable commute, Recklessness is crucial, The brazen rise to kiss Apollo, Weaves the gossamer of myth; In flushed freewheel of youth, Vital abandon strains, Frothing fervid at the bit, How easy to hold living light, While dew lies wet on years, Lightning racks the fertile mind, Thunder echoes …
[I keep coming back to Nietzsche’s aphorism about the madman, from where the famous “God is dead” phrase originates. I’m struck by how extraordinary clear-sighted Nietzsche was about all the societal changes that began racing down the tracks towards us once we lost our transcendent reference points. This poem is something of a meditation on …
