This song seized me by the lapels and demanded my tears like a debt collector at the door. It’s rare, subtle, infinitely dangerous – it simply stands at a distance, tips its hat, and in doing so undoes you entirely. Ans Herz geh’n is lethal. I didn’t understand a word of it when I first … Continue reading Ans Herz geh’n – A Song That Refuses to Weep (and therefore breaks you anyway)
Category: philosophy
Wankerism: A Field Guide to the Modern Fool
This afternoon I found myself once again wandering the countryside in the company of a dangerously attractive lady – the sort of woman who improves both the scenery and one’s vocabulary. There’s something about walking that encourages philosophical invention. The Greeks had the Peripatetics; we have the footpath and a thermos. And so it was … Continue reading Wankerism: A Field Guide to the Modern Fool
Pilgrimage North: Where the Wind Remembers Your Name
Northern pilgrimages — those walks that feel less like a journey to a holy place and more like a negotiation with eternity. Down south, a pilgrimage is a gentle stroll between tea rooms, the sort of thing you might undertake with a guidebook and sensible shoes. Up here, the guidebook will be soaked within a … Continue reading Pilgrimage North: Where the Wind Remembers Your Name
‘Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life’. — C. G. Jung
Madness isn’t a visitor, Jung tells us — it’s a tenant. A hereditary lodger sealed into the house of the psyche long before we learned to speak. Most people spend their lives pretending they don’t hear it pacing upstairs. They turn the radio up. They shut the door with a polite smile. They medicate the … Continue reading ‘Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life’. — C. G. Jung
A Reflection on Dante’s Warning Against False Charity
‘If a thief helps a poor man out of the spoils of his thieving, we must not call that charity.’— Dante There are lines in Dante that feel less like poetry and more like a divine diagnosis — a sudden flash of God’s own X-ray slicing through human pretence. This is one of them. It’s … Continue reading A Reflection on Dante’s Warning Against False Charity
Wording 