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
Tag: existential
The Room in the Tower: A Dream with Teeth
For years I dreamt of a house that hated me. It wasn’t merely haunted — it was hostile. Its walls bowed with resentment, its staircase groaned in complaint, and the air inside was the colour of rot. Every visit was the same: I would wander through its ruined corridors, knowing instinctively that one door was … Continue reading The Room in the Tower: A Dream with Teeth
The Devil in the Duomo: Reflections on the Monster of Florence
They say every paradise has a pit beneath it. Florence, for me, has always shimmered like a painted heaven — that impossible marriage between reason and rapture. As a child, I was bewitched by her domes and frescoes, the polished glow of Botticelli’s Venus, and the ghostly gaze of Savonarola who once tried to burn … Continue reading The Devil in the Duomo: Reflections on the Monster of Florence
The Girl at the Crossroads: The Legend of Kitty Jay
The wind remembers what the Church forgot. Two for the price of one. Today I managed 2.5k words of my book; today’s project was a sombre one so it’s fitting that I pull out these two old essays and share them with you here. I came upon her grave quite by accident, though I suspect … Continue reading The Girl at the Crossroads: The Legend of Kitty Jay
The Corpse Bride and the Living Dead
Illustration inspired by Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. Original concept and rendering © Wordinguk, 2025. I’ve been working on my book again — circling the same themes of death, memory, and the strange comedy of human attachment — when Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride came to mind. It often does, that little animated elegy; the film has … Continue reading The Corpse Bride and the Living Dead
Wording 