Some songs drift like smoke and some songs weigh like stone. Judee Sill’s The Kiss is the latter: not a melody you whistle while waiting for a bus, but a requiem whispered in the confessional, heavy with sorrow, radiant with a kind of bruised grace. Judee Sill herself was a paradox incarnate. Born in 1944, … Continue reading The Kiss of Judee Sill: A Hymn to Love and Death
Tag: Life
The Jangle of Bells and the Old Dame of Music Halls
There’s nothing quite so peculiarly English as Morris dancing. Only in this island kingdom could the populace collectively decide that the best way to summon spring, frighten away demons, and cheer up the neighbours was to strap bells to one’s shins, wave hankies in the air, and smack one another with sticks. It’s both sublime … Continue reading The Jangle of Bells and the Old Dame of Music Halls
The Wooden Shadow: Laura Purcell’s Silent Companions and the Gothic of Hollow Lives
Laura Purcell’s The Silent Companions - a book which proves, if nothing else, that the Victorians couldn’t leave well enough alone. If it wasn’t séances or table-tipping, it was cardboard aristocrats painted to look like Aunt Mildred, propped up in drawing rooms like the world’s most unnerving IKEA mannequins. History assures us they were ‘decorative,’ … Continue reading The Wooden Shadow: Laura Purcell’s Silent Companions and the Gothic of Hollow Lives
The Repudiators and the Inheritance of the West
“A culture of repudiation has taken hold among our elites, who will celebrate every culture but their own, and who see in the inheritance of the West not an achievement to be cherished but a crime to be atoned for.” - Sir Roger Scruton There’s something eerily biblical about Scruton’s lament. I think of the … Continue reading The Repudiators and the Inheritance of the West
The Fires That Cleanse: On Purgatory, Scripture, and the Uneasy Middle
On the back of a rotten dream and a few following unsettled nights, I dragged just about every scriptural reference book I own out, blew off the dust, and began scratching out the following. It’s heavy but it’s worth the toil. I think. The Catholic doctrine of Purgatory has always been a scandal to the … Continue reading The Fires That Cleanse: On Purgatory, Scripture, and the Uneasy Middle
Wording 