Meaning matters. It is bound up with so many things: understanding and misunderstanding, doubt and certainty, to say nothing of philosophy, poetry, music and art; so it is worth considering the mechanism by which it operates. 'Mechanism' is a useful image here: when mechanisms are hidden - as they generally are - their effects can … Continue reading The Mechanism of Meaning (it’s all in the mind)
Category: MUSINGS ON . . .
occasional effusions on every subject under the sun
Plucked from the chorus line – a fable
(a racy tale of a manipulative and exploitative relationship, with cross-dressing, starring Speech as Trilby, Writing as Svengali) Trilby by George du Maurier - grandfather of Daphne - has the rare distinction of giving two new words to the English language, one for a type of hat, the other a sort of person. It was … Continue reading Plucked from the chorus line – a fable
Storypower: Quigley’s Ineffable Escapade
‘The solution to the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem. (Is not this the reason why those who have found after a long period of doubt that the sense of life has become clear to them have been unable to say what constitutes that sense?)’ (Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.521) That remarkable … Continue reading Storypower: Quigley’s Ineffable Escapade
The True Source: a companion piece
(This piece is the origin of the parable I published yesterday as The True Source. Stories and parables are one of our most ancient ways of expressing ideas, so it seemed natural to use one to try and express what I was trying to say about the relation between preliterate society and our own) Here … Continue reading The True Source: a companion piece
The true source: a parable
Once upon a time there was a farmer who had to travel a long way through desolate country to take his grain to the mill; on the left side of the road that he followed - little more than a track, really - a broad plain spread out, with a long ribbon of mist in … Continue reading The true source: a parable
The End of All Our Exploring
Much has been said of the gallant little spacecraft New Horizons winging its way past Pluto at 14 kms a sec - it’s taken nine and a half years to get there, a journey of some 3 billion miles - and now it is heading off into the farthest and coldest reaches of our solar … Continue reading The End of All Our Exploring
A Fable
A young man goes to a wise woman and says, ‘I am a seeker after truth. Show me what is true.’ So the woman takes him to a bell-foundry. She strikes the first bell, which gives out a beautiful clear note, as does the second; but the third is cracked, and gives a flat, dull … Continue reading A Fable
No abiding city
Things take odd turns sometimes. After my Byzantine Epiphany I felt sure I was on the track of something, yet it proved elusive: after a lot of writing I felt I was still circling round it, unable to pin it down. Then this morning I woke to the news that (with the General Election just … Continue reading No abiding city
A Byzantine Epiphany
The other day, I was composing a poem in the basilica of Sent Antuan in Istanbul, just before mass (you must forgive this opening: it’s so rarely I get the chance to make such a statement truthfully that I feel I must take the opportunity when it presents itself - and it is relevant, as … Continue reading A Byzantine Epiphany
Pity or Terror? MR James and Jonathan Miller
Since MR James is our most noted writer of ghost stories, Michael Hordern one of our finest actors, and the many-faceted Jonathan Miller among our most celebrated directors, it should be no surprise that a production combining the talents of all three should acquire ‘classic’ status; but that should not stop us looking at it … Continue reading Pity or Terror? MR James and Jonathan Miller
COMPLEAT TROWZER 