I remember once becoming absurdly excited in Princes St. Gardens in Edinburgh - that was just where I chanced to be, not the cause of the excitement - when I realised that an interesting thing happens if you number the dimensions in the reverse of the conventional order. My brother had once explained the concept … Continue reading Vanishing Point and the Golden Rule (by way of Immanuel Kant)
Category: MUSINGS ON . . .
occasional effusions on every subject under the sun
A true likeness?
If you are not familiar with art history, a painting titled ‘nude descending a staircase’ probably conjures an image of a naked person halfway down a stair, poised in the act of moving from one step to another; but what Marcel Duchamp gives us is this: Here, by way of contrast, are two decently-clad Irishmen, … Continue reading A true likeness?
Rage, semiotics and structuralism.
I occasionally allow myself to become exercised about things out of all proportion to their importance. Take, for instance, the signs that have for several months now been on the stretch of the A904 between the Forth Road Bridge and the works for the new additional bridge, which for some reason is called the Forth … Continue reading Rage, semiotics and structuralism.
The Shadow and the Stone: reflections on the mechanism of metaphor
I mentioned elsewhere that there is a puzzle in our use of metaphor to expand our range of thought: if we think of the unknown in terms of the known concrete, as Vita Sackville-West has it, how does that get us anywhere new? I think I have the answer: it is by a process not … Continue reading The Shadow and the Stone: reflections on the mechanism of metaphor
‘With shabby equipment, always deteriorating…’
We live in an age of infrastructure: we take for granted an underpinning layer of nigh-magical technology, much of it electronic, on which our day-to-day lives rely; occasionally we are visited by anxiety lest it should fail - as the result of a solar storm, perhaps, such as a repeat of the Carrington Event of … Continue reading ‘With shabby equipment, always deteriorating…’
an extract from City of Desolation : Chapter 19 – Virgil
(for an audio version of this piece, click here) There was sand in his mouth and someone was pulling his arm. He tried to open his eyes, but they seemed to be stuck together. Then whoever was pulling his arm turned him on his back and water that had been in his mouth ran down … Continue reading an extract from City of Desolation : Chapter 19 – Virgil
The Case of the Florentine Poet: Was Dante the father of Science Fiction?
It was only in researching this piece that I was struck by the uncanny physical resemblance between Dante Alighieri, the Florentine poet, and Mr Sherlock Holmes, of 221b Baker St, the World’s first Consulting Detective: ‘His eyes were sharp and piercing, ... and his thin, hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness … Continue reading The Case of the Florentine Poet: Was Dante the father of Science Fiction?
‘we are only doing philosophy’
Esse est percipi - to be is to be perceived. That is Berkeley’s great insight, that the world as we know it exists only for us and beings similarly equipped. It is an observation widely misunderstood because the truth of it is difficult to express, hence the famous exchange between my countryman Boswell (whom I … Continue reading ‘we are only doing philosophy’
Repentance, or, embracing Subjective Reality
The sun moon and planets are unwitting actors that we have cast in a drama of our own contriving. Wagner’s Lied an den Abendstern (‘O Star of Eve’ - here intriguingly rendered on the musical saw) is not addressed to the second planet from the sun, inhospitably wrapped in clouds of sulphuric acid, but the … Continue reading Repentance, or, embracing Subjective Reality
FRATER AVE ATQUE VALE
Brendan John Goulding Ward 24 November 1946 - 6 January 2013 (photographed by his niece Kate at his niece Veronica's wedding) + Requiescat in Pace In happy remembrance: Being a Pantoum for my brother on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, commissioned at exceptional cost* and in several colours from the pen of Master Thomas … Continue reading FRATER AVE ATQUE VALE
COMPLEAT TROWZER 