Blogging, Thoughts

Cecil

First question. Why would a person desire to kill a beautiful, majestic creature like this. Why would they spend £32,000 in order to be able to kill it. Why would skinning it and taking its head be important. How can we even begin to understand such behaviour from our own species. As so often in life, I want to try to turn David Attenborough (valuing all life and its behaviours) on the peculiar species to which I so often feel I only tenuously belong. Continue reading “Cecil”

Blogging, Thoughts

Double negative

Some of the most annoyingly cliched advice that people prone to depressive thinking receive is to “think positively”; “just be positive”; “look on the bright side”. As if optimism could be artifically made; as if you could somehow fake or whitewash your experiences and feelings; as if pretending would make things better. Continue reading “Double negative”

Books and music, Translating and interpreting

The dress and the ladder

I wanted to share a song that I’ve been preoccupied by a little. It’s a song by the French singer-songwriter Francis Cabrel and, when put prosaically, couldn’t be more French. An adult looks back at a formative sexual experience of his adolescence, when he – basically – looked up the dress of a girl who had climbed up a tree ahead of him. Put like that, it sounds prurient and a bit pervy. So far, so middle aged French singer-songwriter. Continue reading “The dress and the ladder”