The Stop

The Bus launched on 7 April 2022 because I needed something to do. I’d been made redundant the previous December, and The Bus - with a twice-weekly publication schedule - quickly provided my amorphous daily schedule with both structure and purpose. Since that day, I’ve never missed a single publication date: twice a week for just under four years, in eight volumes composed each of 51 Stops,1 I’ve published 229 original Stops, reprinted 171 of these and published 8 volume retrospectives (including this one). It’s been fun, for the most part, but even dropping back from publishing original Stops requires too much of my writing time.

Consequently, this past Monday’s Stop on Coleridge’s ‘This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’2 was officially the last one, and after today The Bus - in its current form - will no longer drop regularly into your inbox and feed. I don’t intend to completely go away, but have decided to move towards publishing longer-form pieces. I’ve been working on several essays that are about ready for publication, and as the novel continues to come together I just might send out The Bus with a chapter or two for your perusal. But as I’m determined to no longer have a schedule, I’ll only publish a Stop when I decide it’s time.

One of the best parts of this project has been developing a considerable readership. I’ve enjoyed getting to know many of you, and I don’t wish to lose these connections! So, if you’re cool with staying on board and enjoying the occasional Stop, please stay seated. If not, well, feel free to get off as soon as you’re ready with my sincere appreciation for your involvement and encouragement.

So, from me to you: thanks. I hope you enjoyed the ride.

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is composed of 75 tracks I’ve enjoyed over the life of The Bus - some were new to me at the time of publication, others (most, actually) were one’s I’ve always enjoyed.3 There’s no set order, so feel free to put it on shuffle!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from the inimitable Captain James T. Kirk. In the episode ‘The City at the Edge of Forever,’4 after an emotional adventure involving time travel, love and loss, Kirk’s had it - and delivers what many Trekkies feel is the best closing line from The Original Series. I thought it apropos:

‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

Leave a comment

And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!

Thanks to all Bus Riders! Whether you ride in the front, middle, back or the cool-kid seats, your interest and support is truly appreciated.

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (5.9) 13 May 2024

The Stop

Written in 1797, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’ is a meditation on what he believed to be the very real power of the imagination. With a shift in tone from philosophical resignation to emphatic exaltation, the poem - one of Coleridge’s conversation poems1 - is a powerful testament to the mind’s capabilities, and contains some of the best descriptions of nature in English Romantic poetry.2

In July 1797, Coleridge was visited at his home in Somerset by William and Dorothy Wordsworth and Charles Lamb, a close friend from Coleridge’s school days at Christ’s Hospital in London. Though excited by their visit and the walks they were planning to take, Coleridge was unable to accompany them due to injuries suffered when his wife - Sara Fricker - accidentally emptied a skillet of boiling milk onto his foot. Unable to walk, Coleridge was confined to a chair in his neighbour’s garden while his friends and wife enjoyed the countryside.

The poem begins with a sense of regret - ‘Well, they are gone, and here must I remain, This lime-tree bower my prison!’ - and at first he (rather melodramatically) worries he ‘may never more meet again’ his friends for a ‘wander in … that still roaring dell’.3 While lamenting this, Coleridge suddenly finds his imagination taking hold and he begins to think about what the others are up to as they stroll around the Somerset landscape. Though physically confined to his ‘lime-tree bower’, throughout the poem’s progression he discovers his accident has actually afforded him the gift of understanding the power of imagination and a profound appreciation for his enforced surroundings. By releasing his mind, imagination has allowed him to take a mental trip with his friends, vicariously sharing in the sights and experiences they (more than likely) have seen - and arguably appreciating them at a depth he wouldn’t have had in person.

Furthermore, Coleridge feels his unfortunate experience has taught him an important moral lesson. At this point in his life he was a Pantheist,4 and would frequently personify Nature as having a godlike power to provide comfort and solace. Stuck at home in his ‘prison’, Coleridge realises that ‘Nature ne’er deserts the wise and pure’, and that his mind, imagination and an appreciation of Nature are sufficient to set him free.

Of course, the best way to appreciate the poem is to read it:

• Well, they are gone, and here must I remain

  This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost

  Beauties and feelings, such as would have been

  Most sweet to my remembrance even when age

  Had dimm'd mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile,

  Friends, whom I never more may meet again,

  On springy heath, along the hill-top edge,

  Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,

  To that still roaring dell, of which I told;

  The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep,

  And only speckled by the mid-day sun;

  Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock

  Flings arching like a bridge;—that branchless ash,

  Unsunn'd and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves

  Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,

  Fann'd by the water-fall! and there my friends

  Behold the dark green file of long lank weeds,

  That all at once (a most fantastic sight!)

  Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge

  Of the blue clay-stone.

                                             Now, my friends emerge

  Beneath the wide wide Heaven—and view again

  The many-steepled tract magnificent

  Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea,

  With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up

  The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two Isles

  Of purple shadow! Yes! they wander on

  In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad,

  My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined

  And hunger'd after Nature, many a year,

  In the great City pent, winning thy way

  With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain

  And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink

  Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun!

  Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,

  Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds!

  Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!

  And kindle, thou blue Ocean! So my friend

  Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,

  Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round

  On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem

  Less gross than bodily; and of such hues

  As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes

  Spirits perceive his presence.

                                                          A delight

  Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad

  As I myself were there! Nor in this bower,

  This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark'd

  Much that has sooth'd me. Pale beneath the blaze

  Hung the transparent foliage; and I watch'd

  Some broad and sunny leaf, and lov'd to see

  The shadow of the leaf and stem above

  Dappling its sunshine! And that walnut-tree

  Was richly ting'd, and a deep radiance lay

  Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps

  Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass

  Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue

  Through the late twilight: and though now the bat

  Wheels silent by, and not a swallow twitters,

  Yet still the solitary humble-bee

  Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know

  That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure;

  No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,

  No waste so vacant, but may well employ

  Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart

  Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes

  'Tis well to be bereft of promis'd good,

  That we may lift the soul, and contemplate

  With lively joy the joys we cannot share.

  My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last rook

  Beat its straight path along the dusky air

  Homewards, I blest it! deeming its black wing

  (Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)

  Had cross'd the mighty Orb's dilated glory,

  While thou stood'st gazing; or, when all was still,

  Flew creeking o'er thy head, and had a charm

  For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom

  No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to a stunning performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor by Justus Friedrich Eichhorn. It’s remarkable by any standard, but it just so happens that Eichhorn is only 14. It’s long (47:33), and you’ve got to really like Beethoven to go through it all, but even if you’re Beethoven-agnostic, watch a bit of it just to see Eichhorn in action. He gets started around the 3:50 mark.

Eichhorn: Beethoven Piano Concerto No 3

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Coleridge’s Poetry and Prose (2003), the Norton Critical Edition of his work. If you’ve been a Bus Rider for some time, you’ll know I’m a fan of these versions of classic literature. Authoritative, accurate and packed with annotations and critical essays both contemporary to the work and well into the current century, they’re indispensable resources for those with more than a casual interest.5 Highly recommended.

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks based on the theme of imagination: ‘Imagine’ (John Lennon, 1971), ‘Imaginary Lover’ (Atlanta Rhythm Section, 1978), ‘Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)’ (The Temptations, 1971), ‘My Imagination’ (The Supremes, 1964) and ‘Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)’ (The Rolling Stones, 1978).6 Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought, paraphrased from Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria (1817), expresses his thoughts on the role of imagination:

‘Imagination is the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception.’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (5.11) 20 May 2024

The Stop

In the field of literary criticism, the term ‘sublime’ describes a quality of greatness - physical, moral, intellectual or artistic - that is beyond our normal capability to calculate, measure or imitate. The earliest use of the term in this way occurred in either the first or third century CE by the anonymous Greek philosopher Longinus in his work, On the Sublime. In this treatise, Longinus defined literature to be ‘sublime’ if it exhibited ‘excellence in language’, the ‘expression of a great spirit’ and possessed the power to create ‘ecstasy’ in the reader. It was this last condition that Longinus believed to be a writer’s most important goal.1

Longinus’s definition of the sublime was a serious departure from the traditional, classical understanding of those qualities which determined literary greatness. Previously, literary excellence and success was attributed to a work’s balance of ‘certain technical elements - diction, thought, metaphor, music, etc.’, but Longinus identified the source of the sublime to be the ‘moral, emotional, and imaginative depth of the writer and its expression in the flare-up of genius that rules alone could not produce.’

Like many other ideas and inventions from Antiquity, Longinus’s treatise was largely ignored until it was translated in the 17th century by the French poet and literary critic Nicolas Boileau.2 This translation - published the same year as Boileau’s seminal L’Art poétique (1674) in which he established the rules for composing poetry in the Classical tradition - inaugurated a new interest in exploring the ‘powerful emotional effects in art.’ According to Longinus - and now widely available to the educated classes - ‘true nobility in art and life was to be discovered through a confrontation with the threatening and unknown,’ in other words anything ‘that challenges our capacity to understand and fills us with wonder.’ For Longinus (as translated by Boileau), the sublime artist was a sort of ‘superhuman figure capable of rising above arduous and ominous events and experiences in order to produce a nobler and more refined style’.

It was inevitable that these rediscovered ideas about the sublime would eventually become closely associated with the English Romantic movement. Recognising the ‘profoundly limited nature of the self’, this group of poets, philosophers and novelists was interested in exploring experiences which ‘lay beyond conscious control and threatened individual autonomy’, and the language of the sublime provided a vocabulary for those writers and thinkers who ‘wished to challenge traditional systems of thought … that now seemed founded on outdated conceptions of human experience’. The English Romantics in particular believed the sublime was a ‘realm of experience beyond the measurable’ which itself was ‘beyond rational thought, that arises chiefly from the terrors of awe-inspiring natural phenomena’.

There were at the time - of course - various definitions of the sublime, but for most Romantics it was the German philosopher Immanuel Kant who best expressed their understanding of the phenomena.3 In Kant’s Critique of Judgement (1790), he identified the sublime as existing at the ‘borderline where reason finds its limits’. Identifying three types of sublimity - ‘the awful, the lofty and the splendid’ - Kant asserted the sublime was less a ‘formal quality of some natural phenomena’ than a truly ‘subjective conception: something that happens in the mind’. Moving his analysis of the sublime towards the ‘impact and consequence of the … experience upon consciousness,’ he defined it as an expression of what occurs when ‘we are faced with something we do not have the capacity to understand or control – something excessive’. The sublime is that quality in nature which we ‘cannot encompass … by thinking’.

The Romantics believed the sublime required careful study and contemplation, with the hope that by internalising their thoughts and attempting to understand them from a philosophical perspective, they would ‘find enlightenment’. Nevertheless, they would retain a healthy recognition that - no matter how well they might think they understood it - the sublime would inevitably remain ‘indiscernible or unnameable, undecidable, indeterminate and unpresentable,’ and - ultimately, haunting:4

One summer evening (led by her) I found
A little boat tied to a willow tree
Within a rocky cove, its usual home.
Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in
Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth
And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice
Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on;
Leaving behind her still, on either side,
Small circles glittering idly in the moon,
Until they melted all into one track
Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rows,
Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point
With an unswerving line, I fixed my view
Upon the summit of a craggy ridge,
The horizon's utmost boundary; far above
Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.
She was an elfin pinnace; lustily
I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan;
When, from behind that craggy steep till then
The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct,
Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,
And growing still in stature the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own
And measured motion like a living thing,
Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the covert of the willow tree;
There in her mooring-place I left my bark, -
And through the meadows homeward went, in grave
And serious mood; but after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude
Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;
But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.

- From The Prelude (Book I, 357-400), William Wordsworth (1850)

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to ‘Come Again’, a short (2:45) performance of the Elizabethan composer John Dowland’s ‘secretly rather saucy’ 1597 tune.5 It’s an amazing rendition - there’s truly nothing like a lute, and tenor Morgan Manifacier’s voice is transcendent. Talk about sublime ….

Come Again (John Dowland)

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Tree of Life (2011). Directed by Terence Malik6 and starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain and Sean Penn, the film is an epic exploration of the meaning of life. Dealing with themes about memory, innocence, loss, and the complexities of family dynamics, the film moves towards a meditation on these issues in relation to the origins of the universe and the emergence of life on Earth. It’s a very unique blend of the intimate, the cosmic - and the grand questions about existence and our place within it.

Tree of Life (2011) Trailer

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks which are - in their own way - sublime: ‘Dayvan Cowboy’ (Boards of Canada, 2005), ‘A Tear for Eddie’ (Ween, 1994), ‘Sedan Delivery’ (Neil Young, 1979), ‘The Aeroplane Flies High (Turns Left, Looks Right)’ (Smashing Pumpkins, 1996) and ‘Oxbow Lakes’ (The Orb, 1995). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from William Wordsworth’s ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey’ (1798):

‘I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean, and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man...’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.50) 14 March 2024

The Stop

Absurdism is a philosophical thesis that maintains the universe is fundamentally irrational and meaningless. Though inspired by existentialism, absurdism ‘occupies a unique position within existentialist thought.’ Recognising the inevitable conflict that arises when ‘humanity’s inherent desire for meaning’ is forced to confront the universe’s ‘apparent indifference’ to this search, absurdism seeks to provide a reason for the insistent human need for meaning from a world which lacks any.1

Though references to the absurd can be found in the works of writers such as Kant and - especially - Kierkegaard,2 absurdism is perhaps best expressed by Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sysiphus (1942). Camus launches his essay boldly: ‘There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that.’3 For Camus, the essential philosophical question is not asking ‘what does it mean to ask whether life is worth living,’4 but rather asking ‘should I kill myself?’ And if the answer is ‘no,’ there must be a reason why.

For Camus, philosophy is about ‘action, not comprehension’, and this question is not purely theoretical, but rather a genuine interrogation of the ‘life and death problem of whether and how to live.’ Since existence itself has no meaning, humans are forced to ‘bear an irresolvable emptiness,’ which creates a paradoxical tension between our ‘impulse to ask ultimate questions and the impossibility of achieving any adequate answer’. This tension is what Camus calls the absurd: it is absurd to ‘continually seek meaning in life when there is none’ and it is absurd to ‘hope for some form of continued existence after death, which results in our extinction.’

Camus believed that a confrontation with this absurdity should result in a positive answer to the question of suicide - and yet it doesn’t. According to Camus, people commit suicide ‘because they judge life is not worth living’,5 and yet the overwhelming majority of people do not kill themselves, despite the absurdity of life. Furthermore, they continue to ask fundamental questions to which the ‘natural world, the universe, and the human enterprise’ all remain silent, and do so over and over despite the absence of answers.

This absurd determination by humans to seek answers despite there being none to be found is best summarised with a ‘striking image of the human fate: Sisyphus endlessly pushing his rock up the mountain only to see it roll back down each time he gains the top’. Pushing it up, watching it roll down, descending after the rock so he can start over again before repeating it in an endless cycle … this, for Camus, is human life. Like Sisyphus, we must continue to ask about the meaning of life, only to see our answers tumble down again before we ask them another way and watch those fall as well. It’s utterly absurd, and yet still we say no when confronted with Camus’s essential philosophical question.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to Helter Skelter: The Wild Anomalies in the Most Controversial Beatles Song. A fascinating documentary (21:22), it is a very deep dive into the recording history of one of the band’s most controversial - and sonically explorative - tracks.6 If you’re a Beatles fan, it’s worth a watch. However, a word of warning: as noted by the filmmaker, you can’t unhear this.

Helter Skelter

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Albert Camus’s The Stranger (1942). From the ambiguity of its opening lines - ‘Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.’ - the protagonist’s resigned indifference establishes a tone and attitude that never lets up. A classic of existentialist literature, it is also an absurdist story about the fate of a person who, in an attempt to find meaning, is led into a deadly conflict with the world. Highly recommended.

From the back: Meursault leads an apparently unremarkable bachelor life in Algiers until his involvement in a violent incident calls into question the fundamental values of society. In his classic existentialist novel Camus explores the predicament of the individual who is prepared to face teh benign indifference of the universe courageously and alone. In this world, cut off from a sense of God, society has created rules so binding that any person breaking them is condemned as an alien, an outsider. For Meursault it is an insult to his reason and a betrayal of his hopes; for Camus it is the absurdity of life. To him Meursault was not ‘a reject, but a poor and naked man … who, without any heroic pretensions, agrees to die for the truth.’

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks, all of which are connected in one way or another to the idea of absurdity: ‘Everything In Its Right Place’ (Radiohead, 2000), ‘A Design for Life’ (Manic Street Preachers, 1996), ‘Where is My Mind?’ (Pixies, 1988), ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ (Bob Dylan, 1965) and ‘Helter Skelter’ (The Beatles, 1968). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from the American novelist, Tom Robbins:7

‘For the being who is at peace with itself, survival may be of trivial concern.’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

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And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!

Thanks to everyone who subscribes - your interest and support is truly appreciated. If you like The Bus, please SHARE it with a friend or two. 

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.49) 11 March 2024

The Stop

Paracosms are complexly detailed imaginary worlds that some children develop in middle childhood.1 Usually complete with their own geography, history, cultures and languages, interest in paracosms can last for a long period of time - for months, or even years. In some rare cases, they become ‘sophisticated realit[ies]’ remaining with their creators well into adulthood - and occasionally become the setting for famous works of literature.2

Because they are ‘so elaborate and inventive,’ it’s often assumed that paracosms are rare. However, a 2018 study by researchers at the University of Oregon showed they are more common than usually thought: around 17% of children interviewed described creating ‘imaginary worlds - places where, for example, people only read the books they have written themselves, cats fly, and inhabitants speak a [created] language.’ What the researchers also found striking was that children who create paracosms, rather than being considered unusual or ‘odd’, are in other ways just like their peers - they ‘do not stand out’, but are ‘similar … in verbal comprehension, working memory, and … creativity.’ However, where the creators of paracosms do stand out is in their enhanced ability for story telling: not only are the ‘narratives of their paracosms impressive,’ they tend to invent ‘more creative endings’ to a given story than those produced by children who had not designed a paracosm.3

The history of English literature is filled with writers who created paracosms, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s son, Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849), who invented the paracosm of Ejuxria, on which he would work for the rest of his life having, according to a biographer, never been able to ‘relinquish the keys to his personal paradise.’ Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859) and his older brother, William, invented two imaginary kingdoms - Gombroon and Tigrosylvania - which were constantly at war with one another, and the Brontë sisters - Charlotte (1816-1855), Emily (1818-1848) and Anne (1820-1849) - joined with their brother, Branwell (1817-1848), to create Great Glass Town and two offshoots - Gondal (Emily and Anne) and Angria (Charlotte and Branwell). In the case of the Brontës’ creation, these worlds formed the basis of Charlotte’s romance, High Life in Verdopolis.4

While most paracosms fade as a child matures, for some like Hartley Coleridge they remain a ‘favourite fantasy pastime’, while for others they become incorporated into the ‘way that they think about their life goals.’ As a result, paracosms that remain active after childhood are usually folded into their creator’s work, and for writers this means they often become the setting for narratives. The detailed worlds of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, C. S. Lewis’s Narnia and J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth are all examples of paracosms that remained with their creators long after childhood and, in these examples at least, became the setting for three beloved fictional worlds.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to The Underground Clocks of Paris, a fascinating short (8:30) documentary about the extraordinary, ingenious network of underground pipes which kept 19th century Paris on perfect time - by using bursts of compressed air to keep thousands of clocks around the city synchronised to a central, master clock. Interesting for the engineering, but also for the way industrialisation led to the realisation of how important it was that everyone was able to be on time.

The Underground Clocks of Paris

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is one of the most famous - and enduring - paracosms: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955). Though published in three parts (The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), The Two Towers (1954) and The Return of the King (1955)), Tolkien’s original intention was that it would be published as a single volume.

As a young teen Tolkien began inventing languages. When he later began imagining the people who spoke them, he created Middle-earth, a complex paracosm populated by multiple cultures with detailed histories, genealogies, and languages that, in the end, formed the backdrop for his epic high fantasy novel.

From the back: In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell by chance into the hands of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins.

From Sauron's fastness in the Dark Tower of Mordor, his power spread far and wide. Sauron gathered all the Great Rings, but always he searched for the One Ring that would complete his dominion.

When Bilbo reached his eleventy-first birthday he disappeared, bequeathing to his young cousin Frodo the Ruling Ring and a perilous quest: to journey across Middle-earth, deep into the shadow of the Dark Lord, and destroy the Ring by casting it into the Cracks of Doom.

It’s quite the ride - and one I’ve loved since I first read it in the seventh grade. If you’ve read it before, I’d suggest reading it again, and if you haven’t, it’s worth a go. What I would suggest is that you read the book and not see the films so that you can define the world yourself and not the way Peter Jackson envisioned it. Which, while sufficient in many ways, pales in comparison to how I imagined it as a child.

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks about imaginary worlds: ‘Ramble On’ (Led Zeppelin, 1969), ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’ (The Flaming Lips, 2002), ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ (The Beatles, 1967), ‘The Big Rock Candy Mountain’ (Harry McClintock, 1928) and ‘Planet Telex’ (Radiohead, 1995). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from Hartley Coleridge’s Liberty (1833):

‘But what is Freedom? Rightly understood, A universal licence to be good.’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

Leave a comment

And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.47) 4 March 2024

The Stop

John Cage (1912 - 1992) was an American American avant-garde composer whose ‘inventive compositions and unorthodox ideas’ profoundly influenced mid-20th century music. Active during the period of Abstract Expressionism,1 Cage is best known for revolutionising modern music by using unconventional instrumentation. Deeply influenced by Asian philosophies such as Zen Buddhism, his ‘approach to composition’ focussed on the ‘harmony that exists in nature, as well as elements of chance.’2

John Cage was born in Los Angeles to John and Lucretia. His father - an inventor - and his mother - an amateur artist and occasional writer for the The Los Angeles Times - were both ‘revolutionary and eccentric,’ who made a lasting impression on him as a child. He started piano lessons when he was ten, and although he ‘enjoyed music and showed great academic standing,’ he had a passionate desire to write. After graduating as class valedictorian from Los Angeles High School, he began his studies at Pomona College, but dropped out less than two years later as he felt he was wasn’t being ‘challenged enough as an aspiring writer’.

In 1930, he traveled to Europe where he experimented with different artistic mediums, including painting, architecture, and poetry, but found that ‘nothing moved him to create innovative works’ until he encountered the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. For Cage, Bach suddenly made sense of contemporary composers such as Stravinsky, and he was inspired to create his own compositions. Returning to the US, Cage experimented with composition, but realised he needed a ‘more refined understanding of music.’ Relocating to New York, he began taking classes at The New School, where he was recommended by his ‘instructor and friend’ Henry Cowell3 to seek out the avant-garde composer Arnold Schoenberg,4 the person Cowell believed could offer Cage the kind of instruction he needed. After months obsessively honing his composition skills, Cage felt confident enough to approach Schoenberg. The composer accepted him as a pupil - for free - on the condition he would ‘dedicate his life to music.’

After two years with Schoenberg, Cage felt he needed to separate himself from his mentor if he was to develop a new, innovative style of music. Moving to Seattle, Cage taught music while composing and began experimenting with works for dance, many of which were the result of collaborations with the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, with whom he would have a long creative and romantic partnership.

In the early 1950s, Cage spent two summers as an instructor at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, a ‘radical institution [which] provided the environment’ for some of his most experimental works. In North Carolina, Cage began to ‘unleash some of the most startling events and non-events in musical history: tape and radio collages, works composed by chance process, [and] multimedia happenings.’ Such works include 4' 33 (Four Minutes and Thirty-three Seconds) (1952), a piece in which the performer remains utterly silent onstage for that amount of time, and Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (1951) - a composition requiring twelve radios, each of which is controlled by two players, one who changes stations and the other who adjusts the volume according to the score.5

From early imitations of Schoenberg’s 12-tone method,6 Cage’s experiments with ‘increasingly unorthodox instruments such as the ‘prepared piano’ (a piano modified by objects placed between its strings in order to produce percussive and otherworldly sound effects),’ tape recorders, record players, and radios had now become essential components of his intention to ‘step outside the bounds of conventional Western music and its concepts of meaningful sound.’ His innovations with sound, instrumentation, performance, and composition would contribute to a redefinition of music in the 20th century and beyond.

Despite dying of a stroke in the summer of 1992, Cage’s influence can be found in the music of Stereolab, Radiohead, Sonic Youth and Aphex Twin - who used a ‘prepared piano’ on Drukqs (2001) - and he still remains a popular composer. In fact, one of his compositions is currently being performed in the church of St Bulchardi in Halberstadt, Germany. Chosen by a group of ‘group of philosophers and musicians at an organ conference’ six years after Cage’s death, Halberstadt - which, in 1361, housed the first organ with a modern keyboard - was felt to be the perfect location for the performance of Cage’s composition ‘Organ²/ASLSP As Slow as Possible’. Played on a wooden-framed organ combining bellows and sandbags, the organ itself is a work in progress that is being built - with pipes added or removed - with each chord change. The piece began on 5 September 2001 - what would have been Cage’s 89th birthday - and will continue to be played for 639 years - a number chosen to mark the time between the first organ and the new millennium. Just last month - on 5 February - the first chord change in two years (and only the 16th since it began) occurred. Suffice it to say, Cage - and his influence - won’t be going away anytime soon.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to Thick Skin, a short (2:51) video which uses dance to explore the idea that one must have a ‘thick skin’ to survive in Bogotá, Colombia. It’s beautifully avant-garde … which is, of course, one purpose of art. Definitely give this one a watch.

Thick Skin

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007). One of the most interesting books I’ve read in the last two decades, this is an indispensable text for anyone curious about the continued development and important, influential role of classical music. Yes, it’s a complex topic - but this book is accessible and fascinating, even if you’re not a classical music fan. Highly recommended.

From the back: Alex Ross, music critic for the New Yorker, takes us on a whirlwind tour of the wild landscape of twentieth-century classical music. In a century when music fragmented into apparently divergent strands Ross follows the individuals, pieces and crucial moments that shaped musical development - from Adams to Zweig, and Brahms to Björk, travelling from pre-First World War Vienna, to Benjamin Britten’s Aldeburgh, to downtown New York in the sixties.

Depicting an era when music became a social and cultural indicator as never before, The Rest is Noise becomes an intricate commentary on politics and its troublesome dance with art. Broad, vivid and powerful, it is a unique portrait of the sound-scape of the last century.

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five early John Cage compositions I’ve chosen in an attempt to give a slight flavour of this most remarkable composer: ‘In a Landscape’ (1948), ‘Sonata and Interludes for Prepared Piano: Sonata V’ (1948), ‘A room (Two Pieces for Harp)’ (1942), ‘Experiences No. 1’ (1945), and ‘The Seasons: Spring’ (1947). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is a great one from John Cage:

‘There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.’

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.44) 22 February 2024

The Stop

Scarlet, one of the most striking shades of red, has long been a controversial colour. Though it has been 'almost continually in fashion’ since the 14th century, its approval has not been universal. Associated with everything from the ‘archetypal scarlet woman, the biblical Whore of Babylon’ to symbols of great power, wealth and even divinity, the colour has been associated with power and riches both good and bad since ancient times. The name ‘scarlet’ however, was not initially the name of the colour, but a ‘particularly admired woollen cloth.’1

Though references to what might today be considered scarlet dyes are mentioned in Ancient Persia and Assyria, they were actually known as Armenian Red. After this colour was exported to Rome, it quickly became a mark of both wealth and authority, with the highest ranking generals wearing the bright red paludamenta - cloaks which signalled leadership, fastened over one shoulder. One reason for its exclusivity was its nearly prohibitive price, as it was painstakingly obtained from the kermes beetle, a species of tiny scale insects the common name of which was given to the red dye obtained from crushing their dried bodies.

So tiny they were ‘often mistaken for seeds or grains’ - in the first century CE, Pliny the Elder described it as ‘a berry that becomes a worm’ - the bodies of around 80 female kermes beetles were required to produce a single gram of the colour. Producing the exact tone and shade took great skill, but the result was a ‘dye so bright and colourfast’ that cloth dyed with kermes became the ‘epitome of luxury.’ From the 14th century, because the fine woollen scarlet cloth was so often coloured with kermes, the word began denoting the colour instead. By the 15th century in England, it would cost a master mason a month’s wages to buy a ‘single yard of the cheapest scarlet cloth; the dearest cost twice as much.’

Kermes red had long been popular with royalty: in 800 CE, Charlemagne wore scarlet shoes when crowned Holy Roman Emperor, and Richard II did the same when he was crowned in England 500 years later. In 13th century France, the colour was restricted to be worn only by kings, and in 1464 Pope Paul II ordered his cardinals to change their robes to scarlet from purple; from this point the colour began its inextricable connection with power and ‘insignia, particularly in the Church and academia.’ It was also a shade enjoyed by the princess who would become Elizabeth I. Though she appreciated scarlet’s connotations of power, she recognised the colour wouldn’t fit her image as ‘virgin queen’. Consequently, once she was crowned in 1558, she dressed her ‘ladies-in-waiting and retainers in scarlet … presumably so that they could act as a dramatically symbolic backdrop’ to her colour palette consisting of ‘neutral or broken tones like tawny, gold and ash.’

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to ‘When You Heat Any Fluid’, an engaging video (11:49) in which the creator’s curiosity about how convection currents in heated fluids make different - often striking - patterns, whether this is boiling water, cooking oil, or even the surface of the sun. Worth even a cursory skim-through!

When You Heat Any Fluid

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850). A book that unfortunately suffers from the assigned-in-high-school-English stigma, this is actually a great story.2 It’s set in a world that was different from the one in which it was written and certainly one even further from our own, but it nevertheless considers profound themes with which our society still grapples: sin, guilt, redemption, and the hypocrisy of a supposedly pious community.

Brief synopsis:

Set in a village in 17th century Puritan New England, Hester Prynne is a young woman who has had a child out of wedlock. Forced to wear the scarlet letter A on her dress as punishment for her adultery and refusing to name her lover, her husband - who she believed was dead - secretly arrives in the village, conceals his identity and becomes obsessed with discovering the father. When he learns the man in question is Arthur Dimmesdale - the saintly young minister leading the pack demanding her to name the father - he proceeds to torment Dimmesdale until, overcome with guilt, the minister publicly dies in her arms.

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks, all with scarlet in their title: ‘Scarlet Begonias’ (The Grateful Dead, 1974), ‘Scarlet’ (The Rolling Stones, 1973), ‘Scarlet Pussy’ (Prince, 1988), ‘Scarlet Town’ (Bob Dylan, 2012) and ‘Scarlet Ribbons (For Her Hair)’ (Harry Belafonte, 1956). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is a useful, humbling reminder from Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter:

‘It is a good lesson - though it may often be a hard one - for a man ... to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognised, and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.’

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.43) 19 February 2024

The Stop

Ken Kesey (1935-2001) was an American novelist and essayist. Educated at both the University of Oregon and Stanford University, his experiences taking mind-altering drugs as a paid volunteer influenced his first novel - One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) - and inspired him to become one of the central figures in the 1960s counter-culture.1

Born in La Junta, Colorado, when he was eleven Kesey’s parents moved to Springfield, Oregon to become dairy farmers. A star wrestler and football player in high school, he attended the University of Oregon on a football scholarship but switched to wrestling as it better fit his build. While at university, in 1956 he eloped with his high school sweetheart - Norma Faye Haxby. After briefly considering a career in acting, the Keseys relocated to Palo Alto, California, when he won a scholarship to the graduate program in writing at Stanford University. At Stanford, under the guidance of writers such as Wallace Stegner and Malcolm Cowley, Kesey forged his lifelong friendship with writer Ken Babbs, fell under the influence of Beat writers such as Jack Kerouac, and participated in the drug experiment that would change his life.

In 1960, Kesey volunteered (and was paid $20 a session) for an experiment at the Menlo Park Veteran’s Hospital investigating the effects of various psychoactive drugs.2 Willingly taking a host of chemicals, including LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and DMT amongst others, Kesey found himself mentally ‘shifted over’ to where he could see the world as fully ‘dimensional.’ Unquestionably, the experiences provided him with the ‘sort of multiple perception[s] that a fledgling novelist might find extremely useful.’ Soon Kesey was working the night shift at the hospital, when the ‘medicine cabinet … was wide open for anyone who wanted to borrow an experimental chemical or two,’ and he was able to ‘swab the floor, chat with the nurses, chat with the crazy insomniacs … and do a little typing on the side.’ The outcome of these experiences was his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, in which he used the mental hospital as an extended metaphor to examine the abuse by the system against the individual in late 1950s America.

Kesey’s second novel was Sometimes a Great Notion (1964), released to mixed, but generally positive acclaim. To celebrate its publication, Kesey and his group of like-minded creatives - the Merry Pranksters - decided to drive from Oregon to New York City in a Day-Glo painted school bus named Further.3 Outfitted with a sound system that ‘allowed them to converse with the outside world,’ the trip was obsessively filmed with the intention of creating a unique take on movies. To Kesey and the Pranksters, the ‘world was their movie, or rather the world was a rivalry of movies. People were always trying to trap you in their movie … and the only way to prevent this was to create alternative movies.’ In the end, the trip proved to be a ‘turning point’ for Kesey who had decided to ‘‘put on another costume’ - that is, to step away from or, at least, beyond writing as an expression of his values and ideas.’

Upon his return to California, Kesey and Faye moved to La Honda, a rustic hamlet 15 miles east of Stanford where his nearest neighbour was a mile away. Here, in a ‘modern log cabin’ with ‘six large rooms … a massive fireplace and a pair of elegant French doors that opened on to six acres of redwood forest’, Kesey created a ‘community of psychedelic adventurers’ consisting of friends close and extended, the Merry Pranksters, and his favourite band, the Warlocks - who would later be known as The Grateful Dead. Black lights, strobe lights, fluorescent paint, speakers hung from the treetops blasting music at all hours of the day and night, and copious amounts of the still-legal LSD4 combined to fuel a constant series of parties he called ‘Acid Tests’, and the rest is counter-culture history.5

Over the next years, Kesey was arrested for cannabis possession, faked a suicide note, and ran off to Mexico to avoid incarceration. Upon his return to the United States he served a six-month prison sentence before relocating permanently to a farm near Eugene, Oregon. His writing ‘ebbed more than it flowed’ while he raised his family and worked his land, but he continued to contribute to ‘prestigious magazines,’ edited the 1971 supplement to Stewart Brand’s The Whole Earth Catalogue, and published three works of non-fiction: Kesey’s Garage Sale (1973), Demon Box (1986), and The Further Inquiry (1990). From 1987-1988, Kesey taught a creative-writing class at the University of Oregon in which he and his students collaborated to produced a group novel, Caverns (1989), published under the pseudonym O.U. Levon. In 1992, he published two other novels: Sailor Song and Last Go-Round: A Dime Western, the latter co-written with Ken Babbs.

In 1997, Kesey had a stroke and from then his health began to steadily decline. Following complications from surgery to remove a tumour from his liver, Kesey died on 10 November 2001 in Eugene, where he is memorialised by a life-sized sculpture of him wearing his ‘trademark touring cap reading to three children.’

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to a short (2:41) animated film by Amanda Duckworth, What Is Your Biggest Regret? Accompanying recordings of adults revealing their regrets, the minimalistic animations make all of them - whether general or specific - thought-provoking. Worth the time.

What Is Your Biggest Regret?

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Ken Kesey’s Sometimes A Great Notion (1964). Though not as famous as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,6 this complex and multifaceted novel also explores themes of individualism, family conflict, and community tension, and is considered an ‘essential’ American novel.

Set in the Pacific Northwest, the story focusses on the Stamper family and its obstinate patriarch Henry’s decision to continue logging against the wishes of the union and the community. Henry’s eldest son - Hank - is determined to uphold the family tradition of self-reliance even though it isolates them from their neighbours and his wife, and Hank’s half-brother Leland, a college-educated outsider, returns home haunted by personal demons and disillusionment with the outside world. Leland’s return ignites internal conflict within the family as he challenges their beliefs and way of life, and as tensions escalate acts of increasing violence result in tragedy. Highly recommended.7

From the back cover: A bitter strike is raging in a small lumber town along the Oregon coast. Bucking that strike out of sheer cussedness are the Stampers: Henry, the fiercely vital and overpowering patriarch; Hank, the son who has spent his life trying to live up to his father; and Viv, who fell in love with Hank's exuberant machismo but now finds it wearing thin. And then there is Leland, Henry's bookish younger son, who returns to his family on a mission of vengeance - and finds himself fulfilling it in ways he never imagined. Out of the Stamper family's rivalries and betrayals, Ken Kesey crafted a novel with the mythic impact of Greek tragedy.

Sometimes a Great Notion (Book Review, New York Times)

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks from albums released in 1967 - the year of the ‘Summer of Love’, in many ways the apex of what Kesey, the Merry Pranksters, and their associates created.8 This year saw the release of an incredible number of now-classic albums - many of which are among my favourites - so the choice wasn’t easy. But, in the end, these seemed to fit the Stop. Though by the time of their release he’d moved back to Oregon, I like to think he would have blasted these tunes out of the tree-speakers at La Honda: ‘The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)’ (The Grateful Dead, The Grateful Dead (March)), ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ (The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour (November)), ‘D. C. B. A. -25’ (Jefferson Airplane, Surrealistic Pillow (February)), ‘Love Me Two Times’ (The Doors, Strange Days (September)) and ‘Dear Mr Fantasy’ (Traffic, Mr Fantasy (December)). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is, of course, from Ken Kesey:

‘I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.’

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.42) 15 February 2024

The Stop

Logical fallacies are arguments built on false reasoning. Initially, they might appear true - and can be persuasive. Consequently, they are often used in rhetoric to encourage people to think a certain way or believe certain things, and - as they usually appeal at least in part to emotions - can be very effective. However, fallacious arguments are built on flawed reasoning that is exposed when logic is applied. There are many types of logical fallacies, and philosophers as early as Aristotle recognised as essential the need to detect and avoid them - including ones such as the ‘straw man’ and ‘red herring’ fallacies.1

The straw man fallacy occurs when someone attempts to rebut an argument by misconstruing it or addressing only a weak or distorted version of it. Named after the idea that a straw man (or scarecrow) is a fake representation or caricature of a real person, the idea is that the person attempting to win an argument from this standpoint is not engaging in good faith with the real argument. Rather, they develop their argument against a caricature of the real argument, thereby ‘constructing a straw man’ in their rebuttal.

Some examples:

Scenario 1: A teacher says the class needs to spend more time on maths, and a parent complains the teacher doesn’t care about literacy. In this instance, the teacher has only said the class needs to work more on maths - nothing has been said about literacy. But by arguing as if the teacher’s statement betrays the teacher’s true thoughts about literacy, the parent has constructed a straw man fallacy. The teacher may (or may not) value literacy - but literacy is not the point of the statement, and thus to argue against spending more time on maths from this standpoint is fallacious.

Scenario 2: A Democrat politician says more money needs to be spent on social welfare, and a Republican opponent says this means the Democrat is a communist. In this instance, unless the Democrat is also calling for the dissolution of private industry, the end of capitalism and the imposition of state control on everything, they’re not arguing for communism at all. Accusing the Democrat of being a communist might stir-up the right-wing base, but at best it’s a caricature - a straw man - of the Democrat’s true position.

The straw man fallacy is a type known generally as red herrings - logical fallacies in which information is presented in such a way as to distract from the main issue or argument being discussed. The term was coined in 1807 by the British radical journalist and politician William Cobbett2 who used strong-smelling red herrings to distract dogs from chasing rabbits. The smell of the fish overpowered the smell of the rabbits, putting the dogs off the scent. Today, the term is used to explain any situation where someone attempts to distract people from the true issue under discussion.

A couple of examples:

Scenario 1: A father and son are discussing the difficulties of earning a living in today’s economy. The son says, ‘I can hardly make ends meet - I need to find a better paying job,’ to which the father responds: ‘You think it’s difficult to earn a living on your salary? When I was young, I only made £3 an hour!’ This response is a red herring fallacy because the father’s income when he was young is irrelevant to the discussion about earning a living in today’s economy. It is a complete distraction from the son’s current struggle, moving the discussion off topic towards something entirely unconstructive.

Scenario 2: In an interview, a politician is asked to explain why the unemployment rate has risen despite implementing his party’s policies. The politician replies: ‘I have been working incredibly hard since I entered office, and I think the citizens can see this.’ In this (unfortunately very common) example, the politician directly avoids answering the question by using the red herring of talking about how hard he has been working. By throwing out a comment about an irrelevant point, the politician’s attempt to avoid the question is fallacious because how hard the he works is unrelated to unemployment rates.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to ‘Friend of a Friend,’ a music video (5:25) by The Smile3 from their latest album, Wall of Eyes. Directed by the acclaimed filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, Inherent Vice, and Licorice Pizza, amongst others), it’s a brilliant fit to the band’s eclectic sound. If you’re at all a fan of Anderson, The Smile or Radiohead, give it a watch. You won’t be disappointed.

The Smile: 'Friend of a Friend'

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is an unusual one for The Bus as it’s neither a book nor a film, but a serial news magazine: The Week. Published in both UK and US editions (my experience is only with the former version), for years I’ve found it a good way to get concise, balanced summaries of the previous week’s major news stories - and an enjoyable supplement to the many other news outlets I absorb daily on screen and in print. With a format that makes it easy to dip in and out of, it’s a great magazine to keep in the bathroom!

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks which have nothing to do with the Stop, but seem to keep appearing on my playlist: ‘Tramazi Parti’ (Black Grape, 1995), ‘Jane Says’ (Jane’s Addiction, 1987), ‘The Hardest Button to Button’ (The White Stripes, 2003), ‘I Was Born This Way’ (Carl Bean, 1977) and ‘Lido Shuffle’ (Boz Scaggs, 1976). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is good advice from the 19th century American novelist, satirist and humorist Mark Twain:4

‘Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.41) 12 February 2024

The Stop

Written between 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously in 1925, Franz Kafka’s The Trial is one of his major works and ‘perhaps his most pessimistic.’ The surrealist story of Josef K. - a bank functionary who is suddenly arrested and prosecuted by a ‘remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor the reader’ - has become ‘synonymous with the anxieties and sense of alienation of the modern age.’ Frequently considered to be a prescient ‘anticipation of totalitarianism,’ the novel resonates in its depiction of an ‘ordinary person’s struggle against an unreasoning and unreasonable authority.’1

Like his other two novels - The Castle and Amerika - The Trial was never completed, and had Kafka had his way it would never have been published. Unhappy with the majority of his work, he instructed Max Brod - his friend and executor of his estate - to burn all of his unpublished writing upon his death. However, Brod - knowing Kafka’s habit of destroying his work2 - had taken the manuscript for safekeeping and ignored his friend’s last request. Working from a manuscript composed of 161 loose pages torn from various notebooks, Brod edited and assembled the work into its present form. As Kafka had a habit of titling chapters but not numbering them, there is debate as to whether the chapters were published in the correct order, but - despite changes by both Brod and others in various print runs - Kafka’s original vision for the novel is unknown.

Kafka’s works typically involve ‘isolated protagonists’ who find themselves in ‘bizarre or surrealistic predicaments’ against incomprehensible and inflexible bureaucracies, and the plot of The Trial is no different. Addressing themes such as the relationship between (1) justice and the law, (2) alienation and control, and (3) the difference between the unknowable and interpretation - all examined through the lens of an absurd system devoid of any logical, predictable structure - Kafka’s everyman protagonist experiences first-hand the senseless, disorientating and menacing complexity which we describe today as ‘Kafkaesque.’

Brief Synopsis:

On the morning of his 30th birthday, Josef K. wakes to find himself arrested. The nature of his crime is entirely unknown - both to him and the reader - and K. suspects ‘someone must have been telling lies’ about him. He is subsequently thrown into a into a labyrinthine legal system run by a menacing bureaucracy that offers no explanations and demands absolute obedience.

Desperate to understand his charges and clear his name, K. follows the rules as he understands them, but the court proceedings are absurd and surreal and expectations continue to change. He is forced to navigate a maze of illogical rules, confront contradictory officials, and respond to ever-changing accusations. Paranoia quickly starts to set in, and despite seeking help from friends, lawyers, co-workers and mysterious strangers, he finds no one capable of helping him through an increasingly nightmarish situation.

As his trial progresses through a series of starts and stalls, K.’s life unravels further and further. His job, relationships, and even his sense of self all deteriorate under the constant pressure and uncertainty until, on the eve of his 31st birthday, he is visited at home by two men in frock coats and top hats. Taking him to an abandoned quarry, they pass a knife back and forth to each other, with the implication that K. should take it and kill himself. But he doesn’t - an act his experience causes him to interpret as his ‘last failure’ - so instead one of them pushes it into his heart and twists it twice. K. - never understanding any of his ordeal - dies, in his words, ‘like a dog’ - as if the ‘shame of [his death] must outlive him.’

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to Time Tides, a very short (1:40) animated film from Kanahebi/Hideki Inaba. It’s a surreal attempt at representing the ‘chaos of time and evolution.’ In the words of its creator: ‘The waves of the sea gently ebb and flow, while the mountains silently observe the passing of time. The short life of a bee and the long transformation of continents, both are merely illusions. The flow of time shines eternally in each fleeting moment. Perhaps there are neither beginnings nor ends, nor haste nor delay, not even existence or cessation, in its true essence.’ Absolutely worth the time.

Time Tides

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is the recent ITV miniseries Mr Bates Vs. The Post Office (2024). First broadcast in January, the four episodes depict the extraordinary true story of what has been called the ‘greatest miscarriage of justice in British legal history.’ From 1999 to 2015, hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters and postmistresses were wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting due to Fujitsu’s defective Horizon computer system. Failures in the system were ignored and covered up, the blame being placed on its users. The resulting court cases, convictions, imprisonments, debts, and loss of jobs and homes took a massive toll on those caught up in the scandal and resulted in stress, illness, divorce and at least four suicides.3

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks inspired - either directly or indirectly - by Kafka’s themes:4 ‘Bloom’ (Radiohead, 2011), ‘Love/Paranoia’ (Tame Impala, 2015), ‘Flagpole Sitta’ (Harvey Danger, 1997), ‘At Night’ (The Cure, 1980) and ‘Colony’ (Joy Division, 1980). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from Franz Kafka, one of my favourites about the purpose of literature:

‘I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? […] A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.40) 8 February 2024

The Stop

In contemporary usage, a doppelgänger (from the German ‘double goer’ or ‘double walker’) is ‘someone who looks exactly like someone else but who is not related to that person.’ The belief in the ‘existence of a spirit double, an exact but usually invisible replica of every man, bird, or beast’ is ‘ancient and widespread,’ and it was often thought meeting one’s double meant one’s death was imminent. Despite the idea of a biologically unrelated double of a living person existing for centuries, the word wasn’t coined until 1796 when it appeared in the German Romantic writer Jean Paul’s novel Siebenkäs. Since then, the idea has been a staple of literature.1

The ancient Egyptians believed the soul had multiple parts, one of which was the ka - a sort of ‘doubled’ spirit identical to the body and able to survive death to reside in a picture or statue of a person. Throughout Europe and parts of Africa, ‘supernatural’ children known as changelings were often believed to have been left in the place of their identical human infants, and the Norse believed in the vardøger - a double that appeared in a place before the original person arrived in order to lead others to believe the person was already present. German folklore contains stories about ‘wraith[s] or apparition[s]’ of living people, and in 18th and 19th century British literature there are many stories told about the fetch - an ‘ethereal double’ who appeared, like the doppelgänger, to signal the death of the person it copied.

For obvious reasons, the doppelgänger became popular in horror literature, and the idea - ‘perfectly suited for exploring human duality’ and often personifying a character’s darker side - took on considerable complexity. In Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale ‘The Shadow’ (1847), a man’s shadow suddenly separates from his body and gradually becomes his ‘walking double,’ embodying his opposite physical and moral traits, and eventually replacing him. A similar theme runs through - and is actually the entire point of - Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novella The Double (1846), the doppelgänger is the bold, assertive opposite of a normally mild and antisocial government clerk. Encroaching on every aspect of the clerk’s personal life, the double eventually drives him insane by the end. driving him mad by the story’s end.2

In addition to their existence in myth, folklore and literature, reports of doppelgänger sightings can be found throughout history. For example, in 1612 the English metaphysical poet John Donne reportedly saw his wife’s doppelgänger pass by him twice, ‘her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her arms.’ In distress, Donne sent a messenger to check on his wife and discovered that in fact she was in ‘very poor health after losing their child.’ The German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe described seeing his doppelgänger (in ‘unfamiliar attire’) on horseback - and years later found himself on the same road wearing the coat of his double. The English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley not only included a double in Prometheus Unbound, but claimed to have met his doppelgänger shortly before his death in 1822, and no less a rational figure than Abraham Lincoln reportedly met his doppelgänger three times during his Presidency.

Various psychological explanations have been identified to explain the existence of doppelgängers, including heautoscopy - a condition in which a person ‘hallucinates their own image at a distance.’ Though a good explanation for the phenomenon, the problem remains that auto-hallucination doesn’t explain those cases when the doppelgänger is observed by others, but recent research may have the answer.

Since 1999, Canadian photographer François Brunelle has travelled the world photographing strangers who look nearly identical to one another. Researchers asked 32 pairs of his subjects questions about their lifestyles and to submit samples of their DNA, and facial recognition software analysed the subjects’ headshots to ‘quantify similarities among their faces.’ In the end, half of the pairs were given ‘twin-like scores’. After taking into account lifestyles and behaviours, the researchers concluded that the existence of doppelgängers is actually down to nothing more mysterious than ‘genetic overlap … by happenstance.’ In a growing population, there are only so many genetic permutations, and as the ‘human population is now 7.9 billion, these look-alike repetitions are increasingly likely to occur.’ Presumably, in the smaller, provincial and - frankly - classist gene pool of the previous centuries, the odds for genetic overlap were even higher.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to The LAST Eclipse in History, a short (4:30) film from minutephysics which - with some lovely low-fi illustrations - explains how solar and lunar eclipses work, and why we’ve reached (as a planet) peak eclipse quality. Worth a watch, if you’re even remotely interested in this stuff.

The LAST Eclipse in History

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005).3 A dystopian science-fiction novel set in an alternative ‘late 1990s, England,’ the novel tells the story of three friends growing up together in a strictly-run boarding school. We learn the children are actually clones of unnamed and unseen wealthy individuals for whom their organs will be harvested when later required, an inescapable fate that conflicts with what they learn about themselves - and the limited experience they have with the world. The novel is remarkable, and its tone of resigned unease eerily masks the true horror of the events that unfold. Highly recommended.

From the back: In one of the most acclaimed and original novels of recent years, Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go hauntingly dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School, and with the fate that has always awaited her and he closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life.

Never Let Me Go (Guardian Review)

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is unrelated to today’s Stop - just five great tracks that have found their way to my playlist:4 ‘What Kinda Music’ (Tom Misch, 2020), ‘Kayleigh’ (Marillion, 1985), ‘Sweet and Low’ (Fugazi, 1993), ‘Echo Beach’ (Martha and the Muffins, 1980) and ‘Meladori Magpie’ (The Smashing Pumpkins, 1995). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice (2009). I thought its sentiment somewhat appropriate, given today’s Stop:

‘What goes around may come around, but it never ends up exactly the same place, you ever notice? Like a record on a turntable, all it takes is one groove's difference and the universe can be on into a whole 'nother song.’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.39) 5 February 2024

The Stop

Robert Hunter (1941-2019) was an American singer-songwriter, translator, poet and lyricist best known for his extensive work with the Grateful Dead. Hunter's lyrics contributed to making the Grateful Dead into a ‘countercultural touchstone,’ and he took great pride that the band’s fans would spend hours analysing them. The New York Times referred to his ‘deeply literary’ songs as being responsible for differentiating the Grateful Dead’s music from mainstream popular music, and Rolling Stone noted that - as one of ‘rock's most ambitious and dazzling lyricists, Hunter was the literary counterpoint to the band’s musical experimentation.’1

Born Robert Burns in Arroyo Grande, California, when he was seven his alcoholic father deserted the family and as a young boy Hunter spent several years in the foster system, a peripatetic existence which led him to seek stability and refuge in books. After a few years he was reunited with his mother who had married a McGraw-Hill publishing executive - Norman Hunter - who adopted Robert, gave him his surname and encouraged his writing while providing ‘stability and a literary sensibility to his life’. As a teenager, Hunter attended high school in Palo Alto and learned to play several instruments. When the family relocated to Connecticut, a ‘miserable’ Hunter completed his senior year before attending the University of Connecticut. Dropping out a year later, Hunter returned to Palo Alto, where he served in the National Guard for twelve months.

Palo Alto was also where he met - and quickly became fast friends with - Jerry Garcia.2 Bonding over a shared love of folk and bluegrass music, the two began playing together as a duo called ‘Bob and Jerry’, but this was short-lived because of ‘Hunter's limits as a guitarist and Garcia's ravenous drive to get better.’ Nevertheless, the two remained friendly - a relationship which was only enhanced when they and other members of what would become the Grateful Dead began bonding over the newly-available LSD.

In 1962, Hunter volunteered for a series of psychedelic chemical experiments at Stanford University.3 Unaware the experiments were secretly sponsored by the CIA’s MK-ULTRA programme,4 Hunter was excited by the opportunity to take LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and other substances and report on his experiences. When a friend tried to convince him otherwise, his response - ‘It’ll be fun! I’ll take my typewriter and no telling what’ll come out’ - was realised by his ‘string-of-consciousness rhapsodies’. Hunter’s experience would be the first any of the Grateful Dead had with psychedelic drugs, and his resultant ‘creative surge’ proved to be highly influential on their collective outlook.

After a first album (The Grateful Dead (1967)) of covers and two original tracks, the Grateful Dead began working on what would become their experimental second album, Anthem of the Sun (1968). This included a Hunter-penned song - ‘Alligator’ - which led to an invitation to join the band as their official lyricist. Hunter and Garcia wrote every track on the third album, Aoxomoxoa, including ‘China Cat Sunflower’ which became a popular addition to the band’s repertoire for the rest of its career. Hunter's relationship with the band grew until he was officially a non-performing band member.5

After Aoxomoxoa, the band changed its focus from a purely experimentalist/psychedelic approach towards what would become their unique combination of Americana and country music. This aesthetic featured strongly in their next two albums - American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead (both 1970) - which together included some of Hunter’s most successful and long-lasting songs: ‘Uncle John’s Band’, ‘Casey Jones’, ‘Cumberland Blues,’ ‘Box of Rain,’ ‘Friend of the Devil,’ ‘Ripple,’ ‘Truckin’,’ and ‘Sugar Magnolia.’ Living and touring with the band, Hunter would sometimes write the lyrics while the others composed the music, sometimes write the lyrics to already-completed music, and still other times they’d all work together to create the songs as one mind.

Hunter would continue working with the Grateful Dead, penning numerous tracks on all of their following albums. When Garcia died in 1995 and the Grateful Dead disbanded, he continued to write songs for many artists, including Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Jim Lauderdale and Bruce Hornsby. He also toured as an opening act on several of the various band incarnations composed of the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, but health issues meant these would be gradually curtailed until his death at home on 23 September 2019.

Though he never performed with the Dead, Hunter gave it a ‘universe of images, ideas, and tales.’ Populated by a cast of ‘drifters, thieves, rounders, jailbirds, horndogs, vigilantes, and roustabouts,’ Hunter’s songs might have provided ‘few conventional, charting hits,’ but there is no question that he hit ‘lots of home runs.’

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to Dollar Pizza Documentary, a short (7:30) video celebrating the New York pizza slice. It’s an interesting look at a staple food - and a delicious one, too, if my personal experience is anything to go on. There are also some rather profound observations buried amongst the comments, so this is definitely worth a watch. But - warning - you will want a piece of pizza.

Dollar Pizza Documentary

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Robert Hunter’s Box of Rain (1990). A lightly annotated collection of his lyrics, this book - which now appears to be out of print, at least in the version I once owned - is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in Hunter’s lyrics and poetry.

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five of my favourite Hunter-penned Grateful Dead tracks:6 ‘China Cat Sunflower’ (Dick’s Picks Vol. 28; 28 February 1973), ‘Wharf Rat’ (Dick’s Picks Vol. 3; 22 May 1977), ‘Brown-Eyed Women’ (Dick’s Picks 29, 21 May 1977), ‘Franklin’s Tower’ (Dead Set, 25 October 1980) and ‘Sugaree’ (One From the Vault, 13 August 1975). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from Robert Hunter’s lyric for the classic Dead track, ‘Truckin’:7

‘Sometimes the light’s all shining on me/Other times I can barely see./Lately it occurs to me/What a long, strange trip it’s been.’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.38) 1 February 2024

The Stop

For about 50 years, from 1570 - 1620, the revenge tragedy was a favourite form of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.1 A play in which the ‘dominant motive is revenge for a real or imagined injury,’ this theme - and its fatal consequences - is intricately detailed through the elaborate unfolding of the protagonist's revenge plot. Championing private rather than public (i.e., state-sanctioned or judicial) revenge, there is contention as to whether those protagonists seeking revenge are heroes or villains - is a character seeking revenge for the murder of his son in the right or wrong? However, this is rarely addressed in the plays themselves as their plots inevitably lead not only to the death of those on whom revenge was sought, but frequently the avenger, too.2

Beginning with the Ancient Greeks and finding its first formal expression in the plays of the Roman philosopher and playwright Seneca,3 the pursuit of revenge quickly became a central theme in many tragedies. However, the revenge tragedy as a genre was established on the Elizabethan stage with the publication of Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (1587). In this play, the protagonist Hieronimo discovers his son’s body which leads him into a fit of madness. After discovering the identity of his son's murderers and realising their status puts them above the law, he exacts his revenge through the staging of an intricate play-within-a-play, after which he kills himself. Hieronimo's determination to attain justice despite the weakness of the state gripped the popular imagination and a raft of similar plays quickly emerged.

There are numerous notable revenge tragedies from this period, including Shakespeare’s remarkably bloody Titus Andronicus (ca.1589-1592)4, Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy (1606) and John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore (1626), to name a few. The genre, however, found its ‘highest expression’ in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, though the depth of the play’s philosophical considerations and the complication of its principle characters for many scholars sets it apart. Nevertheless, it is a part of the tradition, for - like all revenge tragedies - its plot ticks off all ten of the genre’s basic conventions:

1. The protagonist is typically a noble character driven to deceit and cunning to avenge a terrible wrong done to him or someone else.

2. Noble characters often behave in ways inappropriate for their social station and can mix with characters from the lower orders.

3. Comedy intertwines with tragedy, not only in certain characters and dialogue, but at moments of high seriousness when the plays seem to teeter on the edge of black comedy.

4. The play dramatises a moral code in which personal vengeance rules and a consequent cycle of violent reprisal continues until all the principals have been slaughtered.

5. The setting is usually outside of England.

6. There is often a play within a play which conceals or reveals a murderous plot.

7. The plotting is complex, with a lot of intrigue.

8. There is frequently a ghost, often of a murdered person, calling for revenge.

9. Madness - both real and feigned - is present.

10. The tone is one of sensationalism and excitement, including physical horror, such as torture or poisoning.

Though the genre itself died out over time,5 its influence was a constant throughout the next centuries of drama and remains current today. Ask yourself - have you recently seen a play, read a book, watched a film or binged a television series in which revenge of some sort is at the heart of or is a considerable part of the storyline? It certainly might not tick all the classic boxes, but there’s a reason they were popular then - and a reason revenge remains popular today. And I’d hazard a guess that it’s not going away anytime soon.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to ‘Raising Silver,’ a short (6:15) documentary from the ‘How Was It Made’ series produced by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. Contemporary silversmith Ndidi Ekubia leads a tour of her inspirations and her studio, showing how she raises, chases and embosses her artworks. Inspirational and beautiful, this is a fascinating insight into an artist and her work. Definitely worth the time.

Raising Silver

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (1966). It’s the bizarre - and very funny - story of Oedipa Maas, a disappointed California housewife who, upon receipt of news of her ex-lover's death becomes co-executor (‘or she supposed executrix’) of his estate. As Oedipa goes about settling his affairs, she stumbles across clues that suggest the existence of a secretive postal system called Tristero that potentially operates as a shadow network ‘beyond’ the established postal service. Obsessed with unravelling this mystery, she embarks on a surreal and increasingly paranoid journey across Southern California, encountering a cast of strange characters who may or may not be part of Tristero.

It’s a great novel, and one of my favourites by Pynchon, but I include it today because one of the things Oedipa uncovers along her journey is a little known (fictitious) Jacobean revenge tragedy in which this mysterious postal service plays an important part. Written by the ‘depraved’ 17th century playwright Richard Wharfinger (also fictitious), The Courier’s Tragedy is delightfully over the top and a great send up of the entire genre, not least because it functions as a play within the frame of the novel. Highly recommended.

From the back: When V was published in 1963, it was proclaimed as a new kind of novel, recalling Joyce, Beckett and Joseph Heller. Suffused with rich satire, chaotic brilliance, verbal turbulence and wild humour, The Crying of Lot 49 opens as Oedipa Maas discovers that she has been made executrix of a former lover’s estate. The performance of her duties sets her on a strange trail of detection, in which bizarre characters crowd into help or confuse her. But gradually death, drugs, madness and marriage combine to leave Oedipa in isolation on the threshold of revelation, awaiting The Crying of Lot 49.

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five great tracks, all with a theme based one way or another on revenge: ‘One Way or Another’ (Blondie, 1978), ‘Run for Your Life’ (The Beatles, 1965), ‘These Boots are Made for Walkin’’ (Nancy Sinatra, 1966), ‘Your Time is Gonna Come’ (Led Zeppelin, 1969) and ‘I Feel So Good’ (Richard Thompson, 1991). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (III.i.63), in which Shylock is pointing out the equal humanity - both good and bad - in both Christians and Jews:

‘If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.37) 29 January 2024

The Stop

Released in the US on 19 December 1971 and in the United Kingdom on 13 January 1972, A Clockwork Orange is Stanley Kubrick’s ninth film, coming between the magisterial 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Barry Lyndon (1975). A dystopian science fiction/crime film based on the eponymous novel by Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange ‘employs disturbing, violent images to comment on psychiatry, juvenile delinquency, youth gangs, and other social, political, and economic subjects in a … near-future Britain.’ Controversial from its release, A Clockwork Orange is a film that has become not only a cult classic but part of the ‘pop-culture firmament’.1

Described as an ‘artful dark comedy of violence’, A Clockwork Orange is considered by most critics to be the ‘most repellent film’ of Kubrick’s career.2 Kubrick’s thematic concerns about power and the morally bankrupt people who are corrupted by it - from the ‘decadent Romans of Spartacus to the careerist French military brass in Paths of Glory to deranged stewards of our nuclear arsenal in Dr Strangelove’ - now find expression in the story of a violent misfit who runs up against a British ‘society lost to authoritarian rule, where an experimental campaign to curb criminal behaviour leads to a deplorable form of social engineering.’

Synopsis:

In a futuristic Britain, 15-year-old Alex DeLarge leads a gang of ‘droogs’ who one night, after getting intoxicated on drug-laden ‘milk-plus’, embark on an evening of ‘ultra-violence’. Invading an unsuspecting writer’s home, they end up beating the writer to the point of crippling him and violently raping his wife while singing ‘Singing in the Rain’. The next day, while truant from school, Alex’s probation officer - who is fully aware of his activities - approaches and cautions him.

The droogs aren’t happy with petty crime, desiring better targets and higher-yield thefts - but Alex asserts his authority by attacking them and beating them into submission. However, during another home invasion - this time of a wealthy ‘cat lady’ who Alex proceeds to bludgeon with a phallic sculpture - the droogs turn on him and Alex is arrested. He later learns the woman has died of her injuries and he is sentenced to 14 years in prison for her murder.

Two years into his sentence, Alex is offered the opportunity to be a test subject for the Minister of the Interior’s new ‘Ludovico Technique’ - an experimental aversion therapy which claims to rehabilitate criminals in two weeks. As part of his treatment, Alex is strapped to a chair, his eyes are clamped open and he is injected with drugs while being forced to watch films of sex and violence, some of which are accompanied by the music of Beethoven - his favourite composer. As the association between the violent scenes and Beethoven becomes stronger, Alex becomes traumatised and nauseated by the films and, afraid the Ludovico Technique will make him sick when hearing Beethoven, begs for the treatment to end.

Ignoring his pleas, after two weeks of treatment, the Minister of the Interior demonstrates Alex's rehabilitation to a group of officials by showing he is unable to fight back against an actor who taunts and attacks him and that he becomes ill at the thought of having sex with a topless woman. While the prison chaplain worries that Alex has lost his free will, the Minister dismisses the loss as a small price to pay for a technique that will cut crime and reduce overcrowded prisons.

Released from prison, Alex discovers his possessions have been sold to raise compensation for his victims and his parents have rented his room. Encountering an elderly vagrant he had attacked years before, when the vagrant and his friends attack him, Alex is saved by two policemen who turn out to be his former droogs. They drive him to the countryside, beat him and nearly drown him before abandoning him. Alex barely makes it to the doorstep of a nearby home before collapsing.

Alex wakes to find he is in the writer’s home from the first evening of ultra-violence. Though the writer doesn’t remember Alex from the earlier attack, he knows of the Ludovico Technique from the newspapers. Seeing Alex as a potential political weapon, he decides to introduce him to his colleagues, but when he overhears Alex singing ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ he realises who he is. With help from his colleagues, the writer drugs Alex and locks him in an upstairs bedroom, playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony loudly from the floor below. Unable to withstand the pain the music elicits, Alex tries to kill himself by jumping out of the window.

Alex survives the suicide attempt and wakes up in a hospital with multiple injuries and discovers the Ludovico Technique has failed and he no longer has aversions to violence and sex. The Minister of the Interior arrives and apologises, offering to take care of Alex and provide him with a job in return for help with his election campaign. As a sign of his goodwill, he presents Alex with a stereo system playing Beethoven's Ninth. Alex begins contemplating violence and has vivid thoughts about having sex with a woman in front of an approving crowd. The film ends with him thinking to himself, ‘I was cured, all right!’

But don’t take my word for it, check out the trailer: A Clockwork Orange (1972) Trailer.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to 49 Mile Scenic Drive, a short (9:59) documentary about the iconic tourist drive through the city of San Francisco, the designer of its iconic signs and - well, what happens when an original piece of art gets slowly replaced by an inferior imitation. It’s a bizarre little film, but worth the time - even if you haven’t had the pleasure of driving this most interesting route.

49 Mile Scenic Drive

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is David Mikics’s Stanley Kubrick: American Filmmaker (2020).3 Part of the Jewish Lives series, this short biography and study of Kubrick is a great introduction to this highly influential filmmaker. It’s a quick read, and absolutely worth the time if you’re interested in Kubrick.

From the back: Kubrick grew up in the Bronx, a doctor’s son. From a young age he was consumed by photography, chess, and, above all else, movies. He was a self‑taught filmmaker and self‑proclaimed outsider, and his films exist in a unique world of their own outside the Hollywood mainstream. Kubrick’s Jewishness played a crucial role in his idea of himself as an outsider. Obsessed with rebellion against authority, war, and male violence, Kubrick was himself a calm, coolly masterful creator and a talkative, ever‑curious polymath immersed in friends and family.

Drawing on interviews and new archival material, David Mikics for the first time explores the personal side of Kubrick’s films.

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks inspired by or otherwise connected to A Clockwork Orange: ‘Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun’ (Beastie Boys, 1989), ‘Ultraviolence’ (New Order, 1983), ‘Girl Loves Me’ (David Bowie, 2016), ‘Alex Descends into Hell for a Bottle of Mile/Korova 1)’ (U2, 1991) and ‘Temptation’ (Heaven 17, 1983). Enjoy!4

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from Stanley Kubrick:

‘If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

Leave a comment

And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.36) 25 January 2024

The Stop

Found in ‘all civilisations, both ancient and modern’, divination is the practice of using different techniques to uncover the ‘hidden significance or cause of events’, and frequently foretelling the future.1 During the Middle Ages, scholars coined names for many of these methods, often giving them the suffix -mantia (from Greek manteía, ‘prophecy’ or ‘prophesy’) when the practice appeared more mystical than scientific. Consequently, names were given to innumerable bizarre divination practises based on reading purported signs in the movement of cats (ailuromancy), the contents of dreams (oneiromancy), the distribution and colouration of skin spots (maculomancy), the location of randomly-chosen words in a book (dictomancy), and even - in the case of tyromancy - mould on cheese.2

Tyromancy, the ‘practice of telling fortunes with cheese,’ is first mentioned by the 2nd century Greek historian/diviner Artemidorus of Daldis in his writings on dreams. It seems Artemidorus was unimpressed by cheese as a source of divination, believing it was subject to ‘trickery and ambushes’ and that tyromancers ‘sullied the work of true diviners’ such as those who read signs in the livers of sacrificed animals. In fact, he was so down on tyromancy, that be believed its practitioners were closer to those who practised ‘evil types of divination, including dice diviners and necromancers’.

Despite tyromancy’s association with those who read dice or tried to communicate with the dead, the practice was especially common in Engand, reaching peak popularity during the Middle Ages and the early modern period (1500–1800). A general fondness for the paranormal and a Christian society’s desire to know ‘one’s predestined future … to find a way to gain control over it,’ coupled to produce a popular interest in divination. As the country at this time was primarily agrarian, access to milk-producing livestock was common, and cheese became an easily accessible - and egalitarian - tool for divination purposes.3

Cheese was used to divine everything from determining who committed a particular crime, how a newborn’s life would turn out, whether there would be a good harvest, or what the winter weather would bring. One of the most popular uses was to determine who to marry: by carving the names of potential suitors into different pieces of cheese, the tyromancer would wait to see which one moulded first to know the answer. Moulds and veins, the number and sizes of holes, the way a piece of cheese ‘sweated’ - all were interpreted as signs from beyond to be read by the tyromancer. Who would, of course, like all diviners, need to be paid in some form for this vital service.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to BOOM, an award-winning short (6:30) animated film from École des Nouvelles Images. It’s a ‘darkly comedic’ take on parenting, told through the story of a couple of birds who desperately try to protect their eggs when a volcano erupts on their island.

BOOM

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is The Cheese Life (2023). An excellent introduction to artisan cheeses, this book is a rich resources into many different types and varieties of cheese, along with providing recipes, creative pairings and insight into the making, storage, presentation and even cutting of cheese. If you like cheese, this is highly recommended.

From the back: Cheese is not just a food, it's a way of life!

Divided into Grill, Melt, Bake, Grate and Slice, The Cheese Life celebrates the new wave of artisan cheeses sweeping the globe with gloriously gooey recipes and inventive cheeseboards, as well as insights into how cheese is made, killer drinks matches and interviews with the people that work on the front line.

From how to make the ultimate fondue to the perfect grilled cheese sandwich, the recipes include feta and tomato tart, five cheese macaroni, smoked mozzarella sticks and cheeseboard accompaniments such as bacon jam and poached pears. Interspersed throughout are deep dives into key cheese varieties, from brie to blue, and wedges of cheesy wisdom, such as how to taste like a professional and when to eat the rind.

Most of all it's a book about having fun and enjoying good cheese from people who genuinely care about what they do.

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks based on the theme of the future: ‘A Better Future’ (David Bowie, 2002), ‘Future People’ (Alabama Shakes, 2015), ‘One Hundred Years From Now’ (The Byrds, 1968), ‘The Future’ (Leonard Cohen, 1992) and ‘Future Games’ (Fleetwood Mac, 1971).4 Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from Sister Noella (The Cheese Nun) from Michael Pollan’s Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (2013). Sister Noella is a Benedictine nun with a PhD in microbiology who’s fascination and love for the subject has led her to become an award-winning cheesemaker, specialising in raw-milk cheeses.

‘Cheese is all about the dark side of life.’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.35) 22 January 2024

The Stop

Defined by one of its founders - the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure - as the study of the ‘life of signs within society’, semiotics is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to studying signs and sign-using behaviour. A key study into the evolution of human consciousness, in the 17th century the English philosopher John Locke used ‘semiotics’ to describe his ‘doctrine of signs,’ but it wasn’t until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that it became a distinct field itself - largely as a result of the work of Saussure and the American scientist and philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.1

Peirce defined a sign as ‘something which stands to somebody for something,’ in other words anything that communicates ‘intentional and unintentional meaning or feelings to the sign’s interpreter’. He categorised signs into three primary types: an icon (a sign which resemble its referent, e.g., a road sign for falling rocks), an index (a sign associated with its referent, e.g., smoke is a sign for fire), and a symbol (a sign related to its referent only by convention, e.g., words or traffic signals). Despite these strict categories, Peirce recognised that it was impossible to attribute a definite meaning to a sign, as the fluid nature of human communication means they must be ‘continuously qualified’.

Saussure considered language a sign-system, and his contribution to semiotics was the development of various concepts and methods that semioticians would later apply to non-language sign-systems. One of his most important offerings was his distinction between the ‘two inseparable components of a sign’, the signifier (the sign itself) and the signified (the concept or idea behind the sign). Taking this relationship further, he made a clear distinction between what he termed parole (the actual sign or utterance, in the case of speech - the choices made by the speaker to communicate information) and langue (the ‘underlying system of conventions’ that makes signs and utterances ‘understandable’ - the structure or grammar of a language). It is langue that intrigues most semioticians, as this is where meaning - and changes in meaning - rests.

Modern semiotics studies signs and symbols as a significant part of communications, but includes - unlike the field of linguistics - non-linguistic sign systems. While ‘fundamental semiotic theories’ study signs or sign systems, ‘applied semiotics’ considers the way signs are used to create meaning in cultures as cultural artefacts. A broad field including studies of ‘indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism and signification’ under its umbrella, semiotics is also an important contributor to both anthropology and sociology, as some semioticians interpret ‘every cultural phenomenon as being able to be studied as communication’.

Today’s semioticians examine the ‘entire network of signs and symbols around us that mean different things in different contexts, even signs or symbols that are sounds.’ For example, if you hear an ambulance siren when driving, you think ‘someone is in trouble and we’re trying to help them, so pull over and let us by.’ Similarly, someone who is able to mimic James Earl Jones (as Darth Vader)’s deep baritone saying ‘Luke’ can instantly ‘transmit a raft of Star Wars images and sounds and meanings.’ The field of semiotics explains how this works, and in today’s world it’s good to know there are scholars who work to get communication right.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to Menagerie (4:25), a multi-award winning animated study of the ‘daily motions and mundane tasks of contemporary city life’. Through hundreds of ‘looping animated characters’, the film is an exploration into how quickly the ‘repetitive actions of our day-to-day lives … spiral into an endless kaleidoscope of abstraction’. The detail alone is worth the time.

Menagerie

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Shepherd’s Glossary of Graphic Signs and Symbols (1971). A bizarre - and very dated - collection of thousands of signs and symbols, the book is Walter Shepherd’s2 attempt to classify taxonomically human ‘marks’ in over 110 subject areas, including botany, numismatics, phonetics, geology, hydrography and even Texas cattle-brands.

From the inside flap: Man’s use of graphic signs and symbols predates his use of written language by several millennia. Yet this book is probably the first formal classification of graphic signs and symbols to be published. The proliferation of signs and symbols in the present age is bewilderingly self-evident, but new signs constitute only the tip of a vast iceberg.

The total number of significant marks devised by man is prodigious, and Mr. Shepherd has had to be selective in deciding what marks to include in the Glossary. He has succeeded in covering an extremely wide variety of meaningful marks made in writing or in diagrams or by display devices. They include alphabets, accents, technical signs, insignia, standard types of shading, types of ornament, and even the tramps’ ‘smogger’, chalked on walls and pavements. In all, the Glossary contains some 5,000 distinct forms with upwards of 7,000 meanings. There are lists of internationally agreed standard signs, and many series of historical or social interest such as the American ‘shaped notes’. Even where a particular class of sign is too numerous to reproduce in its entirety it is nevertheless represented by typical examples.

in all serious reference works the arrangement of the contents and the methods of classification are vital factors. Walter Shepherd has had much experience in the compilation and presentation of factual material, and the method he has devised in this Glossary enables the reader to find the meaning of a sign from its form alone without prior knowledge even of the subject to which it relates. The range of meanings attributable to any single sign is seen at a glance, and the reader desiring to invent new signs can readily discover whether his ideas have already been exploited.

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five sign-related tracks: ‘Vital Signs’ (Rush, 1981), ‘Sign of the Times’ (Prince, 1987), ‘Sign Your Name’ (Sananda Maitreya (formerly Terence Trent D’Arby), 1987), ‘Warning Sign’ (Talking Heads, 1978) and ‘Signs’ (Five Man Electrical Band, 1970). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from the Italian literary critic, novelist, and semiotician Umberto Eco (1932-2016):3

‘True learning must not be content with ideas, which are, in fact, signs, but must discover things in their individual truth.’

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.34) 18 January 2024

The Stop

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) was an American writer celebrated for his ‘wryly satirical’ novels. Known for an unusual writing style characterised by long sentences, little punctuation and his vehemently humanist point of view, Vonnegut is considered one of the most influential American novelists of the twentieth century. Blending literature with science fiction, fantasy, humour and various postmodern techniques, his novels are absurd social commentaries highlighting the ‘horrors and ironies of 20th-century civilisation.’1

Born in Indiana to a well-to-do family, Vonnegut began his literary career by working on his high school newspaper, and continued in journalism by writing for the student newspaper at Cornell University, where he majored in biochemistry. In 1943, Vonnegut enlisted in the US Army and was sent to fight in Europe. After the Battle of the Bulge, he was captured by the Germans and imprisoned in a POW camp near the industrial city of Dresden. While in Dresden, Vonnegut was put to work in an underground meat locker making vitamin supplements, a fortuitous placement as he survived the Allied Forces’ firebombing of the city in February 1945. Following the war, Vonnegut worked as a reporter for the City News Bureau while taking graduate courses in anthropology at the University of Chicago. A subsequent job in public relations led him to question the inherent ‘deceitfulness’ of that profession, and he quit to become a full-time writer.

Vonnegut initially published short stories, many with themes concerning technology and the future, which led him to be classified by some critics as a science fiction writer. His first novel, Player Piano (1952), elaborated on these themes by exploring a wholly mechanised and automated society which over time lost all sense of its humanity. In his second novel, The Sirens of Titan (1959), human history is discovered to have been manipulated by a race of aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. Requiring a replacement part for their spaceship in order to return home, the aliens decide to design human history as their factory which will - eventually - develop enough to produce the desired part.

Vonnegut abandoned science fiction altogether in Mother Night (1961), the story of an American playwright serving as a spy in Nazi Germany, and in Cat’s Cradle (1963), a novel exploring what happens when the Caribbean practitioners of an island religion based on ‘harmless trivialities’ come into contact with an atomic substance that destroys all life on Earth. This novel is notable for introducing Vonnegut’s ‘slyly irrelevant voice’ which he would develop into a ‘metafictional’ style in his subsequent work. Similarly, in God Bless You, Mr Rosewater (1965), Vonnegut introduces the writer Kilgore Trout, his ‘fictional alter ego’ who appears throughout his later work.

By the late 1960s, Vonnegut was a popular author, but the 1969 publication of Slaughterhouse-Five; or, The Children’s Crusade firmly established his reputation, with the book ‘lauded … as a modern-day classic’. Breakfast of Champions (1973) followed, and though less critically successful than its predecessor, became a best seller. Over the next decades, Vonnegut remained a prolific writer, though he would never reach the levels of acclaim he had in the 1960s. Later novels would include Deadeye Dick (1982), Galápagos (1985), Bluebeard (1987), Hocus Pocus (1990) and Timequake (1997) – the latter a ‘loosely structured meditation on free will.’

A lifelong atheist who nevertheless admired the socialist teachings of the Biblical Sermon on the Mount, Vonnegut believed socialism could provide a better life for Americans than the ‘social Darwinism and ‘survival of the fittest’ ideas that dominated mid- and late-century capitalism. He regretted that communism and socialism had become ‘unsavoury topics to the average American’, as he thought they were both beneficial substitutes to contemporary social and economic systems. He also found it ironic that during the Reagan years, despite the administration’s professed support for Christian beliefs, ‘anything that sounded like the Sermon on the Mount was socialistic or communistic, and therefore anti-American’. He found this a true shame, as he believed the Sermon taught humans a sort of ‘mercifulness that can never waver or fade.’

For a large portion of his life Vonnegut suffered from depression, and in 1984 attempted suicide. He bounced back after this low and would continue to publish, but over time his mental and physical health continued to decline and, towards the end of his life he was ‘very feeble, very depressed and almost morose.’ A fall in his New York City brownstone led to brain injuries from which he died a few weeks later on 11 April 2007.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to another instalment (16:44) of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series, this time with PJ Harvey. A powerfully intimate concert, it’s an excellent example of this artist’s unique exploration of ‘how human boundaries can shatter, reassert themselves or be rendered irrelevant.’ A great way to spend a quarter of an hour - and if you’re unfamiliar with Harvey’s 30 year career, I’d suggest giving her a listen.

PJ Harvey (NPR Tiny Desk Concert)

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Kurt Vonnegut’s most famous novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, Or: The Children’s Crusade (1969). This anti-war novel has a bleak, fatalistic message, but couches it in some fantastic dark humour. A modern day classic, it is an absurdist, nonlinear work blending science fiction and historical facts, specifically Vonnegut’s own experience as prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany during the Allied firebombing.

Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of US Serviceman Billy Pilgrim, captured and imprisoned in a German POW camp during the last years of World War II. But for Billy his experience is unlike anyone else’s, for Billy discovers he is ‘unstuck in time’ and has the ability to move both forwards and backwards through his lifetime in an arbitrary sequence of wide-ranging events. Whether his birth and childhood, his time in the military, his experience in Dresden during the firebombing, his career as a bored optometrist in New York, or as the lover of an actress on the distant planet Tralfamadore to which Billy’s been abducted and placed on exhibit in a sort of zoo - it all adds up to an absurdist take on the meaning of life which, in Vonnegut fashion, is explained as: ‘so it goes.’

From the back: Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great anti-war books. Centring on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most.

Slaughterhouse-Five is a classic for many reasons and needs to be read, or re-read if it’s been awhile.2 Highly recommended.

For more information, here is a good commentary from a Guardian Reading Group: Slaughterhouse-Five (Reading Group).

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks inspired by the works of Kurt Vonnegut:3 ‘So it Goes’ (Nick Lowe, 1978), ‘Sirens of Titan’ (Al Stewart, 1975), ‘Blue Monday’ (New Order, 1983), ‘The Last Man on Earth’ (Wolf Alice, 2021) and ‘Uncle John’s Band’ (The Grateful Dead, 1970). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night (1961):

‘We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.’

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.33) 15 January 2024

The Stop

Released on 4 February 1977, Rumours was the eleventh studio album by the British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, the second after guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and vocalist Stevie Nicks joined in late 1974. Produced by the band, Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut, the album had four US number one hits and as of February 2023 had sold over 40 million copies worldwide. A ubiquitous radio presence since its release, the album’s ‘raw, immediate emotional power … touched a nerve’ and has ‘transcended its era to be one of the greatest, most compelling pop albums of all time.’1

Following the success of their self-titled 1975 album, Fleetwood Mac intentionally recorded Rumours as a ‘pop album’ to build on their commercial success. The band - guitarist and vocalist Lindsey Buckingham, drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, vocalist Stevie Nicks and keyboardist and vocalist Christine McVie - recorded the album at The Record Plant in Sausalito, California, with Buckingham taking charge of the studio sessions. The result was music characterised by a unique mix of electric and acoustic instruments, guitars and keyboards which alone would make the album outstanding in its class. However, it was Buckingham, Christine McVie and Nicks’s lyrics - concerning personal, troubled relationships, drugs, pessimism and dreams - which would transform the album into one that ‘simply exists outside of criticism and outside of its time, even if it thoroughly captures its era.’

Mid-1970s Fleetwood Mac was both ‘professionally and romantically intertwined’: the McVies had been married since 1968, and Buckingham and Nicks had been a couple since high school. However, prior to the recording of Rumours, the McVies divorced, Buckingham and Nicks split up, and Nicks began a secret affair with Fleetwood. The resulting personal tensions - fuelled by heroic amounts of cocaine and alcohol - so influenced the songs that listening to the album is a ‘nearly voyeuristic experience.’ Listening to Rumours is effectively an exercise in ‘eavesdropping on the bandmates singing painful truths about each other, spreading nasty lies and rumours and wallowing in their grief, all in the presence of the person who caused the heartache.’ All soundtracked to exceptional music, of course.

In his role as studio chief, Buckingham was able to cloak the ‘raw emotion’ of the lyrics in ‘deceptively palatable arrangements,’ that made even the most tortured songs anthemic. For example, the first single - ‘Go Your Own Way’ - was written by Buckingham in response to his breakup with Nicks - whom he had known since he was 16. ‘Devastated’ by her departure but knowing he had to still write hit songs for her, he channelled his anger and frustration into lyrics such as ‘packing up/shacking up/is all you wanna do’ - a line Nicks demanded he remove, but he ultimately refused. By turning private pain into something universal, this song has become one of their most popular, played at every show on every tour. Not to mention the number of times its been played on radio, in department stores, in college dorms, in ….

Which is one of the criticisms of the album: that, as frequently happens, their repeated play has made many of the songs too familiar. Nevertheless, in the context of the album each song, perfectly tracked amongst the others, ‘regains its raw, immediate emotional power’ - revealing why Rumours is considered one of the greatest albums of all time. Of course, the best way to appreciate this is to listen to the album in its entirety. In track order, of course - don’t shuffle. There’s a story being told and each chapter is perfectly placed.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to The Science of Snowflakes, a short (4:22) animated video produced by The Royal Society and narrated by Professor Brian Cox2 which explains the universal laws of nature involved in the unique structures of snow crystals. Fascinating and hypnotic, you’ll never look at snowflakes the same way again.

The Science of Snowflakes

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Hans Rosling’s Factfulness (2018).3 Subtitled ‘Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think’, the book’s thesis is that the overwhelming majority of people are mistaken about the state of the world: misinformation leads them to think it is poorer, less healthy, and more dangerous than it is in reality. Statistics and facts, Rosling believes, are the way of addressing these inaccuracies and - hopefully - returning a sense of positivity to the conversation.

From the back: When asked simple questions about global trends - what percentage of people around the world are living in poverty; why the global population is increasing; how many girls finish school - we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess journalists, Nobel laureates and investment bankers.

In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens, and reveals the ten instincts that distort our perspective.

It turns out the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a world view based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.

Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world.

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five Fleetwood Mac tracks from around the heyday of the Rumours era (1975 - 1982): ‘Rhiannon’ (Fleetwood Mac, 1975), ‘Sara’ (Tusk, 1979), ‘Storms’ (Tusk, 1979), ‘Hold Me’ (Mirage, 1982) and ‘Over My Head’ (Fleetwood Mac, 1975). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Storms’, from the 1979 album Tusk:

‘But never have I been a blue calm sea. I have always been a storm.’

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.32) 11 January 2024

The Stop

Named for James Webb, the administrator of NASA during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programmes from 1961-1968, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a joint project of NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency. Launched on 5 December 2021, the satellite observatory - the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope (launched in 1990) - differs from its predecessor in that it primarily detects light in the infrared range in order to ‘observe sources such as the first galaxies and protostars that radiate at those wavelengths’. In another departure from previous space telescopes, the JWST does not orbit the Earth, but instead orbits the Sun at the second Lagrange point which is around 1.5 million kilometres (1 million miles) away from the Earth.1

The largest telescope ever sent into space, the JWST’s infrared technology enables it to detect light beyond the visible spectrum. As infrared light travels through dense gas clouds that block visible light, the telescope is able to reveal regions of the universe that have been previously hidden: ‘early galaxies, forming planets, brown dwarfs, and much more.’ An ‘innovative design’ was required to construct the JWST as infrared telescopes have two unique challenges: there must be a mirror large enough to capture the required amount of light, and it must be kept cold in order to keep ‘unwanted sources’ of infrared from interfering with the light that astronomers want to observe. The solution was a large segmented mirror composed of 18 segments covering 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) at the widest point and a series of tennis court-sized sunshields that protect it from stray heat and light from the Sun.2

The results produced by the JWST are astounding, revealing a wealth of details only possible through capturing infrared images. In combination with visible-light images produced by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers are able to calculate galaxy distances using the principle of redshift: light from distant galaxies has a longer wavelength and is thus red, while light from closer galaxies has a shorter wavelength and is thus blue. Previously, there had been debate over whether some galaxies appeared redder because they were ‘more distant’ or because they contained ‘copious amounts of dust’. With its infrared lenses, the JWST is able to clarify this point.

The photo above is a panchromatic view of galaxy cluster MACS0416, created by combining infrared observations from the JWST with visible-light observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. The image was made by colour-coding the shortest light wavelengths blue, the longest ones red and the intermediate ones green. The result is the revelation of a ‘vivid landscape of galaxies that could be described as one of the most colourful views of the universe ever created.’ But, even more remarkable, the JWST has enabled the distance of MACS0416 to be calculated at about 4.3 billion light-years from Earth, which means the image above was as the cluster appeared shortly after the formation of our solar system. A serious snapshot in time.

For a library of the images released so far, follow this link: JWST Images. Click on one you like for an enhanced view and then scroll down for more information.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to The Spirit Triangles, a short (3:13) animated film by the Tawainese visual artist Shih-Yen Huang. Using stop-motion techniques, Huang creates a unique synaesthetic experience by syncing a triangle to music and ambient sounds to which it continues to multiply and interplay. Hypnotic.

The Spirit Triangles

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Universe (2011).3 A companion book to the BBC documentary series of the same name, this is a very clearly written, beautifully illustrated book that uses the laws of physics on earth to explain cosmology and the universe in a way accessible to a general reader.

From the publisher: Professor Brian Cox is back with another insightful and mind-blowing exploration of space. This time he shows us our universe as we've never seen it before.

13.7 billion years old. 93 billion light years wide. It contains over 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars. This infinite, vast and complex Universe has been the subject of human fascination and scientific exploration for thousands of years. The wonders of the Universe might seem alien to us and impossible to understand, but away from the telescopes, the labs and the white coats, Professor Brian Cox uses the evidence found in the natural world around us to explain its simple truths.

The same laws of light, gravity, time, matter and energy that govern us here on Earth are the same as those applied in the Universe. Using 3D CGI imagery, his expert knowledge and his infectious enthusiasm, Professor Cox shows us that if we can understand the impact of these governing laws on Earth it will bring us a step closer to an understanding of our Universe.

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks connected to today’s Stop because they're all related to space (in one way or another): ‘Astronomy Domine’ (Pink Floyd, 1967), ‘Moonage Daydream’ (David Bowie, 1972), ‘Space Truckin’’ (Deep Purple, 1972), ‘Space Cowboy’ (Steve Miller Band, 1969) and ‘Black Hole Sun’ (Soundgarden, 1994). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is from the French poet, dramatist and novelist, Victor Hugo (1802-1885):4

‘We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present.’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (4.31) 8 January 2024

The Stop

Carol Ann Duffy (born 1955) is a ‘well-known and well-liked’ British poet whose work engages topics such as gender, oppression and sexuality. What makes Duffy unique is that she examines and expresses these themes in ‘familiar, conversational language’ which makes her work accessible to a wide variety of readers.1 In 2009, she became Great Britain’s first female poet laureate.

Born in Glasgow, Scotland, when Duffy was six her family moved to Stafford, England. The oldest of five siblings, she was a passionate reader from an early age. Always wanting to be a writer, she began producing poems from the age of 11 and began publishing her poetry in magazines when she was 14. When she was 16, she met 39-year-old Adrian Henri, one of the Liverpool poets.2 Deciding she wanted to be with him, Duffy applied to the University of Liverpool to be nearby and they remained together for ten years. In 1977 she graduated from Liverpool with an honours degree in philosophy.

After graduation, Duffy began her writing career in earnest, publishing several books and traveling to read and teach her poetry. Duffy won the National Poetry Competition in 1983, and many other prestigious awards followed. She worked as a poetry critic for The Guardian from 1988 to 1989, and edited the poetry magazine Ambit. In 1996, she took a position lecturing in poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and later became creative director of the Writing School, a post she retains today.

In 1999, Duffy was almost appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, but Prime Minister Tony Blair reportedly feared ‘middle England’ would not accept her homosexuality and the poet and author Andrew Motion3 was chosen instead. At the end of Motion’s term in 2009, Duffy accepted the position, but ‘made it clear in interviews that she had agreed to become poet laureate only because, since its inception in the 17th century, no woman had previously held the post.’ She held the position until 2019, when tenure passed to Simon Armitage.4

A writer of strong, feminist poetry, Duffy is best known for poems that often take the form of monologues. Her verses, as described by an Economist reviewer, are ‘spoken in the voices of the urban disaffected, people on the margins of society who harbour resentments and grudges against the world.’ Although she knew she was a lesbian from a young age, her early love poems are written to ‘someone whose gender is not specified,’ and it wasn’t until her 1993 collection, Mean Time, and 1994’s Selected Poems that she began to write openly about queer love.

Duffy’s poetry collections include Standing Female Nude (1985), The Other Country (1990), The World’s Wife (1999), Rapture (2005), and Sincerity (2018). She has also written plays including Take My Husband (1982) and Little Women, Big Boys (1986), and several books for children including Underwater Farmyard (2002), The Tear Thief (2007), The Princess’s Blankets (2009), and Dorothy Wordsworth’s Christmas Birthday (2014). In 1995 she was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), advanced to Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2002, and was named a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) in 2015 - all for her service to poetry.5

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to A History of the World According to Getty Images. This film (18:37) is a montage of some of the 20th century’s ‘most momentous events’ - all of which are owned by Getty Images. It’s an interesting look on both how the past is viewed and understood, and how commercial archives control what we can and cannot see.

A History of the World According to Getty Images

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife (1999). Duffy’s fifth collection of poems uses well-known fictional, biblical, mythological or historical female figures - and, in several cases, her imagined counterparts to well-known male figures from the same literary milieu - to examine the ‘complexities of gender relations, the roles of women, and the often ill treatment of women’. Contemporary references bring these characters into the modern day, showing that the same issues and concerns unfortunately remain alive and well in today’s society. It’s a strong collection of poems and an accessible introduction to her work. One of my favourites is 'Anne Hathaway', a poem written from the perspective of Shakespeare’s long-suffering wife who, in his will, was gifted the ‘second best bed’.6 Another favourite is 'Medusa' - a very powerful poem which I’ll let you experience without explanation.

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks released in 2023 I’ve been holding onto until I found the right Stop. They have nothing to do with the topic, but they’re nonetheless poetic in their own ways and brilliant: ‘Give’ (Westerman, An Inbuilt Fault), ‘Gemini Sun’ (Black Pumas, Chronicles of a Diamond), ‘With A Smile’ (Maiah Manser, With A Smile), ‘These Days’ (Westrin & Mowry, These Days), and ‘Wasted on You’ (Andy Shauf, Telephone). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is (of course) from Carol Ann Duffy:

‘I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way.’7

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

Leave a comment

And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!

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Until the next Stop …