Miami … what a place! And the people that live here … they are so affluent. This is the impression I get as I sit in a cafe on the opulent Ocean Drive sipping on a pina colada no less, and watching an impeccably dressed middle-aged man stroll towards me, the picture of material success …
There was something deeply troubling in the recent tabloid coverage around the murder of Joanna Yeates when police called in her landlord. One red top argued that because he, Chris Jefferies, had a penchant for the avant garde – for literature and cinema which was deliberately obscure, challenging and unorthodox – this pointed to his …
My wife, an artist, took me to a performance of The Readers in Hackney the other night, an avant-garde performance art group led by two contemporary artists Ramon Salgado-Touzon and Jones Tensini. “What do they do?” I asked her dismissively, on the way to the venue. “Well, it’s hard to explain,” she replied. “They’re specialists …
Fan the Flames, No. 6, Dec 2001 Wednesday 12th September 2001 I’m in my car on my way to work. I won’t forget this day. Why? Because the day before was one of the worst days in American history. I switch on the radio and listen to the Today programme on BBC Radio Four. John …
Human Givens, Vol. 9, No. 2, Summer 2002 I want to recount my experience of psychoanalysis in the hope that I can determine exactly how effective and therapeutic it was for me. Did it alleviate my mental distress? Did it make me feel less miserable? Did it make me happier? I do not conduct this …
Slovo, Vol. 9, No.1, 1996 Mikhalkov’s tale of life in the Russian countryside in the mid-1930s is an apparently idyllic one. A man and a woman deeply in love, a child they adore, and a family they cherish. The characters sing and dance in a beautiful and harmonious setting. But the destructive glare of Stalin …
29th December ‘52 At Kirovskaya, Natasha stands on the escalator as it descends into the bowels of Moscow. She recalls how just over a week ago, on 21st December, she and a few other work colleagues had to celebrate Comrade Stalin’s birthday, there something obscene about this. For though the majority of people know that …
I opened my eyes at three o’clock in the morning as the temple bell tower sounded: I always woke at the same time. I no longer required the gong to wake me; rather I simply used it as a prompt to bring me from sleep back into awareness, into the present moment. I sat up, …
There was me at my table in Bucci’s, new Italian on Lexington up near the Chrysler Building, been there about a year and I liked it a lot. Got tired of that place on Sixth and Sullivan, great fuckin Bruschette but not much else, with one of those third generation Italians who thought he was …
The bus he gets on is packed. He scans the bottom deck for an empty seat, then goes upstairs. As he reaches the top, he glances round and spots a vacant aisle seat two from the back. He sits down and almost immediately finds himself drifting into warm reflections about his time with Catherine in …