Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire! This episode is all about stars! I discuss at length the many versions of A Star Is Born and their relative strengths and weaknesses, as well as their gender politics. I also use those movies to look at trauma and the dire male response to trauma and addiction by one of the central characters…
“This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same…
During last year’s coverage of the Oscar Pistorius trial a South African legal commentator said something that stuck in my brain. Trying to anticipate Judge Masipa’s ruling he was talking about what punishment the accused’s crime would warrant and by way of offering a context of scale of punishment in relation to particular crimes he mused that while Pistorius was…
A friend asked me today if I was happy. No big deal. A straightforward question to which the easiest answer is of course ‘yes’. Naturally, that didn’t enter my head for a second. I suppose for many this is a relatively innocuous enquiry akin to “how’s it going?” or “all good?” or “how’s tricks?”. Something that can be answered with…
A long time ago, in an Irish town far, far away, there was a tiny little swimming pool. It was a Friday afternoon and in this pool there frolicked the excited and heavily chlorinated attendees of a little primary school. I was among them. Even though the pool was small, we were small, so it seemed large and more than…
When writing for this blog I typically start with the kernel of an idea in my mind that I trust will carry enough discursive and imaginative heft to justify the thousand or so words that follow. What I have discovered though is that by the time I press ‘publish’ that kernel may not be in evidence at all. In other…
Take a moment and think about all the things you have been told in your life. All the things that have been said to you. All the heart-to-hearts, the tete-a-tetes, all the deep-and-meaningfuls. The advice, the encouragements, the admonishments. How much can you remember? And from whose mouths did the words come? Now take another moment and think of how…
The arrival of this post has been delayed by technology on one hand and caution on the other. First, my technological difficulties – the gremlins struck this week and disabled both my laptop and phone as well as killing my headphones. I won’t bother rant about the inconvenience and how we are all now so dependent on our phones, computers,…
