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Posts Tagged 'Psychology'

Brands of Solitude: Poets and their Nature

The highlight of this year has been participating in recordings for The Poetry Show on KUSP Radio, Santa Cruz. This post is indebted to a discussion of Andrew Marvell’s ‘The Garden’ and Christina Rossetti’s ‘In the Willow Shade’ for our fourth installment which aired on 8th May, the best to date.

We all enjoy solitude at points in our lives. Privacy is not just a right, one might argue, but a human requirement. We all enjoy that little realm when the door is shut firmly behind us and we can lapse into self-sufficiency.

The fundamental problem is how to draw the right balance. Managing solitude can be vital to our psychological wellbeing. It is difficult to maintain relationships that have little contact, and even harder to develop new ones. We live in times where it is easy to get lost and forgotten if we do not project ourselves publicly. It is rare that people will come looking for us.

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A Vote of No: Social Media and Sacrifices

Published May 7, 2011 Culture , Politics , Writing 7 Comments
Tags: Blogging, Cultural Revolution, Democracy, Election, Facebook, Friendship, LiveJournal, Politics, Print Culture, Privacy, Psychology, Public Sphere, Speech-Acts, Writing

Regular users of social media networks will no doubt have noticed – if their friends lists are anything like mine – that politics is again becoming a very public sport. I raised some concerns last year about the extent to which social networking sites were turning into moral and ideological crusades when elections came along. Yesterday, a referendum was held on whether to adopt the ‘Alternative Vote’ system, and the same tactics were out in force again.

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“Life is a Jigsaw”: Literary Shapes and Private Thoughts

Published April 11, 2011 Edinburgh , Literature , research 2 Comments
Tags: Andrew Balfour, Andrew Marvell, Art, Circles, Early Modern, Ekphrasis, Elegy, Facebook, George Puttenham, Jigsaw, John Donne, Literature, Mosaic, Oliver Cromwell, Print Culture, Psychology, Robert Browning, Seventeenth Century, Thomas Salusbury

Several years ago, a phrase came into my head on a dark day: “life is a jigsaw”. It was used for a trail of dark introspective thoughts concerning self-image, but it was clearly an analogy that had plenty more to offer.

The phrase is hardly unique to me; Google will attest to that. But my introspective thought has long revolved around shapes. George Puttenham’s Arte of English Poesie (1569), which describes the properties of shapes, reminds us that the study of literature can transgress disciplines and fuse modes of thought creatively.

Original thought is fun to contemplate. Are our lives the equivalent of average undergraduate essays: recasting what has come before in our own way and offering a mere fraction of originality along the way? What constitutes new ideas? What is a ‘philosopher’, for their own chutzpah? Much which challenges subjective realms of thought must owe itself to literature.

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In Dreams

Published March 17, 2011 Literature , research 2 Comments
Tags: Dreams, Poetry, Psychology, Self-Confidence, Sigmund Freud, T.S. Eliot

A digression from the thesis, which is suffering from the law of diminishing returns today. As I am presenting the recording for Radio Santa Cruz this evening, it is time to shift from the analytical towards the imaginative mood, or at least find a useful balance between the two.

This has not been difficult of late. I have found myself returning to arts not visited for a long time, and returning to long absent experiences. A particularly wholesome dream of mine last night, I thought, might just provide enough fulfilment to cover the swelling gaps of a vacant life for as long as the memories hold on.

Dreams have always intrigued me with their mystery, but my interest in them waivers. Continue reading ‘In Dreams’

Public Hypocrites and Private Anger

Published December 21, 2010 Politics , research Leave a Comment
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Autobiography, Early Modern, English Civil War, English Revolution, Human Nature, Hypocrisy, Interregnum, Kingship, Literature, Marchamont Nedham, Nigel Smith, Politics, Print Culture, Privacy, Psychology, Public Sphere, research, Secrecy, Self-Promotion, Seventeenth Century, Sleepthief, Thomas May

What grates so much about hypocrisy? Is it observing people changing their mind? Breaking promises? Breaking trust?

To speak in one way and act in another is something almost all of us do. We would be hypocrites ourselves to deny it. Often, it is a tool of diplomacy, of fitting in, even of subjugating oneself. Just like the well-meaning white lie…

Yet, distinct from the more innocent ‘forgetfulness’ or the more calculated and sinister ‘betrayal’, which often uses secrecy as its veil, hypocrisy often bites because it is flagrantly public; it is exuded through public channels, and knowledge reaches us that way. Inconsistencies and reversals are paraded in disregard of those with whom bonds were formed through the old values now abandoned. Worse still is when the hypocrisy seems fuelled precisely by this form of conquest and deliberately targets those left behind, the victims.

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Life Never the Same Again

Published October 14, 2010 Politics , Television Leave a Comment
Tags: Celebrity, Culture, Politics, Privacy, Psychology, Public Sphere

After 17 days of isolation, 33 miners consigned to die underground found a way to break their silence.

And tonight marks a great celebration. Remarkable resilience and sheer human determination have triumphed over some of the harshest conditions imaginable. The efficiency and expertise of the team on the surface has made an intricate rescue process seem effortless. There is a tireless energy from everyone involved to see this through to the end.

We witness history in the making. For all the mistakes that have been made, this can, and should, overwrite the lasting national impressions of Chile.

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Circles

Published October 27, 2009 Uncategorized 2 Comments
Tags: Circles, George Puttenham, John Donne, Literature, Psychology, Secrecy, Self-Discipline

If the paradigm shift can be forgiven, this is a nervous return to the world of thought. (Perhaps I mean sentiment). The impersonal neoclassicist yields to the romantic.

It has something to do with the temporal. Tomorrow morning (28th) marks the ten year anniversary of a nasty incident that shaped much of what I have become in this decade. Aside from the day permeating the calendar, the causes no longer reach me with their unexplained darkness. For the effects, I’m glad to have had the opportunity to address the case personally.

I’m also grateful for new avenues, having moved to London; it has opened my mind to boxes locked by embarrassment. At the end of a long conversation with someone I trust unendingly, the thought just crept into my head. “It’s like…” I reached into my pocket and found two inauspicious copper coins, one of which became a circle of need, the other of asset love. A glimpse of the days of naivety, characterised by little crackpot ideas and crackpot instability.

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Posts Tagged 'Psychology'

Brands of Solitude: Poets and their Nature

A Vote of No: Social Media and Sacrifices

“Life is a Jigsaw”: Literary Shapes and Private Thoughts

In Dreams

Public Hypocrites and Private Anger

Life Never the Same Again

Circles

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