I've written another Substack. This one's more personal and it's sort of about mental illness and sort of about types of knowledge and why they matter (or don't?)
08.03.2026 20:09
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I've written another Substack. This one's more personal and it's sort of about mental illness and sort of about types of knowledge and why they matter (or don't?)
I wrote a short film with a dear friend of mine about four years ago. This year, we finally gathered a team and made the film. I reflect on the process—exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure—in this short piece.
I have been helping to make a film this past week! I wrote it with my friend Ollie, and he also did the cinematography.
If you're interested in natural environments and the gothic aesthetic, but you're fed up of all the Wuthering Heights discussion, then do click here to find out more! #Filmmaker
Have you read 'The Overstory'? It has caused me to reflect on my relationship with the natural world.
I've written a piece about five sonnets. They're all very different, but all very sonnet-ish.
Trying to make this a kind year, trying to make this a kind year, trying to make this a kind year, trying to make this a...
Hello Bluesky! I have started a Substack, 'Opus 120'. Please help me find readers who are interested in literature and music, nature and poetry, and all the ways these things connect. I have made my first post about what I hope to read, see and listen to in 2026. #substack #writing
Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood playing guitar together at the O2 arena in the Radiohead comeback tour.
Johnny and Thom playing to each other last night was beautiful to see. #radiohead #O2
I've written a short story, some poems and redrafted a short film in the past few weeks. If you're interested to learn more then do please click the Substack link below!
Last night I discovered, purely by chance, the music of Madison Cunningham. I haven't been this in awe of an artist since I don't know when. If you haven't heard her moving song "Life According to Raechel" please please do so.
(Or for a bop, check out "Hospital".)
Both played in the vid below!
I was in north-west Wales with some dear friends over the past weekend and I've written about it here:
I went on a long walk to celebrate being done with Finals. More specifically, I walked some of Offa's Dyke. Do click here if you're interested in my account of day one:
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I've got one more exam and one more day till it's all done! I've written a little reflection on my recent experiences here, for anyone interested.
You know that feeling when you discover a new song that it feels like has been waiting for you forever?
That's Roo Panes' 'Tiger Stripe Sky' right now.
Somehow I have done 3/4 of my finals exams!
✅ Practical Criticism
✅ Tragedy
✅ Visual Culture
Just 'The Ethical Imagination' left. This means my reading material for the rest of the week consists of things like Augustine, Wittgenstein, Montaigne, Bacon and so on. Heavy but hopefully rewarding!
Just listened to Fleet Foxes' 'Helplessness Blues' again.
I was feeling overwhelmed with my stresses and concerns, but they all lifted for a while thanks to the wonderful music.
It's an album with so much hope and joy and entirely without bombast. I try to carry it with me.
Ambivalent.
I thought it meant that you didn't care about the thing in question. Kept up this misapprehension until I had to write an essay on 'Ambivalence' in Medieval literature...
Penultimate Cambridge supervision – we discussed how I would answer past paper questions for the Tragedy Paper in real time. Intense, but, actually, fun in the way the original interview for this place was. Seems strange to think that interview was nearly 6 years ago – I was a different person.
Reading Raymond Williams's 'Modern Tragedy' and it's a bit bewildering but also beautiful. He says that among the most influential medieval ideas about tragedy was that you have a choice 'whether you get on [the wheel of Fortune] at all'. It's like the best bits of English at school are coming back!
When all this is over, said the swineherd, I mean to retire, where Nobody will have heard about my special skills And conversation is mainly about the weather. I intend to learn how to make coffee, as least as well As the Portuguese lay-sister in the kitchen And polish the brass fenders every day. I want to lie awake at night Listening to cream crawling to the top of the jug And the water lying soft in the cistern. I want to see an orchard where the trees grow in straight lines And the yellow fox finds shelter between the navy-blue trunks, Where it gets dark early in summer And the apple-blossom is allowed to wither on the bough.
I want to learn more poetry by heart. There's no need to aim high, I'd just like to learn some gems. I have this one already – its mystery and its bliss.
Heading back to Cambridge for finals term tomorrow! It feels strange that five years have led to this, but hopefully I will get a chance to enjoy this one last push. If all goes to plan, I may even get to write a little on Beowulf in the tragedy paper...
Happy Independent Bookstore Day! 📚🎉 Show some love for your local indie today—either in person or online!
Hey hey, I have written about Bob Dylan.
It's partly in connection to 'A Complete Unknown', but mostly just because I'm a fan and have been for a long time. I'll never forget when the headmaster at my Primary School taught us 'Blowin' in the Wind'...
...I have written about:
(1) Van Gogh's 'Pair of old Boots'
(2) Ansel Adams's photographs (with references to Sontag)
and I am currently writing about:
(3) 'The Searchers' (1956) (taking a Wittgensteinian approach to classical Hollywood)!
It has been great to follow up some interests!
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So far this term at Cambridge, I have written about:
(1) Fanon/Butler on the importance of evaluating stories
(2) Marx/Arendt and how they might view Melville's Bartleby
(3) Montaigne/Bacon on the subject of sympathy
All for one paper and for the other...
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