If the two could see the sorrow in their eyes,
The silent bond that words would break,
Their wounds would heal, and love renew;
Yet still, they suffer from mistake.
Yet still, a light remains unseen,
A flicker faint beneath the grief;
If only they could let it rise,
Yet still, they cling to disbelief.
A dog will play with a new toy until it’s shredded to pieces. A cat will play with a new toy for three seconds before deciding that the box it came in is far more interesting.
A dog shows excitement by bouncing around like a spring. A cat shows excitement by blinking at you slowly and then pretending you don’t exist.
Leave a dog alone for an hour, and you’ll come back to a reunion as if you’ve been gone for years. Leave a cat alone for an hour, and they’ll be exactly where you left them, slightly annoyed you interrupted their nap.
Tell a dog to sit, and they’ll sit immediately, looking proud. Tell a cat to sit, and they’ll give you a look that says, “You first.”
Dogs love to show off their tricks and accomplishments, like catching a ball mid-air. Cats show off by walking along the highest shelf in the house and knocking down whatever’s in their way.
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
I didn’t realise Montaigne was so influential. His words have an echo in much great literature after him, including the works of Shakespeare. Was Hamlet referring to Montaigne in, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”? Was Roosevelt referring to Montaigne in, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”?
There has been an obvious degeneration of quality, hasn’t there? Maybe it’s easy to cherry-pick from the past, but those cherries are a lot more appealing than today’s rotting harvest.
Note to self: Learn about AI and think about its application. What’s the future of Hollywood, the BBC, Netflix etc., if AI enables individual creators to make great films and programs from their ideas?
We are hurtling towards AI. I hope it helps us, as we are in need of some saving.
Poetry is words that dance with music.
Poetry was originally meant to be sung. It is musical in its being. Yet many actors perform Shakespeare’s verse in one note.
What justifies the statement, “I am an artist”? An artist is moved to become a new expression in the dance.
I’m biassed against Byron because he was snobbishly dismissive of Keats. However, art is not the artist, even though we live in a society that glorifies the cult of the individual. Art is not just the result of a person, it emanates from humanity, and more deeply, the world.
Over the past year, I’ve been on the receiving end of two spectacularly awful bureaucratic blunders, which have inspired some Kafkaesque ideas for a sci-fi horror screenplay I’ll be writing this Autumn.
It is amazing how the odd sentence here and there mounts up over time.
The subconscious is far more intelligent than my reasoning.
Some of the most insightful and prescient comments people make are often throw away, instinctive comments made before rationalising kicks in.
A key teaching of Christianity is that the highest calling is not one of dominion but of service, exemplified by Jesus who devoted himself to humanity, ultimately sacrificing his life. “Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” resonates with the paradoxical wisdom of the Tao. It has inspired phrases such as “a servant of God,” “servant of the people,” “in service of your country,” and more contemporary ideas like “servant-leadership.”
A real flaw is the deluded self-certainty of being in the right. “You are a stupid piece of shit,” as often repeated in the febrile modern world, isn’t right. “You are behaving like a stupid piece of shit” is rather more likely because virtually all of us has been in that second category from time to time. A better example of this was given with sins and stones a while ago.
Optional ways to get things done:
Be incredibly well-disciplined, ever-vigilantly defeating distraction impulses.
Live in fear, constantly in motion because you are terrified of the consequences of failure.
Live in hate, fired up to prove people wrong or in vengeance of some past wrong.
Have an inflated ego, pushing yourself so that you can assert yourself over others.
Be a narcissist wanting others to admire you.
Have warped beliefs that you obey without question, usually due to some perceived reward.
Desire the future reward so much it overrides everything else.
Be a saint working relentlessly because you care about people and want to bring some good into the world. For instance, this could be for a benevolent cause and/or your family’s wellbeing.
Be out of your mind, doing what you do, like a machine.
Be insanely obsessive, driven by a compulsive need to do it at all costs.
Be in love with what you do, so you want to do as much of it as you can.
Or create a routine that is easy to adopt out of habit.
The last one is the most realistic in most situations. Therefore, design the rules of the algorithm up front, so it’s easy to get things done without having to be a great master, a saint, or a sinner. The consistent taking of small steps can become vast in its effects.
An AI clone of my voice. It pauses for some reason on the word “distract”. Is this the AI’s little joke?
I once worked in the Cabinet Office, which was a remarkable experience. One day, I made an internal phone call and was greeted by the indignant response, “Do you know who you are talking to?” I must have dialled the wrong number and was instead talking to some supercilious twit. I said, “Is this the Prime Minister?” He was a bit confused and said “No,” to which I responded, “Oh, I must have dialled the wrong number then,” and hung up. Times were different then. I remember playing football in Downing Street, kicking a ball against a wall. The security guards just thought it was funny as they laughed and joked with the drivers. I don’t remember security cameras. I would wander freely around amazing empty state rooms in Whitehall and the Treasury, and nobody seemed to mind. There were only two men on the front desk of the Cabinet Office, which was just a short walk away, down an old Jacobean corridor, to the back door of Number 10. The entrance was just a normal turnstile, which could have been easily jumped over. By the time I left, though, the entrance had been secured with ceiling-high glass security turnstiles. It seems incredible now, but not so long ago, appraisal of risk and implementation of standards operated by a very different compass. Rightly or wrongly, we currently live in a much more rules-based, legalistic, risk-conscious culture.
I constantly come up with hare-brained ideas that I then impulsively implement, badly. Should I add this to my CV? It just so happens though that some show signs of life before falling flat, while occasionally others work out very well. But mostly I look back and wonder at what on earth was I thinking? Why was I so stupid? Being aware of this doesn’t make me want to stop coming up with stupid ideas, only to become better at turning some of them into good ones.
To build up the worry muscles I’ve been doing reps on some non-proportionate thought loops. My achievement today was that I was able to cram in an extra 30 minutes of worry time followed by some focussed anxiety to distract me from what I was doing.
I’m really seeing the results—my heart rate is elevated, and I’ve managed to develop an ability to turn a minor inconvenience into a full-blown crisis, breaking all personal bests! My jumping to the worst possible conclusions has also come on leaps and bounds.
I’m now working on a new technique called “Pre-emptive Fretting”, where I worry about potential future worries before they even have a chance to materialise. It’s all about staying ahead of the game, you see.
For an added challenge, I’ve started integrating some multi-tasking worries—like stressing about relationships while simultaneously fretting over work issues. It’s a real brain workout, but the sense of overwhelming high-performance anxiety at the end of the day is so stimulating that my mind doesn’t even want to go to sleep.
A version before the “first draft” is a “free-write” stream of consciousness draft, where no editing or filters to thoughts are applied. It’s not for anyone else to see, unless they really want to wade through structural incoherence and undeveloped, inchoate prose.
I’ve still got quite a bit of writing to do, but I’m starting to think now about performance and my physicality.
Adversity motivates change. Difficulty prompts improvement. Failure spurs transformation.
God / the universe gave me everything and I still wasn’t happy. My concerns were mostly about me and the stories I was telling myself. My thoughts created the problems.
Imagine positive things to be true, and this can become your internal experience. It’s not about clinging to beliefs despite evidence to the contrary; it’s about welcoming possibilities that can live in you.
The internet was the brainchild of a group of cats who wanted to share pictures of themselves more efficiently. The first web browser was designed to be cat-friendly, hence why we have so many cat videos online.
Keats, Blake, and Turner all spoke with London accents, and were denigrated by less capable people because of it, even though almost all the great artists in British history did not come from inherited wealth.
The true author of the works commonly attributed to Shakespeare was in fact a scurry of squirrels. A non-aristocratic man who merely attended the provincial grammar school could never have written those lines. No, he would feed the squirrels hazelnuts, and they’d scribble away on tiny manuscripts. The famous line, “To be or not to be”, was actually a squirrel asking if it should hibernate.
Everyone credits Michelangelo with painting the Sistine Chapel. But did you know that it was actually a paint-by-numbers kit? Michelangelo wasn’t a genius; he was just really good at following instructions. The Vatican ordered the kit from craftsmen in Florence who’d perfected the art of large-scale paint-by-numbers. Michelangelo just filled in the lines while muttering about how he’d rather be sculpting.
We’re told Socrates was a brilliant philosopher who never wrote anything down. The truth? Socrates was the original troll. His method of questioning, known as the Socratic Method, was just a way to annoy people at parties by asking endless, irritating questions.
Charles Dickens, the esteemed author of classics like A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations, was actually a prankster. His novels were never intended to be taken seriously; they were elaborate jokes meant to poke fun at the literary elite. David Copperfield? An extended pun about the metal copper. The famous line in Oliver Twist, “Please, sir, I want some more”, was originally about a child asking for more bad puns at the dinner table. The Victorians just had a terrible sense of humour.
Did you know that Albert Einstein wasn’t just a comedian but also a professional wrestler? That’s right, Einstein’s wild hair was part of his wrestling persona, “The Relativity Rocker”. He would enter the ring, confuse his opponents with complex equations, and then pin them down with his “Theory of Pain”. His E=mc² was originally his wrestling catchphrase: “Energy equals muscle times chaos squared.” The physics community misinterpreted it, and the rest is history.
You know the big, ferocious T-Rex everyone talks about? Complete and utter nonsense. T-Rexes were actually gentle giants that loved nothing more than a good cup of tea. They had these tiny arms because they were perfect for delicately holding teacups. It’s a well-known fact in the paleontological community that they even had sophisticated tea parties. The velociraptors were the rowdy ones who never got invited—always trying to nick the scones, you see.
The big mystery of Stonehenge? It’s not some druid calendar or an alien landing pad; it was a prehistoric concert venue. Cavemen were massively into music about rocks—aka “Rock Music”.
Most people think the Leaning Tower of Pisa was a result of poor engineering on unstable ground. In reality, it was an intentional design by the architect, who was just a big fan of practical jokes. He wanted to create the world’s largest optical illusion, a building that looked like it was perpetually about to topple over but never actually did. The original plan even included a giant sign that read, “Made you look!” Unfortunately, it fell off before the grand opening.
The French Revolution is often depicted as a struggle for liberty and equality. But the real catalyst was a catastrophic shortage of croissants. The infamous storming of the Bastille? It was a desperate raid to find the king’s secret stash of buttery pastries. The slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” was actually a mistranslation. The original phrase was “Liberty, Equality, Bakery”, reflecting the true priorities of the revolutionaries.
Robert Walker 