books
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Resonant Thoughts: Ian Penman’s “Erik Satie Three Piece Suite” (2025)
“Certain pieces by Satie are like someone took the lovely opening minutes of Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert and cut away all the subsequent faff and bore and chaff and chore and ego moan.” (54) “IN-BETWEEN All those in-between emotions it’s hard to name. Old time feelings in danger of disappearing. Staring into space vs Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: James Rebanks’s “The Place Of Tides” (2025)
“Our lives are a series of choices – about what we do, and don’t do. Over time we decide what to let go of, what must die, and what we will fight to keep alive. Sometimes these are big, deliberate decisions, other times change happens in a thousand thoughtless little moments” (91). “There is no Continue reading
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On Writing Tools
• iA Writer. For everyday writing I use iA Writer, an app for Mac OS and iOS. The app is quite expensive, and you need to purchase one version for the phone and another for the computer, but it’s well worth it. iA Writer looks pleasingly minimal and cloud syncs perfectly across devices, so if Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Toby Manning’s “Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music” (2024)
“What’s audible in millennial-angst music isn’t piety but a profound sense of loss: not of something remembered but, in this retro, YouTube, internet meme era, something re-remembered” (518). “The centrality of sampling and quotation in contemporary music, alongside the perennial accessibility and audibility of music’s entire back catalogue, means the past is always alive in Continue reading
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