Instant Gratification

Instant Gratification

Essay on which the forward for Alessandro Tomassetti’s book Instant Gratification was based. The medium is fast. The effect long lasting. And sublime. Painters feel time differently. They feel the weight of it. The old masters lean on them with a constant...
Millennial Mindset

Millennial Mindset

Being a Millennial has nothing to do with age. It is a state of mind. Read on, you may discover you’ve been a Millennial your whole life. I’m 54. I have a grey beard and long grey hair. Old friends like to call me Gandalf for a laugh. Depending on your own age I’m...
10 things I learned from my dogs

10 things I learned from my dogs

I never had a dog before. Animals were fine but I never really, “got,” them, at least not in the way other people seemed to.  I’d met some Scottish terriers in South Africa and thought they were great but owning one, no, not really me. My wife...
Badly Remembered Poetry

Badly Remembered Poetry

I wandered lonely as a cloud . . . something, something, something… In praise of the half-remembered gems of poetry. I’d like to think of myself as someone who remembers complete poems. Someone who can recite them at significant moments in life, preferably looking...
Holy Smoke

Holy Smoke

In the early hours of Friday morning RJD gallery in Sag Harbor was destroyed by fire. All the artwork on the premises was lost. Hundreds of original paintings gone. Millions of considered brush strokes no more to be seen. With everything else that is going on in the...
Direct Governance

Direct Governance

If I can handle my banking online why can’t I run my country online? Wouldn’t that be better, more responsive democracy? Why do I need politicians to represent me? I can see why they were necessary in the past but why do I need them now? If I can access my online bank...
No Retreats. No Surrender.

No Retreats. No Surrender.

I’m sitting with my eyes closed in a school hall in Dublin. Forty people I met only yesterday surround me. John Denver strums over the sound system and we’re encouraged to sing along. This is the 80’s. This is personal development. “Sweet, sweet surrender. Live, live...