Nostalgia Blues: The Music of Cowboy Bebop
I’m watching tomorrow with one eye While keeping the other on yesterday. Shinichirō Watanabe’s Spike Spiegel has one critical affliction: his two eyes do not match. With the vision in one eye he sees the future, whilst the perception of his other eye is glossed over with colours of the past. Hi
Review: Fermat’s Last Tango
If equations get you excited and sums get you salivating, then Fermat’s Last Tango is the show for you. The show fictionalises the real-life story of Andrew Wiles (named Daniel Keane in the musical) who proved Fermat’s Last Theorem in 1993. The whole affair is sung: it’s a maths musical, or a
Work in Translation
What must be done to an oyster to make it produce a pearl? Firstly, the oyster – usually bred in controlled conditions and grown in sheltered bays – is taken out of the water and sent to the pearling workshop. Workers then pry it open with a small clip. This allows them to slice into […]
Clawing onto Capitalism: Subculture in the Modern Age
For many, Punk brings to mind a long-lost rebellion: a Vivienne Westwood-tinged era of underground DIY resistance, smoky cat eyes and youthfully optimistic, anti-establishment values. Yet, in Britain’s modern age, pop starlets wear goth-inspired pieces in glossy magazine editorials, and heavy meta
Never Mind Picking Apples
I. I want to tell you about the tree. How the tree was tall, how it held its height in the way tall-kind do, assured of presence, as if all its life the sun had whispered, you will be tall and strong. As if all its life, the tree had believed the promises of the […]
What’s Left Behind: ‘Hallyu! The Korean Wave’ at the Victoria & Albert Museum
As the museum guide opens the door into the exhibition, I’m immediately certain that the experience will be one of sensory overload. The first room introducing the Hallyu! The Korean Wave exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum features a collection of intensely flashing scenes, each depict
Invisible by Design: Druidism in Modern Britain
On a blustery winter day, I went to visit Glastonbury, really for no other reason than that I hadn’t been before. I expected a small slumbering town, a few twee cafes, maybe a garden centre. But the town was buzzing. The cafes were vegan and the most prevalent shrub, it was plain to smell, was [&h
The Travels of the Bonsai
Towering above the rural village of Maekgwe in South Africa is the King-of-Garatjeke baobab tree. The tree is celebrated for its majestic size and age (some baobabs have reached 5000 years-old), and it functions as a town hall for the local community. The baobab is an iconic symbol of the African sa
Meditations on Morisot
To my mother, who taught me the language of painting. Berthe Morisot (1841-1895): Impressionist painter, woman, mother. While her counterparts, the Impressionists, became known for their radical paintings of landscapes and Parisian nightlife, art history portrayed Morisot as a mother. Over the years