Wordstall

  • Grotesque For Sale

  • The Puzzle of Depth and the Fact of Slavery

  • Write a Message on the Wall

    It might take me a while to find the words; the heat saps my will. At first the mid-thirties heat here was enjoyable, was welcome: it was wonderful just to feel actually hot. But now in the third week of these temperatures, I find myself envying the temperature in Totnes: twenty would be quite warm…

  • Watched over by the Man

    Cicadas and drum ‘n’ bass compete, the cicadas drown out most of the drum ‘n’ bass. But then I notices the good strong voice, male voice, singing a Beatle’s song. I can’t think of the title and then there is the next Beatle’s song which I cannot recall of the title of either. I cannot…

  • Tue future’s looking hot!

    Just as there is no such thing as death, so there is no such thing as the future. Added to which the past is a decidedly murky sort of place. And the present, of course, is a tangle of shouts and screams plus a few moments of beatific peace. But don’t get lost in the…

  • From Flying Too Close to the Sun

    From Flying Too Close to the Sun

    I happened to pick up my copy of Death at Intervals by José Saramago this morning (opening words: ‘The following day, no one died, this fact, being absolutely contrary to life’s rules… (etc)’). I was  also reminded that the front-piece of the book quotes Ludwig Wittgenstein; If, for example, you were to think more deeply about death,…

  • Futurism I

    A questioning puzzlement as to the future has appeared on the horizon. The sea is calm at the moment and I have to remind myself that this is not the only state that the sea loves to express. Surely it is ecstatic when the Atlantic winds can hurl it at the coastline, moving beaches, tossing…

  • What’s “It”?

    What’s “It”?

    ‘A Sweet Disorder’ Pardon my sarong. I’ll have a Shirley Temple. Certainly, sir. Do you want a cherry with that? I guess so. It’s part of it, isn’t it? Words! It is the words, isn’t it, that are increasingly hard to believe in. Without terminal humor (sic) that is – the above lines come from…

  • Musical Instability

    Musical Instability

    Pin your ears between the oscillating voice of the self and the voice of the text, score, or content: most of the time it’s either tinnitus or grand narrative but occasionally terminal humour succeeds, Harry Kratchnikov said. Bees should be told of the death of their keeper, writes Alberto Mongrel in Curiosity . ”I’ve wished that…

  • Viewed from Below

    Viewed from Below

    Remember Harry Krachtnikov? The weight of the man: slow paced, with a huge head and long thick strands of hair the colour of straw bursting out over his forehead and above and below his mouth. Trixie and Harry walked arm in arm. Neither of them believed in fidelity, and the pavement might have been Italy.…

  • How do we listen, tune in, to what the world is saying?

    They are chasing after votes, but trying not to say anything. Is it a code they speak in or is it the fear that grips their vitals and all that can exit their mouths and enter into the debate are the semi-strangled sounds of the advertising industry, the special advisers, SPADS as they seem to…

  • Beached

    Beached

    Who says? Men’s voices raised in argument, but that this was rhetoric hadn’t occurred to him before. Rhetoric – the word seemed to belong to a bygone age, of voices raised in sharp arguments, and adversarial set-piece speeches, and ornamentations and elegant phrases to divert and entertain, and of being in a court with clerics,…

Categories (2024) are:

  • ATELIER Work – about-creative-work (in all mediums: text-drawing-sounds-image etc)
  • CLIMATE Action – indications-and-contra-indications
  • DAWDLING – walking-pausing-to-wonder-wandering
  • IN Conversation – companionship-and-connections
  • LA Communita –participatory-collaborative-artivism
  • OTHER than Human – animate-and-inanimate-terrestrial-kin
  • PARANOID Readings – violence-and-fundamental-perversions
  • POLITICAL Readings – mobilisations-affect-polarisations
  • REPARATIVE Readings – inspiring-healing-restorative
  • SHADOW Readings – speculative-and-not-yet-visible-thinking
  • STYLE Readings – scales-and-familiarities
  • TONITE at the Coliseum – live-experiences-performance
  • YOGI (‘Not This-Not That’) – meditation-bhakti-consciousness


Different WORDSTALL Categories in the past supported the mainly experimental personal writing in posts. The previous list of Category headings was: Anti-gravity Surgery / Atelier / Catastrophe Games / Echo Effects / Exodus / Fundamental Perversions / Hitting the Potholes / Holy Fool-Hero / In Conversation / Old Men Traveling / On the Street / Out in the Wilderness / Over and Beyond / Tonite at the Coliseum. Some of these still persist or recur as Tag key-words.

The even earlier Category headings for the walkingtalkingwriting blog (2006-2012) have been forgotten, but can be explored if desired via the long tail of monthly posts for those years here.