I Didn't Ask for This ...

Whitney Bell at her gallery show surrounded by

some of her large collection of dick pics turned art 

(Photo: Courtesy of Whitney Bell / via KALW) 

 

 

I. 

 

I am not a woman. And I have never been sent unsolicited male genital images, or dick pics as they are commonly referred to. So, I've no idea how I'd react if I were to be cyberflashed [1]. 

 

Some recipients are, I know, negatively impacted by such images and while I don't wish to downplay the distress that can be caused by acts of sexual harassment and online exhibitionism, I like to imagine that I'd respond like the artist Whitney Bell [2]. 

 

Or perhaps in the manner that some women have recently responded on social media, which is with humour and song, just tinged with the right amount of anger and outrage [3].

 

 

II. 

 

The really rather brilliant comic song 'I Didn't Ask to See Your Dick' was released on the audio-sharing account Unhinged & Unfiltered [4] just last month. 

 

It almost immediately went viral across TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts - embraced by women who love to lip-sync far more than they enjoy receiving unsolicited pictures of a sexual nature from men they hardly know - if they know them at all - and probably don't wish to know.   

 

With its Irish folk-punk sound and expletive-laden lyrics it's extremely catchy. And yet, it is of course created with generative AI tools - not by human musicians - even if prompted by an anonymous person. 

 

It is, then, a pretty impressive example of how AI tools can, when used by the right person in the right way [5], produce genuinely amusing pieces of popular entertainment. I'm not quite sure I'd call it art, but it wouldn't greatly trouble me if someone else described it as such. 

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Responses to receiving a dick pic vary as widely as the motivations for sending such images. What research has been done into this phenomenon suggests that women tend to react negatively, while homosexual men tend to react positively. 

      Often the negative reactions of the receiving party are not caused by the explicit nature of the photo per se, but by the fact that it was unsolicited and not consented to. It's a violation and an impertinence. And it's this aspect that ensures that cyberflashing is criminalised in England and Wales under the Online Safety Act (2023) and carries not only a large fine, but a possible prison sentence of up to two years. A convicted offender will most likely find themselves also placed on the sex offenders register.  

 

[2] In 2016, the LA-based feminist artist and activist Whitney Bell transformed countless unsolicited dick pics sent to her and other women into a provocative art show titled I Didn’t Ask for This: A Lifetime of Dick Pics. Her aim was not simply to shame the men, but expose the absurd nature of the phenomenon and demonstrate how widespread sexual harassment is within pornified contemporary culture. 

      I don't quite agree with Ms Bell on her interpretation of why men might do this - she insists it's only always power and control, while, as I mention above, I believe the motivations for this behaviour are myriad and more complex. Those interested in knowing more might like to see Alison Stevenson, 'This Woman Turned Her Collection of Unsolicited Dick Pics into an Art Show' (15 April 2016) and/or Mitchell Sunderland, 'Dick Pics on Display: The Woman Behind the Controversial Art Show', (20 September 2017). Both these articles are available to read on vice.com.    

  

[3] As one might imagine, there are many mimed performances of the song now circulating on social media. This video - by Lauren Collins on Instagram - is selected purely at random, being the first that came up on my phone when searched for. It's maybe not the best or funniest, but it's certainly not the worst and serves its exemplary function.

 

[4] Unhinged & Unfiltered (@unhinged.tunes) is a comedy audio brand that sets human-written adult humour to AI-generated Irish pub music. Tracks with male vocals are attributed to The Unfiltered Lads, while tracks with female vocals are credited to The Unhinged Lasses. They have around 30,000 followers on the main page of their TikTok account and over 167,000 likes, though some of their tracks have had millions of views and reposts.

 

[5] While the AI provides vocals, instrumentation, and the musical arrangement, the track still relies on a human comedy songwriter to provide the witty lyrics, structure the rhyme scheme, and make sure the comic timing is on the money.   

 

 

The Surrealist Sex Pistols According to Marie Arleth Skov

 

André, Johnny & Marie 

(The Surrealist, the Sex Pistol & the Punk Scholar)

 

 

I.

 

I don't know why, but there are some people in the world I just like. 

 

And the Berlin-based Danish art historian, curator, and author Marie Arleth Skov is one such person - even though we have only met once, very briefly, a couple of years ago at a punk symposium in London [a]. 

 

Partly, the reason I feel her to be sympathisch is because her interests and mine intersect and I admire her as a writer. But I also think she has a nice face and a stylish way of dressing [b].  

 

And while Johnny Rotten tells us not to judge a book by its cover [c], D. H. Lawrence argues that if you can't judge a thing by its appearance - which is to say, by the instinctive impression it makes upon you - then you're a fool [d]. And while I'm many things, like Stinky Turner I am not a fool [e].    

 

 

II. 

 

Anyway, this is all by the by. 

 

For we're actually here to discuss Dr Skov's contribution to the recently published Routledge Handbook of the Sex Pistols (2026): an essay titled 'Dustbin Flowers, Fallen Angels, and Safety-Pin Lips', which examines the punk band in the light of surrealism ...

 

Skov opens her chapter with André Breton's definition of the simplest surrealist act: namely, blindly firing a pistol into a crowd (Breton, 1930). 

 

One immediately assumes, therefore, that we are going to be discussing the random shooting that ends Sid Vicious's unique performance of 'My Way' in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980). However, Skov surprises us by referencing instead Johnny Rotten's declared wish to destroy the passerby, which she feels is an "echo of sorts" [f]. 

 

I have to say, that's not my interpretation of this line from 'Anarchy in the U.K.' (EMI, 1976). 

 

For me, just as Rotten's self-description as an anti-Christ is rooted in his ethnoreligious background as the son of Irish Catholic parents - and not, alas, in Nietzschean philosophy - so too does his ambition of wanting to destroy the passerby display traces of lessons learnt in Sunday school by a good little boy in shirt and tie. 

 

Particularly, of course, the parable of the Good Samaritan, as told by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke (10: 25-37) [g].

 

In other words, the line echoes Christian moral teaching, rather than French surrealism. 

 

Rotten is not, unlike Breton, simply expressing his (typically modernist) political contempt for those who conform to mass society [h]. He is displaying his moral outrage with those who refuse to get involved or directly participate in events. 

 

Like early Christianity - and, indeed, like fascism - punk as practised by Rotten obliges everyone to adopt a position and take a stand; it compels us to action. There can be no passersby and no passive audience members.    

 

III. 

 

According to Skov, as movements, "both punk and surrealism merged the poetic with the political, romance with revolt" (315). 

 

I think that's true. 

 

But, the thing is, one might have hoped for a certain wariness when it comes to this aestheticisation of politics, the logical outcome of which is either the fascism of the far-right or the militant asceticism and theoretical terrorism of the ultra-left - and yet I'm sensing Skov's tacit approval. 

 

In 2026, however, we've got a bigger problem now, as Jello Biafra would say [i] ... 

 

For what's infecting politics today isn't the poetic, but the sacred; and revolt is no longer tied to romance but religion. And even if shouting Allahu Akbar before driving a car into a crowd can be interpreted as a surrealist act against global hegemony inspired by a creed of combat and sacrifice [j], I don't think we should romanticise it.

 

 

IV.

 

Skov is right to highlight the connection between André Masson and Malcolm McLaren - something I've done myself on Torpedo the Ark: click here.

 

I still think Masson's cover design for the first issue of the journal Acéphale (1936-39), featuring an iconic headless figure with stars for nipples and a skull where his sexual organs should be, is one that McLaren should have got Jamie or Vivienne to adapt as a design for the Sex Pistols. 

 

And I still think Bataille's "Secrètement ou non, il est nécessaire de devenir tout autres ou de cesser d'être" would have made a great punk slogan [k]. 

And Skov's right also to insist that when speaking of the Sex Pistols, it is vital to remember that one is not merely referring to members of the band, but also McLaren, Vivienne Westwood, Jamie Reid, and Jordan - although, rather sweetly, she still insists that "music was the key" (318).    

 

 

V. 

 

Skov quotes a famous couple of lines from the Sex Pistols song 'God Save the Queen' (Virgin, 1977): 

 

We're the flowers in the dustbin  

We're the poison in your human machine.

 

But whereas she sees the first as indicating a "very fragile, tender imagination" (319) and somehow connected to Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal (1857), I've always thought it simply revealed Rotten's contempt for the hippies.

 

And whereas she reads the second line as a neo-Luddite critique of relentless mechanisation, for me it's a line that lends weight to Bernard Brook-Partridge's characterisation of the Sex Pistols as the antithesis of humankind [l]. 

 

In other words, it's not the "rejection of a societal system that [...] crushes dreams" (319), and nor does it essentially correlate with "fighting the (dystopian) future" (319). Rather, it echoes the nausea expressed by D. H. Lawrence who wrote: "The very words human, humanity, humanism make one sick." [m]

 

VI.  

 

I like that Skov brings up the subject of alchemy. I would argue that the slogan cash from chaos can be read as an alchemical formula.

 

However, before getting too carried away, it's important to remember the crucial scene in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle in which Steve Jones defecates on a gold disc presented to Johnny Rotten to recognise sales of Never Mind the Bollocks in what is an explicitly counter-alchemical gesture (i.e., the turning of gold back into base matter). 

 

As the female A&R executive with ants crawling on her face in the Swindle says, the Sex Pistols have a "sort of negative Midas touch - everything they touch turns to shit" [n].  And after dumping on the golden disc, Jones credits Malcolm with knowing how to bring out the punk in him - i.e., one who desires to destroy success. 

 

I rather worry at times that Skov's reading of the Sex Pistols is just a tad too upbeat and positive; did they really dance in the dirt in order to create glory? Or did they not seek to degrade the idealist pretensions attached to the latter? 

 

 

VII. 

 

It's true that McLaren and Westwood subscribed to a radical politics of desire that weaponised sex. 

 

But it's also true that this was because they were quite naive and old-fashioned in their thinking, subscribing, for example, to the repressive hypothesis that would be so brilliantly exposed by Foucault in the same year that the Sex Pistols entered public consciousness (1976).  

 

And just as we no longer find it so appealing to romanticise surrealist acts of terrorism, we are no longer nostalgic enough to cling to ideas of sexual revolution, whether inspired by Sade, Reich, or Marcuse (not when we live in a world after the orgy). 

 

Having said that, Skov's ideas on the body in punk and corporeal aesthetics remain fascinating and I really liked her discussion of posture - particularly the idea of slouching as nonconformity.

 

I'm grateful also to learn of Leo Dohmen's surrealist photocollage titled Revanche de la nuit (1958), which features a steel safety pin pierced directly through the lips of a woman - a work about which I knew nothing before reading Skov's essay. 

 

 

VIII.      

 

In the final section of her essay, Skov writes this: 

 

"Of course, the political implications of the Sex Pistols are difficult to pin down [...] Being ambiguous and paradoxical was part of punk's DNA." (323) 

 

And again, that's true as far as it goes, although the politics of boredom or radical negativity as expressed by the Sex Pistols are not entirely beyond our conceptual grasp: beneath the ambiguity lies a fairly simple message after all. 

 

Namely, that politics as traditionally understood and practiced is no longer possible in a transpolitical era and that in order to survive our engagement with nihilism we need to become a little more ironic, a little more insouciant, and a little more intelligent. 

 

In a word, more playful ... 

 

If you make a revolution, make it for fun,  

don't make it in ghastly seriousness,  

don't do it in deadly earnest, 

do it for fun.

 

Above all: 

 

Don't do it because you hate people, 

do it just to spit in their eye. [o] 

 

 

Notes 

 

[a] See the post titled 'On Torn Edges and the Need to Archive' (25 March 2024). 

 

[b] I wouldn't normally comment on someone's looks. But as Dr Skov is someone who writes on the visceral history and rhetoric of the punk body and challenges dualism, I'm assuming she will appreciate that one cannot divorce the intellect from its physical embodiment and stylisation. Without wishing to resurrect and fully endorse the ancient Greek notion of καλοκαγαθία (Kalokagathia), which aligns beauty and virtue, as a Nietzschean, I find the idea still strangely resonates. 

 

[c] I'm referencing the lyrics to 'E.M.I.', by the Sex Pistols, on Never Mind the Bollocks ... (Virgin Records, 1977). 

 

[d] I'm referencing Lawrence's essay 'Introduction to These Paintings', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 192. 

 

[e] Stinky Turner (aka Jeff Geggus) is the lead singer with the Cockney Rejects. 'I Am Not a Fool' was a single on EMI Records, released in 1979. It would be hard to find any trace of surrealism in the Rejects. 

 

[f] Marie Arleth Skov, 'Dustbin Flowers, Fallen Angels, and Safety-Pin Lips', in The Routledge Handbook of the Sex Pistols, ed. Mike Dines, Gabriela Gelain, Paul Graves-Brown and John Schofield (Routledge, 2026), p. 315. All future page references to this work will be inserted directly in the main text.

    It might be noted that Skov does, in fact discuss Sid's 'My Way' performance later in her text and assumes that Breton "would have loved it" (p. 320). 

 

[g] See the post 'I Wanna Destroy the Passerby: Notes on Johnny Rotten as Good Samaritan' (28 May 2020). 

 

[h] I'm aware that his defenders will say my reading of Breton's famous, provocative passage in the Second Manifesto of Surrealism is crass and all-too-literal. I'm afraid, however, that I agree with Camus writing in The Rebel (1951). 

      By fantasising a blind act of violence against a random crowd, Breton reveals a terroristic level of contempt for the public whom he thinks have been debased and crétinised by the System and so deserving of whatever they get. Like so many other modernist intellectuals who claimed to love the People and wish to liberate them, Breton was frustrated and resentful when they preferred the safety and stability of bourgeois lives over the revolution he was offering. 

 

[i] Jello Biafra was the lead singer with the Dead Kennedys. 'We've Got a Bigger Problem Now' is a reworked and updated version of their classic track (and debut single) 'California Über Alles' (1979). It can be found on the EP In God We Trust, Inc., (Alternative Tentacles, 1981). 

 

[j] I'm paraphrasing Michel Foucault who famously characterized the Iranian uprising not as a traditional revolution, but as a collective outburst of political spirituality outside of secular liberalism and the ideals of the Enlightenment. He rightly faced accusations of romanticising anti-modern religious fundamentalism and largely remained silent or evasive regarding the regime's subsequent human rights abuses. 

      See the post 'Foucault's Islamic Folly' (14 Aug 2014). 

 

[k] I would translate this into English as: "Secretly or not, it is necessary to become wholly other, or cease to be." Often, however, the French phrase tout autres is translated as 'completely different'. 

      The line is from Bataille's essay 'The Sacred Conspiracy', which can be found in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939, ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl with Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie Jr., (University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 179. Masson's Acéphale can also be found in this book, on p. 180. 

 

[l] Brook-Partridge was a high-profile Tory member of the Greater London Council and, as this interview shows, he was not a fan of punk rock in general, but had a particular loathing of the Sex Pistols. The interview was included by Julien Temple in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980). 

 

[m] D. H. Lawrence, 'Climbing Down Pisgah', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 255. 

 

[n] This two-minute scene at MAMIE Records - which Skov would, I'm sure, describe as surreal - can be watched between 34:56 - 36:54 in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle. The role of the A&R executive is played by Jean Warren. Sex Pistols aficionados will recall that a gold disc version of Never Mind the Bollocks with a plastic dog turd on it is featured on the back of the compilation album Flogging a Dead Horse (Virgin Records, 1980). 

 

[o] I quote these lines from D. H. Lawrence's poem 'A Sane Revolution', Pansies (1929) and discuss them in my own essay in The Routledge Handbook of the Sex Pistols (2026); see 'Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Swindle: Or, Why I Still Believe in the Ruins', pp. 180-191.  

 

 

  

On Brokenness (And Why I Don't Support Reform UK)

The Reformer - Newspaper of Reform UK 

Issue 001 (Autumn 2026)  

 

 

I. 

 

Saying something is broken means it is damaged, or no longer functioning properly. 

 

And many things can be broken: bones, bottles, hearts, promises, laws, etc. 

 

Even silence.

 

 

II.     

 

But if you're Nigel Farage, then the word broken is a potent political metaphor designed to induce public anxiety, assign blame to opponents, and justify urgent policy intervention and radical structural change. 

 

When Reform UK declare that Britain is broken they are, therefore, following a tried and tested populist script that serves several strategic functions.  

 

 

III. 

 

Obviously, I'm not the first to notice the irony of this: that in order to successfully sell a message of national renewal, they must first wage a campaign of national demoralisation. 

 

I believe this is known as patriotic pessimism - love your country, but acknowledge it's gone to the dogs: crumbling public services, rising crime, spiralling prices, and - of course - record levels of illegal immigration.   

 

By highlighting these (and other) issues, the Reform rhetoric seeks to create a sense of crisis. Britain is broken - but it was broken not by the hardworking people of Britain who pay their taxes and watch GB News, but by the political elite and their friends in the mainstream media. 

 

I know all this because I have just had Issue 001 of The Reformer (Autumn 2026) pushed through my letterbox (not at my request I hasten to add) and the phrase Broken Britain appears repeatedly throughout - as well as in big bold letters on the front page, so readers cannot possibly miss it.   

 

 

IV. 

 

Obviously, it's not a message that appeals to someone like me - someone, that is, born of a critical and artistic tradition where the idea of brokenness enjoys a highly privileged and positive status. 

 

I regard the ideal of Wholeness as a dangerous and totalising fantasy - particularly when invoked in a political context to enforce conformity. For me, freedom and beauty reside (if anywhere) in the crack, the fissure, and the fragment: I still believe in the ruins and I still regard the break not as a sign of failure, but as an opening through which new forces can emerge. 

 

Farage and his Reformers don't seem to appreciate that the history of a people or nation is never complete or settled and never follows a smooth, continuous line of progress. 

 

As Benjamin said, it's not our grand monuments and great institutions that speak of who we are - our true character is only revealed when these structures fall into ruin and our task is no longer to fix that which is broken, but to build up new little habitats and find new little hopes as we move among the ruins. 

 

Or, if we do repair that which is broken, let us do so with gold, so that the break is not disguised or mourned, but celebrated (the Japanese call this the art of kintsugi (金継ぎ).   

 

 

V.

 

It's not my job to tell anyone how to vote. 

 

But I would be wary of any political party that bangs on about a broken nation and exploits the nostalgic longing for a mythic, unbroken past where everything worked perfectly and everyone was united.

 

Das Ganze ist das Unwahre, as Adorno once put it [1]. 

 

And a world without cracks leaves no room for failure, difference, or becoming.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This famous line by Adorno - in which he inverts Hegel - reads in English: 'The Whole is the false.' It can be found in Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life, trans. E. F. N Jephcott (Verso, 2005), see Pt. 1, § 29. The original German text was published in 1951.   

 

On Intellectual Humility

Screenshot from the video for 'Rise' 

Single by Public Image Ltd. (1986) [1] 

 

  

I. 

 

One of the things that someone who values cognitive closure and certainty above all else will never understand is the concept of intellectual humility [2]. 

 

They regard a change of mind as a sign of moral weakness and confusion, or the kind of philosophical relativism that is (mistakenly) said to characterise postmodern theory [3]. 

 

Fundamentalism - be it religious or ideological in nature - involves a strict adherence to a set of core beliefs which are thought always to be true - no matter how circumstances and times may change. 

 

 

II.  

 

Intellectual humility involves not thinking too highly of oneself or being overearnest; it is the rejection of conceit and the spirit of seriousness [4]. 

 

It also implies a willingness to acknowledge mistakes, a radical openness to new ideas, and the flexibility to change one's views when new evidence comes to light. 

 

In brief, intellectual humility is a virtue rooted in the recognition of individual limits - something D. H. Lawrence insisted upon when he reminded us that each one of us ends at our finger-tips [5].  

 

 

III.

 

Etymologically, the term humility derives from the Latin noun humilitas. Crucially for materialists such as myself, this may be translated as grounded or of the earth, since it derives from the word humus.

 

Thus, humility need have nothing to do with the Christian moral ideal, which Nietzsche thought of as a life-denying vice and a strategy devised by the weak to afford them protection from the strong. 

 

In order to avoid confusion on this point, however, Nietzsche preferred to speak of modesty [Bescheidenheit] rather than humility [Demut]; regarding the former as a pragmatic virtue concerned with behaviour and self-stylisation [6]. 

 

Notes

 

[1] 'Rise', written by John Lydon and Bill Laswell, was released as the first single from PiL's fifth studio LP, Album (Virgin Records, 1986). It reached number 11 in the UK charts. Personally, I can't stand the song and whilst the lyric 'I could be wrong, I could be right' seems to suggest a certain intellectual humility, Rotten is one of the last people on earth I would think of as embodying such a virtue. To watch a short clip from the video for the song (dir. Peter Care) featuring this line on YARN, click here.      

 

[2] I am using the term intellectual humility rather than epistemic humility, even though these concepts are closely related - though not quite synonymous. 

      The latter, referring as it does to the limits of knowledge, is perhaps the more philosophical concept, but it's the former - the way in which the thinking subject is limited by their own cognitive abilities and certain built-in biases, etc. - that most interests me here as someone ultimately more concerned with ethics than epistemology. 

 

[3] Postmodern theory is frequently associated with an extreme form of relativism that looks to many like nihilism. But I think that's a simplistic and false characterisation developed by its critics. For while postmodernists reject the idea of transcendent universal truth and display an incredulity toward grand narratives, such critical scepticism does not mean they are endorsing an anything goes philosophy. 

      The task is to examine how truth-claims function within specific historical and cultural contexts and to deconstruct rigid dogmas or totalising ideologies, not simply replace them with an absolute form of relativism.   

 

[4] L'esprit de sérieux is a phrase used by Sartre in L'Être et le néant (1943) and by which he refers to a form of mauvaise foi via which a person thinks values and meanings are fateful, fixed realities rather than human contingencies. As existential freedom requires a subject to recognise their own role in the creation of values and meanings, Sartre encourages people to engage with life through play and accept the responsibility of their choices.

      Sartre's thinking here reminds one of Nietzsche's insistence on the importance of overcoming the spirit of gravity. Both philosophers are concerned with the manner in which individuals are weighed down and crushed by invented values, meanings, and social identities thought to be either natural or divine in origin. However, while they diagnose the same problem, they suggest different ways of dealing with it. 

      For Sartre, as indicated, overcoming seriousness means viewing life as a game which has agreed upon rules, but those rules are not cosmic laws that can never be questioned or subject to change. For Nietzsche, on the other hand, overcoming der Geist der Schwere requires laughter and dancing. 

 

[5] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Why the Novel Matters', in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 191-98. 

      Never missing the chance to take a pop at idealist thinkers, Lawrence writes: "These damned philosophers, they talk as if they suddenly went off in steam, and were much more important than they are [...] It is nonsense. Every man, philosopher included, ends in his own finger-tips" (p. 194).

 

[6] Unlike the ideal of humility, which is thought of as an authentic inner state, modesty is performative and of the surface. It might best be understood as a way of speaking, dressing, and acting that avoids drawing attention or showing off. To be modest - from the Latin modestia - means correct conduct within self-acknowledged limits. The dandy is always modest, but never humble in the slavish, Christian moral sense of the term as practiced by the curled-up worm.  

 

Phoevos the Cat: A Life

Φοίβος ο Γάτος: Μια Ζωή 

(July 2021 - Nov 2026)

 

 

I. 

 

Phoevos le Chat est mort aujourd'hui ... 

 

And I'm going to miss him.

 

 

II.

 

I wasn't there when Maria found him: just a couple of months old, abandoned on the streets of Athens and living in the engine of an old car, covered in grease and fleas.  

 

But I was there with him at the end, when the vet - who, coincidentally, was also from the Greek capital - intravenously administered a dose of phenytoin and pentobarbital [1]. 

 

Phoevos may have only had a short life but, for me, it was one rich in feline immanence ...

 

 

III. 

 

I'm aware that this phrase will irritate those philosophers who are suspicious of the idea that there are different styles of being. 

 

Those, for example, who view immanence through a strictly ontological lens and insist on the Univocity of Being (i.e., the fact that being speaks with one voice and is the same in all things). 

 

For such thinkers, the crucial point is that cats and people are equally expressions of immanence; there is no fundamental difference in the nature of their being, only in the manner in which that being is modified. 

 

For me, however, it's the latter point that most interests; the fact that there exist different entities displaying different shapes, speeds, and folds in the fabric of reality. 

 

In other words, styles of being - a concept which, along with feline immanence, I intend to carry on using even at the risk of being thought a phenomenologist or a poet simply searching for an evocative turn of phrase while grieving for Phoevos.      

 

 

IV. 

 

Cats very much live immersed in their own world and the immediate present. Some people think they can see spirits, but in my experience it's more often a spider that has caught their attention. 

 

Deleuze says that observers often experience an intense love and care for a dying person - even when it's such an irredeemable wrong 'un as Dickens's Rogue Riderhood [2]. I'm not entirely convinced of that. 

 

But I do know that seeing Phoevos first in terrible pain [3] and then heavily sedated in those moments before the fatal injection, was profoundly moving.  

 

 

V. 

 

Is it wrong to think philosophy at a time like this; a little too cold and abstract? 

 

I don't believe so. 

 

In fact, philosophy only really makes sense at a time like this by making some kind of sense of death. 

 

Deleuze's late text that I've been referring to here - 'Immanence: A Life' (1995) - provides a beautifully clever and comforting way to view the death not just of a person, but a cat too. 

 

Phoevos's individual life may have ended, but he has returned to what Deleuze describes as the transcendental field of existence (or plane of immanence). 

 

And of course, his life as a pure event unfolding in time and space can never be undone or erased (Nietzsche toys with the idea that it may even recur eternally).  

 

  

Notes

 

[1] The latter drug, pentobarbital, produces anaesthesia and rapid unconsciousness; the former drug, phenytoin, causes reduced central nervous system function and cardiovascular collapse. This drug combination, favoured by vets, causes a quick and painless death for animals that are suffering and cannot be medically treated. 

 

[2] Roger 'Rogue' Riderhood is a character in Our Mutual Friend (Chapman and Hall, 1865), Dickens's fourteenth and final completed novel. Deleuze references the character in the last text he published before his suicide on 4 November 1995. It can be found in Two Regimes of Madness, ed. David Lapoujade, trans. Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina (Semiotext(e), 2006), pp. 384-389. 

      For Deleuze, the fact that even a shit like Riderhood can trigger compassion from the townspeople when on the brink of death following a boating accident on the Thames, illustrates the allure of a life once it is stripped of its individual history. In other words, impersonal vitality matters more at last than what kind of character Riderhood may have been. As soon as it's clear that he's going to live and recover and go back to being his old self, the people quickly lose all sympathy. 

      The scene can be found in Book 3, Chapter 3 of Our Mutual Friend (made available online as an eBook by Project Gutenberg). 

 

[3] At 3am this morning Phoevos suffered what is called a saddle thrombus (or feline aortic thromboembolism); a life-threatening medical emergency that happens when a blood clot forms in the heart, travels down the main artery, and gets stuck right where it branches off to supply blood to the hind legs. 

      The vet advised that euthanasia was the kindest and medically most sensible option for Phoevos. I would like to take this opportunity to thank him and his team who, suddenly tasked with caring for my feline friend, displayed "an urgency, respect, and even love" for a dying cat's "least sign of life". As a result, Phoevos, in the depths of his agony, got to feel "something soft and sweet penetrate his soul". 

      Lines quoted from Deleuze, 'Immanence: A Life', Two Regimes of Madness ... p. 386.     

 

 

Phoevos produced one of the most amusing and interesting guest posts on Torpedo the Ark. See: 'In the Beginning Was the Word, But That Word Was Not a Meaningless Miaow' (18 Sept 2025).

 

 

 

Faith Hoodies: Just a Form of Streetwear or a Sign of Sectarian Times to Come?

Onward, Christian soldiers / Marching as to War

With the Cross of Jesus / Going on Before [1]

 

 

I. 

 

If there is one 19th-century English hymn I truly detest, then 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' could be it. 

 

I know defenders of the hymn will argue that the imagery is purely metaphorical and rooted in the language of the Bible; that believers are called on to fight a spiritual battle against Satan and to morally struggle against the temptation to do evil or commit sin - that it is not a call to physically take up arms. 

 

But we know that's not how it's heard in practice by many Christians - anymore than the term jihad is interpreted in a purely benign manner by those Muslims keen to take up the sword. It's a song effectively promoting holy war, religious triumphalism, and imperialism [2]. I know it, you know it, and I suspect that William Booth knew it also when he selected this hymn as the battlecry of his Salvation Army [3].     

 

What's more, I suspect that the manufacturers of Christian streetwear also know it ... 

 

 

II. 

 

Faith hoodies - like those modelled in the image above [4] - are, along with other forms of Christian streetwear, a predictable but deeply depressing reaction to increasing ethno-religious friction in the UK, serving as a defiant assertion of traditional British identity in the face of a rising Islamic presence.

 

I realise many of those wearing the clothes do so simply as followers of fashion; they like the blending of streetwear with spiritual messaging and find the bold gothic or minimalist style graphics visually appealing. They certainly don't regard themselves as neo-Crusaders. 

 

I realise also that other young adults regard wearing faith hoodies as an authentic expression of personal belief and are sincerely devout in what they do without being militant or hateful. But then, on the other hand, I know that there are those happy to co-opt the Cross in order to fuel a rising tide of Christian nationalism, turning a fashion trend into a uniform suitable to wage cultural warfare.  

 

The fact is, these garments sit at a complex intersection of fashion, consumerism, and socio-political gesturing, and in a highly polarised environment they have the potential to piss a lot of people off. Not just members of other faiths and communities, but also those Christians who are appalled by what they see as the cynical commodification of faith and holy scripture. 

 

As for secularists and liberal humanists, they might smile on the sidelines, but I imagine they too are made more than a little nervous by overt displays of religious iconography in the public arena. They may, in principle, support religious freedom and the right of the individual to wear what they wish, but one suspects they know only too well where this is leading.  

  

 

III. 

 

And where is it leading? 

 

Well, a future defined by sectarian division and civil war along ethno-religious lines is not likely to be a happy time or place, and I'm surprised that certain politicians in the West seem to be facilitating this via the state-sponsored promotion of mass migration on the one hand and multiculturalism (leading to hyperplurality) on the other.     

 

Faced with such impending chaos and structural fragmentation, one is vaguely nostalgic for a time when young people found and expressed their identity through pop music and safety pins, not scripture ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' by Sabine Baring-Gould (1865). It was set to music by the composer Arthur Sullivan in 1871. Usually, I would provide a link to the song, but not in this case (I'll also resist the temptation to put something by Welsh anarcho-punks Icons of Filth here in its place). 

 

[2] There is a long history of debate regarding the hymn 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' and whether or not it might lend itself to real world religious violence thanks to the martial language it employs. Even many churchgoers are troubled and have difficulty squaring it with the peaceful teachings of Jesus. Some Anglican hymn books use revised lyrics and replace the word 'Soldiers' in the title with 'Pilgrims'. 

 

[3] William Booth was an English Methodist preacher who, along with his wife, Catherine, founded the Salvation Army in 1865 along quasi-military lines (appointing himself as its first General). 

      Booth may primarily have been concerned with spiritual and social welfare, rather than geopolitics and British imperialism, but he certainly wanted his organisation to become a global force and openly spoke of occupying territories with the ultimate aim of subjugating the entire world to the Word of God and the Love of Lord Jesus. 

      And so, while members of his Salvation Army didn't themselves carry weapons or volunteer to fight in overseas wars, they were happy to rely upon the infrastructure of the British Empire in order to expand their own power and spread the gospel as they understood it. 

 

[4] The visual language of these garments shown here (even if the image is probably AI fakery like almost everything now found on Instagram) is revealing. The young man and woman look less like churchgoers and more like insurgents; their hooded tops pull up to obscure the lower half of the face, co-opting a tactical, urban aesthetic. Yet the details are explicitly sacred: zippers shaped as crosses, a crown of thorns wrapped around the sleeve, and a prominent reference to Psalm 27:1 ("The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?").  

 

The Routledge Handbook of the Sex Pistols (and the Black Essay It Didn't Include)

routledge.com 

  

 

This expensive collection will appeal to those interested in and working across 

a wide range of intellectual and creative disciplines - sociology, psychology,

cultural anthropology and a bit of fuckology ...[1] 

 

 

 

I. 

 

Why is it that the very name Sex Pistols today creates tedium everywhere? 

 

Probably because their story has been told over and over and over again, so that when one was tasked with submitting an original text on the band for a new Routledge Handbook it proved nigh on impossible: everything that could be said, had been said; everything that could be written, had been written. 

 

The world needed a new collection of essays on, by, or about the Sex Pistols like it needed a hole in the head and I'm not sure which is worse; their recuperation by capitalism and the culture industry; their archiving in museums and art galleries; or their becoming the focus of academics who like to think of themselves as punk scholars. 

 

If Malcolm McLaren's watchwords were sex, style, and subversion, mine are now silence and secrecy; words which have an important role to play as part of a cultural counter-narrative or, more precisely, a strategic non-narrative. Perhaps if we can give the Sex Pistols back some of their mystery, they might regain some of their allure, their magic, their danger. 

 

My problem, however, as a writer who had formally agreed to submit a piece to a book project that wishes to critically examine (and celebrate) the diverse legacy of the Sex Pistols, is what might this strategy mean in practice. The last thing I wanted to do was further illuminate the band or make them more accessible: Do not play, don’t give the game away (Lesson 4). 

 

My solution was to follow Amy Winehouse and go back to black … For black is the colour from which the Sex Pistols were born and to which they will always return; the colour that fascinated McLaren as an art student and which is associated in Western culture with the anarcho-nihilism and seduction of evil that the Sex Pistols would later embody. 

 

 

II. 

 

The Routledge Handbook of the Sex Pistols is published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of a key event in the band's history: the release of their debut single, 'Anarchy in the U.K.' (EMI Records, November 1976). A record that originally came in an all-black sleeve, with no information and no image of any kind: a perfect statement of what the band were all about, politically, philosophically, and artistically. 

 

It's debatable whether McLaren was nodding towards Malevich's 'Black Square' painted sixty years earlier, recalling Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1760), or if, as Paul Gorman suggests, the insistence on such a sleeve was simply in line with his own aesthetic, as seen in his portraits of the 1960s and the clothes designs produced with Vivienne Westwood for Sex [2]. 

 

Either way, it was a great idea and when EMI executives complained that an all-black sleeve with no identifying information would make it extremely difficult for fans to find it in the record stores, McLaren smiled and said: I don't want them to find it. 

 

And when one of my editors was told that I planned on submitting a text consisting of thirteen all-black pages pointed out that no one will be able to read it, I echoed Malcolm in my reply ...

 

  

III. 

 

Predictably, they weren't terribly impressed by the idea. They thought it was fine as an art school prank, but not appropriate for a comprehensive, peer-reviewed, must-have volume in the Routledge Music Handbook series [3]. 

 

And so I compromised and wrote a fairly standard academic essay, albeit one in which I privileged The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1979) over Never Mind the Bollocks (1977) and gave full credit for the Sex Pistols as a conceptual art project to McLaren working in collaboration with Vivienne Westwood and Jamie Reid. 

 

By downplaying the contribution of the actual band members - who cares about the music? - I was able to argue that things only really became interesting once Rotten was thrown out of the band [4]. In this way, I hoped to subvert the book's effort to "immortalize the Pistols in perpetuity" [5] and prevent the canonisation of St Johnny.  

 

Just to be clear: I've nothing against the good people at Routledge. In fact, I will always be grateful to them for publishing Nick Land's book on Bataille - The Thirst for Annihilation (1992) - despite rumoured reservations concerning the work. 

 

And I've nothing either against the editors of the book: Mike Dines may be a bit of a hippie, which raises issues around trust for some people, but he's essentially a good egg and Gabriela Gelain é a minha brasileira favorita (with the exception of Clarice Lispector).  

 

It's just that I loathe hagiography and wish to shit on any book that flirts with the genre à la Seve Jones.  

 

The Sex Pistols were not "instrumental in creating a cultural transition from the staid 'black-and-white' authorized era of post-war austerity to what was to become a more radical and creative future in which everybody had agency and a do-it-yourself ethos that transformed social norms" [6]. 

 

They were, rather, the most notorious, filthy, disgusting, dirtiest rock 'n' roll band in the whole bloody world! [7]

 

 

For details see note [8]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This opening is, of course, a hybrid paraphrase of publisher's blurb and Johnny Rotten's bored studio preamble to the band's cover of The Stooges' 'No Fun', which became the B-side to 'Pretty Vacant' (Virgin Records, 1977). Click on the link for the unedited version recorded in October 1976. 

 

[2] I have discussed all this in the post titled 'But Malcolm, They'll Not Be Able to Find It' (24 March 2024). 

 

[3] Obviously, there is a playful, pranksterish aspect to this work, but I still see it primarily as a provocative piece of meta-commentary that powerfully affirms the nihilism at the heart of the Sex Pistols project. The Black Essay would have effectively highlighted the irony of celebrating a movement based on No Future fifty years after its inception. 

[4] See Stephen Alexander, 'Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Swindle: Or Why I Still Believe in the Ruins', in The Routledge Handbook of the Sex Pistols, ed. Mike Dines, Gabriela Gelain, Paul Graves-Brown and John Schofield (Routledge, 2026), pp. 180-191. 

 

[5] Ellen Bernhard, Assistant Professor of Communication, Georgian Court University (USA), writing in a critical review of The Routledge Handbook of the Sex Pistols that features as the book's frontispiece and appears on the Routledge website. This phrase is everything I resist in my essay via the promotion of a gargoyle aesthetic and belief in the Ruins. 

 

[6] I'm quoting from the description of The Routledge Handbook of the Sex Pistols, presumably written by the editors. 

 

[7] Malcolm McLaren (as The Embezzler) speaking to camera outside Seditionaries in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980). 

 

[8] The first figure shows the original sleeve design for 'Anarchy in the U. K.' by the Sex Pistols (EMI, 1976). The second, is the 13th and final page of my unused 'Black Essay' (2024) intended for The Routledge Handbook of the Sex Pistols. The first section of this post is based on the abstract for this non-text.   

 

Reflections on the Museum of Youth Culture Exhibition 'God Save the Queens' & How You Too Will Learn to Live the Lie

Flyer for the God Save the Queens exhibition 

at the Museum of Youth Culture 

 

"The exhibition challenges traditional punk narratives by placing the women 

who helped shape the movement at the centre of the story: not as 

footnotes to punk history, but as some of its defining creative forces." [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Last week I went to a private viewing of the current exhibition showing at the Museum of Youth Culture [2]. God Save the Queens brings together rare and previously unseen artwork, photography, and personal archival material celebrating the women who shaped punk's look, sound, and cultural history.  

 

The exhibition is curated by Up Yours! - a non-profit, multimedia and art collective founded by Celeste Bell and others [3] to honour punk rock's female pioneers, who are now characterised as she-punks, whereas, back in the day, they were known by the rather less savage and much prettier sounding title of punkettes [4].

 

According to the Up Yours! mission statement, the aim is to "preserve, celebrate, and spotlight the under-appreciated music, literature, film, fashion, and visual art of women who shaped punk and DIY counterculture over the last 50 years". 

 

Which is all very admirable, though I would challenge the premise that the role played by women in punk - and the artwork produced by them - has been underappreciated or overlooked. It's Westwood, not McLaren, whom the fashion world idolises and I would suggest more people are familiar with the faces of Jordan and Soo Catwoman than those of Cook and Jones.     

 

 

II. 

 

But let's not quibble on this point. It's clear that the curators of the exhibition are pushing this tired narrative and continue to derive a certain amount of speaker's benefit [5] from it, so good luck to 'em! 

 

What concerned me more is how the show recreates a boring class system, with all the stars and usual suspects given centre stage (or, in this case, wall space). Meanwhile, actual punk youth is tokenistically given a couple of small boards on which to share their images and stories. For me, this goes against the punk ethos where 'anyone could be a Sex Pistol' and the audience mattered as much - if not more - than the performers.

 

In other words, my real issue with God Save the Queens is how easily a counterculture built on the erasure of hierarchy has been restratified [6] and - what's that word the Situationists liked to use? - ah yes, récupérated [7]. And recuperated with the curatorial connivance of the children of the punk revolution!   

 

 

III. 

 

Having said that - and here's the twist - I enjoyed the exhibition and because I wanted to memorialise an old friend, I even have a photo included in it myself [8]. And so I am, arguably, at some level complicit with - or at the very least caught within the wheels of - the culture industry's recuperative nostalgia. 

 

Similarly, thanks to my involvement with the Punk Scholars Network and the Subcultures Interest Group, I'm an uneasy collaborator with the academic recuperation of punk [9].

 

As The Pop Group once sang: We are all prostitutes / everyone has their price ... And we shall be hypocrites, hypocrites, hypocrites [10]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This quote is taken from the exhibition's promotional material and curatorial statement, framing God Save the Queens as a radical reclamation of space. As we shall see, the reality on the gallery walls tells a somewhat different story. 

 

[2] Just a few minutes' walk from Camden Road station, the Museum of Youth Culture moved to its now permanent location at 51 St. Pancras Way, London NW1 in June of this year, after operating previously as a pop-up museum in various temporary spaces. 

 

[3] Filmmaker and writer Celeste Bell is the daughter of Poly Styrene, which explains why the exhibition is primarily dedicated to the legacy of the late singer, songwriter, and frontwoman of X-Ray Spex. Ms Bell co-founded Up Yours! with Lauren Estelle Jones (yes, Mick's daughter) and the writer, musician and punk professor Vivien Goldman. 

      While Bell and Jones cannot help being the children of punk royalty, we cannot ignore how this lineage grants them the institutional access and cultural authority to determine the narrative. The paradox of an egalitarian counterculture being archived and gatekept by a hereditary hierarchy is central to the exhibition's structural tension. 

 

[4] The term she-punk was coined by Helen Reddington and later popularised by Vivien Goldman as an alternative to punkette and is presumably meant to sound a bit more spiky and savage, although it does make me think of Jennifer Walters and we might question this rejection of the feminine diminutive form; does it mark a victory for women or might it not be seen as an unintended reinforcement of the masculine? 

 

[5] This phrase, coined by Michel Foucault, is a critical component of his critique of l'hypothèse répressive. In brief, certain groups and individuals love believing they have been repressed and marginalised because it yields le bénéfice du locuteur - that is to say, an immediate emotional and political reward that one receives simply by daring to speak openly about a taboo subject or some past injustice. In this case, the Up Yours! Collective want to pretend they are defying the patriarchy and refusing to be silenced - as if they are outside of power and ushering in a liberated and more diverse, equitable, and inclusive future. And they do so with the kind of moral solemnity that some of the original punks would have been appalled by.  

      In sum, speaker's benefit gives the gratification of feeling like a rebel simply by talking about something that power structures and institutions actually want you to talk about and provide the material resources that enable you to do so. See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin Books, 1998). 

 

[6] The sociological concept of restratification refers to the process of a movement such as punk shifting from a flat, egalitarian ideal back into a strict hierarchy. According to Robert Michels, there is an iron law of oligarchy determining this outcome. 

      Thus, as we see at the God Save the Queens exhibition, there are professionally taken photographs of punk icons (the creators and trendsetters) individually framed and carefully hung on the walls, signifying that the subject has cultural value and historical importance (not to mention aura and agency). And then there are snapshots of punk fans (the consumers and fashion followers) randomly collaged together on boards so that their individuality is reduced and they serve only to provide a little authenticity to the event. 

      Of course, to be fair to the curators, there was always a punk elite and in order for a museum to put on an exhibition of something as chaotic as punk they have to make it intelligible to a viewing public and so naturally apply their own bureaucratic (and commercial) metrics; identify the leaders and the marketable faces, etc. 

 

[7] Recuperation is the process by which politically radical ideas and images are co-opted and commodified by the powers that be, thereby neutralising them. In this case, it's the appropriation of punk (and youthful rebellion) by the culture industry. 

 

[8] The picture is of Lorrie Millington - see the sister post to this one titled 'Lorrie and the She-Punks' (30 Oct 2026). 

 

[9] See the post titled 'On Torn Edges and the Need to Archive' (25 March 2024) in which I share thoughts on the PSN. And to access a number of posts that detail my involvement with SIG and its annual publication SIG News go to torpedotheark.blogspot.com/search/label/subcultures%20interest%20group 

 

[10] Lyrics from 'We Are All Prostitutes', by The Pop Group, (Rough Trade, 1979).  

 

 

Whatever Happened to Síomón Solomon? (A Tragi-Comic Horror Story for Halloween)

 

 

Oh, what happened to you? / Whatever happened to me? 

What became of the people we used to be? [1] 

 

 

I. 

 

A few years ago, his was a name being whispered by the literati from Smock Alley to Swabia. But now there is only silence, leaving one to ask: whatever happened to Síomón Solomon? [2]

 

 

II. 

 

Occasionally, however, the silence is broken by the sound of rumour ... 

 

I've heard, for example, that a follow-up to Hölderlin’s Poltergeists (2020) [3] is in progress and has been given the working title of Imperfect Penances. The book is said to consist of a creative-critical translation of Georg Trakl and is possibly being published by Infinity Land Press [4], although as yet it does not appear on their list of forthcoming titles.    

 

There is also talk of a pataphysical script - commended in its early form by the Druid Theatre Company - being secretly revised and promising to build upon the success of The Atonement of Lesley Ann, a short play staged in 2020 and described by Marina Carr as both lyrical and terrible [5].  

 

And then there's the project which many of us have been long anticipating - a first collection of poems (working title My Grandfather's Demon). This will give a very special form of relief and pleasure when it finally appears, fulfilling the eternal promise.  

 

 

III. 

 

So, what has happened to Síomón Solomon?  

 

Some say he has now taken on a cloak of anonymity and amuses himself trolling other writers ...

 

Some say that, having concerned himself for so long with ghosts and exceptional individuals, he has ironically ended up ghostwriting the everyday tales of very ordinary folk who dream of turning their memories into memoir ...   

 

And some say he can be seen, in somewhat monstrous form, pacing by the edge of Quilca Lake, and staring at his reflection in the waters ... [6]  

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from 'Whatever Happened to You', by Highly Likely (sung by Tony Rivers), (BBC Records, 1973). This was the theme song for the TV series Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (BBC1, 1973-74), written by Mike Hugg (music) and Ian La Frenais (lyrics). The TV show was created and written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, and starred Rodney Bewes (as Bob Ferris) and James Bolam (as Terry Collier), the latter of whom is pictured above wondering what became of Síomón Solomon. 

 

[2] For readers unfamiliar with the name, Síomón Solomon (the nom de plume of Simon Thomas) is a poet, playwright, editor, translator and English lecturer based in Kells, County Meath, Ireland. 

      He holds inter-disciplinary academic qualifications in the humanities, including an MA in European Philosophy from the University of Warwick (1991) and an MA in Creative Writing (Boston, 1994). His PhD thesis (London, 2008) was a trilingual (and schizopoetic) study of Friedrich Hölderlin. 

     A former (somewhat shadowy) friend of Torpedo the Ark, there are several posts written by, about, or addressed to Síomón Solomon (under this and other names or guises).

 

[3] Síomón Solomon's first book, Hölderlin’s Poltergeists (Peter Lang, 2020), is primarily a creative adaptation (or remix) of Stephan Hermlin's 1970 audio play Scardanelli. It was slated for theatrical presentation by Queen Mary, University of London in 2023, but, as with the best laid plans of mice and avant-garde authors, this unfortunately didn't come to pass. There is a multiple-part series of posts on this hyper-niche book existing on the outer margins of traditional Hölderlin studies on TTA, and these can be accessed by clicking here. 

 

[4] Founded in 2013 by Karolina Ursula Urbaniak and Martin Bladh, Infinity Land Press would make an ideal home for the work of Síomón Solomon, publishing as they do works which are (to quote from their website) "steeped in pathological obsessions, extreme desires, and private aesthetic visions" and "inoculated against the circulatory system of the established book market" (heaven forbid any of their authors should dream of a popular bestseller). 

 

[5] Staged at Smock Alley Theatre as part of the Scene and Heard Festival (Dublin, 2020), The Atonement of Lesley Ann (dir. Larissa Brigatti) was billed as a true-crime ghost story and starred Misha Fitzgibbon, in a challenging role. As well as stumping up the €100 fee that went toward production costs, I also wrote a trio of posts on the work published on TTA: click here.

 

[6] There might be something in this: see the humorous post titled 'Limnophilia: Lakeside Tales of Monsters and Poets and a Little Blue Mind Theory' (10 Aug 2026). Whatever the truth of what's happened to Síomón Solomon, I hope he's well and we can look forward to some new work shortly.