Save me, O God: for the waters are entered even to my soul. I stick fast in the deep mire, where no stay is: I am come into deep waters, and the streams run over me. (Psalm 69:1-2, 1599 Geneva Bible) Is it, as Bosch would have it, a sinking scene, hut scarcely erect, while in the background knights andContinue reading “Broken Epiphanies”
Tag Archives: Renaissance
Christmas 9: Join the dancing
On the ninth day of Christmas, apparently, someone’s true love once gave them nine ladies dancing. Impractical though this is as a Christmas present (not to mention hard to wrap), it suits today’s carol well: the majestic “In dulci jubilo”, set by the seventeenth-century German Lutheran composer Michael Praetorius. The story of the text, originallyContinue reading “Christmas 9: Join the dancing”
Christmas 1: Greensleeves in the Suburbs
Nothing says summer like this: Renaissance minstrel piped through tinny speakers, musicbox-like, rotating through sleepy street, a call for ice-cream from a roaming van, suburban icon, half-sinister, half-sweet. To us in the south it seems fitting that the tune should be used too for carols: “What Child is This?” and another I don’t know, “NowContinue reading “Christmas 1: Greensleeves in the Suburbs”
From Ashes Part 8: No work for tinkers
It is autumn in my home town of Melbourne as I write these words, and outside the University library the streets are bathed in orange, golden and golden-brown leaves. It is a glorious sight, one of those moments where something seemingly hopeless – the dying of leaves – can be simultaneously so beautiful. I wasContinue reading “From Ashes Part 8: No work for tinkers”
The Consolations of Writing 