Writing fiction is like making bread. You need to know when to knead it, and when to just let it rise. — The other day, I took a break from my writing desk and went into the kitchen to make bread. There’s something therapeutic about the process of mixing flour and yeast and water, combining it, then turning it out onto the table to knead it into shape. When I write, sometimes…

In a world obsessed with conversation, physical books bring us solitude and freedom. — Several years ago, I attended a talk by the Canadian poet Erín Moure. She talked about poetry and translation and writing. It was a talk so full of brilliant insights that, as I jotted things down in my notebook, I struggled to keep up. …

Myanmar helped me come to terms with grief. Now I am grieving for Myanmar. — I arrived in Yangon for the first time in January 2017, my life broken into pieces. The previous year had been punishing. In August, Elee, my partner of thirteen years, died of breast cancer. Before her death, we talked about what I would do after. I said I didn’t know…

Is philosophy a kind of play? Is it a kind of combat? Or is it a kind of aesthetic experience? — Two Men, Fighting You don’t notice it at first. The two men are fighting it out with big sticks. One has blood streaming down his face. He lifts his arm to bring his cudgel down hard on his opponent’s head. …

When the going gets tough, it‘s good to read philosophy out loud. — 💡 This is the fourth in a seven-part series on how to read philosophy. Read the earlier pieces on reading Napoleonically, reading haphazardly, and reading self-interestedly. The Silent Reader There’s a story that Saint Augustine (354–430 CE) tells about his meeting with Ambrose, the bishop of Milan. When Augustine turned up in Milan…

Ptolemaïs of Cyrene, the ancient philosopher, and what she can teach us about the art of music. — Learning to Play At the moment, I’m endeavouring to improve my rudimentary jazz piano playing. It’s a long process: I’ve played on and off for years, without really getting any better. So this year, now I’ve been reunited with my keyboard, I’ve been trying to put some more time in, hoping that I…

For the philosopher Han Fei, the ultimate form of charisma was to have no charisma at all — Have you ever had a boss who is so unreadable, so difficult to gauge, so seemingly characterless, that they were almost scary? If so, perhaps your boss had been taking their cues from the Chinese philosopher Han Fei (韓非) (281–233 BCE). Because for Han Fei, the ideal kind of charisma…

How to think about change, with the Chinese philosopher Zou Yan — The Philosophical Alchemist The philosopher Zou Yan (鄒衍) lived between 305 and 240CE. He is associated with the so-called Yin Yang School (yinyang jia 陰陽家), also sometimes referred to as the school of Chinese naturalism. What biographical information we have about Zou Yan comes from Sima Qian’s Shiji or Records of the Grand…

Two philosophers from the ancient world who changed their minds: Timocrates the (former) Epicurean, and Dionysius the (former) Stoic. — Does philosophy change our minds? Philosophers talk a lot about the power of reasoned argument to change our minds. The whole discipline of philosophy, to an extent, depends on the idea that this is how argument works. But there’s a problem with this idea. Because one thing that you notice if you hang around philosophers…