There are new beginnings everywhere I look. Friends are wearing signs of the fatigue and joy of being new parents; Ireland’s getting a new government; and my near-future neighbours will be dolphins.
Beginnings
Author: Michael Dornan
Musician / Writer / Amateur Devonian / Maker of decent lasagnes
Time to Focus. Here are the Things I’m Not Focusing On
Think of the places you've lived in your life. Time spent anywhere is always limited, but now I'm aware of just how limited that time is. Here are some priorities I've made (& ignored)...
Little Song for the Day of the Sun
Featuring my Bristol Bucket List, Gerard Manley Hopkins and a brand spanking new song of mine.
My Only End-of-Year List was Me Leaning to One Side, Thanks to the Cava
Featuring thoughts on Michael Kiwanuka, Lord Kitchener, record stores and some other things I've been enjoying in 2019.
Returning Spirits
We go to cinemas for a different view of the world we live in, or to visit an imagined world and escape the laws by which this one's bound. Like the best films, Mati Diop's Grand Prix-winning film Atlantics satisfies both longings.
Things of Feather, Flight and Bone
In which my post-sleep brain comes to life in the company of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's genius; we consider the internal monologue of St Cecilia; and my new music project is announced.
Call Upon Some Saints’ Assistance
When I last launched a recording project, Prince and Bowie were alive, and the 90s weren't back in fashion yet. Times's changed, my friends.
Worth of a Nation: Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, the Oscars and Capra
Here’s why I’m going to bat for BlacKkKlansman. I don’t have to ask my partner about her best moviegoing experience of 2018, because I remember the visceral responses that came from the seat directly to my left – expressions of every feeling art can produce, a pile-up of emotions at the picture’s several denouements, and… Continue reading Worth of a Nation: Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, the Oscars and Capra
A Last, Very Locked Box: The Cinema and the Heart
It’s contained, like a lamp-bound genie, sought-after like hidden treasure and as glowing and inaccessible as the realm of the Wizard of Oz. The Room may know you better than you know yourself, so be ready for a stark discovery.
“Start in the Middle of a Sentence and Move in Both Directions at Once” – New Facets to Coltrane’s Genius
"Like finding a new room in the Great Pyramid", says Sonny Rollins. Maybe so, but for John Coltrane this recording was just another tape reel and another day in a brief, wondrous life.
