#wplongform

David Bowie’s Artful Death

On January 7, 2016, about a week before his death, David Bowie released his final music video, “Lazarus.” The similarities between Donne’s death shroud portrait and Bowie’s video are unmistakable as both highlight the artists’ engagements with mortality and creation of an artful death. In this song and video, and throughout his final album, ★, Bowie’s use of symbols associated with early modern…

Everyday Buddhist: Accumulating Good Karma is Beautiful, by Geshe Gedun Tharchin

In the mind training or mind transforming practices (lojong), it is taught that there are two things which should be done—develop appropriate motivation and dedicate the merit from practices to the benefit of all beings. Before coming to this summer school, for example, we should have produced a good motivation and at the end we should make the dedication. So, motivation and dedicating merit are…

High Fidelity then starred John Cusack as an immature, self-absorbed record store owner who, because of a recent, painful breakup with his girlfriend Laura (perf. Iben Hjejle), went on a tour of self-discovery through conversations with all of his ex girlfriends. He handles his breakup, which is the opening scene of the film, with the grace and maturity of a five year old who just broke his…

I’ve long been an early technology adapter. I started building webpages/websites in the 90s, used turnitin.com not just for plagiarism checking but for providing rich feedback on student papers in the very early 2000s, and around that time had students write live blogs on a course website as part of their writing requirements. I didn’t catch up to the iPhone until the iPhone 3, but I owned a…

Tiffany at 50: She’s Not Alone Now

I had the pleasure of seeing 80s’ pop icon Tiffany (Darwish) perform in Melbourne, Florida, at the Iron Oak Post on November 21st. Her performance gained national attention through outlets such as TMZ because she said to the audience, “F-you, guys,” after struggling with her singing during the performance of her hit song “I Think We’re Alone Now.” She later apologized for her behavior in a…

International Piano Star Jonathan Powell will be playing back home this weekend. Jonathan spent his childhood in Wolverhampton, near St Michael and All Angels Church, Tettenhall, and sang as a boy chorister there in the late 1970s. He will be at St Michael’s on Saturday at 3pm playing a century of Polish music including music by Szymankowski, Szymanowska and lots of Chopin. The programme…