The emperor’s twin 

In the absence of gods, must we choose monsters? You can never really know the difference, or see under. These creatures...

Threshold

What is the voice of one who has died if no one listened to what remained unspoken? It no longer matters.

Mildew on the whiteness of Hölderlin

Mildew on the whiteness of Hölderlin’s shoulders, his phantom limb reaching towards an ideal he is sure he’ll reach. When the snow...

Things come together

After a photo by Annie Leibovitz of Johnny Cash with his grandson Joseph, Rosanne Cash and June Carter Cash,...

Exeunt

The mirage of beer before their eyes. Barney wipes his feet upon the mat unaccustomed to such luxuries.

A less artificial future 

Humans have been making automatons since the time of the Ancient Greeks. Disruption due to technology is nothing new. We need to think critically about this fourth industrial revolution, remembering the lessons of the past. The rapid scientific discoveries, exponential technological advances and widescale job losses have all been seen before.

Navigating truth

Libraries have always played a huge role in my life. Now, in a different city far from the lakeside town I grew up in, I still have my routine, my favourite spot, a fondness for DIY signage. And yet, I never saw myself as a librarian until a few years ago.

I think in movies

When I remember stories, I remember films – how they made me feel, what they made me think about, and often the experience of seeing them. Eli needed the bathroom in Phantom Menace, and Dad took him, reluctantly – they were only gone for five minutes, but that was long enough.

Acknowledgements, mon amour 

From there, this acknowledgement fetish expanded to my leisure reading. Novels, memoirs, narrative non-fiction – they all contained these tantalising windows into the person and story behind the book. Whenever I picked up a new tome, I would head straight to the back to find out what the author had to say for themselves.

Orwell everywhere

George Orwell is trending. But why?

No doubt the answer is complicated, but one reason, perhaps, is that Orwell anticipated the deepening epistemic crisis signified in the phrase ‘post-truth’. We are living through a time of thoroughgoing confusion as to what kind of information counts as evidence, and this is something Orwell came back to time and again in his novels and essays.

Killing the poets 

When asked in an interview what he feared most during this war, Palestinian writer Khalil Abu Yahia responded, ‘I fear that I will die without achieving my dreams. I want to complete my PhD. I want to rebuild my family’s house… And [my] biggest dream – to meet my [international] friends in person, to shake hands, to hug them. It sounds very simple, but colonialism disconnects people from the rest of the world.’

Bin chicken wonder 

While often playful and ironic, the bin chicken phenomenon has a more serious side. Like an ‘animal familiar’, the humble ibis is helping us navigate changing times, including the question of who belongs and who does not in modern Australia. A vast array of bin chicken merch celebrates a decidedly kitsch Aussie aesthetic that champions a working-class or bogan sensibility.