Muses

My Muse is a literary blog about the way films, songs and words fill our lives, influence them, offer wisdom, wit and wonder.
  • Movies

    It’s bigger on the inside

    It’s bigger on the inside

    I think what makes The Tardis so compelling as a storytelling device is its strength as a metaphor for our own human condition. Like us, it’s larger — much larger — on the inside than it appears on the outside. Infinite. Surprising. Confusing. Contradictory. And extraordinarily, strangely beautiful. And also like us, our minds, our…

  • Music

    I can love that tune on the very first chord ~ Donny Hathaway

    I can love that tune on the very first chord ~ Donny Hathaway

    And some stuff you just love from the very first chord … timbre, qualities of its attack, sustain and decay, the authority with which it’s played, the key it’s played in, the instrumentation and even their arrangement, the way all these elements come together in that brief moment when sound establishes itself as music. You…

  • Books

    Before and After ~ Stephen Mitchell’s Second Book of the Dao

    Before and After ~ Stephen Mitchell’s Second Book of the Dao

    I was digging into Stephen Mitchell’s The Second Book of the Dao one day back in January (over a lovely Red Snapper Soup @ Granville Island) when a passage in the second chapter inspired the following poem. You may also like these articles: The trick … is not minding that it hurts ~ Lawrence of…

  • Featured Post

    Winnie the Pooh and the Vinegar Tasters

    Winnie the Pooh and the Vinegar Tasters

    The Vinegar tasters is among my favourite allegories and provides an excellent introduction to the three philosophies that dominated China through thousands of years: Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. For me, the most important of these is Taoism, a gentle, soulful and luminous philosophy. I’m going to be lazy and let someone else explain it all.…

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