In Cannes recently, along with all the rough diamonds that humanity can provide and all its glitz and glam, there has been a strike going on to protest the cuts in unemployment benefits that the French have had to suffer. Now to put it in context, film festivals and strikes are the two things that the French know how to do with consummate ease. It would be hard to discern whether the French prefer a good film festival or a good strike, both having merits that are peculiar to themselves. ...

Bjork would not have won Idol! I have recently been listening to Bjork and falling in love all over again. I typed live instead of love in that last sentence and I think there is something to it. I have been without music for the last year of so, not because I lack the means but because I lacked the interest. Recently the interest was reignited and I found myself alive again. Virgins realise how they have not yet been born into the world until that first touch and priests understand the...

In a recent conversation with a friend, we were discussing why it is that blogs that seem to lean to the more frivolous and flippant consistently win out over the blogs that possess a certain density or majesty. Now we must keep in mind that those adjectives – frivolous, flippant and dense, majestic – are subjective to the extreme, shifting from reader to reader, perspective to perspective. The interpretations we bring to a piece change according to the time and place we read something as ...

My silence is born out of a fundamental dishonesty. I cannot speak because I cannot lie, and I cannot remain silent because I cannot speak the truth. What an interesting and logical paradox. The suppression of truth inevitably leads to one talking to oneself. The “I” becomes the only person you can speak to without suffering a crushing shame. This is what he told me that afternoon, squinting through the cigarette smoke with only the slightest trace of a cynical smile on his face. This poi...