The Evolution of the Western Film Score

I first came across the music of Aaron Copland in 1989. I already knew that his work had influenced the sound of Hollywood Western film scores, most notably Elmer Bernstein’s The Magnificent Seven. I had assumed Copland had been the only influence behind this kind of music. I didn’t realise that what we now think of as “Western” film music had developed over time, influenced by several composers before Hollywood adopted it as the sound of the cinematic American West.

One of those earlier composers was Ferde Grofé. His Grand Canyon Suite came out in 1931, before Copland produced a similar sound with Prairie Journal in 1937. Though not written for film, its sweeping orchestration would go on to influence Hollywood composers during the 1940s.

While Grofé wasn’t a film composer himself, his orchestrational style gave Hollywood composers new techniques for evoking the American West. This can be heard in Max Steiner’s score for They Died with Their Boots On (1941), which has strong similarities to Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite.

Before the 1940s, the Western genre had no fixed musical identity. Early Westerns relied on film orchestrations that followed general film music conventions, without any attempt to sound specifically “American” or “frontier”.

That changed with composers like Dimitri Tiomkin and Jerome Moross. Tiomkin’s scores for Red River (1948) and High Noon (1952) incorporated folk melodies, hymns, guitar and harmonica. And Moross’s score for The Big Country (1958) had a spacious feel that matched the landscape.

So far, we’ve looked at how this musical style evolved through Grofé and the film composers he influenced. Now we will look at how Copland’s music fits into this evolution.

As mentioned earlier, Copland’s first foray into the kind of sound we now associate with the American West came with Prairie Journal. While this was not written with Western tropes in mind, it used many of the musical elements (open harmonies, folk-like melodies and a sense of spaciousness) that, as we have seen, would later become associated with cinematic depictions of the American West.

The following year, Copland’s ballet, Billy the Kid (1938), marked a turning point. It used cowboy songs, square dance rhythms, and a more minimalist style of orchestration. Although it was written for the stage, it would define how the West sounded in film, especially by the 1960s, when Elmer Bernstein drew heavily on it for his score for The Magnificent Seven.

Interestingly, though Copland had written a score for the 1948 Western, The Red Pony, it had no influence on Western film music in the '40s and '50s.

What emerges, then, from this brief history is not one clear origin point for Western film music, but two separate paths developing alongside each other. One came from Grofé (lush, grand and pictorial), which dominated the Hollywood Westerns of the '40s and '50s. The other came from Copland (minimalist, folk-based and direct), which became predominant in the 1960s and thereafter.

Exposing the Flaws in the Observer’s Salt Path Critique

A recent article in The Observer called ‘The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were spun from lies, deceit and desperation’ has caused some controversy. It presents a damning investigation into Raynor Winn’s bestselling memoir The Salt Path, calling into question its truthfulness and suggesting that Winn and her husband “Moth” built their public image on a foundation of legal trouble, financial misconduct and selective storytelling.

But while the article presents some serious claims backed by multiple sources, its tone, framing and rhetorical style raise their own questions, about journalistic bias, assumption-laden reporting and what truth in memoir really means.

From the headline alone, the tone is set: “spun from lies, deceit and desperation”, is not neutral language. It prepares the reader for scandal before the evidence has even begun. This isn’t unusual in click-bait media, but in investigative reporting, such language can subtly (or not so subtly) shape a reader’s judgement.

Throughout the article, sources who speak critically of Winn (especially Ros Hemmings, a former employer’s widow) are presented as credible and emotionally grounded, while Winn herself is largely silent, represented only by a short legal statement. The article makes no serious attempt to balance its narrative with a fuller version of Winn’s perspective. The effect is to turn one side of a complex story into a presumed truth.

The article depends heavily on Winn’s past legal and financial troubles, most notably an alleged embezzlement case from 2008, settled out of court with a non-disclosure agreement. It’s a serious allegation, but the reporting treats this as a smoking gun that discredits The Salt Path entirely, without acknowledging that memoirs often include omission, thematic shaping and selective focus.

Similarly, the article highlights that Winn and her husband owned property in France at the time of their supposed “homelessness”, yet fails to clarify whether the property was habitable or financially viable. The implication is that they had options they hid from readers. That might be technically true, but without examining the real condition or accessibility of that French property, the reporting veers into insinuation.

An assumption running through the article is that because Winn omitted parts of her past, she must have intended to deceive. But memoir is not autobiography. It’s an inherently selective genre, based around emotional truth and narrative arcs, not exhaustive chronology. Many people who write memoirs, write under pseudonyms, simplify time-lines, or emphasise thematic resonance over literal precision.

The article also assumes that because some readers were moved by the story, they might have acted on it in misguided ways, and that therefore Winn’s alleged misrepresentations could cause “real harm”. That claim is speculative and unsupported by evidence. It functions as a rhetorical device, not a documented consequence.

One of the strongest challenges raised in the article is over Moth’s diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration (CBD). Several neurologists are quoted expressing scepticism about the longevity and reversibility of his symptoms as portrayed in the book. Yet even here, the article admits there is nothing to disprove the diagnosis. It also acknowledges that medical anomalies do happen.

Ultimately, the article tries to draw a hard line between fact and fable in a literary form that has never been that tidy. The claim that The Salt Path misrepresents Winn’s life might have merit, but does that invalidate the emotional and symbolic journey that so many readers found meaningful?

The article suggests that Winn’s supposed deceptions disqualify her from telling a redemptive story. But that’s a moral judgement, not a literary one. The uncomfortable reality is that flawed people can write true things, and inspirational books don’t have to be written by saints.

The article raises serious questions. It uncovers contradictions, omitted facts and unresolved tensions between the private past and the public story. But its tone is adversarial. 

It’s worth noting that the journalist behind the Observer piece, Chloe Hadjimatheou, was previously found by the BBC’s own Executive Complaints Unit to have breached editorial standards in a separate investigation—specifically, a 2021 Radio 4 documentary that included false claims and unsupported insinuations. The BBC later admitted the programme failed to meet its accuracy standards. Given this prior finding, it’s reasonable to approach her current reporting with caution—especially when it relies heavily on implication and selective framing.

This kind of history suggests a need for caution when weighing reporting that relies heavily on implication and selective framing.

Good journalism should probe. But when it loses sight of balance, it can resemble the thing it critiques.

‘How the UK Benefits System Became Punitive’ by Andrew Davies—guest blogger

In 1989, if you were unemployed in the UK, you were entitled to Unemployment Benefit, Income Support and Housing Benefit without being subjected to regular interrogations at the Jobcentre. Today, the welfare state looks very different. Universal Credit claimants are forced into relentless job search routines, and sanctioned often for no reason. This shift didn't happen by accident. It’s the result of a decades-long transformation—one that replaced the old welfare state with a system designed not to support the poor, but to discipline them.

The roots of today’s punitive benefits system lie in the 1980s, when the Thatcher government began framing welfare as a problem rather than a public good. The introduction of the Restart Programme (a predecessor to today's Restart Scheme) in 1986 was a significant moment. Unemployed people were summoned to interviews a couple of times a year to discuss their job prospects. In theory, if you missed one your benefit would be stopped, but this seldom happened.

This marked the beginning of what policy makers called “activation”—the idea that claimants should be prodded or pushed into work. Thatcher’s successors took this even further. Under New Labour in the late 1990s, people had to earn their benefits. The New Deal introduced under Blair linked welfare to mandatory training and job applications. Rights were increasingly tied to responsibilities.

The real transformation came after 2010, when the Coalition and Conservative governments built an entire system on coercion. Universal Credit rolled six benefits into one, but more importantly, it introduced digital control mechanisms that let the Department for Work and Pensions track claimants in real time. Under Universal Credit, you can be sanctioned for:

Missing a job centre appointment

Applying for “too few” jobs

Turning down a zero-hours contract

Not updating your journal promptly enough

A missed click or misunderstood instruction can mean weeks without income. The DWP doesn’t need to prove you’re lazy or fraudulent, they only need to catch you failing to meet their requirements. The result is a system of bureaucratic cruelty, dressed up as “encouraging independence”.

The most glaring contradiction is that all of this has happened during a period when secure, decent jobs have declined. In 1989, the UK still had large-scale manufacturing and public sector jobs. The labour market has since fractured into insecure work, gig economy scraps and stagnant wages.

And yet the benefits regime assumes there’s a job for everyone—as if full employment still exists, and the only obstacle is personal failure. It’s a fantasy. But it’s a convenient one, because it justifies cutting support while blaming the claimant.

Several forces have driven this shift:

Welfare has been reframed as a problem to be fixed rather than a right to be upheld.

Crackdowns on “scroungers” play well in the press and among older, property-owning voters.

Algorithms make it easy to track, control and punish claimants.

After 2010, slashing welfare became a core part of budget-cutting measures

Perhaps most crucially, the idea of a social contract, where the state protects the vulnerable, has eroded. In its place is a doctrine of compliance, where you have to prove your worth every week, or go without.

The UK benefits system has not failed—it has been redesigned to behave exactly as it does: to deter claims, enforce low-paid work and punish those who fall through the cracks. It’s no longer about lifting people out of poverty. It’s about managing poverty through pressure, stigma and surveillance.

And all of this in an era where there are no jobs for a large majority of the working age population.

‘A Critical Look at the Restart Scheme’s Structural Flaws’ by Andrew Davies—guest blogger

The UK government’s Restart Scheme is presented as a lifeline for long-term Universal Credit claimants, an intensive employment support programme designed to help people back into sustainable work. But behind the glossy promises of “tailored help” and “enhanced support” lies a system riddled with structural flaws. For many, Restart doesn’t feel like support, it feels like coercion dressed up as care.

Restart is framed as something that helps you, but for most claimants, it's not optional. Once a person has been on Universal Credit for six months or more, they can be referred without choice or prior agreement. Participation is backed by sanction threats: fail to engage, and you could lose some or all of your benefit.

Even the introductory “warm handover call”—which sounds friendly—is part of a formal compliance chain. It marks the beginning of a process where your cooperation is no longer simply encouraged, but expected and enforceable.

Restart isn’t delivered by Jobcentre Plus. It’s outsourced to private providers: companies that are paid by the government per referral, and can receive further payments when a claimant secures employment. This structure has built-in negative incentives.

Providers are financially rewarded for getting people through the door, not necessarily for giving them useful help. The pressure to meet performance targets can outweigh the quality or relevance of the support offered. And individual needs are often overlooked in favour of tick-box exercises, quick job placements or unsuitable training schemes. In short, profit is prioritised over people.

Claimants are often asked to sign documents like participation agreements and data consent forms. These forms are presented as routine, but they carry real consequences. The participation agreement gives the provider leverage to enforce tasks and activities (including job searches, training courses and workshops). And the data consent forms may give the provider access to share personal details with third-party organisations.

These documents are not always mandatory, but the pressure to sign is immense. Refusal can lead to friction, suspicion or implied threats of being reported as “non-compliant”. Those who exercise their right not to sign certain documents are often met with passive-aggressive resistance. While they retain legal autonomy, they may:

Face hostility or resentment from provider staff

Be treated as “problem claimants”

Have to constantly defend their position and remind staff of their rights

It creates an adversarial atmosphere where the burden is on the claimant to assert their rights repeatedly—a psychologically exhausting task, especially for those with mental health conditions.

Restart is particularly hard on people with anxiety, depression or other vulnerabilities. The scheme’s structure (regular appointments, compliance demands and the threat of sanctions) often worsens mental health rather than improving job prospects. Instead of personalised support, many claimants experience:

Micromanagement of job search activities

Inflexible scheduling

Patronising workshops

And an overwhelming sense of being watched, judged and pushed. Rather than building confidence, Restart can strip away autonomy and dignity.

Once someone is referred to Restart, they are usually on it for up to 12 months. During that time, they are expected to:

Attend multiple appointments

Complete provider-set tasks

Accept job offers, training or interviews—sometimes regardless of suitability

There is no easy way out. Requests to leave the scheme are refused—even when alternatives would be more helpful.

Despite claims of being “personalised”, Restart operates on a one-size-fits-all model. People from all backgrounds, including skilled professionals, carers, those with long-term health conditions and those already engaged in their own job-seeking strategies, are treated identically. Instead of flexibility and genuine help, the scheme offers rigidity and delivers bureaucracy, surveillance and pressure.

The structural flaws in the Restart Scheme aren’t accidental—they’re built into the foundation:

It punishes non-compliance more than it rewards effort

It treats claimants as risks to be managed, not individuals to be supported

It serves the needs of contractors and targets, not the people it claims to help

Any real solution would require more than tweaks. It would need a complete rethinking of what support for unemployed people should look like: with respect, choice and real empowerment at its heart.

People on Universal Credit deserve genuine support, not mandated compliance under threat. The Restart Scheme may work for a few, but for many, it is a source of unnecessary stress, surveillance and stigma. Until the system stops prioritising targets and payments over people, schemes like Restart will continue to fail those they claim to serve.

The Lost World Above the Liverpool Adelphi Hotel

I have lived in Liverpool all my life, and The Adelphi Hotel was once one of the city's crowning glories. I remember having tea there with my sister when we were kids, as a treat from my mum. I was awestruck by the glittering chandeliers and the ornate ceilings. It was like stepping into another world.

Around 15 years ago, I read a library book written by a former staff member of the Adelphi (I’ve forgotten the title and the author’s name). In the book, she reminisced about her time working there in the 1960s. What struck me most wasn’t just her stories of guests or the routines of hotel life, but her description of an entire hidden world above the hotel: the top floor, which comprised of staff live-in apartments. Not only that, but there was also a refectory, a TV room, a laundry and a shared lounge. Staff were also given perks like discounted train fares, due to the Adelphi being owned at the time by British Railways, which operated a number of railway hotels across the country.

When I read about all this, I was amazed, not just at the physical scale of the arrangement, but at the attitude behind it. It was a different way of treating and caring for staff: one that acknowledged their worth, not just as cheap labour (as might be the case these days), but as human beings who deserved dignity, stability and a sense of belonging. Sadly, that world is gone forever. Today, the top floor is, I understand, just storage space.

The Adelphi was not the only hotel that had staff live-in apartments. This was true of most hotels worldwide. Having staff living in hotels was more than merely being the decent thing to do, it was also the foundation of impeccable service. Staff could respond instantly to guests’ needs, ensuring that hotels maintained a high level of customer care.

Removing staff live-in apartments has forced staff into daily commuting, thus increasing stress, fatigue, staff dissatisfaction and staff turnover. 

Reinvesting in staff well-being, including reintroducing staff live-in apartments where possible (I appreciate that only the large hotels could do this), would restore some of the decency and efficiency lost in the name of false economy. Hospitality is a human business—and its foundation depends on people who feel valued, and genuinely part of the workplace they serve.

The Beautiful Contradiction at the Heart of Stevie Wonder’s Love Song

I only recently became aware of Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)’. It is a song with one of the most beautiful melodies I have ever heard, yet its lyrics, while emotionally rich, contain contradictions.

The singer’s refrain, “I believe when I fall in love with you it will be forever”, sounds like a vow from someone ready to embrace lasting love. But looked at closer, it becomes a paradox. How can someone pledge eternal devotion to a person they have not even fallen in love with yet? This assumes not only that love will happen, but that it will last forever. It is a romantic notion, certainly, but it goes beyond what is emotionally and logically plausible.

And far from being a stranger to heartache, the singer has previously known love and its painful aftermath, as seen in phrases in verse one such as "shattered dreams" and "worthless years". Having experienced such devastation from love before, what makes them certain that things will somehow be different next time?

There is also the contrast between belief and feeling. “I believe” implies conviction, but conviction alone does not generate love. Falling in love is not a choice—it happens us. It is not summoned by belief or commanded into permanence by force of will. So to promise love forever in the absence of that love is meaningless.

But perhaps I am being too pedantic, and that the contradictions are not flaws at all, but part of what gives the song its emotional power. Maybe they reflect the messy, often contradictory nature of loving again after loss: of someone trying to reconcile past pain with the determination to believe in love despite everything. And maybe that is what gives the song its power. Not the certainty, but the hope.

The Genius of ‘Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson’ by Aaron Copland

Emily Dickinson’s poetry can often seem reserved and difficult to access when just read on the page. Her writing is usually short and indirect, and sometimes seems emotionally distant. But if we look more closely, there is much going on beneath the surface. Her poems deal with major themes like nature, grief, love, death and the inner life: all explored in a very personal and introspective way.

The composer, Aaron Copland, inspired by Dickinson's poetry, created a musical setting for twelve of her poems. By doing this, he brought out the emotional intensity that might not always be obvious in the written text. Instead of making the poems more dramatic or adding lots of flourishes, He used subtle musical choices to highlight what was already there. His settings seem to “breathe” life into the words, revealing the feelings hidden within them. The result is a powerful balance between simplicity and deep emotion, where Dickinson’s careful language interacts with his expressive music.

The collection, called Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson does not follow a narrative, but the order of the pieces, nevertheless, creates a sense of emotional movement. It begins with awe at the beauty in nature, then moves into more painful subjects like loss, and ends with a quiet reflection on death. Copland never forces meaning onto the poems, instead, his music surrounds the text gently, helping the listener to hear Dickinson’s voice more clearly.

Rather than just being musical accompaniments, his settings feel like they are thinking and feeling alongside the poems, and so amplify the feeling in Dickinson’s work. He captures her mix of clarity and mystery, belief and doubt, and even the emotional tension that sometimes is just below the surface. Together, the poems and the music create something that is both intimate and powerful.

Here are a few selections from the work, with brief commentary:

‘Nature, the gentlest mother’

This opening piece sets a gentle and peaceful mood. Copland’s music helps bring out the softer, more nurturing side of Dickinson’s poem. The musical accompaniment flows calmly, and the vocal line is smooth and relaxed. This matches the poem’s idea of nature as patient and kind, even to those who do not seem to deserve it. There’s also a quiet sense of reverence, as if the music is skirting around something sacred. At the same time, the music does not ignore the slight irony in the poem: it leaves room for the listener to notice that this version of nature might be more complicated than it first appears.

‘Why do they shut me out of Heaven?’

This piece is emotional and urgent. Copland uses sudden changes in rhythm and dynamics to show the speaker’s frustration and confusion. The question in the title seems like a real cry, not just a rhetorical question. The line ‘Did I sing too loud?’ becomes an intense moment in the music, where the speaker seems to be reduced to a state of anguished vulnerability. This turns the poem from something that might seem distant or sardonic into something raw and personal. Copland makes the pain and longing in the poem feel very real.

‘Heart, we will forget him!’

This is probably the most emotional piece in the work. The poem is about trying to forget someone you loved, and Copland captures that with music that is slow, quiet and full of pauses. The voice sounds hesitant, as if the speaker is not sure she can really achieve what she is aiming at: to forget her lover. The music also seems to hold back, which adds to the feeling of sadness and inner conflict. There is a sense that though the speaker is declaring that she will forget her lover, the music suggests that forgetting is going to be much harder than she is willing to admit.

‘I felt a funeral in my brain’

This piece is unsettling and intense. The music uses sounds that mimic bells or footsteps, and the rhythms feel unstable, which matches the poem’s description of mental anguish. As the poem continues, the music becomes stranger and more disjointed, showing how the speaker is losing touch with reality. On the page, this poem can feel quite abstract or abstruse, but Copland’s music makes the experience physical and immediate. It feels like we are inside the speaker’s mind as she unravels.

‘Because I could not stop for Death’

The final piece in the work is calm and slow, with a peaceful mood. Copland does not make the idea of death frightening, but presents it as something gentle and inevitable. The steady pace of the music gives the feeling of a slow journey, which fits the poem’s description of being carried by Death in a carriage. The vocal line does not rush, and the music is soft and even. This creates a mood of acceptance rather than fear. The ending feels like a quiet conclusion, not a dramatic finish, which works well for the reflective tone of the poem.

What makes Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson so effective is that Copland does not try to make the poems overly dramatic or emotional. Instead of adding lavish musical gestures, he keeps everything simple and understated: just like Dickinson’s writing, which often says a lot with very few words. His music does not take over the poems, but gently brings out the feelings already inside them. Rather than changing Dickinson’s work, Copland seems to complete it.

An Analysis of Internal Contradictions in The Beach Boys’ ‘God Only Knows’

I was saddened to hear of the recent passing of Brian Wilson, a towering figure in pop music whose influence extends far beyond his renowned work in arrangements, harmonies and production. While not all of his lyrics were celebrated as literary masterpieces, many were marked by an honesty and heartfelt sincerity.

One of my favourite songs of his is ‘God Only Knows’, and on hearing the news of his death, I listened to it again and, for the first time, noticed a subtle yet significant contradiction in its opening verse—an observation that prompted a deeper look into the song’s lyrical complexity.

‘God Only Knows’ is widely regarded as one of the most enduring love songs in popular music. Its lyrical and musical composition has been extensively praised, yet a closer examination of the lyrics reveals subtle internal contradictions that enrich the emotional complexity of the song. These contradictions, far from detracting from the song’s impact, contribute to a nuanced exploration of love’s multifarious nature.

The song opens with a notably paradoxical statement: “I may not always love you”. This admission of potential faltering introduces an element of vulnerability that is uncommon in traditional love songs, which often prioritise unwavering devotion from the outset. However, this initial doubt is almost immediately countered by the lines: “But long as there are stars above you / You never need to doubt it / I’ll make you so sure about it”. This rapid transition from doubt to certainty creates an abrupt juxtaposition, which can be interpreted in multiple ways. It might reflect an honest acknowledgement of love’s fragility while simultaneously offering reassurance. Alternatively, the swift negation of the initial doubt could be seen as diminishing the emotional weight of vulnerability, presenting it as a mere rhetorical device rather than a genuine conflict.

This opening tension between uncertainty and assurance sets the tone for the song’s subsequent exploration of emotional dependence. The singer’s hypothetical contemplation of abandonment (“If you should ever leave me / Well, life would still go on, believe me”) introduces a pragmatic stance, recognising the inevitability of life’s continuation despite personal loss. Yet, this rational acceptance is immediately contradicted by the assertion: “The world could show nothing to me / So what good would living do me?” This contradiction mirrors the complex interplay between reason and emotion that characterises human experience. While intellectually acknowledging the persistence of life, the singer simultaneously conveys the existential emptiness wrought by separation from the beloved.

The refrain “God only knows what I’d be without you” functions as a thematic anchor, repeated throughout the song to underscore the profound dependence the singer places upon the loved one. The phrase’s ambiguity (avoiding specification of the singer’s state in the absence of the beloved) invites multiple interpretations, encompassing notions of loss, disorientation or incompleteness. This repetition serves both to emphasise devotion and to reflect the unresolved uncertainty that accompanies deep emotional attachment.

These internal contradictions, rather than detracting from the song’s coherence, serve to articulate the inherent ambivalence and complexity of love. Love is neither monolithic nor static; it encompasses doubt and certainty, hope and despair, rationality and emotionality. The song’s lyrical tensions thus mirror the lived experience of love’s contradictions, lending ‘God Only Knows’ its enduring resonance and emotional authenticity.

The internal contradictions present within ‘God Only Knows’ contribute significantly to its artistic depth. The juxtaposition of doubt and affirmation, pragmatic acceptance and emotional devastation, encapsulates the multifarious nature of human love. This nuanced portrayal transcends simplistic romantic idealisation, offering instead a rich, honest and timeless reflection on love’s profound complexities.

I can’t conclude without mentioning the excellent cover version of the song by Andy Williams, recorded in 1967. This rendition eschews the cheerful and chirpy arrangements of the original Beach Boys recording, replacing them with a concerto-like orchestral arrangement that is more reflective and mournful in mood—qualities that align well with the gravitas of the lyrics. The result is almost hymn-like in its solemnity and reverence.

Why Bad Poems Can Become Great

Having spent over 25 years studying, reading and reviewing poetry, I’ve come to the possibly heretical conclusion that it’s often the reviewer, not the poet, who creates the poem. That is, what we think of as a “great” poem (timeless, resonant, artful) is very often not born great. It’s made great. Not by revision, or hidden “genius”, but by the critic, the reader and the commentator, who view it through the right lens at the right time. Put bluntly: a poem is only as good as the reading it receives.

We tend to regard poems as self-contained artefacts, either well-made or not. But poems are not static artefacts. They are more like catalysts: incomplete until acted upon by a mind. And the mind that matters most, is often not the one that wrote the poem but the one that explains it.

Critics don’t merely assess poems, they construct the scaffolding through which we view them. They decide which ambiguities are “interesting”, which facets are “meaningful” and which prosaic lines are secretly fascinating. And over time, their interpretations become part of the poem’s DNA. The original poet might not acknowledge this, but that doesn’t matter. The poem’s real life begins after it has been written.

Many of the so-called classics of poetry began as publishing failures. Some were dismissed entirely, and others were ignored until a prescient critic found something interesting to say about them. Then all of a sudden, that poetry is rebranded as a work of misunderstood genius. This is because the reviewer “created” a poem where there was once only a text.

In this way, indifferent poems become critically significant simply because a respected reviewer read them in a particular way. And did so with enough style, intellect and confidence that others followed suit. This doesn’t mean the poem itself is irrelevant, but rather that its fate is collaborative. Greatness isn’t built into the lines, but built into the interpretation of them.

Some poems are lucky and find the right interpreter early, while others lie dormant for decades until cultural conditions ripen, and the right critic comes along.

We tend to think of criticism as a secondary act: reactive, not creative. But that is simply not the case. The best reviewers shape the work they comment on. They don’t just describe the poem, they also draw its meaning out of potential and into actuality.

Reviews don’t just evaluate a poem but participate in its creation. They give it a frame, a shape, that makes it recognisable as “art”.

Toward a Poetics of Complexity and Ambiguity

Empiricism’s influence on poetry has long shaped the cultural expectation that language can function transparently—that it may render perception faithfully, clarify meaning and secure subjectivity in relation to the world. But as we have seen, this aesthetic ideal, inherited from Enlightenment thought and Romantic practice alike, carries with it a set of epistemological assumptions that ultimately impoverish the poetic field. The empiricist aesthetic reduces poetry to a vehicle for the reproduction of sensory impressions or emotional states, failing to account for the instability of perception, the multiplicity of meanings and the deeply mediated nature of experience.

To move beyond empiricism is not to reject perception, language or representation outright, but to relinquish the illusion of their transparency. It is to recognise that perception is always already structured by language, culture and history—that what we “see” is never simply given, but formed within systems of mediation that resist finality. A poetics of complexity acknowledges that experience cannot be neatly captured in the image or the anecdote; it must be approached obliquely, through fragmentation, contradiction and the open-ended play of language.

Ambiguity, far from being a failure of communication, becomes central to this poetics. It signals the richness of language’s capacity to gesture in multiple directions at once, to evoke rather than denote, to suggest what cannot be pinned down. Whereas empiricism demands closure—knowledge as accumulation, poetry as artefact—a poetics of ambiguity privileges the provisional, the contingent, the enigmatic. It challenges the reader not to extract a meaning, but to dwell in interpretive indeterminacy, where meaning arises from relation, not resolution.

This shift is not merely formal. It is, fundamentally, a shift in epistemology. A poetics of complexity and ambiguity resists the totalising impulse that underlies empirical aesthetics—the idea that the world can be fully described, categorised or known. It instead aligns itself with poststructuralist thought, phenomenology and process philosophy, all of which stress the multiplicity of realities and the impossibility of exhaustive representation. The poetic subject, under this model, is not a stable perceiver but a shifting node within a network of perceptions, voices and influences.

Numerous poetic traditions and movements have enacted a turn away from empiricism, especially within the late Modernist and postmodern avant-gardes. Language poetry, Black Mountain poetics and elements of the New York School have been particularly invested in foregrounding the constructedness of meaning, rejecting lyric transparency and emphasising the politics and performativity of language. These poets often disrupt syntax, refuse linear narrative and engage in metapoetic reflection, insisting that poetry cannot mirror the world but only participate in its construction.

However, for all their formal innovation and theoretical sophistication, these traditions often exhibit a marked reticence toward emotional resonance. In their drive to escape the perceived naïveté of Romantic expressivism or mainstream sentimentality, such poetics frequently bypass the affective dimensions of experience—especially those surrounding love, loss and vulnerability. What they gain in ambiguity and multivocality, they frequently sacrifice in emotional immediacy.

This aesthetic choice, rooted in poststructuralist and anti-essentialist theory, tends to view emotion—particularly personal emotion—as ideologically suspect or intellectually regressive. As a result, the affective charge that animates the work of poets like William Blake and Emily Dickinson is often absent, leaving a poetics that, while complex and linguistically adventurous, can feel emotionally evacuated. For a truly non-empirical poetics to flourish, it must re-integrate ambiguity with affect, and complexity with emotional depth—not as confession, but as a mode of engaging the richness of human interiority beyond empiricist reduction.

However, it is important to distinguish between complexity that is merely stylistic and complexity that is epistemologically engaged. A poetics of complexity does not simply pile ambiguity upon ambiguity; it derives its force from a sustained inquiry into the limits of representation itself. It is not aesthetic difficulty for its own sake, but a mode of critique—of empiricism, of linear logic, of monolithic truth-claims.

Such a poetics also opens space for greater ethical and political depth. By refusing to flatten experience into consumable perceptions or emotional recognitions, it resists the commodification of the lyric self and the reduction of identity to legible, empirical traits. It is a space in which otherness can remain other, not merely incorporated into the dominant epistemic frame. The poem becomes not a mirror but a meeting ground—a site where selves, histories and languages encounter one another without guarantee of understanding.

In this way, the movement beyond empiricism is not a turning away from reality, but a turning more deeply into it—a recognition that reality, like language is layered, unstable and intersubjective. A poetics of complexity and ambiguity invites us to imagine perception not as reception but as co-creation, where poet and reader alike participate in shaping what is seen, what is known, and what is possible.

To write poetry under this paradigm is to take up the task not of description but of encounter. It is to confront the world not as object but as event. And it is, finally, to free poetry from the burdens of empirical fidelity and to return it to its most radical potential: to think differently, to perceive differently and to reimagine what it means to speak and be spoken.

Empiricism's Poetic Legacy

The legacy of empiricism extends far beyond the philosophical and scientific spheres, permeating deeply into the aesthetic sensibilities of the modern mind. And the empiricist aesthetic has become embedded in the modern poetic consciousness, shaping not only the content but the very form and function of poetry in contemporary contexts.

This aesthetic is rooted in the epistemological assumptions of British empiricism, which elevated experience and observation as the foundation for knowledge. Philosophers such as Locke and Hume emphasised the mind’s tabula rasa and the role of sense impressions in constructing understanding. Romantic poets, consciously or unconsciously, inherited this framework, adapting it to poetry by equating the authenticity of poetic subjectivity with the immediacy of sensory perception.

The persistence of this empiricist aesthetic in modern poetry is significant. Despite profound cultural and theoretical shifts—including the rise of postmodernism, psychoanalysis and deconstruction—the dominant poetic mode often remains tethered to the idea that poetry’s power lies in its capacity to capture and represent perceptual reality. This is evident in the enduring preference for vivid imagery, narrative clarity and emotive accessibility in much contemporary work, particularly within mainstream poetry circles and prestigious publishing houses.

Moreover, the empiricist legacy shapes the modern mind’s expectations of poetry itself. Readers are conditioned to seek coherence, clarity and direct emotional engagement, reinforcing the demand for poems that confirm rather than disrupt empirical modes of knowing. This expectation constrains poetic innovation, limiting the exploration of language’s materiality, ambiguity and its capacity to unsettle or decentre subjectivity.

However, this legacy is not without contestation. Various avant-garde, experimental and conceptual poetic practices have emerged to challenge the transparency and immediacy celebrated by the empiricist aesthetic. These practices foreground language’s instability, emphasise process over product and question the reliability of perception itself. Yet, they often remain marginalised relative to the dominant empiricist poetics that shape mainstream cultural consumption.

In addition, the empiricist poetic legacy intersects with broader socio-cultural power structures. The privileging of clear, accessible language and direct representation aligns with institutional preferences for readability and marketability, reinforcing the status quo. This alignment perpetuates a poetic culture that values empirical clarity over complexity, conformity over disruption.

Recognising this inheritance is important for any project that seeks to rethink the relationship between poetry, perception and knowledge in a post-empirical age.

Modernism’s Hidden Debt to Romanticism

Modernism is frequently celebrated as a radical rupture with the past—a movement defined by its break with tradition, its aesthetic experimentation and its disdain for the sentimentality and perceived naivety of Romanticism. Figures like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis positioned their work in conscious opposition to what they regarded as Romantic excess: its cult of the self, its mystical intuitions and its reverence for nature. Modernism, we are told, was urban, ironic, cerebral—a turning away from the Romantic imagination and toward a poetics grounded in discipline, impersonality and fragmentation.

Yet beneath this rhetoric of rupture lies a deeper continuity. Modernism, for all its self-conscious innovation, carries forward key epistemological and aesthetic commitments inherited from Romanticism. Its most radical gestures often reproduce, in altered form, the very empiricist and subjectivist assumptions it claims to reject. The Modernist revolt against Romanticism, far from a clean break, reveals a hidden debt—a continuation of the same unresolved tension between perception, language and the self that haunted Romantic poetics.

One of the clearest continuities lies in the celebration of perception as a privileged ground of poetic knowledge. Like their Romantic predecessors, many Modernist poets insist on the immediacy of the moment, the epiphany, the fragment of perception elevated to aesthetic significance. Ezra Pound’s dictum to “make it new” resonates with Wordsworth’s emphasis on “the freshness of sensation”. The Imagist focus on the “direct treatment of the thing” may discard Romantic ornament, but it retains the empiricist assumption that perception can be rendered directly and accurately through poetic language.

T.S. Eliot’s concept of the “objective correlative” also continues the Romantic pursuit of a disciplined correspondence between inner feeling and external phenomena. While Eliot sought to suppress overt subjectivity in favour of a more formal, impersonal art, his technique still relies on the capacity of the poet to find precise external correlates for inner states—a process that assumes a stable, representable relationship between mind and world. This is not a rejection of Romantic epistemology but a refinement of its empirical aesthetic within a more modernist idiom.

Moreover, Modernism inherits from Romanticism a belief in the special status of the poet as a figure of heightened perceptual awareness. Even as Eliot or Stevens reject the Romantic ego, they cultivate a poetics in which the artist’s consciousness remains central—a consciousness that filters, fragments and reorders the world. This reasserts the Romantic investment in the poet as an epistemic agent, uniquely attuned to the conditions of perception and the workings of reality.

The very fragmentation and difficulty that define Modernist forms are, paradoxically, a continuation of Romanticism’s crisis of representation. The shattered syntax and disjointed images of Eliot’s The Waste Land or Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons do not escape the Romantic problematic; they deepen it. They reveal the instability of language, the insufficiency of perception and the opacity of the self—issues already prefigured in the Romantic confrontation with the limits of empirical knowledge. Where Wordsworth dramatised the failure of sense to grasp the infinite, Eliot dramatises the failure of culture, myth and memory to restore coherence—but the underlying structure of crisis is the same.

This continuity is perhaps most evident in the persistent presence of nature, memory and emotional intensity in even the most experimental of Modernist texts. Wallace Stevens’ icy epistemological musings are never far from Romantic reverie; even Gertrude Stein, in her radical reconception of syntax, often returns to themes of presence, immediacy and consciousness—quintessentially Romantic concerns refracted through a new linguistic prism.

The hidden debt of Modernism to Romanticism, then, is not merely a matter of shared themes or stylistic echoes. It is a deeper epistemic inheritance, a shared engagement with the limits of empiricism, the problems of representation and the centrality of perception to poetic meaning. Modernism, like Romanticism, wrestles with the fundamental questions: What can be known? How is it known? And what role does language play in mediating experience?

To expose this debt is not to diminish Modernism’s innovations, but to reframe them. It invites a more critical understanding of the movement’s claims to originality and rupture, and a deeper awareness of the continuity of poetic inquiry across historical periods. Far from superseding Romanticism, Modernism extends its central concerns, often in more anxious, ironic or opaque forms. The empiricist aesthetic, the poetic self as observer and the struggle with language’s capacity to capture experience—all remain intact beneath the avant-garde veneer.

In revealing these hidden continuities, we better understand not only the persistence of Romantic structures in the modern mind, but also the limits of poetic modernity itself. The refusal to reckon fully with its Romantic inheritance leaves Modernism haunted by the very poetics it seeks to transcend—ensuring that the crisis of perception, representation and subjectivity remains unresolved, carried forward into our own contemporary poetic moment.

The Empirical Illusion of Romantic Subjectivity

Romanticism is often celebrated as the epoch that privileged subjectivity, imagination and emotion against the cold rationalism of the Enlightenment and the rising scientific worldview. Its poets are credited with inaugurating a new poetic subjectivity that privileges interiority, spontaneity and a deep attunement to the self’s feelings and intuitions. However, such subjectivity is, paradoxically, deeply entangled with and even reinforces the modern scientific gaze through its empiricist foundations. The so-called Romantic subject is not a radical break from empiricism but a complex reenactment of empirical assumptions about perception and knowledge, creating what can be described as an empirical illusion of subjectivity.

At the core of this illusion is the Romantic poet’s claim to authentic, direct experience grounded in sensory perception. The Romantic subject perceives the natural world with immediacy and intensity, privileging sense data as the foundation for poetic truth. This mode of perception situates the subject as an observer, a perceiver whose consciousness functions much like a scientific instrument—receiving, registering and transmitting sensory information. The poetic self is cast as an empirical subject who objectively witnesses phenomena and translates them into language, thus mirroring the empirical method central to modern science.

Yet this mirroring is deceptive. Romantic subjectivity masks the active, interpretive processes inherent in perception and linguistic representation. By presenting perception as immediate and transparent, Romantic poetry naturalises the epistemic stance of detached observation, obscuring the mediation performed by the mind and language. The subject’s “feelings” and “intuitions” are themselves shaped by cultural, linguistic and conceptual frameworks, yet these frameworks are rendered invisible by the rhetoric of authentic experience.

The Romantic poetic subject becomes complicit in the very project it seems to resist, reaffirming the authority of observation, objectivity and the categorisation of experience. In doing so, Romantic poetry contributes to the modern epistemological regime that privileges empirical evidence and sensory data as the primary path to knowledge.

Moreover, this alignment is evident in the ways Romantic poets often appropriate scientific imagery and discourse, invoking optics, optics metaphors and natural philosophy to legitimise their poetic claims. The natural world is depicted as a arena to be observed, measured and known through the senses, echoing the practices of empirical science. The Romantic poet’s gaze is thus an extension of the scientific gaze, refracted through the lens of personal sensibility but retaining its foundational assumptions.

This empirical illusion shapes Romantic poetic form and style. The preference for clear imagery, precise description and vivid sensory detail reflects the epistemic commitments to empirical observation. The very aesthetic of transparency—where language aims to be a clear window onto the world—derives from this empiricist subjectivity. Such poetics values representation over disruption, coherence over ambiguity, reinforcing the stability of the empirical worldview.

The consequences of this empirical illusion extend beyond Romanticism, seeping into the modern and contemporary poetic tradition. The scientific gaze, mediated through the empiricist subject, continues to dominate poetic perception and expression. Even critiques of Romanticism often remain trapped within its empirical framework, unwittingly perpetuating the illusion that poetry’s relationship to reality is one of transparent mediation.

Recognising this allows for a more critical engagement with Romantic poetics and sets the stage for exploring alternative modes of perception and poetic practice that disrupt the empirical illusion.

Coleridge and the Failure of Empirical Compromise

If William Wordsworth constructed a poetics of perception, then Samuel Taylor Coleridge struggled—heroically, inconsistently and ultimately inconclusively—to dismantle it. His poetic philosophy is a record of resistance: to the tyranny of the senses, to the passivity of observation, to the narrowing of language into the role of mirror. Where Wordsworth entrenched empiricism, Coleridge exposed its contradictions. Yet Coleridge’s tragedy, and perhaps his failure, is that his critique never fully displaced the epistemological foundations he sought to challenge. He could not, or would not, break with the empirical frame altogether.

Coleridge is often invoked as the counterpoint to Wordsworth’s naturalism: the mystic to the realist, the thinker to the feeler. But this binary oversimplifies. Coleridge was not merely a dreamer in contrast to Wordsworth’s walker. He was, in many respects, more analytically rigorous, more philosophically engaged and more alert to the perils of unexamined assumptions. Where Wordsworth accepted sensory perception as the ground of poetic truth, Coleridge questioned what it meant to perceive at all. He suspected—rightly—that empiricism smuggled in a hidden metaphysics of passivity, and that to base poetry on sensation was to surrender agency at the outset.

And yet, despite this insight, Coleridge never fully escaped the gravitational pull of empiricism. His early writings are steeped in associationist psychology. He read Hartley with enthusiasm. His attempts to reconcile sensation and imagination are burdened by the very philosophical categories he sought to transcend. In Biographia Literaria, he attempts a distinction between fancy and imagination, elevating the latter as a synthetic, unifying power capable of transforming perception into insight. But even this formulation grants too much to perception itself. It begins with the given world and merely reshapes it. Language remains reactive rather than creative.

His greatest poems, however, betray a different impulse. In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, ‘Kubla Khan’ and Christabel, Coleridge does not describe the world—he disorients it. These poems do not depict reality; they warp it. Time becomes unstable, space collapses, language becomes incantatory rather than expository. There is no stable subject observing a stable world. Instead, we find spectral presences, hallucinations, reversals of causality. This is not the language of sense-data—it is the language of vision, of the uncanny, of what cannot be seen but must be imagined.

And yet, Coleridge’s critical writings seek to rationalise this irrationality. He defends imagination but returns again and again to empirical language: “facts”, “experience”, “truth”. It is as though he feared the very implications of his own poetic practice. His commitment to German Idealism was never fully integrated into his poetics; it hovered above them like an aspiration never realised.

This internal contradiction has had consequences. Coleridge’s legacy has too often been used to reinforce, rather than undermine, the empirical model of poetic thought. His formulations about imagination are quoted in support of a poetics that still treats perception as primary. Even his boldest theoretical interventions are neutralised by their anchoring in epistemological “balance”—a word he uses frequently, and fatally. The imagination becomes not a radical force but a mediating one. It is a supplement to perception, not a replacement for it.

There is, then, a kind of bad faith in Coleridge’s philosophical project. He gestures toward the liberatory potential of the imagination, but retreats into empiricism when the stakes become too high. His inability—or unwillingness—to abandon the language of perception leaves him caught in a poetics of compromise. It is a failure not of intellect, but of resolve.

Nevertheless, Coleridge remains essential—not because he resolved the crisis of empiricism, but because he revealed it. In recognising that perception alone cannot ground poetry, that language is not a neutral medium but a force of distortion and creation, he opened a space that later poets would either occupy or evade. His failure is instructive, because it makes clear what is required: not a synthesis of observation and imagination, but a break. Not a reconciliation with empiricism, but a severance from its dominion over the poetic act.

The 1980s: The Last Great Cultural Decade

I was in my twenties during the 1980s and didn't realise just how extraordinary a decade it was. Looking back now, I feel that decade was the last time culture felt unified, daring and truly alive. People still go on about the 1960s, and rightly so. But if any decade since came close to matching its cultural impact, it was the 1980s. For me, no other decade has come close.

The decade saw the advent of MTV, which gave visual representation to pop songs, turning them into short films, often to a high artistic standard, that everyone watched. It seemed as if each new hit by artists like Madonna or Michael Jackson was a newsworthy event, mentioned on TV and radio news.

There was a shared experience back then. Songs were on the radio, in music videos and in films, like “Take My Breath Away” from Top Gun and “What a Feeling” from Flashdance. These weren’t just hits, they were events. Music, film and fashion moved together, like one element. The concept of “niche markets” had yet to be invented or become a blight on cultural experience.

The films of the 1980s had a kind of magic. They entertained without cynicism. Back to the Future, The Breakfast Club, Ghostbusters, were optimistic, stylish and heart-warming. There was still wonder in films then. Few were franchises, and few depended on comic book heroes, like 98% of films now.

The “flashy” clothes people wore (mostly in primary colours) and the "loud" hairstyles might look ridiculous now, but there was confidence and rebellion in them. You could tell someone’s “group” by their look: punks, mods, metalheads, new romantics, goths, rappers. Fashion wasn’t minimalist. It was expressive. People dressed like they meant it. Irony had no place in fashion back then.

The decades that followed resulted in a splintered culture. Then the internet arrived and took away the shared experience we all had. Everyone got their own niche, their own algorithm, their own curated feed.

Today, a song goes viral for 15 seconds. A film goes to streaming shortly after its release and disappears within a week. Music, fashion and film don’t “talk to each other” the way they used to.

In the 1980s, it all felt connected. A song could define a summer. An item of fashion could start a craze. A film could make you want to carry on living. There was a collective rhythm and cultural heartbeat you could feel.

I didn’t know I was living in the last great cultural decade. None of us did at the time. But when I look back now, from the blandness of today’s culture, I see a decade that was vibrant, confident and full of creative cohesion. I miss it greatly. Not just for what it was, but for the kind of culture it made possible. The kind we will probably never see again, as long as the internet exists.

The American Dream Myth

Donald Trump goes on a lot about the American Dream as if it was more than "just a dream". The idea behind the American Dream is that with enough hard work and ambition, anyone, regardless of their background, can achieve success and prosperity. It’s an idea that has been indoctrinated for generations into Americans, from the cradle to the grave

But in reality, it is, indeed, just a dream: one that simplifies the complexities of social mobility, while ignoring systemic inequalities ingrained in American society. For many, this idea has become a narrative that encourages people to blame themselves for their failures, rather than the real forces that shape opportunity.

The actual phrase "American Dream" was first coined in 1931 by James Truslow Adams in The Epic of America. He defined it as: ‘Life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.’ In some ways, the Dream was a reality for a few people, but for the majority it was not.

The Dream is based on the myth of equal opportunity: that hard work equals success. But the reality is far more complicated. Social mobility in America has become increasingly restricted, particularly for those in the lower socioeconomic strata, who face systemic barriers preventing them from achieving their dreams.

There is also the growing wealth inequality in America. The richest 1% of Americans now have more wealth than the bottom 90% combined. The gap between the rich and poor has widened, making it difficult for those born into poverty to escape. This means that social mobility in America is now lower than in many other industrialised countries

This wealth gap has created a system where, for many, the Dream is very much a dream. People with financial resources have access to better education, healthcare and job opportunities, while those without wealth have no access to them. This inheritance of privilege, makes it difficult for those born into poverty to succeed, regardless of their ”work ethic”.

The education system in America is often regarded as “the great equaliser”, and a way for people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Yet, the reality is that education is heavily stratified by socioeconomic status. Public schools in wealthier areas have access to better resources and more experienced teachers than those in less wealthier areas.

And the astronomical cost of higher education has made it difficult for students from lower-income families to access university. Students from wealthy families are more likely to go to prestigious institutions, while those from disadvantaged ones face high student loan debt or don’t go to university at all. This educational disparity limits opportunities for upward mobility.

There has also been a decline in organised labour unions and job security. For most of the 20th century, unions played a crucial role in improving working conditions, wages and benefits for American workers. However, union membership has declined, resulting in low wages for many workers and the removal of workplace benefits.

The rise of gig economy jobs, with its short-term contracts and precarious employment philosophy, has also contributed to the decline in job security, resulting in many workers being trapped in low-wage, unstable jobs, unable to escape the cycle of poverty, despite their best efforts to.

Yet, despite the evidence to the contrary, the Dream remains a powerful cultural ideology. This is because the idea that anyone can achieve success through hard work creates a sense of meritocracy, where people believe that success and failure are based on individual effort rather than external factors. This makes it easier for those who succeed to believe that they earned their success, and that those who fail simply didn’t work hard enough. It also allows those at the top to justify inequality, as it is framed as the result of individual choice and effort, rather than systemic barriers.

Confronting the truth about how systemic inequalities limit access to opportunities can be uncomfortable, particularly for those who benefit from the existing system. Acknowledging these barriers would require a radical shift in how society views wealth and power, and many are reluctant to acknowledge these uncomfortable truths. It’s easier to hold on to the comforting myth of the Dream than to confront the reality of how deeply entrenched inequality is in American society.

So, the American Dream is no longer an achievable ideal for many, if it ever truly was. The idea that anyone can make it if they just work hard enough is a myth that ignores the real forces at play. True social mobility requires dismantling the barriers that perpetuate inequality and creating opportunities for everyone, regardless of their background, to reach their full potential. Only then can we begin to move beyond the myth of the American Dream and work towards a society where success is not just for the privileged few, but for everyone.

Rethinking Gender Beyond Biology

When it comes to understanding gender, we are often told to start with biology. Chromosomes, hormones and anatomy form the standard framework for defining what it means to be male or female. But I've come to believe that this framework—while useful in certain contexts—is fundamentally flawed when it comes to understanding gender identity.

To me, biological sex is like a bottle. It has a shape, a colour, a material. But what really matters is what’s inside. The contents. The substance. In this analogy, the bottle represents the body and the contents—milk, juice, water—represent gender identity. What makes a person a man, a woman, or nonbinary is not the bottle they were born in, but what they carry within them.

This isn’t just a poetic metaphor. It’s also aligned with a growing body of neuroscience that suggests gender identity might have roots in brain structure—material, biological differences in the brain that are independent of reproductive anatomy. Some trans individuals have brain patterns that more closely resemble those of their identified gender rather than their assigned sex at birth. These differences aren’t just theoretical—they show up in scans, in developmental pathways and in lived experience.

Critics often point to chromosomes or genitalia as the final word on gender. But if we accept that the brain is the seat of the self—of thought, feeling, identity—then surely it should be given greater weight than the body parts we can see. After all, we don’t define a person’s personality, intelligence or emotional world by the shape of their feet or the number of ribs they have. Why should gender be any different?

I believe gender types are innate. Not learned, not conditioned, not a result of cultural programming—but built in, hardwired, perhaps even before birth. That’s why attempts to “correct” gender identity through social pressure or behavioral therapy don’t work. You can’t pour milk into a bottle of juice and expect it to become juice. The contents are what they are.

And this is why I see the recent debates over legal definitions of sex and gender as missing the point. Courts and governments can legislate bottles, but they cannot legislate contents. The law may define “woman” by anatomy, but many trans women live every aspect of their lives as women—not because of surgery or clothing, but because of who they are on the inside. That reality deserves recognition.

It’s important to acknowledge, though, that the science around gender identity is still in its infancy. While there is growing evidence pointing to biological factors—such as brain structure and hormonal influences—there’s no single, conclusive explanation yet. The relationship between gender identity, brain patterns and genetics is complex, and we are still learning how these aspects fit together.

That said, the point I’m making isn’t that gender identity can be reduced to biology alone. Instead, it’s that the biological aspects—particularly those related to brain function—deserve more recognition in the conversation. Much like how we don’t reduce a person’s intelligence, personality or emotions to a single biological feature (like the size of their brain), gender identity should not be defined solely by physical markers. It’s the lived experience—the internal sense of self—that truly defines us.

In the end, we have to ask: what makes a person who they are? Is it the visible, the measurable, the externally assigned? Or is it the felt, the known, the lived experience of being? For me, the answer is clear. It’s not the bottle that defines us—it’s the contents.

The Human Being as God’s Camera

Back in the early 1990s, I was looking for something beneath the surface of religions. And I adopted a metaphor, probably not original to me, but perhaps not rendered in as detailed a way as I made it.

The metaphor is this: Each human is a sort of “CCTV camera”—a physical and psychological apparatus used by God (or universal consciousness) to observe the world. Each “camera” thinks it’s autonomous and unaware that it’s part of a vast network of observation. And it is unaware that what it sees, thinks and experiences is not for its own use.

In this metaphor, God is not separate from us but is present through every eye, experiencing the physical plane through billions of perspectives. It is not intervening or judging but just watching, absorbing and remembering. Every human is a lens, in other words.

At death, the camera stops, and the body decays, but the camera footage is not lost but archived as a kind of “soul-memory” or “karmic imprint”. This, perhaps, is what people tap into when they recall past lives—not because the ego reincarnates, but because the recorded footage still exists and can sometimes be accessed when the conditions are right.

This idea harmonises with a range of mystical and philosophical thought. In Hinduism and Buddhism, karma and samskaras (mental imprints) continue beyond death. And in Theosophy, there is the “akashic record”—a universal memory field.

Meditation, in this metaphor, is the moment when the camera pauses itself, turns inwards and becomes aware of its own function. In that pause, the camera begins to realise it is not just filming the world but is the thing that is operating it. Or more accurately, it is an extension of the watching God. Meditation allows the camera to see that it is the apparatus through which consciousness flows.

Eventually, if the meditation deepens, even the sense of being a “camera” will disappear. What will be left is the “watcher”—the God that sees through all eyes but is not limited to any single pair.

The Unrealistic Promise of the Second Amendment

In American politics, the Second Amendment is venerated as a foundation for personal freedom. For many US citizens (mainly on the right-wing of the political divide), the right to bear arms isn't just about self-defence, but about safeguarding personal freedom. The idea is that an armed population is essential to protect against an overreaching government. But in today's world, where advanced technology and military strength have shifted the balance of power, this argument no longer holds water.

In theory, a well-armed population could act as a check on government power or tyranny. But that theory was born in an era when the United States had to rely on militias, not fighter jets or drones. Nowadays it’s impossible to take that argument seriously. No matter how many guns people own, they stand little chance against the overwhelming force of the modern US military.

The US military is one of the most powerful in the world, and has technology that is superior to anything a civilian could match. Tactical nuclear weapons, stealth bombers, drones and fighter jets would render any resistance movement powerless. A group of civilians armed with hunting rifles wouldn’t stand a chance against the precision and reach of military aircraft, able to take out targets from miles away.

Also, today’s military can shut down communications and disable power grids, cutting off access to the tools needed for any coordinated resistance. Without communication and electricity, the fight would be over before it began.

So, when we look at the Second Amendment today, we can’t help but wonder if the argument for its role as a safeguard against tyranny is more a fantasy than a feasible reality. In the age of modern warfare, where the power of the state is nearly limitless, the idea of armed civilians standing up to the government is, for all practical purposes, an impossibility.

Calvinism and Arminianism Harmoised

When I used to be a Christian, I went through several theological shifts that reflected a deeper conflict not just with doctrine, but with the very nature of God. One of the most significant transitions for me was the journey from a traditional evangelical view of salvation—where only the "saved" escape hell—to that of Christian Universalism, the belief that ultimately, all people will be reconciled to God.

This shift didn’t come easily. I had been steeped in the kind of theology that drew rigid lines between the “elect” and the “damned”, between those who would experience eternal bliss and those who would suffer unending torment. But over time, I began to question whether such a view could truly reflect the character of a God who is love.

As I moved towards Universalism, I also moved away from Calvinism. I could no longer accept the idea that God created some people for salvation and others for damnation. It felt incompatible with any meaningful definition of goodness or justice. I found the Calvinist vision of God not just troubling, but blasphemous—a distortion of divine love. Arminianism, while still not fully in agreement with my Universalist views, at least held to the idea that God desires everyone to be saved. So this was a theology I could be comfortable with.

I remember at one point considering attending a Methodist church. Methodism is rooted in Arminian theology, and while I knew that Arminians aren’t Universalists, I felt more at home with their view of a God who sincerely seeks the salvation of all people. My thinking was that Christian Universalism harmonises both Arminian and Calvinist insights: yes, God has chosen an elect, as Calvinism teaches—but that elect is not an exclusive club; it is simply those who have accepted Christ in this life. And yes, God desires to save all, as Arminianism teaches—and he will do so, even if that salvation comes in the life to come. Seen in this way, the theological conflict between Arminians and Calvinists dissolves into something greater and joyous.

So even though I didn’t fully align myself with Arminianism, I felt no tension about attending an Arminian church. The real issue was Calvinism. I couldn’t bring myself to worship with those who believed in a God who would intentionally create people for eternal suffering. That was not a God I could love or trust. In contrast, the Arminian vision—though imperfect—pointed in the direction of a God whose character I could love.

In the end, theology isn't just about ideas. It's about the kind of God you believe in, and whether that God is worthy of your love, trust and worship. For me, the God of Christian Universalism was. The God of Calvinism was not.