Field Notes – The Architecture of the Lane my new post on The Polymath talks of a late afternoon walk I took through old lanes and modern pavements reveals layers of architecture, class and memory. Abandoned houses, workers’ housing, porcelain swallows, hidden exhibitions and a clearing carpeted with fallen apples beneath a waxing Moon. Field Notes – The Architecture of the Lane can be read here.
15th-century illuminated manuscript, Seneca Epistulae morales ad Lucilium
The Smiths, Seneca, and the Corrosion of the Soul is my new essay is at The Listening Room HQ The Listening Room HQ – my men’s practice – site
In Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius) Seneca warned Lucilius that busyness, ambition and external success can quietly erode the inner life.
The Smiths, Seneca, and the Corrosion of the Soul starts from a line in The Smiths’ Frankly, Mr. Shankly: “It pays my way, and it corrodes my soul”.
The post explores Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius, the modern cult of busyness, creativity, masculinity, and the hidden cost of lives lived in perpetual motion.
Through The Smiths, Seneca, Stoicism, Mal Evans, creativity, grief and modern life, this essay explores the hidden cost of endless activity asking if the things that pay our way may also corrode our souls.
What happens when productivity, success and endless projects begin to erode the very instrument through which we experience life: the soul?
My radio show Amazing Songs & Other Delights is on repeats until mid September.
Amazing Songs & Other Delights is broadcasted on Yé Yé Radio: yeyeradio.com to (or on the app). Each same show repeats 1st and 2nd Monday of the month, then another 3rd and 4th Monday of the month, 3-4pm (London time).
Exceptionally, this year The Anniversary Edition is in Autumn.
In New Moon In Cancer, July 2026 – The Womb and the Sanctuary & One Year of The Listening Room HQ – my men’s practice and The Polymath sister site – my new post on The Polymath the Cancer New Moon of July 2026 meets the first anniversary of The Listening Room HQ, exploring home, family, sanctuary, sovereignty, creativity, and the slow architecture of belonging. You can read it on The Polymath site: https://www.thepolymathisme.com/2026/07/new-moon-in-cancer-july-2026-womb-and.html