My initial thoughts as I arrive in South America — The first card of the Major Arcana in Tarot is The Fool. Card number zero, it evokes the innocence and enthusiasm of a new beginning. The image depicts an individual vacillating on the edge of a precipice, with mountains in the background and the sun auspiciously shining on them. Holding…

… and an announcement about our next meeting! — This Sunday past saw the first gathering of The Riff Album of The Month of the year, to discuss Bloc Party’s 2005 album Silent Alarm. Present to listen to my disjointed spasms of passionate nostalgia—and share their own experience of (re)discovering the album—were Terry Barr, David Acaster, If Ever You’re…

Companion pieces for Silent Alarm — A very happy New Year to the readers, writers and editors of The Riff! May 2022 be filled with joy, healing and grace—all of it accompanied, of course, by great music. To start 2022 on a brilliant note (pun intended!), we meet on Sunday, January 9 for the first The…

Adam McKay’s climate crisis parable transmits a sobering truth through satire — I was pretty skeptical about Don’t Look Up—Netflix’s huge, star-studded, end-of-year release. While it’s certainly in the best interest of actors and directors to invest their talent into projects for the small screen—especially after 2020—I’ve yet to fully make the shift. I’m still a bit disheartened when watching films that…

Fare thee well, thorny year! — A few weeks ago, I shared in Songstories the tune that began my year, and how it threaded through the months that ensued, unravelling its message : The Song That Began Your Year Did it live up to its promise?medium.com As the year fast dwindles to a close, I’m invested, like many, in a reflective mood that calls to synthesise the past few…

What I’ve learned, loved and am leaving behind — In February, I disconnected from social media and sold the tickets to several personal development and online marketing events that I had enrolled in. I was feeling saturated by the information I was taking in and wanted to reconnect to the stillness of my inner world—to cut out the noise…

Lana Wachowski’s fourth instalment in the series mirrors and updates the original film — A dark screen with a blinking cursor starts to unravel lines of green code. Two individuals speak on the phone in secretive tones. Nondescript agents storm into a building to find a woman alone in a room, plotting. Tightly dressed in black, hair neatly combed back. It all feels so…

Diagonal reflections inspired by Brian Eno’s deck — Writing, for all its apparent dullness (who ever looked captivating typing on a screen or a scribbling in a notebook—as opposed to, say, a painter or a sculptor?) betrays a storm beneath the still façade. In the emergence of words, the crafting of thoughts, a flow seems to occur which…

Our individual experience of a relationship may differ wildly — I’m fashionably late to the “Swift-enhaal” furore that’s been sparking debate over the internet in the past few weeks—but I thought I’d chip in anyway. If you’re blissfully unaware, a widespread animation was caused when Taylor Swift released a lengthy reworking of a song from her 2012 RED album, All…