About Me

Hi, I'm James, and I sometimes do programming.

Here are some of my online profiles:

If you would like to get in touch by email, email me at chat at this website's domain.

I am also interested in starting an essay reading club – this would be a fairly slow-paced club where we vote on and read through essays (both simple and complex) and meet virtually to discuss them. If this sounds like something you would be interested in joining, click this essay reading club Discord invite link.

Favourite Things

For the vanishingly few people who might be interested, below are some of my favourite things.

Novels

George Orwell, Coming Up for Air (1939)

Coming Up for Air is a humorously pessimistic novel detailing the vaguely disappointing life of George Bowling, a 45-year-old insurance salesman, and is set just before the start of World War II.

At risk of admitting the dullness of my life publicly, I think about this book and George Bowling often. The ceaseless dull disappointments of lost nostalgia, endless sensationalized news, and, in the words of Sam Melville the experimental chemistry of food are all painfully relatable.

The motif of the legs gets called to mind often – a sensational news story in the novel where a woman's legs were found in a railway waiting-room. Bowling reflects and what with successive editions of the papers, the whole nation was supposed to be so passionately interested in these blasted legs that they didn't need any further introduction. At time of writing, I have been growing increasingly tired of the news sorties of the hour – the asbestos in childrens' play sand: Who's to pay? How could this have happened? More play sand found laced with asbestos! Human rights lawyer demands urgent investigation! swinging to a recent sewerage overflow into the ocean: Warning: sewerage spill smell could get worse! Beaches closed! Mayor calls for investigation!

Music

One of my favourite genres of music, if it could be considered a genre in and of itself, is modern classical music featuring spoken voice or narration. Thankfully, there are composers who specialize in this, for example:

Kate Soper
  • Ipsa Dixit
  • Voices From the Killing Jar
  • Missing Scenes
Frederic Rzewski
  • De Profundis
  • Coming Together
  • Rubinstein in Berlin
  • The Road: Mile 58, "Marriage"
Barbara Kolb
  • Chromatic Fantasy
  • Three Place Setting

There are, of course, other composers who don't use spoken voice who I quite like such as:

Sofia Gubaidulina
  • Chaconne
  • St John Passion
Nicolai Obukhov
  • The Third and Last Testament
  • Five Prayers
Galina Ustvolskaya
  • Composition no. 2
  • Sonata no. 4
  • Symphony no. 4
  • Grand Duet

Galina Ustvolskaya is probably my favourite composer with a unique, unwavering style, with a mastery of polyphony. Ustvolskaya also wrote this bombshell of a quote in a note regarding an acquaintance who shall not be named here:

On the contrary, it was painful and killed my best feelings.

I begged God to give me strength to create and now too I ask God the same.

Coincidentally, I used this quote as the singular epigraph in my PhD thesis.