How do we begin to periodise a slice of time like 2020, a year in which complete cultural hegemony about which everyone was talking non-stop was finally monopolised, albeit not by world communist revolution but the COVID-19 pandemic which has, of the time of writing, resulted in over 1.5 million deaths, 75 million infections and […]

In an 1844 essay called ‘The Metaphysics of Sexual Love’, Schopenhauer proposes to account for why so many poets and songwriters are inspired by love as the most powerful passion after which their heroes desperately strive no matter what danger might befall themselves, be it Shakespeare’s suicidal couple or Taylor Swift’s Starbucks lovers.

There is a scene in the 1988 anime film Akira depicting a billboard counting down 147 days until the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, with “just cancel it!” graffitied over the top. On 28 February 2020, this dystopian science fiction became a reality when the hashtag #justcancelit started trending on Twitter, precisely 147 days before the Tokyo […]

In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche traces the development of art back to an untamed nature’s “Dionysian” rupture with our anthropic, “Apolline” values and ideas about what is good, true and beautiful. Through anti-heroes like Oedipus and Prometheus rebelling against their lot by claiming the seductive and fire-bearing powers of kings and gods for themselves […]