Music for Well-Being
I got this interesting link from Reasons to be Cheerful (David Byrne's excellent website). How do concert spaces make themselves more...
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Alistair Appleton
- 3 days ago
- 1 min
The Sabbath / W.H. Auden
Some pungent Wystan in this moment when it's hard to remain very positive about humanity's inherent goodness. It's such a lapidary poem....
212 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Nov 21
- 1 min
To Paradise (Tom Adès' Dante)
I have been listening to the last movement of Tom Adès' ballet score Dante which was released on disc this Summer by the LA Philharmonic...
154 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Nov 17
- 5 min
Generosity 2: The Pinch Point
This transcript comes from the second week exploring the transcendental action (paramita) of generosity. You can join in the cornucopia...
152 views5 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Nov 17
- 6 min
Generosity 1: dana and dzinpa
From the first of two live sessions dedicated to the "transcendental action" of generosity, in November 2023. A recording of the practice...
146 views2 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Nov 9
- 3 min
The Paramitas: where the rubber of practice hits the road of reality
If you've been following our Live Sessions of late, you may have noticed this word paramita cropping up again and again. Apologies if it...
290 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Oct 21
- 3 min
How the Holy Island retreat went this Autumn...
Photos from the summer retreat courtesy of Darika Barker and Elaine Gray. Obviously, we didn't have our phones in October! We went to...
1,037 views19 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Sep 13
- 1 min
The Road Home / Gillian Allnutt
Gillian Allnutt is a British poet from the Northeast of the country and the recipient of the Queen's Prize for poetry. This poem is from...
456 views5 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Sep 5
- 2 min
To Autumn / John Keats
Just in case you think I don't like any poetry before 1920, here is the sumptuous "Ode to Autumn" by Keats. Familiar as it is, it's...
389 views5 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Aug 23
- 1 min
A False Awakening /John Burnside
I stumbled across this delicious poem in the London Review of Books (which is my only source of news these days). Burnside is a Scottish...
556 views5 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Aug 23
- 4 min
Make Your Own Retreat
I am a big fan of organised retreats. There is something so potent and human in being with a group of people who signed up for a week or...
522 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Jun 29
- 6 min
Going Outdoors to Enter the Presence
I am entering one of my periodic periods of great doubt. I have these on a fairly regular basis - once every five years, perhaps - and...
1,273 views28 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Jun 6
- 3 min
Sometimes A Wild God/ Tom Hirons
Something a little different. A long rollicking carnivalesque of a poem from Tom Hirons, a writer and mask-maker from Dartmoor. (The...
437 views14 comments
Alistair Appleton
- May 11
- 8 min
Victory Mind II: Sleep Is Not Enough
One of the factors that Johann Hari identifies in his excellent book Stolen Focus is the crippling exhaustion that most humans in the...
629 views8 comments
Alistair Appleton
- May 6
- 2 min
Coal Sarcophagus/William Haas
I don't usually care for prose-poems but there are, of course, some masterpieces. (Rimbaud, par example). But I have been really enjoying...
266 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Apr 19
- 8 min
Can we meditate while the world is burning?
A participant in the last retreat I led asked a very good question that often arises in retreats. “It’s all very well us pondering our...
450 views6 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Apr 19
- 2 min
Apertura d'ali (Wingspan) / Bartolo Cattafi
Cattafi was one of the generation of post-war Italian poets I was inspired to read at university in the 1980s. He lived through the...
233 views6 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Apr 10
- 6 min
The Machines are Not To Blame
This is the second in my series of Victory Mind blogs exploring the ways in which we can gird our minds against the incursions of Big...
383 views18 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Apr 10
- 2 min
Moment / Wisława Szymborska
translated from Polish by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh This beautiful poem was suggested by Mindsprings regular Mechteld-Hanna...
246 views0 comments
Alistair Appleton
- Mar 26
- 4 min
Victory Mind
What if you woke up each morning with a mind completely refreshed? What if your mind could rest on a rich subject for a long time, making...
742 views8 comments
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