Uncivil Savant
Newsletter (Digital)
Welcome to Uncivil Savant. In late 2022 was drawn to write at Substack as my writer friends one by one migrated here and formed a neighbourhood that I wanted to join. Before coming here, my writing was mainly found in Dark Mountain, on my occasional T’ai Chi blog, and in private posts on the Long Table, which grew out of A School Called Home. Apart from that, my writing had mainly been found in long conversations with friends over many months or years by email, as we shared our ideas, and wondered about our work in the world. Thanks to encouragement from friends, after five years stashing everything away on my hard drive, I made a leap into sharing things publicly and created Uncivil Savant. Source
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Recent Articles
Search ArticlesEpisode 113 - Beauty is Essential
Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -5:54 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. There was a thoughtful piece on beauty by Anja Byg this week about things I have mulled over for many years too (and which Ted Chiang wrangled meaningfully in his short story “Liking What You See: A Documentary”.) For me, the crucial pivot which supports the always-ambivalent weight of beauty is how it makes us behave.
Beauty is Essential
Sorting pigment rocks found on Tyneside. I find colourful stones deeply beautiful. NB this week’s piece comes from a room full of packing for travelling away to teach. I’ll add a voiceover as soon as I have moment to do so. The images are from some of the last fortnight’s beauty quotient.
I Was Beside Myself
Archive essay When I published this essay in March 2023, I was diving into the reading needed for future essays. I was enjoying many other writers here, as we all grappled with the Machine, and how it famously co-opts our attention. Substack was then a place for long-form essays and a few niche newsletters. I loved it and was not distracted by it, just revelling in a few great writers and treating myself to essays with a quiet breakfast, most days.
Episode 112 - Crooked but Lit
Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -6:40 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. I set the twisted candle in the holder and lit it. Heat may have melted it S-wise but its light remains undimmed. Something so skew suddenly so dear. To burn while the Great Bear is in the south and my north star with him. A whole week in another land and yet at home. Incomparable gifts. The return of a blessing.
Crooked but Lit
I set the twisted candle in the holder and lit it. Heat may have melted it S-wise but its light remains undimmed. Something so skew suddenly so dear. To burn while the Great Bear is in the south and my north star with him. A whole week in another land and yet at home. Incomparable gifts. The return of a blessing. With paper bag trousers hanging loosely at my hips I happily apportion blame.
Episode 111 - Towards an Embodied Philosophy
Uncivil Savant Podcast Episode 111 - Towards an Embodied Philosophy 1× 0:00 Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -21:46 -21:46 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Episode 111 - Towards an Embodied Philosophy it's a dance, not a forwards march Winged beings Red-tailed hawk is always nearby. She swooped down from the veranda rail corner as I opened the door, the exhalatory sigh of her wings the first intentional sounds I heard from another being yesterday.
Towards an Embodied Philosophy
it's a dance, not a forwards march Fish skin on deer leather applique WIP for a bag I am making for my friend. NB this week’s voiceover will appear within a day. I am away from home so will need to juggle phone, laptop and wifi… Winged beings Red-tailed hawk is always nearby. She swooped down from the veranda rail corner as I opened the door, the exhalatory sigh of her wings the first intentional sounds I heard from another being yesterday.
Episode 110 - Slipping Between Words and Worlds
Uncivil Savant Podcast Episode 110 - Slipping Between Words and Worlds 1× 0:00 Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -6:23 -6:23 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Episode 110 - Slipping Between Words and Worlds From the delirium of sleeplessness I am thousands of miles from home but amongst dear friends.
Slipping Between Words and Worlds
I am thousands of miles from home but amongst dear friends. I’ve only been here 28 hours and I have been moved to tears several times by the hospitality and love that comes from the humans, creatures and land that I meet, some deeply familiar, some new to me. I can’t write about it all now, prosaically as my phone (new to me second hand phone, new sim, new plan) yet again does not work here. Plus I am delirious from lack of sleep.
Notes from a Small 'I' Land
May Day eve ingredients: water from River Allen, soft, bright pebbles from its margins, small boulder, elbow grease. Outdoors, so much beauty, barely hidden under a veil of finest buff silt, which the loving, roving eye can peer through. All returned to Earth in the rain, as it should be. Indoors, one of the remaining pleasures of Substack, (despite the developers’ seemingly fervent desire to trash the joint), is the opportunity to converse with readers and writers in long comments after articles.