field notes from the spine: Reviewing Everything

Cultural R&R

field notes from the spine — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 12:30:50 GMT

La chaine humaine de Saype au Bénin

This piece is part of Reviewing Everything, a series written over several months and across places. I didn’t know what it was yet while writing it. Art Genève, last weekend, gave me the final lines.

Cultural R&R: looking for art in Geneva, Basel and where it stays

I learned R&R in Afghanistan (R&R=rest and recuperation).…

Staying at the Table

field notes from the spine — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 12:31:09 GMT

This year, to mark Human Rights Day, OHCHR invited Jon Kabat-Zinn to Geneva.

He has written books that have taught millions of people how to breathe, how to sit with pain, how to pay attention. He has worked with hospitals, schools, prisons, corporations. Standing in front of a room full of human rights officers and diplomats, he said - almost casually -…

PLURIBUS: Asimov Never Warned us about Forced Happiness

field notes from the spine — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 12:30:54 GMT

Watching Pluribus, I kept thinking: talking to “them” is like talking to you. You, the model on my screen. You, the polite hive of other people’s words.

If Carol knew about AI chat, she would recognise the texture instantly: the way the “we” listens, the way it answers, the way it keeps saying we just want to help, Carol with the same bright, suffocating…

Inside the World Fondue Cup: notes from an Amateur Juror

field notes from the spine — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:15:39 GMT

I’ve judged many things in my life - witness testimonies, ceasefire violations, the existential fragility of men who call themselves ‘strategic thinkers’ - but never eight bubbling cauldrons[1] of molten cheese in an overheated cave in Tartegnin. That changed last weekend, when I joined the amateur jury of the Mondial de la Fondue, apron on, clipboard i…

Everybody Scream — Florence Welch and the Humidity of Being Alive

field notes from the spine — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 12:16:04 GMT

I should start with a confession:
I know nothing about music.
Not how to make it, not how to read it, not the difference between tones or registers.

But that doesn’t matter.

Music is not a skill. Music is a haunting.

In ‘Run the Song’, Ben Ratcliff wrote - and this sentence has lived in my ribs ever since- that music “connects people and makes them understan…

Reviewing Everything

field notes from the spine — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 18:30:45 GMT

This is a record of how things taste, sound, or ache when they meet a person trying to stay human in a world increasingly written by machines.

I’ve realized lately that I’ve been reviewing everything for years. In my diaries, mostly. Between witness statements, field notes, and love stories gone wrong.

I’ve spent the last few months rereading those diarie…