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Simon Taylor

Simon Taylor

https://orcid.org/0009-0008-6687-4647

false effort

So much of the performance of conventional NZ masculinity – what it means to be a man – can be summed up as false effort. The voice lowers, even to shuddering in its lowest registers. Speech is halting. It is a machine that stalls, turns over, starts up again with a cough,

from island to volcano

unyielding insularity takes itself tothe arena of its own closure, the quasi-incantatory expending of the ‘I’ towards thecrossroads of its own necessary undoing, an over-exhaustion of the Self to the point of itsirrelevance, its self-excising, its reflexive desolation. Moreover, annihilation would by rightrepresent the most volatile engagement with sacrifice by

Wellington loved us in April

in praise of Linus Torvald and another human being

Am I speaking with Mr. Taylor? Yes. Mr. Tony Taylor? No, his son. Can I please speak with Mr. Tony Taylor? No. I’m afraid Mr. Tony Taylor is no longer with us. Has he got like a divorce? A what? A di-v-horse? No. He passed away. So who is

lucky escapes

.different fronts

thigein & conatus

What is important is that thiscontemplation without knowledge, which at times recalls the Greek con-ception of theory as not knowledge but touching [thigein], here functions todefine life. As absolute immanence, a life . . . is pure contemplation beyondevery subject and object of knowledge; it is pure potentiality that preserveswithout acting. – Giorgio Agamben,