debate properly with his peers. He was an impressive speaker and a handsome man. His lectures attracted young people from outside the university. He could be found giving passionate talks in the back rooms of crowded pubs, or in cafés where he would stand on two chairs, one foot on each, and rock slightly as he spoke, or to crowds of young mothers in the usually deserted public libraries on winter afternoons. He was a champion of strong belief and positivity. He was out for something and it radiated from him and made him someone wonderful to be around.
He had his detractors. There seemed to him to be an abundance of miserable grey-faces whom he assumed had never known passion in their lives, who made it their business to hate everything about him. They were deeply suspicious. They discussed his sex life. They wrote articles for university magazines where they found fault with the tone of his voice, his beard and even the way he drank his coffee. They didn’t like his popularity, or the fact that it didn’t seem to be diminishing his ability to work. They were jealous of him, and his success made them uncomfortable because it reminded them of how often they had not followed their own dreams or cultivated principles worth sticking to. The universities were, it seemed to John, filled with stillness and loathing. He tried to shake it off, but it remained.
In the long months and years when John was working on the final draft of his book,
How We Can Take Power WithoutPower Taking Us,
he was consumed with the project and unable to relax. His mind was so full of his ideas that his body began to spasm and fidget. He found himself rubbing his hands and nodding his head furiously when he was alone. His whole frame would shake violently and he would clench his teeth and have no choice but to go with it. He would fit like this silently in toilet cubicles at train stations for five straight minutes. Then he would gather himself, stretch his tensed-up mouth, shake his fingers like they were wet, smooth his clothes down and step back out into the chaos of the platform. Dazed.
One clear September night after a long summer of touring, and a hard week back at the university, he attended a concert given by a friend of his, the famous cellist Marco Abbadelli, and felt calmer than he had in months. Marco and John had spent many hours discussing life and the point of the artistic temperament. The meaning of beauty. The language of music. They had once made love and it had been something wonderful and honest, but it had only happened the once and it was never spoken of again. They had huge affection for each other, and whenever Marco was in London they enjoyed nothing more than meeting up and drinking until dawn.
Paula Shogovitch had fallen in love with the idea of capturing moments when she was five years old and playing in the garden of her grandparents’ house. It was coming on for dusk and the lights were on inside. She was on her way back in,when she noticed through the window her two brothers, Ron and Rags, stealing sweeties from their grandma’s cupboard. There was something so perfect in the poise of their bodies, strained, listening for footsteps, ready to run. Something so familiar in being the younger sister, looking on while the elder brothers did things that they imagined she couldn’t understand. She began to look for moments like this. Moments that gave away so much. She started to find them everywhere. She learned to capture them. A couple fighting in a train carriage, a married woman walking with her grumpy husband, staring after a beautiful young man as he passed them at a crossing, a boy smiling in the middle of a fight, two women sneaking sips from a bottle at the theatre. There was an intimacy to Paula’s photos. Something so careful about the way she captured London people. Whether she knew it or not, she was doing something that hadn’t been done before. Photographs taken with so much love for their subjects that
He had his detractors. There seemed to him to be an abundance of miserable grey-faces whom he assumed had never known passion in their lives, who made it their business to hate everything about him. They were deeply suspicious. They discussed his sex life. They wrote articles for university magazines where they found fault with the tone of his voice, his beard and even the way he drank his coffee. They didn’t like his popularity, or the fact that it didn’t seem to be diminishing his ability to work. They were jealous of him, and his success made them uncomfortable because it reminded them of how often they had not followed their own dreams or cultivated principles worth sticking to. The universities were, it seemed to John, filled with stillness and loathing. He tried to shake it off, but it remained.
In the long months and years when John was working on the final draft of his book,
How We Can Take Power WithoutPower Taking Us,
he was consumed with the project and unable to relax. His mind was so full of his ideas that his body began to spasm and fidget. He found himself rubbing his hands and nodding his head furiously when he was alone. His whole frame would shake violently and he would clench his teeth and have no choice but to go with it. He would fit like this silently in toilet cubicles at train stations for five straight minutes. Then he would gather himself, stretch his tensed-up mouth, shake his fingers like they were wet, smooth his clothes down and step back out into the chaos of the platform. Dazed.
One clear September night after a long summer of touring, and a hard week back at the university, he attended a concert given by a friend of his, the famous cellist Marco Abbadelli, and felt calmer than he had in months. Marco and John had spent many hours discussing life and the point of the artistic temperament. The meaning of beauty. The language of music. They had once made love and it had been something wonderful and honest, but it had only happened the once and it was never spoken of again. They had huge affection for each other, and whenever Marco was in London they enjoyed nothing more than meeting up and drinking until dawn.
Paula Shogovitch had fallen in love with the idea of capturing moments when she was five years old and playing in the garden of her grandparents’ house. It was coming on for dusk and the lights were on inside. She was on her way back in,when she noticed through the window her two brothers, Ron and Rags, stealing sweeties from their grandma’s cupboard. There was something so perfect in the poise of their bodies, strained, listening for footsteps, ready to run. Something so familiar in being the younger sister, looking on while the elder brothers did things that they imagined she couldn’t understand. She began to look for moments like this. Moments that gave away so much. She started to find them everywhere. She learned to capture them. A couple fighting in a train carriage, a married woman walking with her grumpy husband, staring after a beautiful young man as he passed them at a crossing, a boy smiling in the middle of a fight, two women sneaking sips from a bottle at the theatre. There was an intimacy to Paula’s photos. Something so careful about the way she captured London people. Whether she knew it or not, she was doing something that hadn’t been done before. Photographs taken with so much love for their subjects that