And so Kenneth Binyavanga Wainaina becomes past tense, or in Facebook argot, “remembering”. Every day since his death, the Binj has haunted me, not as a frightening spectre, but as a form of insistence. I found myself reading all the obits and eulogies from those who knew him, as well…

Black Panther is a lot of fun and a landmark film — re-arranging a century of biased film symbolism that black characters must die early/be the baddies. The psychological boost this will give black kids cannot be underestimated — the background confidence to see themselves mirrored as superheroes. Good for…

A memory scored so deep it feels ancestral is the sound of the Salvation Army band visiting the village each year, a few weeks before Christmas. In the early days, it was a harbinger of joy: ahead would be presents, merriment, mince pies, trifle and James Bond by the fire…

Beyond the metropolis, what is happening in white America? I don’t think its simply an atavistic return to 1930s (even if it apes its forms), or any form of basic repetition of the past. Rather, there are three novel dynamics in play. Firstly, it’s a response to the symbolic disruption…

Of the three Abrahamic faiths, the Jewish religion offers the most clues that early prophetic consciousness involved the sacramental use of entheogenic plants. Let us take a brief look. There are at least three profound passages in the Tanakh — the Hebrew Bible — (also known as the Christian Old…

For those interested in research into altered states of consciousness and the healing properties of psychedelic drugs, we live in exciting times. The wave of decriminalisation/legalisation of marijuana across the globe (despite evidence-free resistance from countries such as the UK) has created a backdrop for normalising personal and scientific research…

Today I went outside to prepare myself for a motorbike trip into central London when I sensed something was spatially awry in the front garden. The Vespa had been stolen. There was a tire mark depression back to the path from where it had been parked, inside the hedge. …

Adam Curtis new documentary, Hypernormalisation is required watching. With arresting, sometimes surreal and often macabre archive footage set to haunting music by the likes of Aphex Twin and Burial, the documentary neatly weaves together a grand narrative of our time (from the 1980s to the present) — portraying the internet…

White supremacy is a structural condition that spans societies across the planet. Of course it takes different forms in different places and is implicated by different histories, but the commonalities are stronger than the variations: is there a place on earth which values darker skin over lighter skin? The symbolic…