glass house philosopher / notebook 1 Wednesday, 24th November 1999
I'm sitting in the tiny staff room at the community centre where I am due to give my evening class for the Workers' Education Association in about ten minutes time. I'm beginning to panic.
Not about the class. The students have gotten used to the idea that they're expected to do all the work, so there's nothing for me to prepare. This week the topic is the philosophy of art. Provoided that the four class members scheduled to give talks turn up, I can just sit back and enjoy myself. You could say that tonight my brain is an empty canvas, so far as the subject of aesthetics is concerned.
No, the reason why I am panicking has to do with my latest rash venture. The Philosophy of A-Z page is up and the launch date set for 20 December. So far, I have just seven items to put on the web site!
June said, 'If it's such a great idea, put your money where your mouth is!' And I did, splashing out on a domain name — 'philosophyof.com' — that came off the top of my head. Just to be provocative, the Philosophy of A-Z has a list of fifty-seven 'links' (a tribute to Heinz) none of which, at the time of writing, actually link to anything. They are ideas snatched out of the air — the weird, wonderful, or downright nutty. Few will still be there when the day comes, so just for posterity, here they are:
Archery
Architecture
Art
Ballooning
Brown
Cathedrals
Chemistry
Dance
Dypsomania
Earth
Eating
Flying
Football
Garbage
Gardening
Gurning
Happiness
Hills
Hunting
Ink
Islands
Jousting
Juggling
Kaleidoscopes
Kibbutzim
Lego
Limericks
Marathon
Mastermind
Mummification
Names
Nuzzling
Opera
Ornaments
Otters
People
Ping Pong
Questions
Queuing
Riddles
Running
Sanity
Sunbathing
Towers
Trees
Umbrellas
Undertaking
Vehicles
Volcanoes
Whackiness
Worldliness
Xanthippe
X-Files
Yellow
Yosemite
Zero
Zulus
Which leaves me with the task of finding fifty suitable items in three and a half weeks. I must be nuts myself.
No more time to think about that now. What was it that Socrates said? 'I don't know anything about art, but I know what I like.'