Heike Sperling
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"The Heart Said Now I Am Love (Tarabya Blink)" by Sarah Szczesny, 2026, Pigment and textile paint on sile fabric, 80 x 120 cm.

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Julian of Norwich (c. 1343 – after 1416)
May 19th, 2026

Via Wikipedia: "Julian of Norwich (c. 1343 – after 1416), also known as Juliana of Norwich, the Lady Julian, Dame Julian or Mother Julian, was a medieval English Catholic anchoress. Her writings, now known as Revelations of Divine Love, are the earliest surviving English-language works attributed to a woman. They are also the only surviving English-language works by an anchoress. [...]

Julian was an anchoress from at least the 1390s. Living in her cell, she would have played an important part within her community, devoting herself to a life of prayer to complement the clergy in their primary function as protectors of souls. Her solitary life would have begun after the completion of an onerous selection process. An important church ceremony would have taken place at St Julian's Church, in the presence of the bishop. During the ceremony, psalms from the Office of the Dead would have been sung for Julian (as if it were her funeral), and at some point she would have been led to her cell door and into the room beyond. The door would afterwards have been sealed up, and she would have remained in her cell for the rest of her life. [...]

Julian of Norwich is now recognised as one of England's most important mystics; according to Leyser, she was the greatest English anchoress. For the theologian Denys Turner the core issue Julian addresses in Revelations of Divine Love is 'the problem of sin'. Julian says that sin is behovely, which is often translated as 'necessary', 'appropriate', or 'fitting'. [...]

In her fourteenth revelation, Julian writes of the Trinity in domestic terms, comparing Jesus to a mother who is wise, loving and merciful. Author Frances Beer asserted that Julian believed that the maternal aspect of Christ was literal and not metaphoric: Christ is not like a mother, he is literally the mother. Julian emphasised this by explaining how the bond between mother and child is the only earthly relationship that comes close to the relationship a person can have with Jesus. She used metaphors when writing about Jesus in relation to ideas about conceiving, giving birth, weaning and upbringing. [...]
She wrote that God sees us as perfect and waits for the day when human souls mature so that evil and sin will no longer hinder us, and that 'God is nearer to us than our own soul'. This theme is repeated throughout her work: 'Jesus answered with these words, saying: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. ... This was said so tenderly, without blame of any kind toward me or anybody else.'"

Thanks to Nick Cave's The Red Hand Files !


 

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"Grave of the fireflies" by Slava (Thisset) Semeniuta.

Glück

April 11th, 2026

Glück (1907)
von Hermann Hesse

Solang du nach dem Glücke jagst,
Bist du nicht reif zum Glücklichsein,
Und wäre alles Liebste dein.

Solang du um Verlornes klagst
Und Ziele hast und rastlos bist,
Weißt du noch nicht, was Friede ist.

Erst wenn du jedem Wunsch entsagst,
Nicht Ziel mehr noch Begehren kennst,
Das Glück nicht mehr mit Namen nennst,

Dann reicht dir des Geschehens Flut
Nicht mehr ans Herz - und deine Seele ruht.

Thanks to Claudia Jericho!


In this context you might want to consider this conversation on The Power of Awe too.

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70’s Soda Sparkly, Malibu, 2023 (Archival Pigment Print) by Todd Weaver.

Values

My pyramid
December 9th, 2025

Lightness
Music – Honesty – Freedom
Humor – Intuition – Integrity – Love – Humility – Patience

Take another step toward what matters.

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"Heaven" is a song by the American new wave band Talking Heads, released on their 1979 album "Fear of Music".

Heaven

Talking Heads, Fear of Music, 1979
August 28th, 2025

Via Wikipedia: "Cover versions:
In 1995 the song was covered by Iva Davies and Icehouse on The Berlin Tapes, the soundtrack album accompanying the ballet Berlin, for which Icehouse performed live on stage.
In 1996, the song was covered by Jimmy Scott on his album of the same name.
The song was covered by Eric Burdon on his 2004 album My Secret Life and in 1985 by Simply Red for their album Picture Book.
A German-language cover of the song, Der Weg in die Ferne, was recorded by Joachim Witt for his 1980 album Silberblick.
In 1986, Thomas Di Leva made a Swedish-language adaptation of the song, named Himlen. It was recorded for his album Pussel, and was also the B-Side of his single Snurra bakåt!.
Singer Q Lazzarus covered Heaven for the 1993 film Philadelphia (directed by Jonathan Demme, who had filmed Stop Making Sense). Her version was not available in its complete form until the release of the soundtrack from the documentary Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus in 2025.
k.d. lang covered Heaven for her 2011 album Sing It Loud.
The National contributed a cover of Heaven to the 2024 Talking Heads tribute album Everybody's Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense."

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Typeface Transito (1931) designed by Jan Tschichold.

Tattoo

Wear life like a loose garment
June 3rd, 2025

Via ChatGPT: "The phrase wear life like a loose garment is often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, reflecting his teachings on detachment and humility. However, the exact origin of this saying is unclear, and it may not be directly traceable to his writings. Some sources suggest it encapsulates his philosophy of living lightly and without attachment to worldly possessions.

In the realm of spiritual teachings, a similar sentiment is expressed by Gautama Buddha, who is quoted as saying, 'Wear your ego like a loose fitting garment.' This advice encourages individuals to approach life with humility and flexibility, avoiding rigid attachments to one's sense of self.

The phrase has also been embraced in various contexts, including Twelve-Step recovery programs, where it is used to promote emotional resilience and detachment from material concerns. In this setting, it serves as a metaphor for not allowing the world to bind or define one's sense of self.

In summary, while wear life like a loose garment is often linked to St. Francis of Assisi, its precise origins remain uncertain. The concept resonates across different spiritual traditions, emphasizing the value of living with openness, humility, and a light touch."

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Into Eternity

Constructing Onkalo (Finnish for "hiding place")
May 25th, 2025

Via Wikipedia: "Into Eternity is a 2010 Danish documentary film directed by Michael Madsen, released in 2010. It follows the construction of the Onkalo waste repository at the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant on the island of Olkiluoto, Finland. Director Michael Madsen questions Onkalo's intended eternal existence, addressing an audience in the remote future."

Via The Guardian: "'I'm interested in what this topic tells us about the world we live in," says Madsen. 'This timespan – 100,000 years. What does it mean? It is so incomprehensible that you have to film something different to create an experience in which people can relate to it.'"

Via The New York Times: "There is something apocalyptically awful about Onkalo, to be sure, but the impulse behind it is noble, and the installation itself has an undeniable grandeur. That theologians, engineers, ethicists and bureaucrats spend so much time and effort trying to protect the distant future from the consequences of present folly speaks rather well of our current civilization, or at least that sector of it devoted to clear thinking and rational problem solving.
But the fact of Onkalo points in the direction of mystery and paradox. If it lasts as long as it is supposed to — and every precaution is being taken to fortify it against earthquakes, political chaos and the ice age predicted in 60 millenniums or so — this enormous feat of engineering may well be the only thing that survives us. It may, in other words, constitute the whole of the human legacy for a long, post-human time to come. And this will be especially true, and especially fitting, if the place is forgotten and never found."

Consider watching Into Eternity as a double feature with Cave of forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzog.

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Howl (2022) by Mel Bochner. Oil on velvet, 32 x 18 7/8 inches [81.3 x 47.9 cm], unique.

Arguments For God

Tier-list
February 16th, 2025

Read the My Favorite Argument for the Existence of God article by Ross Douthat in The New York Times, stumbled across these lines, "But do I have a favorite argument within this larger run of converging claims? I was thinking about this while reading the effort by the prolific and precocious (he’s apparently still an undergraduate) essayist who writes under the name Bentham’s Bulldog to rank or grade a long list of arguments for God’s existence." and had to follow the link down the rabbit hole:

Via Bentham's Newsletter: "Tier lists on arguments for God are all the rage! Tier lists rank arguments for God on a scale from F to S, where F is the worst, S is the best, and the rest follow a traditional letter grade—A better than B, B better than C, and so on. [...]

Fine-tuning (S)

The fine-tuning argument is widely seen as the best argument for God. But crucially, there are actually three kinds of fine-tuning, and two of them dodge most of the standard objections (for more on the argument, see my very long post about it):

1. A priori fine-tuning: this kind isn’t about the specific laws. Instead, it’s about the more general point that most ways the world could be wouldn’t produce anything interesting. If the laws are very simple, then probably they’d just result in a basic pattern—too basic to produce anything. For instance, the ultimate laws could have just involved particles aimlessly bouncing around, or moving in a circle, or disappearing after a second, or moving in a line. If the laws aren’t simple, then they’d be almost guaranteed to produce random chaos. This kind of fine-tuning is probably the most convincing, and isn’t threatened by findings from physics.

2. Anthropic fine-tuning from physics: this kind proceeds from the striking observations that the constants of physics—the values that are plugged into the laws—fall into an incredibly narrow range needed to give rise to life. For example, if the cosmological constant weren’t in a tiny range, on the order of one part in 10^120 of its possible values, no life or complex structures of any sort would arise.

3. Fine-tuning for discoverability: this builds on work mostly from Robin Collins. What Collins argues is that some of the constants are precisely set in a way ideal for scientific discovery. For instance, he claims that the masses of many of the particles in particle physics happen to be an ideal quantity for us to measure them. This is expected if God set the constants in ways ideal for us to do science, but unexpected if they took their values by chance.

Taking into account all three kinds of fine-tuning, this argument is utterly devastating. Maybe an atheist can explain the second kind by a multiverse—though, as I’ve explored, a multiverse has various problems—but certainly they can’t use a multiverse to explain the first and third kind.

The problem for the atheist is that the improbability is so vast—it’s so wildly unlikely that we’d get a fine-tuned universe by chance—that they must, for their view to be plausible, have some explanation of fine-tuning. But the explanations of the first kind of fine-tuning just transfer the fine-tuning back a level—if the atheist invokes a multiverse, for instance, the multiverse itself is just a physical system that generates universes. But to generate the right kinds of universes—and universes at all, rather than producing nothing—it needs fine-tuning. Thus, even the multiverse just transfers things back a level.

While there are some mild ways to criticize the likelihood of fine-tuning on theism, the atheistic replies are not enough to overcome the vanishingly low probability of fine-tuning on theism. Atheism predicts a barren wasteland—the fact that isn’t what we observe strongly undermines it."

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The Party is Over by Charles Xelot.

End of 2024

December 31st, 2024
I am grateful for...

Aging My GP recommended Outlive by Peter Attia, saying it covers all the key recent research on healthy aging. I’ve studied it and now use it regularly—it’s an excellent resource.

Art My lovely and witty friend Sarah Szczesny has spent several months this year away on residencies. I missed her and decided to visit her at CCA Andratx. For the first time ever, I chose to buy a piece of art because it felt deeply important to have a part of her work in my home.

Concerts Felt so blessed to see many amazing concerts in 2024. My top three were: Nick Cave, for his depth, uplifting energy, and the breathtaking brilliance of the musicians; Mary Jane Leach, for her soulful performance on the St. Peter’s Church organ in Cologne, where she recorded this very piece in 1989; and Róisín Murphy, for her incredible style and fabulous leadership.

Book Couldn’t stop once I started reading All Four by Miranda July. It’s both highly entertaining and a precise observation of the journey and catharsis during the climacteric period. She masterfully captures all those manic feelings, thoughts, and sensations many of us experience. Thank you, Carina Mergens, for putting it into my hands!

Exhibition In the mid-80s, I had the great privilege of studying with Anna Oppermann (1940–1993) at the University of Wuppertal. She coined the term ensemble – process-based spatial collages that encompass both the installed work and the underlying method. This year, Susanne Kleine and Anna Schäffler curated an enormous, precise, and affectionate exhibition at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn. It was overwhelming and breathtaking.

Film Last and First Men is a science fiction film directed by composer Jóhann Jóhannsson based on the 1930 novel of the same name by Olaf Stapledon. The 16mm black-and-white film predominantly features memorial sculptures erected in the former Republic of Yugoslavia beautifully photographed by Sturla Brandth Grøvlen. The story is narrated by Tilda Swinton. This might sound boring, as it did to me, but it is mind-blowing. Do not miss it.

Nerdom Stanley Kubrick’s films feel like an almost infinite source of reference and thus inspiration to me. I deeply admire the complexity, effort, and time that went into creating them. Here is a shot-by-shot analysis of my favorite of his films, Eyes Wide Shut. I adore this website and it so proves my point.

Routine Paradoxically, I find my routines fundamental to my sense of freedom. One of them is my yoga practice. This year, I discovered the location of my basic trust—it seems to reside between my shoulder blades, where it supports and lifts my heart.

Party Went to the 40-year reunion of my class of 1984. Almost a lifetime ago. It was overwhelming to meet so many of my former schoolmates and to see pictures of us from the '80s projected on the walls. An intense, confusing, and extremly rewarding experience.

Past Just learned that my great-aunt, my favorite childhood relative, didn’t celebrate New Year’s Eve either. This year, I started reading the same books she used to read to me to an 8-year-old close to me. Memories resurfaced, and I spent time reflecting on the influence she had on me. She passed on when I was 12, and this year I realized that I never truly grieved. So I finally did.

Tool Learning to use my phone as a tool in my daily practice wasn’t easy. It taught me how to share; through sharing, I’ve found connection, and that connection makes me feel whole, being of integrity. One day at a time. Thanks to all the wonderful people I’ve talked to and listened to, cried with and laughed with—you know who you are.

So, here we are... And what is next?

 

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From the series They Cometh! paintings by Steve Seeley. The body of work is an homage the comic master Jack Kirby and his insane ability to capture and portray emotion thru simple line work and expression.

Super-recognisers

Can reliably detect AI-generated faces, while typical observers cannot
November 29th, 2024

Via PsyArXiv: "AI-generated faces have become virtually indistinguishable from real human faces. In this study, we demonstrate that super-recognisers—individuals with exceptional face recognition abilities—can reliably detect AI-generated faces, while typical observers cannot. Super-recognisers (N=36) and typical observers (N=89) were shown images of real and AI-generated faces and classified each as real or fake. Super-recognisers performed significantly above chance, with decision confidence positively correlated with accuracy, indicating metacognitive insight. In contrast, typical observers performed at chance level, with no insight into their accuracy. Aggregating responses using a wisdom-of-crowds approach improved super-recogniser accuracy substantially but did not affect typical observer accuracy. To understand the basis of super-recognisers’ enhanced sensitivity to real faces, we examined the facial cues used by each group. Super-recognisers and typical observers showed qualitative differences, with super-recognisers relying less on perceived familiarity and memorability—cues that have previously misled typical observers when assessing face authenticity. These findings suggest that understanding individual differences in face-processing ability may help mitigate risks associated with hyper-realistic AI faces."

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rand

“You maniacs, you blew it up!”

I tried to train my color vision

Neuroplasticity
November 6th, 2024

Via Sequencer Magazine: "We don’t understand color vision as well as you’d think from decades of academic study. We have classic theories of how red, green, blue, yellow, bright, and dark encode in the brain. […] 'That’s still the theory you get in textbooks. But it’s a very naive theory,' he said. 'There’s a whole mystery of how the brain really represents color.' […] In a pivotal study from 2009, their team at the University of Washington cured color blindness in monkeys […] Most color deficiencies come from anomalies in the cones, but one form called “dichromatism” is a genetic condition where one cone is entirely missing. The Neitzes treated dichromat monkeys with this categorically severe version of color blindness. And not only did they replace the missing type of cone with a first-of-its-kind gene therapy, they did this in adult monkeys, raising entirely new questions about sensory plasticity. I’m not getting this treatment anytime soon. The therapy is far from approval and, more importantly, I’m not so deficient that I want an eye injection that temporarily detaches the retina.

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