A Piece of Chalk
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- Опубликовано: 6 сен 2024
- In this last episode from my old study I share with you a favourite from GK Chesterton
If you'd like to cheer me on with a cup of coffee and some cake whilst I unpack in the new study you can do so here - thanks www.buymeacoff...
Wonderful and great fun.
It occurs to me that we can only have enjoyed the spells in the library because someone has been with you recording them. Mrs Guite I presume.
Thank you so much - very much appreciated. ❤
I'll gove her your thanks!
Lovely! This reminded me of Dorothy Sayers' book "Five Red Herrings" in which the tube of white paint was also essential.
Evening Malcolm,
We are all looking forward to seeing you in the study in your new house. I'm sure it will be as tidy as your old one! Some wit once said that a tidy house is the sign of a wasted life, or words to that effect. Well, that's my excuse. 😁
God bless, and happy puffing!
Thank you for sharing, Malcolm! I have used this text in teaching informal essays in my high school literature classes. I love that the symbolism of the chalk or color white develops over the essay. I think that we often need to be reminded that the good, morality, and virtue are positive in their essence, just as Chesterton argues that the white chalk or light are necessarily positive.
I pray for a safe transition for you and your family as you move (my wife and I will likewise be packing our library for a move in a couple weeks), and I look forward to getting a glimpse into your new study soon!
Thank you for sharing. I wish you a stress free move (if that is possible). I am looking forward to viewing chats from your new study. God Bless.
Good luck on your move! Great to hear some Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday is my favourite classic work
Thank you for this, Malcolm. For years, I wrote a column for a chain of weekly newspapers in suburban Cincinnati. At first, I thought that they all needed to be explicitly Christian. But over time, I recognized that my witness for Christ was enhanced when I wrote about mundane topics from everyday life. So, one of the columns most remarked on was about an old refrigerator first owned by my grandparents that lasted some fifty years.
I love Chesterton but was unaware of his essay on chalk. It reminded me that in junior high school English class, we read Montaigne's essay, "Of Thumbs." Who says that Seinfeld was the first to create art about nothing?
May God bless you and your wife as you move to your new home.
Thanks Mark
" I reluctantly tore myself away from the task of 'doing nothing in particular.' "
What a great start! it was worth coming here today for that alone (which is not to denigrate what follows). It is SO Pooh Bear - so A.A.Milne! Have you ever done a talk on The Idler?
As ever, many thanks.
ah yes, the Idler would be a great topic and I have some early editions!
Malcolm so kind to be invited to your new place ... looking forward to that delight, not being like chalk and cheese. Can’t wait.
Thank you Malcolm.
Perfectly marvelous! Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Dear Malcolm, wishing you peace in the chaos and you do look like you are enjoying yourself. Hoping your new place is very near perfect for you and yours 🙂
Oh, much packing indeed! Wish you both all the best on your moving endeavors!
You sir are one of those very few who can keep one interested in your words even when your current interlocutor is a mere camera :) I really like the fact that you mostly smoke Petersons - makes me wonder if you too, a bit like me, are a traditionalist. Keep these videos coming I really like listening to you. And yes, good luck with the move. Looking forward to see a video of your newly decorated study sir !!
I really need to find your collection of essays written for the church times. Best of luck to you in the move, and thank you for sharing Chesterton and a piece of chalk. As an aside, I am so intrigued by that large glass figure on the bookshelf behind you, which looks like a bear.
it is indeed a bear!
Nice 1 Mr Malcolm...
Thank you for the joy of discovering another Chesterton enthusiast and reminding me of this wonderful essay! I wrote my undergrad thesis on Chesterton and look forward one day to perhaps reading all of his hitherto inaccessible works from GK's weekly through the Chesterton Digital Library project! www.gofundme.com/f/TheAmericanChestertonSociety
Amazing essay.
You'll be a loss to Cambridge Malcolm but hope you're looking forward to your move east! And of course will still have your you tubes and books 😄
Have you ever considered doing an audiobook?
yes, hope to bring out one soon
I love these videos, but this just baffles me - am I the only one who can see that it’s glaringly a racist set of symbols that GK is setting out in this? Is it not just blindingly obvious that there’s a connection between the ‘white’ of the chalk and the ‘white’ of ethnically English people’s skin? It’s an implicit and probably not consciously drawn connection, but it’s very obviously there. I’m stunned and disappointed to see that you would share this essay without stopping to think and realising that this is blandly nativist English supremacism that GK is bandying about. I like your videos, Malcolm, and I love the joy you have for poetry, but this is poor form. I just ask you to please think more carefully about how race figures in these English Christian symbolisms. We have to do better than ‘white = good’. After all, what inference other than ‘black = bad’ can be drawn from that idea? Where does that leave people with dark, or deeper-toned, skin? I think a rethink is needed of the way we talk about colour and value as well as the way we describe skin colour. GK’s words here wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t inaccurately describe Northern European skin as ‘white’. However, the fact is that we do, and this is clearly because we have historically wanted to associate ‘white’ skin with moral purity and superiority. I could go on with all of his but I’ve said enough. Malcolm, if you read this, I trust you’ll understand that I’m not out to get you, but only want us all to learn and grow as much as possible; it just so happens that your role as a public figure is to publicly take responsibility for a wider social growth and evolution in our consciousness beyond these dull and constraining racial categories and symbolic orders. Thank you for sharing, and for opening yourself to comment and criticism. May we all grow, and receive wisdom and truth into our lives; May we always be learning - I pray 🙏🏻
Oh wow! I hadn't thought about it that way. That is sad and disconcerting. I am an artist and I love drawing on brown paper because instead of just drawing the shadows, which is all that can be done on white paper, I can actually draw the light. I can add both shadow and light. I use white for the light. Is there no possible way to use this metaphor without it being racist?
"I think a rethink is needed of the way we talk about colour and value as well as the way we describe skin colour. "
Why? And who is we? You're not talking about colours either, you're talking about brightness and mixing it up with hue and associating it with racism because the work was by a "white" person, and you associate racism with "white" people.
Or do you mean value as in the technical term for the amount of light, producing brightness/shade in a hue? Do you not see this as an example of the unavoidable ambiguity when using symbols to communicate?
You want to make night the symbolical equal to day? Remove all contrast in art and make everything grey? Why on earth would you want to do that? Surely every culture attaches more positive associations to day/light than they do night/dark.
@@megnewberg6859 Are you saying the same picture at night in the dark is less racist than during the day or in a bright light?
You're reading far too much into this.
@@megnewberg6859 that’s a beautiful idea - drawing the light. I wouldn’t want to ruin that for you! I may have gone a bit strong on this... reading back my comment it sounds a bit strident and also sort of seems to assume other people will be drawing the same connections I am, when perhaps I was just revealing more about my own anxieties. The thing is, as other people have pointed out, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the idea that light = good, or dark = bad. If there’s a problem it’s maybe more in the way we apply those terms to skin colour. Describing people as ‘white’ or ‘black’ is so inaccurate it’s almost ridiculous. The commenter after you said something about hue versus brightness which is an interesting distinction, and to be honest I probably don’t know enough about that. I don’t know, maybe I was/am just reading too much into all of this, but it strikes me as a problem that needs addressing. I’m not saying people should stop associating brightness with goodness. Maybe it’s that ‘white’ is not a colour. It’s the combination of all colours. Equally ‘black’ is the absence of light, not really a colour. So to use either of those terms to describe skin colour is wrong. I would need to watch the video again to comment more on the specifics of how it’s all laid out by Chesterton and whether it’s fair to accuse him of racism. I may well be wrong about that. In any case, thank you for your reply and I wish you all the best. 🙂