“Writing is one way of making the world our own…walking is another.”
Solvitur ambulando—Latin for ‘it is solved by walking’ is a motto/philosophy often attributed to St Augustine. Well, it worked in the fifth century and it’s certainly saved my mind-in-a-mire self more times than I can count. Restlessness, a creative drought, melancholy—a walk is insurance against mostly any feeling of ‘disregulation’ or unease. From Nietzsche to Beethoven, Hemingway to Thoreau, plenty of flâneurs abound in history’s pages as proof. Tchaikovsky, in fact, was so superstitious about a two-hour walk a day, he believed a great misfortune or illness would befall him if he skipped a minute or two. All of this is a long-winded way of saying, dear reader, that if you’re reading this, it’s time to go outside.
A Line of Hamlets
Royal Shakespeare Co’s line of Hamlets: Tim Minchin, Harriet Walter, David Tennant, Paapa Essiedu, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rory Kinnear, Sir Ian McKellen, and Dame Judi Dench (not pictured) star in this epic sketch, enjoy.
This segue was brought to you by the other [composer] Tchaikovsky, born nearly a hundred years after aforementioned pedantic perambulist, who bequeathed his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company to be used as Yorick in Hamlet. Yes, you read that right. Here’s David Tennant with him:
As I Walked Out One Evening by W.H. Auden
