Michael Hooper

Inspired by two great instruments, a wonderful space, two great composers, and a great friend - with Nicola LeFanu, Daniel Parker (x2), Mozart, and Morgan Goff at the end of an amazing day at the 12th century church of St Mary Iffley. Photos thanks to Malene Sheppard Skaerved & Gerald Garcia

11 days ago! Still reading it… Though I have read other things too, and it’s nice to read texts like this slowly, too.

‘If the ghost is the living-dead or the half-dead person, the baby is a dead-living or a half-alive person.’ Thoroughly enjoying Agamben’s Infancy and History.

my mom took tylenol when she was pregnant, which made me super focused on menswear and now i have a million followers on twitter

Congratulations!!

Sarah Collins being presented the Dent medal by Simon Keefe.

Sarah displaying her Dent medal.

A close-up of the impressive Dent medal itself.

Congratulations to our Dent medallist Prof. Sarah Collins! Sarah gave a brilliant keynote lecture yesterday, titled 'Habits of Realism'.

Sarah was presented the Dent medal by the RMA President Simon Keefe.

Current train reading.

Going to an event that includes drinks and ‘canopés’, which I guess are tasty preserved organs that will be served in cute little jars?

Decision to close Meanjin criticised as act of ‘utter cultural vandalism’ Shutting long-running literary journal, which published emerging writers as well as the cream of Australia’s literary talent, described as ‘enormous loss’

Denials everywhere but no explanation.
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...

You know that spelling is called spelling because it’s magic, right??

YouTube video by Peter Sheppard Skaerved Nicola LeFanu - Prelude after Grinling Gibbons

After the glorious afternoon working on Nicola Lefanu's wonderful new Duo, which Morgan Goff and I premiere in Oxford next month, here is the solo piece she wrote me based on a Grinling Gibbons sculpture www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy3-...

My university just switched all its wifi to eduroam and it’s excellent.

UTS academics describe ‘culture of fear’ as enrolments put on hold for nearly a fifth of courses The freeze comes as the university pursues $100m in cost cuts and after it announced in April it could axe 400 jobs * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Academics at the University of Technology Sydney have described feelings of stress and a “culture of fear” after the educational institution temporarily paused student enrolments for nearly a fifth of its courses, leaving staff wondering if their jobs will be among the hundreds set to be axed. The university has stopped taking in new students for 120 of its 615 courses, including masters degrees in teaching primary and secondary education. More than 50 of the affected courses were international study options attached to other degrees. The pause will last until the end of the autumn 2026 semester. Continue reading...

UTS academics describe ‘culture of fear’ as enrolments put on hold for nearly a fifth of courses

Doing some work on philosophies of Art and Freud, and I finally found the chapter that looked good from the abstract. Turns out that the capitalisation of ART is not because it's very definitely about high ART and not everyday art, but because it's actually about Assisted Reproductive Technology. 🤨

Finishing the reading I started in 1999. (I forgot I didn’t finish it.)

Teaching done for the term. This term I was teaching critical musical practices and a course on live performance. Very good work by students and a lot of interesting ideas. Now for the marking.

You better not be wearing the isolator when I get there

Me:

On the overnight practice-desk; Nicola leFanu's wonderful new meditation on a Norman church near Oxford, where Morgan Goff and I will premiere it next month - do come www.ticketsource.com/whats-on/oxf...

I'm now a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. We need organisations like this more than ever, and I'm very pleased to be part of the Society.

This week’s school drop-off train-read is Sarah Collins’s Lateness and Modernism (2019). As good on the second read as the first!

legitimate observation: people are using “is this AI” as an insult for human-generated work

fantasy land conclusion: IT IS CLASS WAR WAGED BY PRIVILEGED KNOWLEDGE WORKER LAPTOP CLASS

lmao

I guess this explains why I’ve had 4 applications to undertake a PhD with me today?

It was going to be a history of music and celebration in Australia over the past 45 years, within a broader context theorising the concept of artistic celebration. 🤷‍♂️

Almost none for the whole of the humanities. Congrats to the very few who were funded, including Ben Etherington, whose work is terrific.

No Future Fellowships for anyone in music.

And that's a nope for my ARC application.

Decades-old music school among casualties as ANU cuts mount Australian National University’s 60-year-old school to become a ‘programme’, as performance, composition and theory give way to ‘music and well-being’

Australian National University’s 60-year-old school to become a ‘programme’, as performance, composition and theory give way to ‘music and well-being’ www.timeshighereducation.com/news/decades...

Why are First Nations children still not coming home from out-of-home care? 2023-06-14T13:58:00+10:00

www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/new...

The point of the essay is about finding resources and organising them into an argument that is then coherently written. Hard to see how to achieve that without essays.

Practising most things is tedious to some extent (often a large extent). But how else to train? There’s a solid argument that all training involves repetition that is not at all interesting (the cellist Emanuel Feuermann used to read the news and smoke while practising scales).