Steven Bamlett
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stevieb.bsky.social
Steven Bamlett
@stevieb.bsky.social
730 followers 770 following 1.4K posts
Retired ex-teacher in HE and social worker. Cis gay white male, (like queer as a rejection of norms). Link to Green 🍏 & Black Lives Matter and anti-exclusion. Lover of visual art, the written and spoken word & theatre, ballet, and opera. Left in politics.
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stevieb.bsky.social
livesteven.com?p=40773
How can a drama be created out of the fate of a boy who ‘acquired a knowledge of decorative painting and design, and graining and signwriting’ from the fag-end of a remnant of pre-capitalist values, a...
What’s the most underrated life skill? View all responses How can a drama be created out of the fate of a boy who ‘acquired a knowledge of decorative painting and design, and graining and sig…
livesteven.com
September 30, 2026 at 4:03 PM
stevieb.bsky.social
Turner Prize 2026
livesteven.com/2026/09/29/n...
‘No settled senses of the world can match / The pleasures of that madness’. The Pygmalion Moment in art. Visiting the Turner prize 2026 exhibition at MIMA today.
What’s a moment in your life that made you feel truly alive? View all responses There is a puzzle in this question in this prompt question that makes me ask if I find ‘a moment’ where I…
livesteven.com
September 29, 2026 at 8:18 PM
Reposted by Steven Bamlett
mayor.nyc.gov
Tonight begins the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot. May a sukkat shalom — a shelter of peace — spread over our city.

To all celebrating: Gut Yontif and Chag Sukkot Sameach!
September 25, 2026 at 8:34 PM
Reposted by Steven Bamlett
claybennett.bsky.social
9/26/2026- SCOTUS www.timesfreepress.com/news/2026/se...
September 25, 2026 at 10:28 PM
stevieb.bsky.social
livesteven.com/2026/09/26/i...
I am reading Tressell’s ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’. I have my idea for my business now!
If you could start a new business right now, what would it be? View all responses I am reading Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists at the moment in preparation for seeing a dramat…
livesteven.com
September 26, 2026 at 8:34 AM
stevieb.bsky.social
livesteven.com/2026/09/25/t...
The best way to explore a city is to build it anew.
New York was built upon the workers’ graves,London erected from their burnt up bones:To serve the greed of Capital, the wavesOf seas of want were held back by gorgeous homesHousing Amsterdam,…
livesteven.com
September 25, 2026 at 8:00 AM
stevieb.bsky.social
livesteven.com/2026/09/24/i...
I believe in karma, only in as much as we practice in our early life or lives what becomes our practise when we think ourselves grown up. This is really a blog in preparation for seeing Hollie McNish ...
Do you believe in karma? View all responses I believe in karma, only in as much as we practice in our early life or lives what is our practise when we think ourselves grown up. Hollie McNish at the…
livesteven.com
September 24, 2026 at 11:18 AM
Reposted by Steven Bamlett
adambienkov.bsky.social
Finally
September 24, 2026 at 7:47 AM
stevieb.bsky.social
Booker
livesteven.com/2026/09/23/t...
The Booker shortlist and my plan of possible INACTION
Daily writing promptWhat’s the most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done?View all responses The Booker shortlist and my plan of possible INACTION The List came out yesterday and I updated the last of…
livesteven.com
September 23, 2026 at 8:16 AM
stevieb.bsky.social
livesteven.com/2026/09/21/i...
In Freud, the ‘unheimlich’ and the ‘heimlich’ are a kind of equivalence. Is what ‘feels like home’ really the ‘uncanny’?
Daily writing promptWhat’s a place you visited that felt like home?View all responses In Freud, the ‘unheimlich’ and the ‘heimlich’ are a kind of equivalence. Is what &#8216…
livesteven.com
September 21, 2026 at 2:12 PM
stevieb.bsky.social
livesteven.com?p=40517
Should we start much earlier than we do learning about ‘Life, the littleness of it’. Do little books about littleness in enlarged contexts need prizes or forgetting? This is a blog on Emma Cline (2026...
Daily writing promptWhat’s one thing you wish you had started doing earlier in life?View all responses Should we start much earlier than we do learning about ‘Life, the littleness of it’.[1] Do lit…
livesteven.com
September 20, 2026 at 4:47 PM
stevieb.bsky.social
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Durham city lacks the cultural vibration of constant reinterpretations of great works that a living professional theatre company gives any city.
What’s one thing that would instantly improve your city? Durham city lacks the cultural vibration of constant reinterpretations of great works that a living professional theatre company gives any c…
livesteven.com
September 19, 2026 at 6:45 PM
stevieb.bsky.social
livesteven.com/2026/09/18/a...
As I said in an earlier blog, some books say we are already switching lives with a ‘fictional character’ in order to survive. The absolute best and most comprehensive writing of our time must ask, as ...
Daily writing promptIf you had to switch lives with a fictional character for a week, who would you choose?View all responses As I said in an earlier blog, some books say we are already switching l…
livesteven.com
September 18, 2026 at 8:47 AM
stevieb.bsky.social
Piddington in context
livesteven.com/2026/09/17/l...
‘Life-hacks’ is yet another example of itself, a way of pretending to understand a more complex explanation of the process by which human understanding of a problem and its solution is reached and imp...
Daily writing promptWhat are some life hacks that you practice?View all responses Did I have to look up that idiomatic term ‘life-hacks’ because of my age and slow adaptation to compute…
livesteven.com
September 17, 2026 at 9:15 AM
stevieb.bsky.social
livesteven.com?p=40408
Do I write what people actually want to read? The issue here is not whether writing can be called writing only because it is read by someone, even if only by yourself, but whether writing appeals to w...
Daily writing promptHow do you write what people actually want to read?View all responses There is, of course, an important and inalienable link being writing and reading, for nothing that is writt…
livesteven.com
September 16, 2026 at 6:06 PM
stevieb.bsky.social
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‘Making time to fill with self-care / Leaves no time still to stand and stare’: Help me W.H. Davies!
Daily writing promptHow do you make time for self-care?View all responses Making time to fill with self-care Leaves no time still to stand and stare: Help me W.H. Davies! I have no great love for W…
livesteven.com
September 15, 2026 at 2:51 PM
stevieb.bsky.social
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Without Satan, Milton’s poetry would be bereft of the means of a story and even more bereft of the nuanced glance of life turned into a kind of song where contraries separate and come together in conf...
Daily writing promptHave you ever liked a villain more than the hero? Who and why?View all responses To like the ‘villain more than the hero’ is not an eccentric thing at all, neither i…
livesteven.com
September 12, 2026 at 10:12 AM
stevieb.bsky.social
livesteven.com/2026/09/11/w...
Who is paying for your cheap air travel?
Daily writing promptWhat’s your best tip for budget travel?View all responses The ‘best tip’ idiomatic phrase is usually a shorthand for allowing people who can afford to spend more of …
livesteven.com
September 11, 2026 at 8:43 AM
stevieb.bsky.social
livesteven.com?p=40296
Stories that stay mainly in one place can often travel further imaginatively – dimensions in space, time and the imagination of mobility in the storytelling. This is a blog on the film ‘Pressure’ dire...
What’s the longest trip you’ve ever taken? View all responses Stories that stay mainly in one place can often travel further imaginatively – using  dimensions in outward and inward space, time…
livesteven.com
September 10, 2026 at 4:38 PM
stevieb.bsky.social
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Should I choose a week of his life which offered no return to a present in which I had no faith in myself? Being Sydney Carton being …?
Daily writing promptIf you had to switch lives with a fictional character for a week, who would you choose?View all responses Should I choose a week of his life which offered no return to a present…
livesteven.com
September 9, 2026 at 10:30 AM
stevieb.bsky.social
livesteven.com?p=40225
Although you never ever regret reading Colm Tóibín’s books, you may regret ‘The Bridge’ for raising the hope that ‘A Long Winter’ for his queer hero, Miquel (the finest of them all) never ends.
Daily writing promptHave you ever regretted reading a book — which one and why?View all responses Colm Tóibín is a true writer of the heart but not from it, except in as much as hearts seem to beat…
livesteven.com
September 8, 2026 at 4:30 PM
stevieb.bsky.social
livesteven.com?p=40181
‘Be ready for the duplicity of adulthood and adults’ is my advice and it continues thus; ‘and if you can, learn how not to collude whilst you learn, as you must, to survive’. This blog is a reflection...
Daily writing promptWhat’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?View all responses ‘Be ready for the duplicity of adulthood and adults’ is my advice and it continues t…
livesteven.com
September 7, 2026 at 4:07 PM
stevieb.bsky.social
livesteven.com/2026/09/03/l...
Let’s concentrate on the word ‘raised’ and its rather frightening semantic history, to unpack the assumptions behind answering about how any actions of mine or their mode of occurrence differ from tho...
Daily writing promptWhat’s something you do completely differently from how you were raised?View all responses I am turning to the Online Etymological Dictionary today again for this prompt questio…
livesteven.com
September 3, 2026 at 11:09 AM
stevieb.bsky.social
livesteven.com/2026/09/02/t...
This is a blog on seeing the Gwen John exhibition in Edinburgh in 2026, using the catalogue edited by Rachel Stratton and Lucy Wood, ‘Gwen John: Strange Beauties’.
In looking at drawings and perhaps even serial paintings whether explicitly named versions of a concept, or ‘studies’ or whatever, something the brilliant Lauren Elkin says about the relationship o…
livesteven.com
September 2, 2026 at 3:03 PM
stevieb.bsky.social
livesteven.com/2026/09/01/k...
Kindness is a strange enough quality I think. It is a word with duplicity born in its origins. To be ‘kind’ in truth is to be informed about ‘unkindness’ to those who are in truth still your kind. Thi...
What’s the kindest thing someone has ever done for you? Ikram Talaat Ahmed teaches displaced children in Gaza from Kindness is a strange enough quality I think. It is a word with ll its duplicity b…
livesteven.com
September 1, 2026 at 3:57 PM