Treadwell’s launch event

Photo by Mark Pilkington

So, the belated launch of Archaeologies of Consciousness at Treadwell’s Books last Friday went swimmingly.

I learned a load about throwing such an event. As ever, I was in danger of falling afoul of traditional designations, pitching things directly between Treadwell’s customary split between “book launch” events and “lectures”. I wanted some good juicy discussion to be part of whatever passed for “celebrations”, so I invited Robert Wallis (above left) and Phil Hine (above right) along for a small panel discussion. In the end, the mix worked wonderfully.

I’m really not up to ad-libbing talks or even introductory preambles yet, so I wrote a piece to kick proceedings off. (By the way, I’ve also posted the piece I wrote for the Libra Aries gig in Cambridge at the end of January.) To me, so far, the purpose of “talks” in public speaking is to fire people’s minds up enough to get some good questions and get a conversation going. Obviously there’s a place for full-length deliveries with questions piggy-backing at the end, but so far I’m most interested in live events of my own for what you can’t get in a book or, really, on the web—face-to-face interaction.

As at Cambridge, the discussion was lively and fascinating. Many thanks to everyone who came along and took part. Or even just came along. Strange to think that very recently I’ve been to talks and chickened out of chipping in with a question (and probably will again)—and there I am giving a talk. There’s a photo to prove it.

Robert and Phil were there because I know them, they’ve got great ideas, and I wanted to honour the traditions they represent (or can be made to represent for an evening!)—open-minded academia and no-nonsense magic. I owe a lot to many people in these streams of culture, and it was fantastic to have Robert and Phil’s criss-crossing contributions there on Friday.