There's not much I can say in-depth today, but there is a lot I want to say - it will have to come in greater density later. I do feel the need to say something now there.
Tough day! We had our HCJ lecture - and as Flick couldn't be here for it, I guess it's my seminar next week, since I'm next on the list. Although the lecture covered a lot of modernism/existentialism, from Marx to Brecht, the seminar will focus on Gottlob Frege, who was the founder of analytic philosophy - according to the quick Wikipedia check I did just now anyway. The real research will have to come over the next week. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche will be covered later I suppose, but I think if I have the time I'm going to read and write about them in the next week.
Schopenhauer especially interests me just at the moment - I played two thoughtful/philosophical games ("does such a thing exist?" you might ask - well, yes, but I'll need more than a parenthesis) in the last year, Planescape: Torment and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magicka Obscura, two games which I now see take a lot from existentialist thought. Arcanum specifically takes from Schopenhauer the idea that (as I understand from the lecture) to live is to suffer, and thus the kindest thing would be if no one lived; in the game, this is the cosmically powerful antagonist's philosophy, and by the end of the game you are thrust into an interactive dialogue wherein you can either join his cause to end life's suffering, or if you have the wits, refute his arguments. It's always good when HCJ gives me a justifiable reason to play classic PC games.
But where am I going to find the time to do so? Well, BBC's Question Time was held at the Winchester Cathedral earlier tonight, and in one of those moments that just get cobbled together at the last moment, I went down to film, with Henry Lewin-Titt backing me up, and George Berridge and Graham Marshall giving us phone support when we needed it. We managed to film an interview with Nigel Farage! While there were some issues - the university saw fit to lend us a gun mic that didn't work, which meant we had to rely on the lower quality one which came with the camera - it went very smoothly, and I'd like to think we did very well. Tomorrow I'm going to start editing and if I can finish it over the weekend, I aim to. It seems to me at the moment that there's two directions I can take the story in, but I don't want to go into ifs and maybes.
Unfortunately, going to Question Time meant I have to give up on two other events I was quite looking forwards to. The first was the screening of Shira Pinczuk's documentary Karet, about the Samaritan society in Israel, at the university chapel. The second was an informal social meeting for the London Freelance Branch of the NUJ I'd been invited to, down at a pub by the British Museum. I can catch up with both another time, however, whereas what I did today may well be my best work on WINOL thus far.
Overall, a hectic day, but satisfying. More to come next week!
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