S2 #80 / Douglas Batchelor on Fatherhood, Art and the ineffable

In this episode, I sit down with my friend and fellow podcaster Douglas Batchelor of What Magic Is This? for a conversation about the mysterious spark at the heart of art and creativity.

Douglas has recently become a father and we kick off our chat on how family life reshapes our relationship with creativity—how the presence of children can sharpen your awareness of time, deepen your sense of wonder, and remind you of the importance of passing on what truly matters.

From there, we explore how poetry, photography, music, and even comics can reach beyond explanation to move us in ways that hint at the ineffable. I share my thoughts on the instinctive side of photography—especially street photography that captures fleeting moments with emotional force—while Douglas and I discuss the power of music, the strange nostalgia of childhood comics, and the shifting landscape of cinema, from Nosferatu on the big screen to today’s spectacle-driven blockbusters. We continue the conversation for another 45 minutes in the plus show and get into some rich territory.

What emerges is a meditation on creativity as something universal and timeless: the drive to make meaning, to capture the ineffable, and to pass along works that connect us across generations.
Show notes:

• What Magic is This? https://whatmagicisthis.com

• Master and Commander (film) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHTHCNYiiHk

• Nosferatu (film) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nulvWqYUM8k

• Oscar Peterson (jazz pianist) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJhHn-TuDY&list=RDNTJhHn-TuDY&start_radio=1

• “Video nasties” — UK horror film ban in the 1980s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_nasty

• W.B. Yeats (poet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WB.Yeats

• Yeats - Easter 1916 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43289/easter-1916

• Yeats - Sailing to Byzantium https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43291/sailing-to-byzantium

• Yeats - The Circus animals desertion https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43299/the-circus-animals-desertion

• Emily Dickinson (poet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson

• Emily Dickinson - I felt a funeral, in my brain, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45706/i-felt-a-funeral-in-my-brain-340

• Protestant Ascendancy (historical context in Dublin architecture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Ascendancy

• Lascaux's Prehistoric Cave Paintings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnSq0c7jM-A&t=1s

• Felix Thiollier (photographer) https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/whats-on/exhibitions/presentation/felix-thiollier-1842-1914-photographs

• The Horse Trainer by Felix Thiollier 1899 https://pixels.com/featured/the-horse-trainer-by-felix-thiollier-orca-art-gallery.html?srsltid=AfmBOoqsPCE1575mUAZYSB-udx0zjLW1ok5vaB6pPHdgPFSglmb9CiD2

  
  

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