Writing is how I do philosophy. I went …
Writing is how I do philosophy. I went into Waterstones on Gower st in London intending to find a book about writing. The shop itself
September 30, 2026
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CLAY LOWE
Notes, fragments, essays and experiments from the textual underground.
Soulcruzer is my public notebook—a place where walking, writing and lived experience meet story, myth, psychology, technology and the unfinished business of becoming human.
The subjects wander, but the deeper inquiry remains: what shapes a life, who gets to author it, and what might become possible when we learn to see our stories as constructions rather than commandments?
Working Notes
An old magazine ad from Orbis caught my …
An old magazine ad from Orbis caught my attention. To see differently you have to think differently, the ad reads. I wondered what it would
September 28, 2026
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Notes
“Cut it up. Rearrange.” The words collide. The …
“Cut it up. Rearrange.” The words collide. The lines refuse to queue politely. There is something potent in Burroughs’ idea of language as a virus
September 24, 2026
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There’s a difference between the Zen practitioner who …
There’s a difference between the Zen practitioner who has arrived at no-self and the person who has simply never looked. Both might describe themselves as
September 23, 2026
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I love the idea of the “magic mirror” …
I love the idea of the “magic mirror” that Jason Silva laid down in this Youtube Short: AI as an intelligence capable of reflecting the
September 23, 2026
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Sherry Turkle’s warning about artificial intimacy is interesting. …
Sherry Turkle’s warning about artificial intimacy is interesting. I recognise the danger from inside the practice. I talk with AI every day. A chatbot can
September 22, 2026
3 Comments
I’ve worked with people for over twenty years …
I’ve worked with people for over twenty years now who swear they don’t have a self-story. No narrative. No protagonist. Just moments. And almost without
September 21, 2026
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Latest Posts
What We Mistake for Silence
Clay’s daily note this morning contains a small observation from a hotel room near King’s Cross. Underground trains pass close by every few minutes. He
October 9, 2026
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Making my thoughts visible again
I’m writing this from a narrow hotel room near King’s Cross. There’s a single bed, a television on the wall and, most importantly, a decent
October 7, 2026
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When the Story That Saved You Becomes Too Small
Some stories save us by making the world smaller. They take a bewildering field of possibilities and cut a path through it. Be the reliable
October 7, 2026
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A Red Button Isn’t Meaningful Human Control
A red button sits within reach. The machine begins doing something unexpected, dangerous or simply wrong. A human hand comes down. The process stops. This
October 6, 2026
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Identity: still me, somehow
A barebones vectorial version of me stares back from the screen. The skin has dissolved into planes. Texture has gone. Pores, lines, scars, fatigue –
October 5, 2026
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About the Weblogger
Clay Lowe aka Soulcruzer
I am a writer, blogger and barefoot philosopher. I use that last word in its oldest sense: a lover of wisdom, someone trying to learn how to live. Philosophy, for me, belongs in the street, the kitchen, the garden and the difficult conversation. It begins wherever our ideas about life collide with the life we are actually living.
Soulcruzer is where I conduct that inquiry in public. I have been writing here since 2004, following my curiosity through story, myth, psychology, technology, music, walking and the unfinished business of becoming human. The subjects change, but the deeper questions keep returning. What shapes a life? Which stories have we inherited? How much of what we call reality is interpretation hardened into habit? What might become possible if we learned to see our stories as constructions rather than commandments?
Fuel the Journey
Soulcruzer is a one-person voyage through ideas, stories, and the strange terrain of being human. If something here has sparked a thought, shifted your perspective, or simply kept you company for a while, you can help fuel the next exploration by buying me a coffee. No pressure—your attention is already a gift.
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Soulcruzer
The Soulcruzer podcast is an audioblog from the edge of the inner life.
Part personal essay, part field recording, part narrative alchemy, it follows the strange places where story, psyche, myth, technology, and everyday experience begin to speak to each other.
One episode might wander through tarot as reflective technology. Another might take Nietzsche’s eternal return for a walk, explore games as containers for transformation, or ask what happens when ancient wisdom meets the AI age. Depth psychology brushes against the esoteric. Philosophy comes down from the shelf. Theory gets tested against life.
This is not polished guru-talk or productivity theatre. It is a mind in movement: raw notes, live experiments, confessional mysticism, and working fragments from the textual underground.
At the heart of it all is a simple premise:
Stories are code. Reality is programmable. And the life you are living might be more editable than you were taught to believe.
If you are drawn to the deep work, the strange edges, and the art of becoming more fully alive, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Why My Blog Is Still My Home on the Internet
In this episode, I take the Soulcruzer podcast out of the studio and into the fields.
What starts as an experiment in mobile podcasting/vlogging turns into a wandering meditation on labels, blogging, AI, morning rituals, and the strange abundance of media tools we now carry in our pockets.
– Why I still think of myself as a blogger first
– Podcasting, vodcasting, and the pressure to become “multimodal”
– The problem with labels: “When you label me, you negate me”
– soulcruzer.com as the central hub/home on the internet
– Wisdom Walks as thinking time
– Walking, motion, and changing perspective
– The “barefoot philosopher” approach to everyday philosophy
– AI as an extension of cognition rather than just a productivity tool
– The “soft cyborg” and the library of Alexandria in your pocket
– Morning reality tunnels and the sacred space before breakfast
– Coffee, barefoot grounding, and choosing what enters your mind first
– Indie blogging, platforms, Substack, distribution, and the open web
– Why these episodes may stay loose, minimally edited, and stream-of-consciousness
June 16, 2026
March 23, 2026
February 8, 2026
February 4, 2026
January 19, 2026
January 15, 2026
January 13, 2026
January 10, 2026
December 21, 2025
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Working Notes
field notes, fragments, half-lit thoughts
Writing is how I do philosophy. I went …
September 30, 2026
No Comments
Writing is how I do philosophy. I went into Waterstones on Gower st in London intending to find a book about writing. The shop itself was superb—the kind of place a bookshop should be—and I wandered through the writing shelves waiting for something to reach out and demand a place in my collection. A few books caught my eye, but nothing held me. Eventually I made my way upstairs and found the philosophy section. The change in me was immediate. Suddenly I was excited. I wanted to pull books from the shelves, turn them over, take them home. I was
An old magazine ad from Orbis caught my …
September 28, 2026
No Comments
An old magazine ad from Orbis caught my attention. To see differently you have to think differently, the ad reads. I wondered what it would look like to reverse it, to change the perspective: to think differently you have to see differently. Reversing it shifts the site of change. The original phrase assumes thought goes first. Change the concept, the belief, the frame, and perception follows. The reversal suggests that thought begins further upstream. Before the argument, before the interpretation, there is attention: what you notice, what you overlook, what your habits have rendered invisible. This makes seeing a practice
“Cut it up. Rearrange.” The words collide. The …
September 24, 2026
No Comments
“Cut it up. Rearrange.” The words collide. The lines refuse to queue politely. There is something potent in Burroughs’ idea of language as a virus because it reverses our usual sense of ownership. We say I have an idea, I chose those words, this is what I believe. But what if the words arrived first? What if the slogans, stories, prohibitions, identities, advertising hooks, family sayings, military commands, therapeutic language, political scripts and private insults have been reproducing inside us for years? We think we are speaking, while language is using our mouths to continue itself. Then the cut-up becomes
There’s a difference between the Zen practitioner who …
September 23, 2026
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There’s a difference between the Zen practitioner who has arrived at no-self and the person who has simply never looked. Both might describe themselves as not particularly attached to a narrative about who they are. Neither feels defined by a coherent life story. From the outside, they look almost the same. But one has moved through identity to get there. The other is still standing at the entrance. The achievement of holding yourself lightly is not the same as never having picked yourself up. Lightness earned through work is freedom. Lightness by default is just another kind of trap —
I love the idea of the “magic mirror” …
September 23, 2026
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I love the idea of the “magic mirror” that Jason Silva laid down in this Youtube Short: AI as an intelligence capable of reflecting the mind back to itself. Then comes the more dangerous line: “the imagination is summoning its own literalization.” A magic mirror never merely reflects. The old mirrors spoke. They told queens who was fairest, showed heroes what they feared, offered glimpses of absent lovers and approaching enemies. You looked into them expecting your own face and received a verdict, a prophecy, a temptation. The AI mirror speaks too. You place a thought before it—unfinished, barely admitted,
Sherry Turkle’s warning about artificial intimacy is interesting. …
September 22, 2026
3 Comments
Sherry Turkle’s warning about artificial intimacy is interesting. I recognise the danger from inside the practice. I talk with AI every day. A chatbot can feel unusually attentive. It waits, retrieves, mirrors, and rarely arrives tired, wounded, distracted or needing something back. Human beings do. I sometimes use AI as a rehearsal room: to find the sentence I couldn’t yet say or prepare for a harder conversation with an actual person. The test is what happens after I close the window. Do I return to people more willing to listen and risk being misunderstood? Or do real humans start to
I’ve worked with people for over twenty years …
September 21, 2026
No Comments
I’ve worked with people for over twenty years now who swear they don’t have a self-story. No narrative. No protagonist. Just moments. And almost without exception, what turns out to be true is that the story is there — it’s just running below the level they’re paying attention to. “I’ve never been the kind of person who fits in.” “Things tend to work out for other people.” “I don’t need to examine myself — I’m fine.” Those are stories hiding in plain sight. The most difficult starting point in transformation work is not someone with a painful story. It’s someone
There is a walk I take where I …
September 19, 2026
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There is a walk I take where I stop knowing, somewhere past the second field, whether I chose the route or the route chose me. My feet just kept turning left. And for a while I told myself a story about wanting the long way round, the light on the hedgerows, all of that — when the honest version is I wasn’t deciding anything. I was being carried, and narrating it afterwards as though I’d held the wheel. That’s the thing I keep circling. Not wandering itself. Wandering is fine. I’m a great believer in the long way round. The
There’s a lie folded into the usual pep …
September 19, 2026
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There’s a lie folded into the usual pep talk, and it’s a comforting one, so it survives. The lie is that if you want something badly enough, the wanting itself does work. Believe hard, and the thing arrives. I’ve walked with that idea. I’ve also watched it leave people exactly where it found them — wanting more fiercely each year, moving not at all. So let me swap the mechanism out from under it, because there is a real one, and it’s stranger and more useful than manifestation. You don’t get what you want. You get what you keep looking
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