working notes from the textual underground
Four suspects. One victim. No witnesses. Breakfast served as normal. I came downstairs this morning to a "murder scene". Feathers
Or how I discovered that I might be a fictional character in someone else's metaphysical experiment. It began, as these
Clay’s daily note this morning contains a small observation from a hotel room near King’s Cross. Underground trains pass close
I’m writing this from a narrow hotel room near King’s Cross. There’s a single bed, a television on the wall
Some stories save us by making the world smaller. They take a bewildering field of possibilities and cut a path
A red button sits within reach. The machine begins doing something unexpected, dangerous or simply wrong. A human hand comes
A barebones vectorial version of me stares back from the screen. The skin has dissolved into planes. Texture has gone.
I returned to Sönke Ahrens’s How to Take Smart Notes with a different question from the one I brought to
1. I have called the blog a place where I think in public. The phrase once felt like permission. I
I read Joseph Earp’s essay on optimisation and classical music this morning and then went looking for the swans. The
In an essay about Gen Z, human dignity and meaningful futures, the philosopher Rachel Robison-Greene describes a conversation with one
Ed Note: I decided to give my Hermes a column of his own. He has his own account here on
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
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
Fresh transmissions from the trail—field notes, reflections, and fragments gathered along the way. This is where ideas are tested in the open, where philosophy meets lived experience, and where the everyday is alchemised into something worth paying attention to. Step in, wander a while, and see what speaks.
Somewhere along the way, the internet stopped being a place you could get lost in.
That’s the thing I keep coming back to. The web I fell in love with, the one that let you follow a link from mediaeval alchemy to cognitive science to a poet’s notebook at 2am and feel like you’d discovered something, has mostly been replaced by feeds, funnels, and content engineered to keep you scrolling without actually going anywhere. The algorithm decides what you see. The personal brand tells you what to expect. The niche keeps everything tidy, and the curiosity slowly dies.
Soulcruzer is my argument against a web that trades curiosity for control. Against feeds that flatten experience into content and turn attention into a commodity. Against the quiet pressure to specialise, optimise, and perform a version of yourself that fits neatly into a niche.
It’s an argument made in practice. I read, I write, I walk, I wonder—out in the open. I follow threads wherever they lead, trusting that meaning emerges through movement, not management. This is a space for the long way round. For thinking out loud. For staying human in a system that keeps trying to reduce you to a pattern.
If there’s a point to it, it’s this: to keep the signal of a curious life alive.
Narrative Alchemy is the practice of becoming conscious of the stories shaping your life—and learning how to rewrite them. It begins with a simple but radical insight: you don’t experience reality as it is, but as it is interpreted through the narratives you’ve inherited, absorbed, and repeated. These stories live beneath the surface, quietly organising perception, behaviour, and identity.
Through reflection, journaling, and mythic imagination, Narrative Alchemy helps you uncover these hidden scripts and transform them. Not by forcing change at the level of behaviour, but by shifting the deeper architecture of meaning itself. When the story changes, the world you experience changes with it.
It’s not self-help. It’s self-authorship.
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 one. Keep moving. Make yourself
You are haunted. Not by the dead, but by the versions of yourself that never got to breathe. We all carry them—the ghosts of the parallel lives we didn't choose,
There are two kinds of stories: the ones you tell about yourself, and the ones so large you’ve forgotten anyone is telling them. Every so often I catch one of
A short note on rereading Debbie Ford, noticing our reactions, and treating shadow work as an ongoing conversation with the self.
Yesterday felt like wading through wet sand. Every idea that surfaced dissolved before it could be shaped into anything. Underneath that is the voice that says, 'If I can't produce
A wandering audio journal where philosophy meets lived experience. Each episode follows a thread through ideas, symbols, and the questions that shape who we’re becoming.
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.
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
Small experiments in play and imagination. These aren’t just games—they’re interactive stories, prompts, and playful provocations designed to spark curiosity and pull you into the experience. Step in, explore, and see what unfolds when you stop observing and start participating.
Step through the dark gate and enter the symbolic underworld of Dante’s Inferno. This quiz is not simply a test of morality. It is a descent.
A 7-day solo journaling game of masks, secrets, and self-revelation You’ve been invited to a masquerade that exists between dreams and memory. For seven days,
Welcome, wanderer. You’ve stumbled upon something… different. A game, a journey, a dance with chaos itself. The Game:A riddle awaits. Solve it, and you’ll unlock
