sometimes a smile is just a smile

When Memory Is Gone, Music Remains Her hand began to move before her face had time to change expression. She sat in a wheelchair, eyes cast downward, both hands resting in front of her. Headphones were placed over her ears. For the first few seconds, almost nothing stirred. Then the opening notes of Swan Lake rose into the air. Her fingers slowly uncurled. Her arm lifted—soft, precise, deliberate—until it seemed as if a ballerina had just stepped out of the shadows. Marta Cinta González Saldanya was once a Spanish ballet dancer. In her finest years she transformed herself into the characters of Swan Lake on stage. Her body had been trained until every movement became instinct. Then Alzheimer’s arrived. Memories of her name, of the stage, of an entire life gradually faded. The nursing home became the quiet place where she spent her final years, when nearly everything that once defined her was no longer clearly present in her mind. But when the familiar music began, something deeper than memory stirred. Her body responded before consciousness could catch up. Her hands found familiar positions; her arms opened to a rhythm they had known thousands of times. People call this muscle memory. The term is accurate, yet incomplete. It points to the truth that certain skills and experiences, lived with long enough, no longer depend on the ability to recount them. They exist on another level—in movement, in sensation, in the reflex that answers a melody. Music does not cure Alzheimer’s. That moment was not a miracle. It simply revealed another path to what remains of a person. A melody that had accompanied her for years could awaken physical and emotional responses in a way words never could. Marta did not need to remember who she had been. She did not need to tell her story. A single raised hand spoke for an entire lifetime. The video was recorded in 2019 and spread across the world. Millions of people paused before that image. Perhaps because it touched a very real fear: that one day the things we once loved and took pride in might no longer live clearly in our own memory. Yet the video also offered a quiet answer. A person is not made only of what they can still narrate. Part of a life can become habit, rhythm, and deep response—so deeply embedded that no words are required to prove it once existed. Marta died in 2020. She could not return to the stage. The moment in the video could not restore the past intact. But it left behind a clear image: an elderly woman in a wheelchair, no stage, no applause—only the music that had traveled with her for so long. Then her hand rose. And a part of a life that seemed lost appeared once more.

Fighting back against educational enshittification

I'm fundraising for MCR Pathways. Check out my @JustGiving page and please donate if you can. Thank you! #JustGiving justgiving.com/page/david-ro…

Meet Aaron. I mentored him last year and he's one of the reasons I think MCR Pathways is so great. justgiving.com/page/david-ro… Or, of course, both!!

Delighted to see Jen Stout winning First Book of the Year at Scotland's National Book Awards. She'll go far. scotsman.com/arts-and-cultur…

Huge congatulations to Ajay Close for winning Novel of the Year in Scotland's National Book Awards. As I (almost) predicted earlier this year booksfromscotland.com/2024/0…

Past… wanna great book festival in London? Head here #standrewsbookfestival

Went a wee dander up Ladyside in the Moorfoots. It's the classic mix of sheep farming and grouse shooting. What did I find, 25km from Edinburgh Castle? 🧵

A Ukrainian ambulance in Edinburgh tonight. Medics are deliberately targeted in this terrible war. Big moral questions for UK citizens. Do you support contributions going directly to help Ukraine buy the weapons they need? Or too squeamish to consider this? ⁦@RedCrossUkraine

Russian embassy, London

So proud of and happy for my friend whose book has long deserved this.

Still thinking about literary Christmas gifts?Then head over to BfS for this review of Elspeth Barker's Notes From The Henhouse, published by @wnbooks! booksfromscotland.com/2023/1…

Can’t help but smile at this shelf of @scotsman_arts best Scottish books 2023. Along with my own Wild History there are 6(!)books I commissioned for @BirlinnBooks & @PolygonBooks - brilliant works by Denise Mina, Alan Warner, David Greig @LynseyMay @DougieStrang & @MerrynGlover!

Our revels are begun! It's the new issue of BfS with the best gifting recommendations from our friends including @bwpublishing @LuathPress @johnmurrays @PolygonBooks @saraband @QuercusBooks @canongatebooks @cranachanbooks @scotlit @BloodaxeBooks & more! booksfromscotland.com/issue/…

One of the funnest characters I’ve ever written is Cardinal Wolsey. Reforming rhymester William Roy wrote: Fie on his golden three-folded crown Which he wears upon his head; Fie upon his majesty and renown Claiming on earth to be in Christ’s stead amazon.co.uk/Blood-Descended…

I am a life-long supporter of the Palestinian search for freedom and statehood , but this morning am feeling only utter revulsion, horror and depression at the press descriptions of yet more innocents massacred. No one, least of all children, should ever have to endure violence and fear, and the kind of atrocity carried out by Hamas is only going to intensify the ongoing oppression, dispossession and occupation, as well as provoking retaliatory waves of bombings and killings which are already leading to the deaths of countless more innocent children. Hamas has not only committed a barbaric outrage with its abominable ISIS-like tactics, I fear it has also done incalculable and lasting damage to the just cause of their own people, entrenched the hawks and haters and ethnic cleansers, and made the search for peace, justice and freedom more difficult than ever.

Trainspotting parodies usually bore the shit out of me, but I quite like this one.