Lauren Pikó
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booklearning.bsky.social
Lauren Pikó
@booklearning.bsky.social
920 followers 330 following 640 posts
Sometimes historian, evaluator, writer, researcher. Always about disability justice and lying down. Exhortations for slowness, process, practice.🥄 Views own. laurenpiko.com
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booklearning.bsky.social
gonna get this framed to hang next to my unreasonable number of Blake prints 💜
"The truth, however, is that consciousness is a wonder beyond its own comprehension. Perhaps the universe is nothing more than cold, calculable matter—that, as Galileo posited, “the laws of nature are written in the language of mathematics.” But the laws of consciousness are written in language. Indeed, I suspect that rather than language being a development of consciousness it is a precondition of it. More specifically, I would suggest that consciousness and thought emerge from the idea of representation—that it is when we developed the idea that something can be a metaphor for, imitation of, or reference to another thing that we began to think. I would go so far as to say that, in fact, this miraculous imprecision is what thought is."
November 18, 2025 at 9:39 AM
booklearning.bsky.social
Beset by impossible crushing deadlines, the postie chose to interrupt my panic attack to give me a treat ... Though now I need to not actually read any of it until the weekend/after Sisyphean tasks are somehow complete
Paperback of Christopher Hill's Milton and the English Revolution. Cover art is a grumpy black and white portrait of Milton.
November 18, 2025 at 2:36 AM
booklearning.bsky.social
Courtesy of the intrepid @bluntshovels.bsky.social , this ARC Discovery project sounds thrilling: "aims to uncover the lived experience of disability in Australian families ...a new understanding of disability as an integral aspect of the Australian story, rather than a minority experience."
Dr Kate Murphy; Emeritus Professor John Murphy; Emeritus Professor Alistair Thomson; Professor Elizabeth Tilley; Associate Professor Lorna Hallahan Australia’s first history of disability: Making a more inclusive Australia. This project aims to uncover the lived experience of disability in Australian families between 1945 and the Disability Royal Commission of 2019–23, using innovative methods to co-produce data with people with disability and their families. The project expects to develop the first comprehensive, national history of disability in Australia. Expected outcomes include a new understanding of disability as an integral aspect of the Australian story, rather than a minority experience. This should provide substantial benefits, informing initiatives and policy aimed at creating a more inclusive Australia, and bringing new insights to bear on public discussion about disability policy and the future of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
October 28, 2025 at 10:53 PM
booklearning.bsky.social
It's ten years ago this month that I made the UniMelb meme pages because it turns out a week 10 lecture on theories of neoliberal urbanism wasn't a big drawcard when studio assignments were due that week
Student view of a nearly empty lecture theatre. Two people behind the lectern are finishing up a previous class. Lauren (white with blonde hair, dark rimmed glasses, blazer) is sitting in the front row of the lecture theatre waiting to set up her slides. Text over image reads "Week 10 lecture be like... let's just have a one on one tutorial"
October 14, 2025 at 9:57 AM
booklearning.bsky.social
Again, and again
The Mitchum brothers from Twin Peaks: The Return, side by side, hiding behind a low wall. Rodney points a gun off camera and looks to Bradley who is at his side. Caption reads "People are under a lot of stress, Bradley"
September 22, 2025 at 12:48 AM
booklearning.bsky.social
This, every time I open anything I wrote the day before, forever, until eternity
Winnie the Pooh looking incredulously at a piece of paper
September 2, 2025 at 1:48 AM
booklearning.bsky.social
Comfort-reading my boy Shelley because he absolutely gets it on every level
Fragment: Death in Life [Published by Dr. Garnett, Relics of Shelley, 1862.] My head is heavy, my limbs are weary, And it is not life that makes me move.
August 30, 2025 at 2:52 AM
booklearning.bsky.social
My kingdom for the Broadway Melody tailoring line, truly. /Fin
Gene Kelly stands in front of a dancing crowd. Immediately behind him is a dancer in a purple and lilac checked suit and red bow tie, and another in a solid cobalt suit paired with a neon pink tie
August 15, 2025 at 4:18 PM
booklearning.bsky.social
Look 16 and 17, the above kings are joined by peach and blue checks and a neon pink and blue barber stripe
A crowd dances looking up at Gene Kelly who performs before them on a stage. In the crowd in addition to the figures mentioned above, there is a man in a peach and blue checked suit and a pink and blue striped suit
August 15, 2025 at 4:08 PM
booklearning.bsky.social
Looks 12-15, some glorious suits getting their three seconds of air time
Cropped detail of background actors from the Broadway Melody dance sequence. One man in a maroon and pinkish-red suit with thick stripes looks confused, while a man in a grey, link and burgundy checked jacket looks up from his game of cards Cropped detail of background actors from the Broadway Melody dance sequence. Through atmospheric cigarette smoke you can just see among a range of more conventionally dressed actors in suits and dresses, one figure in a purple and lilac windowpane check suit
August 15, 2025 at 4:04 PM
booklearning.bsky.social
Look number 11, dweeb Gene in the Broadway Melody, another combo I have spent multiple decades looking for pieces to replicate (the third great windowpane check blazer to appear in this film)
Gene Kelly stands hands outstretched, in a pink and blue check blazer over a yellow waistcoat and grey trousers, paired with thick black glasses and a straw hat. Behind him an agent in a pinstriped waistcoat and trousers and a bowler hat prepares to slam a door labelled 'agent'
August 15, 2025 at 3:58 PM
booklearning.bsky.social
Look number 10. We aren't even in the wall-to-wall fashion inspo section of the Broadway Melody yet and we have some peak blazer lounging
Gene Kelly leaning against a piano wearing a grey and mustard checked sport jacket over a white open necked shirt
August 15, 2025 at 3:51 PM
booklearning.bsky.social
This always looked like a really awesome bookstore to me
Still from Gene Kelly performing Singing in the Rain. He is standing in front of a bookstore with a two-window display displaying signage for first editions and novels, with three tiers of opened rare books in each window organised in tableaus with a globe, artworks on paper. There are peachy-gold velvet curtains hanging behind the displays.
August 15, 2025 at 3:46 PM
booklearning.bsky.social
People talk about Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction as one of those legendary brief film appearances that sticks with you, but he had nothing on purveyor of look number 7: Phoebe Dinsmore, vocal coach, lover of draping, comfy deep voiced icon
Still from Singin in the Rain. Phoebe Dinsmore stands next to Lina Lamont. Phoebe has copper hair, gold chandelier earrings, and is draped in red, gold and green fabric
August 15, 2025 at 3:21 PM
booklearning.bsky.social
Honorary mention to random camera operators in great jumpers
Two camera operators shown from the back. They have complementary geometric patterns on their sweaters and are wearing riding breeches and berets to complete the 20s director look.
August 15, 2025 at 3:10 PM
booklearning.bsky.social
5. My 80s brocade blazer collection wishes it had cuffs the size of a small car like Don
Gene Kelly in period costume with a powdered wig and a silver jewelled cane. His suit jacket is a silver brocade with gigantic cuffs that take up most of his forearms
August 15, 2025 at 3:07 PM
booklearning.bsky.social
There's a lot of fairly generic tuxes and tails at the premiere and at RF's party, but we get straight to look 4, a second windowpane suit matched with a vest I really love. Honorary mention to Cosmo's extremely comfy-looking hat for Make Em Laugh
Gene Kelly wearing a grey suit with blue windowpane checks and a matching cap worn at a rakish angle. Under the suit is a blue and white fairisle vest. Donald Connor sitting at a piano wearing a soft looking greyish beige floppy brimmed hat
August 15, 2025 at 3:00 PM
booklearning.bsky.social
3. While it's a great look, delivering one of my favourite lines, I can't be made to wear all white under any circumstance
Gene Kelly in a white suit with a white trench coat and wide brimmed hat, grabbing a microphone to deliver the line "Dignity. Always Dignity".
August 15, 2025 at 2:36 PM
booklearning.bsky.social
2. Session musician Don's casual wear
Gene Kelly wearing a red, grey and black Argyle sweater with a white shirt underneath that has an aggressively dagger pointed collar, and extremely textured grey tweed trousers
August 15, 2025 at 2:31 PM
booklearning.bsky.social
1. The Fit as a Fiddle suits. First appearance of windowpane pattern suits in the film, with green and white two tone brogues (I legitimately have searched online for shoes like this every few months since like 2008)
Still from Singin in the Rain. Gene Kelly and Donald Connor performing "Fit as A Fiddle" wearing white suits with green windowpane checks, matching white and green brogues with bright red socks, and turned up brim hats
August 15, 2025 at 2:26 PM
booklearning.bsky.social
Currently inked: Parker 45s in Circlet and Harlequin, made in the UK in 1981 before Parker realised they weren't profitable to make and shut down production. They have strong utilitarian Ludd energy to me.
Two thin steel fountain pens resting on a a notebook. Each pen has a geometric design etched into it.
August 5, 2025 at 4:00 AM
booklearning.bsky.social
Fully expect this to be a banger in a highly specific way involving a lot of sad middle distance staring
Hardcover edition of "The Experience of Defeat: Milton and his contemporaries" by Christopher Hill
July 23, 2025 at 1:32 PM
booklearning.bsky.social
"like a human form, a friend with whom he lived benevolent"

May we all live benevolently in friendship with our human forms, as we keep on our wondrous journeys upon the earth.

Blake rules so hard.
"The nature of infinity is this: That every thing has its Own Vortex; and when once a traveller thro Eternity. Has passd that Vortex, he percieves it roll backward behind His path, into a globe itself infolding; like a sun: Or like a moon, or like a universe of starry majesty, While he keeps onwards in his wondrous journey on the earth Or like a human form, a friend with whom he livd benevolent. As the eye of man views both the east & west encompassing Its vortex; and the north & south, with all their starry host; Also the rising sun & setting moon he views surrounding His corn-fields and his valleys of five hundred acres square. Thus is the earth one infinite plane, and not as apparent To the weak traveller confin'd beneath the moony shade. Thus is the heaven a vortex passd already, and the earth A vortex not yet pass'd by the traveller thro' Eternity." Cropped detail of marginalia figures from plate of Blake's Milton. One figure is kneeling, embracing a ghostly child figure. The other is bending and stretching in a C shape. Each figure spans only a few lines of text and has minimal detail.
June 3, 2025 at 3:39 PM
booklearning.bsky.social
Grateful for the chance to savour @eruditorumpress.com 's Last War in Albion, a delightful companion to things I love deeply and things I know nothing about. This captures why this is maybe my favourite bit of Milton, the everydayness of visions that come to cottages of those sick with fatigue
Blake had such visions throughout his life, and depicted them in his work, as in Milton where he describes how   Walking in my Cottage Garden, sudden I beheld The Virgin Ololon & address’d her as a Daughter of Beulah Virgin of Providence fear not to enter into my Cottage What is thy message to thy friend? what am I now to do Is it again to plunge into deeper affliction? behold me Ready to obey, but pity thou my Shadow of Delight Enter my Cottage. comfort her, for she is sick with fatigue   There is a power to these lines. The Shadow of Delight refers to Blake’s wife, Catherine, a marriage Peter Ackroyd describes as “one of the most poignant relationships in literary history.” The image of Blake begging his angelic visitor to think of Catherine’s suffering while simultaneously admitting his willingness “to plunge into deeper affliction” if that is what should be asked of him is a haunting portrait of the delicate balance of sanity that such visionary creativity entails. Blake further suffered from what he described as “Nervous Fear,” which frequently manifested as a searing anger that did an often faltering career few favors.
May 25, 2025 at 7:26 AM
booklearning.bsky.social
Tools for Conviviality rules, and super excited to hear McQuillan talk about its relevance coherently, instead of listening to myself just mutter about it constantly
For a hundred years we have tried to make machines work for men and to school men for life in their service. Now it turns out that machines do not “work” and that people cannot be schooled for a life at the service of machines. The hypothesis on which the experiment was built must now be discarded. The hypothesis was that machines can replace slaves. The evidence shows that, used for this purpose, machines enslave men. Neither a dictatorial proletariat nor a leisure mass can escape the dominion of constantly expanding industrial tools. The crisis can be solved only if we learn to invert the present deep structure of tools; if we give people tools that guarantee their right to work with high, independent efficiency, thus simultaneously eliminating the need for either slaves or masters and enhancing each person's range of freedom. People need new tools to work with rather than tools that 'work' for them. They need technology to make the most of the energy and imagination each has, rather than more well-programmed energy slaves.
May 19, 2025 at 8:26 AM