There is an old Buddhist adage: the teachings are like a finger pointing to the moon. To achieve enlightenment, you are not supposed to look at the finger. You are supposed to look to the celestial light.
I am asking you to look at the finger. The finger is also the moon.
A tilted head. A finger to the lips. A wave that could mean emphasis or dismissal. A raised palm of piety and fellowship.
Our gestures do not simply point to our thoughts, they are our thoughts made flesh. They can be instinctive, intuitive, or calculated — or all three. They exist in the briefest moment and through history, in a gently turned wrist and across whole nations.
Our gestures drag stories with them, whether they mean to or not. They are invitations to think about how our worlds are larger than they seem — how we are much larger than we seem.
Join award-winning philosopher Damon Young — author of The Art of Reading and Philosophy in the Garden— as he sheds light on thirteen curious gestures. Drawing equally from classical poetry and science fiction, heavy metal and ballet, Young illuminates our varied humanity from prehistory to today.
Praise for On Getting Off:
‘Young has a deftness with language that lays out complex ideas with such beautifully written digestibility that you feel osmotically clever when you read them.’
The Irish Times
Praise for The Art of Reading:
‘For Damon Young, writers are like secret agents gone rogue, grabbing us by the lapels and inviting us into a realm of delicious ambiguity. The Art of Reading is an intimately conspiratorial book — erudite, surprising, and persuasive.’
Henry Hitchings, author of Browse: the world in bookshops
