Pushing the Wave

Mozart and the birth of romantic introspection

I listened again the other night to the Andante from Mozart’s Sonata for Piano Duet in F major, K.497 — and something unexpected happened.

Instead of being carried back into the refined world of the late eighteenth century, I found myself hearing the nineteenth: Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, even Fauré waiting quietly in the wings.

That single movement seems to sketch the template for a century of musical introspection — the kind of inward, singing line that Romantic composers returned to again and again.

In a new essay I explore that thread from Mozart to Debussy, and how Debussy eventually rewrote the language of musical intimacy altogether.

New column on Pushing the Wave.

Buckwheat Soda Bread Recipe | Irish Twist by L.A. Davenport

🍞 Buckwheat Soda Bread

Soda bread is part of the rhythm of my Irish upbringing — quick to make, no yeast, no waiting around, and best eaten still warm with far too much salted butter.

After years of baking the classic white loaf, I began to wonder what would happen if I shifted it slightly. I’ve never entirely loved the wholemeal version, so I experimented instead with buckwheat flour. What I was looking for was depth — something nuttier, with a little more bite — but without losing the tenderness that makes soda bread what it is.

It took a few attempts to get the balance right, but this version does exactly what I hoped. It feels traditional, but not predictable.

The full recipe is now up on Pushing the Wave. If you bake it, eat it fresh — and don’t be shy with the butter.

— L.A. Davenport
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 Ivan Terestchenko

Ides of March

Cy Twombly

1962

Oil and pencil on canvas

Kim Minjung
2008
Aquatint…
22" x 30"  |  57cm x 77cm

Introducing Pushing the Wave 2024 by L.A. Davenport

Over the past year, I’ve been quietly gathering together the pieces that now make up Pushing the Wave 2024. Some were written in response to things that felt immediate at the time; others emerged more slowly, or only revealed what they were really about when I looked back at them later.

Writing Pushing the Wave week by week has never felt like producing a series of standalone posts. It’s always been closer to keeping a conversation going — with myself, and with the world around me — and it’s only when those pieces are brought together in book form that the patterns begin to show. Questions about attention, uncertainty, freedom, and how we live alongside systems that increasingly shape our choices run through much of this volume, sometimes quietly, sometimes more directly.

Travel plays its part again this year, not as escape, but as a way of thinking. Time spent on the north coast of Northern Ireland, and later in Cuba, sharpened my sense of how place holds memory, contradiction, and resilience all at once. The photographs and drawings included in the book aren’t illustrations so much as another way of paying attention — of holding onto something fleeting before it slips away.

I’ve written a longer piece on the P-Wave Press site reflecting on how Pushing the Wave 2024 came together, and on some of the essays that sit at its heart. If you’ve followed the series over time, I hope it offers a useful way into the new volume. If you’re new to it, I hope it invites you to linger.

Pushing the Wave 2024 will be published by P-Wave Press on 26 March 2026.

Find out more →

The Dismantling of the Old World Order by L.A. Davenport

🌍 The Dismantling of the Old World Order

This week on Pushing the Wave, I look unflinchingly at the collapse of Western political assumptions, Trump’s abandonment of allies, and why Europe must finally confront the reality of sovereignty.

This isn’t nostalgia for what was lost—but a reckoning with what must now be built.

📖 Read the full column →

Borrowed Cool and the Things We Carry by L.A. Davenport

📼 Borrowed Cool

This week’s Pushing the Wave is an end-of-year reflection shaped around a mixtape—one I’ve carried with me for decades.

It’s about kindness rather than sermons, memory rather than nostalgia, and the idea that “cool” is never owned, only borrowed and passed on.

📖 Read the full column →

Buckwheat Nut Roast | Pushing the Wave

🌰 Buckwheat Nut Roast

Once dismissed as a vegetarian consolation prize, the nut roast is back—with substance and style.

In this week’s Pushing the Wave, I share my updated recipe inspired by meals at The Good Earth in Leicester and old-school farmhouse cookbooks.

This version uses buckwheat flour, chunky mushrooms, and a savoury, cheesy topping that transforms the humble nut roast into a hearty centrepiece.

📖 Read the full recipe →

katia berestova

Irregular.

The Rise and Fall of the AI Bubble? by L.A. Davenport

🤖💥 Are we living in a trillion-dollar hallucination?

In my latest column on Pushing the Wave, I revisit the AI boom—and ask whether, as Carole Cadwalladr suggests, it’s become just another financial bubble.

From Dutch tulips to dotcoms to neural nets, history may not repeat itself, but it certainly seems to rhyme.

📖 Read now →

Yoshiko Yoshida

Shutdowns, Strudels, and Stark Contrasts by L.A. Davenport

🇺🇸 A City Between Extremes

In this week’s Pushing the Wave, I walk a Washington, D.C. emptied by shutdowns and chilled by a bitter wind—yet find surprising warmth in food, strangers, and solemn monuments.

It’s a city of contradictions: grand ideals and social neglect, immense pride and deep fractures. The U.S. capital doesn’t just reflect America—it embodies its tensions.

📖 Read the column →

Table in blue and yellow at the Grote Markt, Groningen - Joost Doornik , 2025.

Dutch, b. 1964 -

Oil on canvas, 50 x 35 cm.

Celebrating the disasters averted by L.A. Davenport

🎆 Celebrating Disasters, Forgetting Salvation

In this week’s Pushing the Wave, I reflect on how we remember loss more than rescue—from Guy Fawkes Night to modern terror attacks—before turning to two striking exhibitions at the Royal Academy.

One explores Anselm Kiefer’s dialogue with Van Gogh; the other showcases the brilliant work of Kerry James Marshall, whose art reclaims and redefines who gets seen in history.

📖 Read the column →

Free speech is not a game of who can shout the loudest by L.A. Davenport

🗣️ Free speech is not a game of who can shout the loudest

This week on Pushing the Wave, I unpack a recent Good Fight Club discussion hosted by Yascha Mounk on free speech.

From Mill to Mounk, from Rauch to real-life consequences, this column explores how the illusion of absolute speech online has replaced the real, messy responsibility of liberty.

📖 Read the full column →

Grandma Davenport’s Flap-Jack Recipe | Pushing the Wave

Grandma Davenport’s Flapjack Recipe 🍯✨

There’s something timeless about a flapjack—sweet, chewy, golden—and this one comes straight from my grandmother’s recipe book, which I recently got from my father.

It’s simple, satisfying and exactly the kind of comforting treat we all need now and then.

I’ve shared the full recipe on Pushing the Wave. If you give it a go, let me know how it turns out!

— L.A. Davenport
🔗 https://pushingthewave.co.uk/more/thoughts/grandma-davenport-flap-jack-recipe/

The elephant in the room of British politics by L.A. Davenport

🇬🇧 Farage, Flags and the Baton

In my latest column, I unpack the drama of Britain’s political conference season—from the mainstream parties finally confronting Nigel Farage to the culture war brewing over the flag.

But just when it all threatens to overwhelm, I take refuge in something entirely different: the sweeping clarity of Günter Wand’s Beethoven.

📖 Read the full piece →

by Joachim Bandau

by Emily Mason, 2014

Woman in porch, 1924 - by Nicolae Tonitza (1886 - 1940), Romanian

Sonia Chabas

sensual

by Lindsay Harald Wong

We Accept the Story Because We Live the Isolation by L.A. Davenport

We Accept the Story Because We Live the Isolation

The murder of Charlie Kirk shocked the world—but in a strange way most of us weren’t surprised. In my latest column, I ask: what happens when the improbable becomes expected, and we stop asking why?

This is a reflection on disconnection, on how we accept tragic violence because we’ve stopped believing in a shared reality—and why that might be the real crisis.

📖 Read the full piece →

Georgia O'Keeffe - Autumn, 1929.

Konrad Cramer, Moss

Dancing Lights - Miho Ichise , 2024.

Japanese , b. 1969 -

Oil on linen , 20 ¾ x 18 in. 53 x 45.5 cm.