Pushing the Wave

L.A. Davenport • Anglo-Irish Author • Find Out More

[pushingthewave]

A Year in Motion: Inside Pushing the Wave 2024

L.A. Davenport reflects on Pushing the Wave 2024, exploring essays, travel, photography, and the ideas shaping the new volume.

Over time, I’ve come to see Pushing the Wave less as a series of separate pieces and more as a way of tracing a year—through what was noticed, what stayed, and what returned later with more weight than expected.

This new column is an attempt to step back and look at Pushing the Wave 2024 as a whole: the essays, the journeys, the photographs and drawings, and the threads that connect them. Some of those threads were clear as I was writing; others only emerged afterwards.

If you’ve been following along, I hope it offers a way back into the work. If not, perhaps it’s a place to begin.

Read more.

[mentaltimetraveller]

Tracey Emin, Hurricane , 2007

acrylic on canvas 182.8 x 182.8 cm. (72 x 72 in.)

[pushingthewave]

Introducing Pushing the Wave 2024 by L.A. Davenport

An introduction to Pushing the Wave 2024 by L.A. Davenport, exploring essays, travel writing, and visual work published in spring 2026.

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 →

[pushingthewave]

I am very proud to say that Pushing the Wave 2024 is out today.

What began as a series of weekly pieces—essays, notes, photographs, drawings—has settled into a single volume. Looking back over it now, I can see threads that weren’t obvious at the time.

Thank you to everyone who has read and followed the work along the way.

📚 Explore the book and buy here↗︎

[historicalbookimages]

🌄 Rural hours New York, George P. Putnam, 1851. Original source Image description: Illustration of a yellow-billed cuckoo perched on a leafy branch. The bird features a sleek brown and white body with distinctive dark wing patterns and a long tail. Its yellow, slightly curved bill and large eye stand out. The branch has green serrated leaves. The image is labeled “Yellow-Billed Cuckoo” and credited to G. P. Putnam, New York, 1851, reflecting rural wildlife.

[pushingthewave]

Mozart and the birth of romantic introspection

How Mozart shaped a century of quiet musical introspection—from Beethoven and Mendelssohn to Debussy’s radical new language of atmosphere.

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.

[pushingthewave]

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

A nutty twist on classic Irish soda bread, made with buckwheat flour for extra depth and texture. Simple, quick, and perfect fresh from the

🍞 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 🔗 Read more

[journalofanobody]

 Ivan Terestchenko

[klimt-s]

Ides of March

Cy Twombly

1962

Oil and pencil on canvas

[vjeranski]

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

[pushingthewave]

Introducing Pushing the Wave 2024 by L.A. Davenport

An introduction to Pushing the Wave 2024 by L.A. Davenport, exploring essays, travel writing, and visual work published in spring 2026.

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 →

[pushingthewave]

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

L.A. Davenport on the collapse of the rules-based order, Trump’s disruption of alliances, and why Europe must now rethink sovereignty.

🌍 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 →

[pushingthewave]

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

A year-end column by L.A. Davenport on memory, kindness, and a mixtape that taught him what “cool” really is—and how it’s passed on.

📼 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 →

[pushingthewave]

Buckwheat Nut Roast | Pushing the Wave

A nostalgic nut roast recipe with a modern twist—L.A. Davenport reimagines a vegetarian classic with buckwheat, mushrooms, and a golden crun

🌰 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 →

[moradadabeleza]

katia berestova

[frillmag]

Irregular.

[pushingthewave]

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

From chatbots to trillion-dollar speculation, L.A. Davenport explores whether the AI boom is innovation—or just another bubble waiting to bu

🤖💥 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 →

[colin-vian]

Yoshiko Yoshida