The Life-Illusion

I recently came across some old writing I did for a previous blog, one that I discontinued because of academic pressures. I have been thinking about the concept of "place" and "home" for quite a while. One of the central projects of my thinking and writing has been to re-think the idea of "home" as a space of excess and exuberance, a commons of the imagination and well-being. The idea of "re-enchantment" comes into this in some form, in another recently-unearthed blog post that I will re-share soon.  Since writing this old post, my project has twisted and morphed into something slightly different. I do wish to return to the ideas I started here, though, not just to integrate them into my current work but also to develop them further. The "Commons of the Imagination" is a central part of my current project, Round Tower Collective , albeit imbued with a more Folk Horror/Gothic aesthetic.   Here is the post: (Shoebu...

'Red Landscape' by Graham Sutherland (1942) I’ve been picking my way through Herbert Read’s poetry and flicking through his only novel, The Green Child (1935). As I have found with John Cowper Powys, I feel a sort of magnetism towards not just his work but the totality of his craft, his ideas, him as a person. Despite the imperfections of his poetry and prose (his non-fiction writing I have yet to read), there is an underlying set of ideas, images and a sense of character I can connect with. His Vitalist philosophy, his dislike of culture being separated and elevated from society, but also the many contradictions of his personality place him in a lineage of anarchist thinkers/artists (same thing) particular to the British Isles. Whilst in many senses a Cosmopolitan, helping to bring Surrealism to Britain from continental Europe, there is also apparent in his work a deep adoration of locality. The plot of The Green Child sees its protagonist, Olivero, return to his...

'The Wedding Dance' by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1566) I am a pessimist in the sense that I don’t believe in a grand, totalising theory. My favourite philosophers tend to be pessimists who write in fragments and aphorisms; Schopenhauer, Cioran, John Gray. Somewhere along the way it blurs into poetry or even story; Nietzsche, Borges, the Tao Te Ching... “ To live signifies to believe and to hope – to lie and to lie to oneself .” -        From E.M. Cioran’s A Short History of Decay There isn’t a border between story, poetry and philosophy rather, they are all part of the same expression. Humans are made for survival, not for truth, and stories are, in a sense, all that we have. Reality must pass through the lens of human sensibility, filtered into something tangible, rational. Our sensory impressions are like words, reducing the truth into a sign. This is a basic philosophical idea, but it forms the foundation of my understanding. Stories ma...