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...

'The Hunters in the Snow' by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1565) Place is inescapable. Place, situation, locality, is the only constant of human existence. It is a flesh, a prison, an endowment, an anchor, a load to bear. It is impossible to transcend and it is sublime.  A part of our species being is the relentless search for ancient wisdom. We invoke a spiritual (transcendental, divine) dimension to this found wisdom. However, the old wisdom is not the Word, but words. The truth cannot be contained in a single book, but is an ongoing process of many books. A vast multiverse of culture, art, writing, music; this is the wisdom. And what we share with the old wisdom is an earthly existence. The old wisdom, the old gods, the pagan gods, are human attributes made divine. A supernatural dimension between subject and object which explain the former’s orientation towards the latter. Landscape, art, text; these things are not separate categories but all part of the same ...

I've been progressing at a leisurely pace through Alexandra Harris' Romantic Moderns (2013). Unlike many of the other academic studies I have proposed to read which much of the time weave some wilfully obscure, theoretical line of reasoning, flexing their scholarly credentials in the process, Harris' thesis seems relatively simple by comparison, perhaps even academically naïve. However, what it lacks in depth it makes up for enormously in scope. Simply put, I have learnt a huge amount since I started reading it, savouring the rich variety and nuance of each chapter. It imbues its subjects with life and colour, written with documentary clarity. 'Stonehenge, Wiltshire' by John Piper (1981) Indeed, each chapter is like a little world in itself and much of my satisfaction emanates from how Harris disentangles the bundle of colours, feelings and ideas which constitute my understanding of that cultural milieu. Ranging across...

'Entrance to a Lane' by Graham Sutherland (1939) Welcome to The Life Illusion . This is a blog I have started primarily to coincide with research for my PhD, as well as being a space in which I can post other bits of writing. As such, topics will vary quite widely, but they will focus mainly on literature, art and culture. My PhD will be in English and the (current) subject of my thesis is British Neo-romanticism and the autobiographical novel.   As implied above, however, this will probably be subject to numerous changes, re-iterations and re-orientations. This is often the case with research and my hopes for this blog are that it charts my intellectual journey as the more I read and the more I write, the more sophisticated and substantial my thesis becomes. Ultimately, my goal is to make a solid contribution to the field and establish a new understanding of the unique relationship between British Neo-romanticism and life writing and, perhaps most significan...