William Blake

Puppet William Blake

Newsletter #28

johnhiggs

A six-and-a-bit-weekly newsletter from author John Higgs. If you haven’t already subscribed, you can do so here.

Summer Solstice 2021

Happy longest day! It has to be this long, here in Britain at least, so that we can fit all the rain in.

Thank you all for your support for William Blake Vs The World. Books live and die depending on whether people talk about them, recommend them, share them on social media etc. I have seen many subscribers to this newsletter doing just that, and am hugely grateful. I’m blown away by the reactions and how this launch has gone – not least by the fact that a second run of the book had to be printed less than two weeks after launch, that’s got to be a good sign!

(This means that – due to the online nature of much of the launch – signed first editions are rare as hen’s teeth, so keep hold if you have one, or get me to sign yours should our paths cross).



There have been many delights with this launch. Seeing the book in the window of Waterstones was one – that’s an honour none of my other books have achieved. I also took a pilgrimage to Blake’s cottage at Felpham, for reasons I explain in this launch-day video. But the ultimate has to be the arrival of Puppet William Blake in our lives, built by the massively talented Myra Stuart.


Now, I’ll probably write more about Puppet William Blake next time – it’s so wrong it has to be right – but for now note that he will accompany me to the ALSO Festival (2nd-4th July), where I am talking on the Sunday. And even better, he will be performed for the first time by Myra at the Blame Blake event at Airy Fairy in Sheffield. The date for this has now changed, due to the postponement of COVID restrictions being lifted. It will now take place on the Bank Holiday of Monday August 30th – hope to see you there. Tickets can be found here.

If you missed my comparison of Prince and Blake in The Quietus, it’s worth a read I think. At the time of writing not a single Blake scholar has taken issue with my claim that Blake was hip to the rare housequake. That means it is definitely true.

There’s also a clip from the audiobook on today’s edition of the mighty Backlisted podcast. Being reviewed by CJ Stone was also an honour, as I doubt I would have written about Blake had it not been for him.

YAKKING: A COMPENDIUM

My next Zoom talk is with the How To Academy this evening – Monday, from 6:30pm – tickets are here if you read this in time and want to join us.

Because most of the promotion I’ve been able to do for the book has been online, much of it is still available for anyone who wants to rediscover it. Here’s an overview of what’s out there.

Podcast-wise, I got to talk about Blake on the BBC History Extra Podcast, as well as the William Ramsey Investigates pod – these were both a lot of fun to do, as was chatting to the Rough Trade folk on Soho Radio’s Rough Trade Book Club. and talking live in Brighton on Slack City Radio to Chris Thorpe-Tracey.

Over on YouTube, I very much enjoyed doing a talk for the London Philosophy Club – the Q&A in the second half was particularly fun here, and you’ll notice that what philosophers want to know about most is sex and drugs. It was an honour to do a talk for The Blake Society, where I was in conversation with John Riordan, the illustrator behind William Blake Taxi Driver. And see how much I joyfully geek out about Blake with Jason Whittaker, the author of the wonderful Blake book Divine Images and the man behind the Zoamorphosis.com blog.

If you watch and listen to all those you will (a) go mad and (b) realise how much I repeat myself, so I don’t advise it. But hopefully one will take your interest.

ELSEWHERE

Over on Instagram, the artist Brandon Hrycyk has been illustrating my KLF book, and the results are great. I heartily recommend you give him a follow, or check out his website.


And finally – I was asked to write a review of any book I wanted for the glossy arts lab magazine MU. I wrote about Hallie Rubenhold’s book on the victims of the ‘Jack the Ripper’ murders, The Five. I’ve done so much hawking of my own book this month that it seems right to shout about something else, so I’ll paste that review here. Let me know if reviews like this are of interest, as I’m probably be going to write more about books that I think are excellent.

THE FIVE: THE UNTOLD LOVES OF THE WOMEN KILLED BY JACK THE RIPPER, by Hallie Rubenhold

This is a book about the women killed by Jack the Ripper. It is not a book about Jack the Ripper himself. That character is largely absent from its pages.

When I first heard about The Five, I feared it would be a book that commits the great crime of being worthy, but dull. Surely the interesting thing about the squalid Ripper melodrama was the Grand Guignol of mysterious Jack himself – with his cape, cane and top hat vanishing into the dark thick fog of Hammer Horror Whitechapel before he can be nicked by the baffled and inept Victorian police? In this, of course, I was entirely wrong. Rubenhold’s brilliantly written book is a far more vivid and engrossing read than any ‘true crime’ examinations of the murders.

In most accounts of the Ripper murders, the lives of the victims are almost entirely absent. Their bodies are present like props or set dressing, existing only to hold much-studied knife wounds or, potentially, vital clues to the mystery. The locations of where there were dumped are typically considered to be more interesting than the lives that brought them there. Often, they are inaccurately described as sex workers.

It is a shock, then, when these background props come to life in Rubenhold’s book – and you realise that the only stories of any value in this pathological tragedy belong to them. In Rubenhold’s telling, their hugely varied lives immediately eclipse the ephemeral phantom that had previously held the narrative, making you bewildered as to how you could ever have seen it differently. There is darkness and horror in this story of course, often brought about by the realities of Victorian poverty and alcohol, but crucially, there is also life.

What is interesting about this is that the book could have been written ten years ago, or thirty years ago, or a century ago – but it wasn’t. The information it is built from has been sitting around, ignored, since the nineteenth century. It needed, of course, the right author to come along who could see the potential in the story and who also had the talent to pull it off. But it also needed a publisher who could see it as a commercial prospect, and for that it needed an audience of book buyers for whom the lives of the five obscured women are more relevant and interesting than hysterical fantasies about an unknown psychopath. Until fairly recently, few booksellers would have had confidence that such an audience existed.

The book, therefore, is an illustration of how our society is changing. The very existence of it shows that we are becoming a culture with a greater sense of empathy, and with less tolerance of cruelty and abuse. We saw another illustration of this when the murderer Peter Sutcliffe died of COVID-19 in 2020, and the media coverage of his death focused on the South Yorkshire Police and their apology for how they had viewed and talked about his victims back in the 1970s. The deep shift in public attitudes which caused these changes is easy to miss, because it does not make headlines or excite social media algorithms. The more we pay attention to books like The Five, however, the more apparent it becomes.

—

If that has tempted you, the book is available from my Bookshop UK shop (affiliate link) and all the usual places.

Until next time!
jhx

Newsletter #27

Newsletter #27

johnhiggs

A six-and-a-bit-weekly newsletter from author John Higgs. If you haven’t already subscribed, you can do so here.

May Day 2021

It’s nearly time for my new book WILLIAM BLAKE VS THE WORLD to be released into the world. The pandemic has meant that normal book launches aren’t possible, but we’ve come up with an alternative which is, I think it’s fair to say, pretty damn special.

The online launch will be on May 27th at 7:30pm, and is hosted by the British Library. It features me being interviewed by Robin Ince, readings from Salena Godden as the Voice of Blake, a look at original Blake manuscripts with the British Library curator Alexandra Ault, and an extra special reading from the shining soul that is the poet, rapper and President of the Blake Society Kae Tempest.

If that’s not enough, there will also be contributions from those imagination-soaked authors Neil Gaiman (in New Zealand) and David Keenan, talking about what Blake means to them.

When you are dealing with Blake there is always the pressure to go the extra mile and make something worthy of his name. As online book launches go, this is something well worth your time and I hope you’ll join us. It’s free for British Library members and people who buy the book, and a fiver for everyone else. You can book tickets and find more details here.

The day we spent filming all this at the British Library was an absolute joy for many reasons, and being able to see Blake’s notebook was certainly one of them. This is the book that originally belonged to his beloved late brother Robert, which William went on to use for three decades. It contains sketches and versions of some of his most famous poems. It’s one of the treasures of the British Library – and indeed the world, as I see it. I love this rare self portrait, alongside the sentence ’23 May 1810 found the world golden’.

And look, it also includes a little sketch by Blake which appears to be a man taking a piss:

It was a wonderful day and fortunately things didn’t get out of hand, unlike that other time I had access to Blake originals.

Huge thanks to Jon Fawcett at the British Library for making all this possible. The online launch is on the original release date of May 27th, although printer-woes have meant that the book itself is delayed. Only by 5 days, though, so it will be with you on 1st June. I can’t wait for you all to see it. I’ve been blown away by early reactions to it – here are some of the quotes you’ll find on the back:

It’s available for pre-order here and if you read it, it would help massively if you talked about it, shared it on social media or left an Amazon review – anything like that would be hugely appreciated, you hero.

OTHER EVENTS AND STUFF

An online launch is all well and good, but an important aspect of Blake’s philosophy was people getting together and having a jolly. So there’s another event planed in Sheffield in July in order to do just that. It’s a day called Blame Blake, and here’s the poster with all the details:

There’s also an event in the Brighton Spiegeltent on June 15 to look forward to. This is with Jennifer Lucy Allan, whose book The Foghorn’s Lament is a delight. It is, as the name suggests, a book about her obsession with foghorns. So Brighton folk, come along to an evening of foghorns and Blake – it’s so right it hurts. As the event promoter David Bramwell has pointed out, “no-one else is doing Foghorns and William Blake, we’re well ahead of the curve.”

There’s more events coming – including an online Blake Society talk on June 16th. When there are links for these, you’ll find them on the events page on my website, so keep an eye on that.

AND FINALLY
Another book which is highly recommended is Richard Blandford’s new novel, Whatever You Are Is Beautiful, a terrific novel that heartily embraces the absurdity of superhero culture. It’s ebook only but only 99p for a brief period, so well worth a punt.

My evil friend Shardcore – who you may remember being behind the AI-generated version of The Future Starts Here – has finally got access to the GPT3 text generation AI, and he naturally asked it to generate the story of The KLF as if it was written by William Blake. Now, I realise that AI-generated Blakean KLF histories is a bit of a niche interest, but I also know that if there are people out there who are into this, then they subscribe to this newsletter.

So I’ll leave you with this – hope you can make it to the launch and that you’ll have the book in your hands soon. Until next time!
jhx

—

The story of The KLF by William Blake

When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

And he answered, “I am the First and the Last. I am He who liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.”

And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, “Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.”

And with these words came a great light. And as it grew brighter still I beheld two figures standing before me. One was robed in white, shining like a star in a cloudless sky. The other was robed in black. His face was hidden from me by a mask fashioned from a human skull. In his hand he held an object that glowed like fire but gave off no heat. It seemed to be made from gold but it was not gold. It seemed to be made from glass but it was not glass. It seemed to be made from crystal but it was not crystal. It seemed to be made from stone but it was not stone. It seemed to be made from water but it was not water. And yet it did seem to be all these things at once…and more besides!

“The time has come,” said the man in white robes, “for you to choose between good and evil.”

“The time has come,” said the man in black robes, “for you to choose between life or death.”

“Choose wisely,” said both men together as they turned their backs on me and walked away into the darkness beyond my sight…

Newsletter #25

Newsletter #25

johnhiggs

A six-and-a-bit-weekly newsletter from author John Higgs. If you haven’t already subscribed, you can do so here.

Imbolc 2021

THE RETURN OF THE KLF: A BLAKEAN ANALYSIS

I was as surprised as anyone when The KLF released a ‘best of’ compilation on Spotify and YouTube on New Year’s Day. This, I thought, was a promising start to the year. It made their music readily accessible to new generations. We could now see their videos remastered after years of putting up with rips of dodgy VHS copies on YouTube. It came with the promise of unheard outtakes to come and, most importantly, those songs still sound fantastic.

But I could understand why some felt a little let down. What the KLF had done seemed to be against the spirit of everything they stood for. Surely they were the Kopyright Liberation Front, eternally at war with the music industry? From their deletion of their back catalogue in 1994 to their refusal to use the name ‘KLF’ or reissue music when they returned in 2017, they stood apart from the music industry and refused to play by its rules. It wasn’t clear what had caused them to back down now. Did signing up to the industry’s standard distribution channels weaken their myth in some way?

When we speak of the KLF’s myth, we tend to talk of their wild magical Discordian capers or their principled war on copyright. But these shenanigans were the path they took – they were not their intended destination. That destination was a place outside of rational understanding and language, and as such it could only be referred to by metaphor. The KLF’s preferred metaphor was The White Room, a place they hoped to reach by boarding the Last Train to Transcentral. All of this was up front and centre in their work – it was hardly hidden.

Another metaphor they used was ‘Eternity’ – they signed a contract with Eternity and sang of the timeless moment they called 3AM Eternal. This was also a favourite metaphor of William Blake’s. When he wrote of holding ‘Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour’, he was talking about the same experience of being outside of time that The KLF spoke of in 3AM Eternal. Much of Blake’s work can be interpreted as an instruction manual in how to reach this awareness.

Blake and the KLF have a lot in common. A fundamental concept from Robert Anton Wilson and the Discordian mythos that the KLF adopted was an understanding of reality tunnels – how our minds construct a limited mental model of the world outside our skull, which we then confuse with reality itself. The key lesson here is that it is important not to believe your own model or Belief System – or to put it simply, to not fall for your own BS.

This is also a Blakean idea. Blake personified the act of mentally creating a world, and then mistakenly believing that the limits of this world were all there is, with a character he called Urizen. Urizen is rational and insecure and desperate to believe his own BS. He is blind to how limited his mental abstractions are, and he cannot see anything beyond them. Like all of Blake’s characters, he exists in all of us. He is useful and we need him, but we also need to recognise how limited he is.

A good illustration of this is Blake’s painting Newton – in which the scientist becomes a representation of Urizen. Here we see Isaac Newton in a strange, atmospheric, organic and shapeless world, which we interpret as the bottom of the ocean until we notice that Newton and his scroll are dry. Newton is blind to the larger world in which he sits because he is focused on his work and the rational abstractions that he mistakes for the wider reality. Rational abstractions like this are, in many ways, brilliant and useful, but they are also the ‘mind-forged manacles’ that keep us locked inside our flawed, limited reality tunnels. They prevent us from seeing beyond ourselves – the place for which the White Room is as good a metaphor as any.

What is the solution? Blake stresses that we need forgiveness to escape – if only briefly – from those mind-forged manacles. As he tells us, ‘Mutual forgiveness of each vice / Such are the Gates of Paradise’. To forgive is not to allow an aggressor to avoid punishment, but to free ourselves from resentment. True, forgiveness is not always easy, especially for those suffering from repeated attack. But it still remains a goal to aim for because, if we let our grudges linger, they become part of our identity, trapping and defining us like unwise tattoos. In A Christmas Carol, Marley’s spirit is trapped in chains of greed, but we can equally snare ourselves in chains of resentment.

To experience Eternity, Blake tells us, we need to be able to be able to slip lightly out of our identities and look beyond our sense of self. Then we can streak naked through the White Room. But resentment, blame, and the extent to which injustice can come to define us acts like a heavy overcoat that we struggle to remove. In this context, what exactly was the purpose of The KLF’s one-sided war with the music industry? It certainly didn’t affect the industry in any way. Was it a useful act of integrity, or were they defining themselves by decades-old grudges that were comfortable and self righteous but ultimately limiting?

The mental model that Urizen creates is constructed out of opposites – light and dark, warm and hot, us and them, and so on. As a result, there can never be a complete utopia or dystopia, only the tension between these ideas. We will always live in an imperfect world, and we will never be done attempting to improve it. We will always be trying to work out what is fair and what works. This can seem exhausting and overwhelming at times, but it is a burden that is much easier to bear when you have moments of transcendence in your life. Your inner Urizen will try to tell you that transcendence is self-indulgent or a denial of suffering. It is neither of these things. Transcendence is fuel.

The KLF’s abandonment of what they used to stand for can be seen as the dropping of their own mind-forged manacles and a return to the limitless liberation that their music was always about. As the overall title they’ve given their re-release programme tells us, the intended journey is ‘Sample City Through Transcentral.’ That title makes most sense, perhaps, during their now re-released track It’s Grim Up North, when the white noise and techno eventually gives way to the sunrise of Blake’s Jerusalem.

ME, GABBING

On Weds 10 Feb I’m joining Robin Ince for his online Reality Bites show, in which he promises to examine “the issues that arise from living in a probabilistic universe, the shortcomings of our brain for perceiving reality, the importance of doubt and the Exegesis of Philip K Dick.” Tickets and more details here.

I had a lot of fun on the Quietus subscribers’ Low Culture podcast, in which I attempted to convince people that there is a lot more to Eddie The Ed, Iron Maiden’s undead mascot, than meets the eye.

It was also fun rambling away to the Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler on his new Ideaspace podcast – there’s lots of good ideas about building a better future in Yancey’s work, have a listen.

ELSEWHERE

Kind readers sometimes send me gifts, but none has been as unexpected as when I recently received a small patch of land in Tasmania. This is a brilliant idea – a crowd-funded rewilding scheme, in which the more people come together and support it, the more land is left alone. A perfect gift for those awkward aunties and uncles, perhaps. For more details, visit the website of the Helsinki Foundation.

If you’re thinking of making a few small changes that might improve your life, can I point you towards the lastest book by my wife Joanne Mallon? Change Your Life In Five Minutes A Day is a small, beautifully designed gift book that will have a big impact.

You’re too late if you want to the film rights to Salena Godden’s brilliant debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death – Idris Elba has already nabbed them. But the good news is that the book is now in shops, and I heartily recommend you don’t miss it.

Among the too-long list of those we lost last year was Dave Mounfield, best known for Count Arthur Strong. Last Orders at the Shoulder of Mutton is a tribute to him from his friend David Bramwell – and all proceeds go to Martlets Charity. Have a listen here.

That’s all for now. By the time you get my next newsletter, there will be flowers opening and sunlight on your face. See you then!

jhx

Newsletter #17

Newsletter #17

johnhiggs

A six-and-a-bit-weekly newsletter from author John Higgs. If you haven’t already subscribed, you can do so here.

Imbolc 2020

I spent yesterday talking about William Blake’s 21st century relevance and legacy at Tate Britain with Brian Catling, Mr Gee and Nabihah Iqbal. This was, I think, the best way to spend Jan 31st 2020.

Thanks to Matthew Shaw for the photos.

If you’re in London and want a more unofficial way to mark the end of the Tate’s William Blake exhibition, the South London Arts Lab are organising a ‘Blake Off’ tomorrow (Feb 2nd). Billed as a day of ‘music, poetry, drones and ceremony’, the plan is to meet in the free Blake legacy room (not the exhibition) at Tate Britain at 4pm, before moving to upstairs at the Morpeth Arms from 5pm. Hope to see you there!

Now that the Tate event is done, my plan is to take a bit of a breather from doing talks this year, although I fully expect to be all over the shop in 2021. That said, I have agreed to do a talk on Blake at Sheffield Library on March 9th because (a) Sheffield, (b) libraries, (c) Blake and (d) full moon. The event is free and I’d advise registering for a ticket sooner rather than later.

I’ve also agreed to an ‘in conversation’ event with Robin Ince at Berkhamsted Book Festival on May 10th because no one can say no to Robin Ince, it is not physically possible. But that should be it for talks this year.

That said – I do have one date you might want to put in your diaries.

I’ve written a play called HG Wells & the Spiders From Mars. It’s a one-man play (well, one visible man) and it stars Oliver Senton, who played Robert Anton Wilson in the Cosmic Trigger play. It’s being directed by Daisy Campbell.

Here’s the blurb:

Geniuses collide when an invisible muse ‘Ziggy’ crash lands into the Edwardian living room reality of the ‘Godfather of Science Fiction’ HG Wells, inspiring him to write his greatest works: but can H.G. surrender to his muse and help provoke an evolutionary leap in the collective imagination? What can myth-making genius teach us about the urgent need to alter our cultural narrative. Could we be heroes?

A time-traveling one-man fusion of theatre, music-hall magic & Bowie-inspired songs, with razor sharp digital sets.

It’s still in development, but it will be presented as a work-in-progress at the Cockpit Theatre on April 3rd. This will be partly fully staged and partly a readthrough, and I’ll be doing a Q&A. More on this next time but for now, if you’re likely to be around London on Friday April 3rd, keep the date free.

Speaking of Daisy Campbell, I’m hella proud to have written the introduction to the book edition of her one-woman show Pigspurt’s Daughter. This presents as being an examination of her relationship with her late father Ken Campbell but is, of course, considerably more than that.

If you heard Conor Garrett’s terrific Radio 4 documentary on the attempts of the KLF/JAMMs to become undertakers and wondered how this came to be, then Pigspurt’s Daughter will explain a lot. You can think of it as the missing link between the story detailed in my KLF book and what’s going on now.

Here’s how my introduction begins:

There are two types of magical people. The first group are those who want to be magical. They feel drawn to the magical life and they read plenty of books to find out about it. They study hard and discuss arcane subjects with like-minded wizards and witches. Magic is a vocation and something to be nurtured, and they apply themselves.

The second type are people who just are magical and there’s not a damn thing that they can do about it. Their lives are a constant parade of unbelievable and impossible situations. Synchronicities compete for their attention. The world bends itself into unnatural positions in order to better reflect their own mental landscape. Their lives are constantly, intensely magical, and they just put up with it as best they can.

The author of this play, Daisy Campbell, is this second type of person.

For more details and how to order, visit Hilaritas Press.

Much is happening and the year, as you’ve no doubt noticed, has got off to a determined start. That strange nameless decade we’ve left behind was a vague, unsettled thing where probabilities were malleable and certainties vulnerable. We were able to imagine wonderful ways forward, but the shifting ground underneath our feet did not want to be built on.

We have landed on settled ground now. It is not an ideal world, to put it mildly, but at least we no longer fool ourselves about its true character. We know the score and there is much to do, but our decade in the mists has orientated us well. It is time – to quote Tom Waits – to get behind the mule, and plough.

Good luck! I’ll write again further down the road.
jhx

Newsletter #14

Newsletter #14

johnhiggs

My newsletter gets sent out 8 times a year – you can subscribe here. This is the newsletter that was sent on 23 September 2019…

Higgs’ Blind Octannual Manual #14

A six-and-a-bit-weekly newsletter from author John Higgs

Autumn Equinox 2019

Happy autumn equinox all! The wheel of the year grinds ever on…

Huge thanks to all who came to the launch of my short book William Blake Now at the Social last Monday. Special thanks to Salon London for organising it at the last minute and to the die-hards who came to sing and proclaim at the spot where Blake was born afterwards – that was a real joy.

Many thanks to Richard Norris for the above photo, in which our gathering is blessed by a very Blakean thread of golden light. Slightly fewer thanks to Flinton Chalk for the following picture, of me at Tate Britain’s new Blake exhibition deep in contemplation of the genitals of the giant Albion.

The Tate exhibition is an overwhelming experience which I urge you all to catch if geography allows. Keep an eye out for William Blake Now in the Tate gift shop – or indeed pick up the paperback, ebook or audiobook version online, if that pleases.

SOME WORDS ON OUR BLIND SPOTS…

In school, Hanif Kureishi was taught that the Beatles did not write their own songs. Those songs were really composed, his music teacher told him, by the well-spoken Brian Epstein and George Martin.

Kureishi’s teacher was expressing the delusion of class superiority. If you believe you are automatically superior to a bunch of scruffy Scouse herberts, then a lot of cognitive dissonance will be created when some of those Scouse herberts produce work far in advance of anything you or your peers could ever dream of. In those circumstances the teacher’s brain took refuge in a conspiracy theory, because this took the pressure off his model of reality.

Note that the teacher was probably unaware he was doing this. His belief in class superiority would have been imprinted upon him as a child. It was buried so deep, and framed so much of his worldview, that he would have been entirely unaware of it. It resided in his mind’s blind spot. It is hard to correct delusions that are invisible to us.

We all have a blind spot. None of us really know the delusions that lurk there. For all we may want to condemn Kureishi’s teacher, we are not that different oursleves. In the forecourt of the temple of the Delphic Oracle was carved the command ‘Know Thyself’, but illuminating the darkest shadows of our reality tunnels is hard. Often the best we can do is hope that our delusions are not harming others, and that reality doesn’t intrude to create the cognitive dissonance that so troubled Kureishi’s teacher.

The collision between invisible delusions and reality is typically expressed as unexpected anger, for which the explanations given seem irrational and incoherent. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, there is a lot of this about at the moment in Britain. In many cases, the invisible delusion in question is British Exceptionalism.

My apologies to non-UK readers for dwelling on this subject, but this country is working through some issues at the moment at it seems important to look at them. For the past year or so, ever since Theresa May brought her EU deal back to parliament, British Exceptionalism and political reality have clashed head-on. They have been aggressively grinding against each other ever since, and while political reality is unaltered, British Exceptionalism has been shredded beyond repair.

British Exceptionalism is, for historical reasons, the polite term for English exceptionalism. It is the belief that Britishness is by definition best, and that Britain is automatically superior to other countries. It looks ridiculous when it is written down and brought into the light, which is perhaps why this is rarely done. For many, it is imprinted so deeply into their reality tunnels that it is invisible and unquestioned. It is, in the words of Lord Victor Adebowale, the Empire of the Mind. For example, there are many who were appalled that Russian spies took a nerve agent to Salisbury and killed Sergei Skripal and others, but they will happily watch James Bond killing people in whatever country he wants and see this as entirely reasonable.

(I’m capitalising British Exceptionalism, incidentally, to distinguish it from actual British exceptional things, which are terrific and worthy of celebration. The work of J.R.R. Tolkien, Alan Moore or David Bowie, to give a few random examples, are all British and exceptional. But this is because of the quality of the work itself – it is not true by default based on who their parents were.)

The real nature of Britain is a politely pagan surreal circus, a fact that is entirely obvious to the majority of those of us who live here. This is what we like about the place. Those imprinted with British Exceptionalism had to invent a mask to put over this – they needed to deny the country’s true character, because it’s easier to feel superior if you pretend that you’re Downton Abbey rather than acknowledge that you’re Monty Python. The utter inappropriateness of the dutiful, stable, decent Downton Abbey mask is of course extremely funny, which does give some insight into the actual nature of Britain.

The Downton Abbey mask, however, has been all but destroyed by the Brexit process. Or at least, it has in the eyes of observers in other countries. Many were shocked to discover that Britain, which they thought of as being largely stable, dutiful, competent and decent, is in fact none of those things. A reputation can be destroyed quickly in the twenty-first century. It does not tend to recover.

Will British Exceptionalism survive? One way to check its health is to check the current status of our folk heroes James Bond and Lara Croft, because both Bond and Croft have British Exceptionalism embedded in their character.

Lara Croft’s last game Shadow of the Tomb Raider tackled the issue head on. It made it explicit that she was the bad guy. Croft uses her wealth and privilege to travel to South America, damage their heritage and steal a cultural artefact, which triggers a tsunami and kills thousands. To make amends, Croft offers herself up as a sacrifice at the end of the game. She willingly lets the ‘Tomb Raider’ be killed. After coming back to life – er, somehow – she vows that she will change. She will no longer probe the mysteries of the world, but protect them instead. Quite how this will play out in future games remains to be seen, but it’s encouraging that the next Tomb Raider film is being made by Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump.

Bond is trickier, as he is essentially British Exceptionalism personified. If the gossip surrounding the next Bond film is true, the intended director Danny Boyle was taken off the project after delivering a script in which Bond died. For producers with a cash-cow to protect, that was clearly unacceptable. Yet given the current disintegration of British Exceptionalism, I’d argue that Boyle’s approach was entirely logical. What else could he have done with the character?

Boyle has now left the project and the Phoebe Waller-Bridge is now working on the script. Waller-Bridge’s achievements with Fleabag have been unfairly overshadowed by debate about her class, but that subject does seem relevant here. She seems a perfect hire for producers wanting make Bond relevant in the #MeToo era, but who are afraid of tackling the deeper and more taboo issue of unquestioned superiority.

Away from Croft and Bond, there has been a creative surge of work that looks at English or British identity without being nationalistic, or by being actively anti-nationalistic. Danny Boyle’s and Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s opening ceremony to the 2012 London Olympics is an obvious example, as is Stormzy headlining Glastonbury’s pyramid stage wearing Banky’s union flag stab vest. You also have artists such as Jeremy Deller and @ColdWar_Steve, musicians including Richard Dawson and Slowthai, comics like Kieron Gillen’s Once and Future and writers such as Jez Butterworth, who gave us both the play Jerusalem and the series Britannia. Looking further afield, you find things like the open-source folk horror project Hookland, the film A Field in England by Lara Croft’s new parents Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump, and the New Weird Britain Movement.

All this is a reminder that, creatively, British Exceptionalism is unwanted baggage. There’s far more interesting stuff being done without it. To drag it out into the light where it can be dismissed is going to be a painful process for many, but I doubt the process can be stopped. It seems to me that life in our politely pagan surreal circus will be all the better once it is over.

That’s all for now, but I have talks coming up this year in Belfast, Kraków, Brighton and Lavenham – come say hello.

Keep on, pilgrim,
jhx

Newsletter #13

Newsletter #13

johnhiggs

My newsletter gets sent out 8 times a year – you can subscribe here. This is the newsletter that was sent on 1 August 2019…

Higgs’ Blakean Octannual Manual #13

A six-and-a-bit-weekly newsletter from author John Higgs

Lammas 2019

 

Time for the Announcement Klaxon – I have a BRAND NEW BOOK coming out on September 5th – it is short, cheap and called WILLIAM BLAKE NOW:


That’s the cover – although a screen doesn’t really do it justice because it’s being printed with neon pantone ink on non-coated stock, making it a very lovely thing.

Much of how we understand Blake now is framed in the ideas of Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, Jim Morrison and the 1960s counterculture in general. We think of him in terms of anti-authoritarian individualism, sexual freedom, the New Age, and so on. Which is all very well, but the 1960s were a long time ago and we have learnt a lot since then. In this little book, I explain why I think that Blake is more relevant to the 2020s than he was to the 1960s.

It’s a breezy 15,000 words, only £5.99 in paperback and £3.99 on Kindle, and pre-ordering is heroic.

This will be followed by a full length book called WILLIAM BLAKE VS THE WORLD in 2021.

 

BLATHER

Whenever I talk about optimism in public, I’m always careful to stress the difference between blind optimism and pragmatic optimism. Blind optimism is in denial of reality and it doesn’t usually end well. Since my last newsletter, the UK has suddenly become awash with blind optimism.

No doubt this current political Project Optimism is only designed to survive until the coming general election, but it’s interesting to see the impact it is already having. The algorithms of social media and the business models of broadcast and print media don’t usually allow optimism through in any form, so it’s not surprising that a fair chunk of the electorate are giddy drunk on it all. This has led to the dawning realisation among commentators that perhaps just complaining about everything isn’t enough, and that it might be necessary to imagine something worth building.

I fear that this public wave of blind optimism will be used as an argument against optimism of all types – especially if the dreaded “optimism = leave, pessimism = remain” narrative catches on – so it’s worth defining what I mean by pragmatic optimism. I’ll give an example.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Romney Marsh to visit the little black cottage where the late film director Derek Jarman lived in the final years of his life, after he had been diagnosed with HIV. It is in a deeply strange landscape, so unrelentingly bleak and eerie that it transcends horrible and becomes almost wonderful.
 
Here, in the shadow of the Dungeness nuclear power station, Jarman decided that he would use his last days to grow a garden. That the land around his cottage was shingle, and that very little would grow in the salt-sprayed damp, did not stop him. He understood the limitations and worked with them. He erected raised beds, little stone cairns and obelisks, and found by trial and error which plants would survive. The fame of his garden grew, and it is now seen as much a part of his legacy as his films. In the bleakest of situations, he made something beautiful that still impacts on people decades after he died. The garden now attracts a steady stream of visitors (although pilgrims should keep to a respectful distance as the house is privately occupied).

This is pragmatic optimism in a nutshell – understanding the difficulties, not being in denial of them, and then choosing to be optimistic and proactive regardless, because logically and spiritually it is the best available option. It is easier to criticise and moan, of course, but what does that get you? Not a garden like this, that’s for sure. Not something anyone will treasure.

On his Red Hand Files website, the singer Nick Cave described this position beautifully: “Either we respond to the indifference of the universe with self-pity and narcissism – as if the world has in some way personally betrayed us – and live our lives in a cynical, pessimistic and self-serving manner; or we stand tall, set our eyes clearly upon this unfeeling universe and love it all the same – even though, or especially because, it doesn’t love us. This act of cosmic defiance, of subversive optimism, of unconditional and insubordinate love, is the greatest act of human beauty we can perform.”

When put as powerfully as that, you have to wonder why this attitude is such an outlier. True, some people psychologically get off on hopelessness, but for such a mass movement it has very little going for it.

I like Cave’s phrase ‘subversive optimism’ very much, incidentally. I think I might try using that instead of ‘pragmatic optimism’, and see how that goes. I’ve also just discovered that the Tumblr/fandom world have a word for the attitude Jarman demonstrated, hopepunk, which is another phrase I’m all for. The ‘-punk‘ suffix suggests a DIY attitude, and an awareness that the task of building a worthy reality tunnel falls to you alone. You’re not trying to make everything perfect for everyone. That’s not your responsibility. You’re just trying to improve the place you find yourself in, on your own terms.

All this is hardly new. As the old proverb says, “better to light a candle than to curse the dark.” The cosmos is vast and dark and cold. The stars are only a tiny part of it, and they are a long way from each other. But still, they are stars.

On the side of Jarman’s cottage is painted an excerpt from John Donne’s seventeenth century poem The Sun Rising, which address the sun itself. It ends:

since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere

 

ELSEWHERE

If you’re in Edinburgh and want some hopepunk stand up, get yourself along to see Andrew O’Neill’s new show WE ARE NOT IN THE LEAST AFRAID OF RUINS, WE CARRY A NEW WORLD IN OUR HEARTS. I’ve seen a preview and it is great – heartily recommended.

BBC Radio 4 Extra has put together a career overview of the poet Salena Godden, which you can and indeed should listen to here. I am planning to clone Salena, incidentally – I admittedly haven’t worked out the technical side of this yet, but I’m thinking that raising an army of about 500 Salenas is the way forward.

You should also know that the entire Tool back catalogue is finally hitting streaming services tomorrow – and that a new album will follow at the end of this month.

AND ALSO

Midlands folk – I’m doing a talk on Saturday August 31st at the Moseley Folk Festival, come along and say hi, there will be books!


Over near Seattle, Andrew Shaw of The Silent Academy has put out a book of couplets. These are impossible things written down in two lines that begin with the word imagine – and then the word imagine is deleted. I wrote a foreword for his collection.

I wrote a thing for The Quietus about the Lovecraftian horror that is Yesterday by the Beatles.

I also wrote about Eton and all the murder.

That’s it for this newsletter – I will report back in at the equinox. I’m sure you’re now thinking of scrolling all the way back up to the top to find the pre-order link for William Blake Now, aren’t you? Tell you what, to save you the trouble, I’ll just put it here again. You’re welcome!

jhx