The Traveller in the Evening

The film Blade Run­ner is hugely suc­cess­ful, but what does it mean? As the makers hint, the key is to watch it through the eyes of Wil­li­am Blake and his myth­o­logy of liberation.

Few could deny that Wil­li­am Blake sup­por­ted the rad­ic­al polit­ics of his time, yet revolu­tion­ary ideas were not an adjunct to his vis­ion­ary geni­us, but the liv­ing heart of it as a poet.

In the wake of the attemp­ted QAn­on putsch, and in the run-up to the inaug­ur­a­tion of Joe Biden, when Trump’s sup­port­ers are expec­ted to take to the streets again, Aleks McHugh con­siders QAn­on hys­teria and social media gen­er­ally as incarn­a­tions of Meyrink’s Golem, as por­trayed in the 1920 film by Paul Wegener.

An ana­lys­is of the recently dis­covered engrav­ings by Serge Arnoux illus­trat­ing Wil­li­am Blake’s ‘Pro­verbs of Hell’, with a dis­cus­sion of sur­real­ism and Blake, and the impact of Moravi­an­ism on Blake’s idea of faith, sexu­al­ity, free­dom and religion.

Images from Serge Arnoux’s le sexaphysique du texte, 1981.

Sac­red to Har­po­crates were first fruits of veget­ables, len­tils, and, above all, the peach tree. His moth­er was Isis, of course, and we may note that in the Valentini­an Pler­oma, the prim­al Moth­er, the First Thought of the incom­pre­hens­ible Bythos, is called Sig, ‘silence.’ As the Nag Ham­madi text Eugnos­tos the Blessed relates: “Sophia, his con­sort, who was called ‘Silence,’ because in reflect­ing without a word she per­fec­ted her Greatness.”

Haunto­logy is a dying art. Haha. I’m not famil­i­ar with the social the­ory of the haunto­lo­gist. I just like the atmo­sphere. I won­der if to study haunt­ing, really study it, one has to be a ghost one­self. Study haunt­ing first-hand. Like
see­ing from the future. A ghost in the cob­web-filled cor­ridors. Play on the old piano, rattle some armor. Know all the
secret pas­sage­ways, where lost treas­ures are waiting

Although Blake’s know­ledge of industry was uncer­tain, his vis­ion of it was not. It is an aston­ish­ing vis­ion — Jac­ob Bro­nowski on Blake and Industry, and Blake on Jer­u­s­alem and Liberty.

To cel­eb­rate Blake’s birth­day, here is one of his illus­tra­tions for Milton’s L’Al­legro, along with the poem itself, which seems suited to the mood fo the day.

Excerp­ted from the book Faust: Stretch Out Time, an essay about how great music helps us escape Urizen­ic time, dead time. “Out of time, into space” (Wil­li­am Burroughs)

Extracts from Michael Ten­cer­’s dream diary as his mind quivers on the edge of the immin­ent US Pres­id­en­tial Elec­tions. What got stirred up?

Thy pur­pose & the pur­pose of thy Priests & of thy Churches
Is to impress on men the fear of death; to teach
Trem­bling & fear, ter­ror, con­stric­tion: abject selfishness.
Mine is to teach Men to des­pise death & to go on
In fear­less majesty anni­hil­at­ing Self, laugh­ing to scorn
Thy Laws & terrors

Blake Bloc, con­ceived by Poets, Artists and Pho­to­graph­ers and the ban­ner designed by Artist Mat­thew Couper, brings back vis­ion­ary and poet­ic anarch­ism to the con­ven­tion­al march of protest. Last seen with Blake’s influ­ence, through Gins­berg, on six­ties anti-war demon­stra­tions and incor­por­at­ing the once-proud trade uni­on and suf­fra­gette ban­ners of the nine­teenth cen­tury. Bear­ing Wil­li­am Blake’s images and his immor­tal words — ‘Oppos­i­tion is True Friend­ship’ — this ban­ner isn’t for the bin after­wards with the pile of plac­ards ! It’s a work of art as much as a protest in the Blakean tra­di­tion of Wil­li­am Mor­ris elev­at­ing social­ist ideals.

The Irish Inde­pend­ent Left con­duc­ted an inter­view with the his­tor­i­an Peter Line­baugh about his book, Red Round, Globe Hot, Burn­ing, which dis­cusses Blake at sev­er­al points and makes some excel­lent obser­va­tions about him, Thomas Spence, and oth­ers, and their rel­ev­ance to our times.