Blake and Heat

It will not have escaped your notice if you live in the UK that it’s hot. When I lived in Spain there wasn’t much to say about the weather apart from in summer, Que calor! and in winter, Que frio! (I don’t know how to do upside down exclamation marks on here otherwise I would. I think they’re a very good idea because they tell you what’s coming.) A Spanish friend of mine, on visiting the UK, remarked on how much we talk about the weather. ‘That’s because it’s different every day,’ I explained. ‘Sometimes it’s different every hour. You just never know.’

Actually these days, thanks to more accurate forecasting, we generally do know. For example, today it will rise to a high of 29 degrees and drop at night to 17. Which means I shall have to start thinking in Spanish; go out for walks in the early morning before it gets hot, and have a siesta in the afternoon. I am generally someone who likes hot weather but if it’s too hot I do start to wilt a little; and whereas with the cold you can warm yourself up by exercising, there’s only so much you can do to keep cool. We currently have all the windows open and as few clothes on as possible; and this morning I practised this yoga cooling breath:

But what’s really on my mind this morning is Blake. William Blake is probably my favourite artist and one of my favourite poets. A visionary and a complete one-off, he openly declared that he spoke with angels and spirits. He was a great believer in equality, not only of the classes but of the sexes; a supporter of the French revolution and perhaps the greatest artist this country has ever produced. Yet where is he celebrated? Tucked away in a dark corner of the Tate, last time I looked, while we prefer less challenging painters such as Turner or Constable (not that I’m disparaging Turner, though Constable I could live without.) Why then is he so neglected?

I think there are several reasons. First, that he was a political radical, and we don’t tend to honour radicals in this country. We know the names of Henry VIII’s wives and the manner of their executions but we haven’t heard of Peterloo (watch the Mike Leigh film; it’s terrific.) Secondly, Blake was working-class. This brackets him with figures such as Lowry and Turner but unlike them his subject matter was much more challenging. To sit in front of a Blake painting is like putting your hand in a fire – consider this picture of Nebuchadnezzar:

Or this, of Cain:

But perhaps the most important reason why he is not sufficiently honoured is this. Blake was a master, not only of painting but also of engraving – and he was a poet. Considered as one of the Romantics, though not much given to lakes or daffodils, he wrote and painted in equal measure and was master of both. Many of his poetry books are illustrated with engravings and it is hard to say which is more important. They are equal – and this we do not forgive. For an artist to master one medium is fine; for them to master a related medium, this we can also accept – but to be master of both art and poetry, this is unforgivable. It’s presumptuous: we come over all Lady Bracknell-ish and say that to master one medium may be construed as genius, to master two looks like hubris.

Yet Blake was the most modest of men, living simply with his wife in a couple of rooms in London. It was sad that he remained unrecognised during his lifetime; what’s sadder still is that he is even now underappreciated.

Kirk out

the God allusion

Ugh!  Woke this morning at 4 am, heard noises downstairs.  Went to investigate – nothing.  Must have been next door.  Then failed to get back to sleep.

It’s strange that on the day I get a comment about Richard Dawkins, the library should email me to say the copy of “The God Delusion” I reserved has arrived!  I got it yesterday and spent the morning dipping into it for my short story, “The God Illusion”.  I disagree with just about everything Dawkins says – but what struck me was how like a fundamentalist Christian he was – albeit on the other side of the fence.

He refuses to countenance agnosticism (too wishy-washy) or pantheism – a broader, more tolerant notion of God is, in his view, a nonsense (“you might as well say you can see God in a lump of coal.”)  Er – well, yes, I thought, you can.

“To see a world in a grain of sand

and a heaven in a wild flower

hold infinity in the palm of your hand

and eternity in an hour”

– that’s Blake.

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/blake/to_see_world.html

Blake is one of my favourite poets, as you will know if you’ve been paying attention.

He (Dawkins) also says that a sense of wonder – and wondering – about life, which many scientists experience, has “nothing to do” with God or religion.  I definitely don’t agree with that, although again, I was struck by how similar this was to what some fundamentalists might say.  Dawkins says that God “must be” a creator God, who is worshipped by people – again, very like a fundamentalist Christian.

Methinks he doth protest too much… which is basically the point of my story.

But where I think he is demonstrably wrong is when he maintains that Jesus saying “love your neighbour” only meant “love other Jews”.  Jesus went out of his way to demonstrate that “your neighbour” also means “your enemy” – and that, nearly everyone agrees, is the meaning of the parable of the Good Samaritan. (Not to mention the Samaritan woman at the well.)

He bangs on about sin a lot (fundamentalist) but hardly mentions love at all.  When he does, it’s only sexual love.  I’ll save my thoughts on this for another post, else we’ll never get done here – I will just add that there was no reference to compassion at all.*

I rest my case.  Well, actually there’s a lot more work to do before that can happen, but Mary Midgeley says something useful here:

Nope – I can’t find it, but she wrote an article called “A Plague on Both your Houses” which said that Dawkins was taking science into realms which science does not and cannot cover – ie the metaphysical.

Mark says that Dawkins is philosophically naive – and doesn’t know it.  I think he’s right.

More on this anon.

Kirk out.

PS Just realised that I mentioned Dawkins in my own post – so, Duh! – not so much of a coincidence, after all.

* Actually, though compassion is not in the index, he does define it as a “misfiring” of the instinct to defend the tribe – I have blogged about this later.

I had a dream…

Bad night, but a good dream – I dreamt I found a story of mine that had been published and which I’d forgotten about.  I was really happy, then wrote to the magazine asking why they hadn’t paid me.  The story, interestingly, was called Nineteenthly, which is Mark’s pseudonym on his blog and on the Half-Bakery.  So make of that what you will.  I know I will!

http://nineteenthly.wordpress.com/

Half-bakery?  It’s a site where geeks come up with ill-thought-out ideas for inventions.  Geddit?  It’s easy enough to find, not so easy to leave (you can log off any time you like/but you can never leave)
www.halfbakery.com/

I had a really good limerick this morning and now it’s lost.  Here’s a later one:

The age of the train

voice of the creep

winds in the lane

howl in our sleep.

(Remember Jimmy Savile?  I try not to, either.)

Reading Rebecca and for lighter relief, HPDH (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to you).  When, oh when will the film come out?

Short stories are coming on.  I am skimming Tracy Chevalier’s Burning Bright – which, as anyone even vaguely literary will know, is about Blake.  You know, Tyger, tyger, burning bright/in the forests of the night/what immortal hand or eye/can frame thy fearful symmetry?  Not her best, I think – the research is too obvious, hasn’t bedded in to the story.  Girl with a Pearl Earring – much better.  I wonder, though, whether she’s got stuck in a genre because that was so successful.

Compare and contrast with how a tiger when walking:

uses first legs one and three

then alternates with two and four –

and after that, there are no more.

RIP Spike Milligan

Deeper and crisper and even better…

…or should that be batter? I was thinking about the word “eke” this morning, or rather the word was floating around my mind when I awoke.  Who know how these things happen?  I daresay there are, as with the Pan-galactic Gargle-Blaster, organisations which exist to help you rehabilitate http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Bartending/Cocktails/Pan_Galactic_Gargle_Blaster

(perhaps the Chaucer Recovery Society?)  Anyway, the word eke used to mean “also”:

When Zephyrus eke with his swete brethe

inspired hath in every holt and hethe

the tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

hath in the Ram his halve-corse y-runne

I think I’ve got the spelling sufficiently wrong.  That’s from The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.  But nowadays, “eke” means “to stretch out to it’s furthest limit”, as in: “Can we eke out the bread for another day?”  (to which the answer is always, “I just ate the last slice”).

To which the response is:

“Eek!”

There used to be a band called “Eek a mouse”.  I don’t remember anything about them apart from the name.  I suspect they weren’t very big.

That’s enough!  Or too much, as Blake would have said.  Damn his braces.

Going to the chalet tomorrow.  After which, this blog will be silent for a while.

Thank god, you think.

Kirk out.

Well, nobody’s forcing you to read it!  Go on, bugger off!

That’s it!  Keep walking!

Damn.  They left.

Ah well.

W at the Y

Word tonight at the Y theatre Leicester. I shall be reading a couple I sent off for the Mslexia poetry comp, judged by Ruth Padel. She is apparently a descendant of Darwin – which brings me beautifully to a short story I’m going to write about Richard Dawkins, in which he is going to have a road-to-Damascus conversion and become a born-again Christian. It could happen! In fact I think it’s more likely that people who cling tightly to dogmatic views can turn around and embrace the exact opposite view. And I tell you this: Richard Dawkins the evangelical Christian is going to be ten times the pain in the arse that R D the atheist ever was.

If you haven’t read The God Delusion, it’s an interesting rant – I mean, read. I can’t argue with anything he says about religion: it’s the things he doesn’t say that I object to. Yes, religions have been guilty of corruption – but so has politics and business. Yes, religions are guilty of indoctrination – but so is politics – and no, there isn’t any evidence for the existence of God – but how could there be? As Mary Midgely points out in her article, A Plague on Both Your Houses, science does not and cannot concern itself with metaphysics. To say there is no scientific evidence for God is like – like – like an octopus saying there is no sky. Which reminds me of Blake’s Newton, trying to measure the world with compasses, which in turn reminds me that some time in April Peter and I (and possibly the daughter) are going to London to see the Picasso exhibition. Can’t ask the daughter at the mo’, because she is still in Wales. If she ever comes back, I’ll talk to her. Or if she reads this blog…

Ho ho ho.