January turns out to be a loooonnnggg months with most days of heavy rain:
A kind of hibernation period.
Yet, there are signs of spring:
And both Epiphany – the 6th January – and Imbolg – the 1st of February – indicate that the light is strengthening.
I am happy to see my new book published.
It concerns my discussion of William Blake and how a Gnostic philosophical approach is the key to understanding the substantive intention of his poetry, art and prophecies.
At the moment, this book is in Spanish only, but an English version is to appear soon.
You can find the texts here:
http://www.michaelgrenfell.co.uk/william-blake-gnosticism-and-gnosis-2023/
http://www.michaelgrenfell.co.uk/william-blake-el-gnosticismo-y-la-gnosis/
I have been reading Julian Barnes’ Departures. Barnes was/ is one of the British nouvel vague of writing that emerged from the 1960s/ 70s. Others included Martin Amis, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie. All waning (or dead) a bit now. A feature of their writing is slightly postmodern: so, hybridity, ruse, decentered, multiple narratives. I have had a bit of a love/ dislike relationship with Barnes. At his best, it is excellent – like in The Levels of Life and The Sense of an Ending. Others seem to go nowhere – like The Only Story which is a kind of cadence that never stops. So, it starts high and runs down into nothing.
This latest is reputably his last: being both terminally ill and 80! Still, he plays the old tricks: this is simultaneously the story of a couple who fall in love again later in life, and that of a dog. We shall see what insights this leads him towards….
More academically, I have been doing some work on Neoliberalism, based around the work of Hirschman, who was quite close to Bourdieu from the 1970s.
It is a kind of ‘sociologicalisation’ of economic theory. His main argument is that the socio-economic conjuncture leads to a lost of ‘voice’ and thus ‘exit’ from participation in set socio-economic institutions – and so to the flowering of extreme market individualism. So, economic liberalism has ‘organic’ foundations. This would be consistent with Marxist/ capitalist theory as reinterpreted as a ‘symbolic economy’ by Bourdieu. He also writes of ‘passions’ : which connects again with work I have been doing on ‘Bourdieu and Lacan’:
http://www.michaelgrenfell.co.uk/bourdieu-and-lacan/
I have been listening to some of the musical influences on Gurdjieff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PMxmgkmLsA
Also, I have returned to my penchant for English classical music. This is not first-rate stuff but I like it: kind of radical/ pastoral – certainly very English in its sentiments of reticence and vision. Soothing to the soul!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C2Wsz9Qytg&list=RD2C2Wsz9Qytg&start_radio=1
Also, a new record from Peter Gabriel: Been Undone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb-sOCk6BP4&list=RDgb-sOCk6BP4&start_radio=1
As in the previous i/ o, the new record – o/ i – will be released as one track per month on the New Moon – the opposite Dark side or Bright Side mixes on the Full Moon. Interesting to see how it unfolds….