william blake

Mark E. Smith = very alert and smart Blake reader

draGnet = (among other things) review/critique/answer record to [insert several enormous blake poems here]

Ulver - Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell the website includes an MP3 for the curious.

One of the most astonishing,intense and original albums of the 90s that mixes rock, experimental electronics, techno, folk, industrial, breakbeats and jungle.

Ulver have also released a more electronic based record this year called Perdition City that is also highly recommended.

Many have cited him as an influence -- Mark E. Smith, Coil, Jah Wobble, Richard Ashcroft, Billy Bragg, The Fugs, er... Zodiac Mindwarp -- but I'm not too sure what relevance he has to much of their work. Mark E. Smith seems to have gone much further with him than most, and has probably suffered similar psychic torments. Coil are pretty passionate about him too.

"Folly is the cloak of knavery"

It takes someone of Smith's genius to realise what a fucking great line that is. He did something with Blake, rather than repeating "Heaven in a Wild Flower" and all that jazz.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/04/11/do1102.xml

^^ some bald people fighting over a comb. ends on note of spectacular mentalism.

That last para is totally wtf and seems to have gone completely uncommented.

Anti-racism and gender egalitarianism... "the follies of the age". That's pretty tough shit, even from the mouth of a conservativr priest.

I can't even work out what he's trying to say in that graf.

Isn't it this song they sing in the church in V for Vendetta (the comic) right before V kills the bishop? I can totally imagine this guy as that bishop in the comic.

The contention that "dark satanic mills" refers to the great churches, and their being in thrall to the enlightenment follies of the age, seems highly questionable.

And what is this modern folly of "compliance"?

Isn't it this song they sing in the church in V for Vendetta (the comic) right before V kills the bishop? I can totally imagine this guy as that bishop in the comic.

-- Tuomas, Friday, April 11, 2008 12:32 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i think so, yeah. it is sort of staggering if churchy types are coming out against it tbh. but this guy is crazy.

That's not written by Peter "make a sad face; show Sid your fugee face" Mullen, is it?!

No, he's Peter Mullan, dur.

I made a comment but they eated it. Perhaps 'cause I used a mailinator address.

The contention that "dark satanic mills" refers to the great churches, and their being in thrall to the enlightenment follies of the age, seems highly questionable.

It's a pretty plausible reading of Blake, I think. Altho of course the dark satanic mills also refers to, erm, mills. The vicar is right: Blake would be a natural enemy of his brand of mealy-mouthed people-hating bullshit. But "Jerusalem" as a song isn't really just Blake any more, any more than Blake was "nationalistic" in the sense that this ecclesiastical cock-shepherd means it. I'm happy to get WB out of the C of E - he wouldn't like it there anyway.

If he saw the cathedrals as dark and satanic I would guess it would be because he was against organised religion in general, rather than because that particular brand of it might have adopted some enlightnment ideals.

Ledge, OTM.

I'm currently reading E.P. Thompson's biography of Blake, which is less of a bio and more an examination of Blake's antinomianism. All new stuff for me, but basically explores marginalized English religious sects that reject(ed) ethical or moral laws as put down by the church. Blake was big into these traditions.

I got into this, by the way, through the Mekons (and their exclamation of "William Blake, William Morris...Tony Benn!).

I gots to explore the MES/Blake connection further... "Dragnet," huh?

Weird that the only thread abt my mew faves person is on ILM.

Anyway, I had a dream that I came up with an idea that resolved all the more fucked up stuff about "female will" and rape in his epic works. I felt so good, and so solid, and so relieved. ANd I woke up – I woke up and I was in tears, and I forgot what the resolution was or how it worked, everything about it.

I mean waking up crying alone is v otherworldly.

why be bleak when you could be blake

william blake is god btw

I wish more writing about literature was done after the manner of Milton A Poem.

http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/images/urizen.g.p25.100.jpg

^^^ love these things

The long sufferings of God are not for ever there is a Judgment

ahhhhhhh yes

re-reading jerusalem emanation of etc and keep misreading "lo!" as "lol!"

Speaking of 'lol,' I told my Blake-loving prof that I got into library science grad program, and after mad congrats, she told me that was "totally Urizenic." <3 <3 <3

Radio just played Parry's "Jerusalem" and I was thinking of my man W. Blake and then I opened up ILX and lo!

http://www.art-artist.co.uk/images/BLAKE_William_The_Lovers_Whirlwind_Francesca_Da_Rimini_And_Paolo_Malatesta.jpg

HERO.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/William_Blake,_Hecate_or_the_Three_Fates.JPG/800px-William_Blake,_Hecate_or_the_Three_Fates.JPG

http://skepticwiki.org/images/thumb/2/25/Behemoth_and_Leviathan.jpg/300px-Behemoth_and_Leviathan.jpg

Hecate is my desktop background image.

the Blake Archive image search site is appropriately bonkers, btw:
http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/imagesearch.html

What does it say about me that I immediately knew the plate that "Self-flagellation" referred to? -_-

that image search is breaking my brain - I don't even know where to begin

Huge influence on Jim Morrison and Patti Smith. Amazing visionary!

That image search is actually super useful if you have any insane personal hypothesis about what feet mean in his poems.

http://artfiles.art.com/images/-/William-Blake/Milton-a-Poem-Giclee-Print-C12028296.jpeg

I feel like C93, apart from being extremely Blakeish, have done something on an actual Blake text, but what is it...?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHOPqwZ0q4I

Scathe8000 i sampled this song and made a hella scary remix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZhpIDs_VQ4

has

http://sinosdobram.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/songs_of_experience_-_the_sick_rose_jk.jpg

!!!

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/hundreds-of-lost-william-blake-etchings-discovered-at-a-manchester-library-8460784.html

Anyone been to the exhibit @ Ashmolean btw, looking to go in Feb sometime.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n03/tj-clark/a-snake-a-flame

I can't see myself getting the day I'd need for a trip up to Oxford over the next month, but I may try. I would like to see the exhibition.

great article. I've only really started reading T J Clark in the last year or so - need to get hold of some more of his books.

likewise going soon I hope. friend of mine went and she was a bit lukewarm on it, but struggles a bit with Blake anyway.

I went again to the Tate Britain the other day to look at some of them - ghost of a flea is never less than remarkable. noticed for the first time properly the skies where his emanations are at play - silver green twilights, burning mornings, roiling night. gives a feeling of places right at the end or the beginning or after/before all.

one painting of the Juggernaut, which I hadn't properly looked at before was remarkable for the minor demons and figures at play around the central figure.

http://www.temenosacademy.org/temenos_hrh_message.html

is it weird that prince charles supports this thing

he gets it

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Blake_Cain_Fleeing_from_the_Wrath_of_God_%28The_Body_of_Abel_Found_by_Adam_and_Eve%29_c1805-1809.jpg

http://i2.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article3424845.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/On-the-Buses-main.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAFGGzs_ebk

Recently bought a collection of his illuminated works, it is a wonder to behold.