Welcome to Golgonooza!
Welcome to Golgonooza!, a new site celebrating the work of writer and artist William Blake, and its relevance for the 21st century.
Almost 200 years after his death, in an unmarked grave and living in near poverty with his wife Catherine, William Blake has perhaps never been so popular or so much in the public eye and consciousness. A retrospective of his work by the Tate Gallery in 2019 sold nearly a quarter of a million tickets; an unveiling of a new gravestone in Bunhill Fields in 2018 - finally marking the spot where Blake was laid to rest - attracted huge international attention and rock star speakers; an image of one of his most famous works was projected onto the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral in central London in 2019 to mark his birthday; and there are currently ambitious plans underway to transform his humble Felpham cottage – the one remaining site left standing where he actually lived - into a major cultural centre and museum, expected to open in 2027, amid a mass of events and celebrations to commemorate the 200th anniversary of his death in that unnoticed and unmarked grave.
For an artist who only sold a handful of his own illustrations and poetry during his lifetime this turnaround is rather astonishing, and says much I think not only about the huge and enduring power and compelling nature of his work and vision, but to a particular contemporary response and resonance with the ideas which he fearlessly and laboriously put forward and presented to the world over two centuries ago. In the so-called ‘Age of Reason’, which worshipped Newton and Locke and deified mechanistic materialism, Blake challenged the dominance of rationalism, literalism, and ‘single vision’, advocating instead for a far more embodied, imaginative, communal, and holistic mode of being and way of seeing ourselves and the world. The increasing attention which Blake is finally receiving is a testament to the receptiveness of these ideas in today’s increasingly fragmented, limited, and divisive world.
There is a lot happening in the world of Blake, and on this site I will be exploring all aspects of it – how his thinking is permeating the contemporary fields of neuroscience, psychoanalysis, theatre, music, philosophy, ecological awareness, political debate, and cultural life.
So if you’re interested in Blake, or are interested in finding out more about Blake – the way he thinks, how he relates to today – and in having access to the latest news, updates, ideas, and different current takes on his work - or simply want to connect with others who have an interest in Blake and find some kindred spirits - please consider subscribing to this platform. There will be regular posts and information on forthcoming Blakean events and meetings, as well as in-depth explorations of his work aimed at providing clear and compelling expositions of his thought, images, and words.
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A William Blake Multimedia Substack!
Blake’s own astonishing involvement in so many domains - he read and explored multiple worlds and territories including philosophy, literature, history of art, mysticism, physiognomy, science, epistemology, politics – will therefore be reflected in the subjects and posts of this site, which hopes to continue and extend these discussions into the new expanding worlds of literature, quantum mechanics, psychoanalysis, politics, and culture.
The fusion of the two - Blake and modernity – is already throwing off some remarkable insights and creative sparks, through the work of such writers as Iain McGilchrist, Philip Pullman, Aldous Huxley, Yeats, Allen Ginsberg, Bertrand Russell, and Alan Moore. And my sense is that this is just the beginning – as the deeper wisdom of Blake’s longer works unfolds and becomes more widely available and understood, there will be revolutions in far greater fields ahead I suspect.
I’m particularly interested myself in the complex correlations between art and science, reason and imagination, the left and right hemispheres, and what the dialectic between them might offer us, as we try to navigate a future and a world which increasingly seems hostile, divided, depressing, and enslaved to old ways of thinking and being.
I explored some of these correlations early on in my life, in my doctorate on the poet Shelley, investigating his remarkable and extensive interest in contemporary science, and continued the connection in my 2012 book The God of the Left Hemisphere - which I only realised half-way through was in some ways a similar pursuit, bringing together the scientific and imaginative, the principles of analysis and synthesis, as Shelley termed them. How can we integrate these two very different, very powerful, and often incompatible ways seeing the world, and indeed of being in the world? This Golgonooza Substack platform seems an appropriate way to develop and harness such discussions – a technological, innovative, and creative space where multiple mental domains constantly collide and interact - what Merleau-Ponty nicely called an ‘interworld’.
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What’s coming up on Golgonooza!
In the next few weeks on Golgonooza there’ll be a variety of original posts and publications, exploring many aspects of Blake’s mind and work. These include a piece on The Tao of Blake (delving into the remarkable similarities between Blake’s thought and Taoist traditions); a special post on War is Energy Enslaved to mark Armistice Day, examining Blake’s distinction between ‘Mental Fight’ and what he calls ‘Corporeal War’, and how he saw modern warfare and contemporary militarism primarily in terms of “energy enslaved”; a virtual guided tour of Blake’s London; a post exploring the subject of schizophrenia and Blake - not only his interest in the “fall into Division” and the divided self, but also touching on the ongoing debate about his own mental state - whether he was, as many critics over the years have suggested, ‘mad’ – or if, in more modern nomenclature, he was perhaps hyperphantasic, borderline neurodivergent, schizophrenic, or bipolar, which have all recently been put forward as possible diagnoses, to try and account for and make sense of his visions and unusual perceptions of the world. I consider these attempts to medicalise and psychoanalyse Blake, and also suggest what he might have made of such rather Urizenic approaches.
There will also be posts exploring Blake’s remarkable poem Auguries of Innocence as ‘one of the greatest political poems in the language’, as Philip Pullman sees it; on ‘Awakening from Woke’ (exploring Blake and the current Culture Wars); an article on ‘William Blake and the problem of revolution’, and a special Christmas edition focussing on the Nativity Ode and Blake’s extraordinary illustrations for it. Plus in the new year there’ll be the start of a major reappraisal and investigation of Blake’s neglected masterpiece The Four Zoas, and how I think it’s key to all his later work. This will include a new Reading and Performance Text of the poem, to help clarify and illuminate the voices and characters. Hopefully this might also enable readers and fans to follow and immerse themselves in the rather complex and intrapsychic, hologrammatic world of the poem - and even to act it out it for themselves if they like! As Philip Pullman notes, Blake’s words are meant to be heard, and spoken – experienced through the mouth and throat and tongue – not simply looked at passively on a page.
I hope you’ll be able to join me in exploring and looking into all of these areas of Blake’s thought and work, and contributing to the ongoing discussion about them. There will also be book reviews, community threads and chances to chat, discuss, and leave comments, or contribute pieces and responses, to make this, hopefully, a genuinely interactive domain and shared imaginative space.
If you have any thoughts or suggestions about what you’d like to see here please let me know – if you’d like to read something on Blake and AI, for example - his views on technology, machinery, and the place of the human in such a world – or perhaps on the perennially interesting subject of sexuality, and where he might fit in with contemporary debates. Just subscribe below and become part of the conversation!
Be part of a community of people who share your interests. Participate in the comments section, or support this work with a subscription.
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Subscriptions
Most of the content on Golgonooza will be free and open access, but Substack also allows for subscriptions to help fund the work and provide additional layers of communication and support. If you would like to support the site, and help me continue to provide this content, please consider subscribing!
There are three basic ways to subscribe:
1. Free subscriptions. These will give you full access to the monthly newsletter and publication archives, and ensure that you never miss an update. Every new post is sent directly to your email inbox, and you will be able to check the Golgonooza site for all the latest information and updates about what’s happening in the world of Blake.
2. Paid subscriptions. These can be either monthly (£4) or annually (£40) and will give you direct access to more in-depth articles and publications, and allow you to be part of a community of people who share your interests. As a paid subscriber you will be able to comment on articles, be part of the threads, and become a more engaged participant in the Golgonooza community.
Having paid subscriptions ensures the independence and quality of the writing available on the platform, as well as providing necessary income for writers who are often struggling or restricted because of other work commitments. As well as receiving additional access to posts, chats, news, and the wider community here you will also be helping me develop my ideas and work. I will make as much of my work freely available as possible, and the paid tiers will allow this.
3. Founding member subscription. In addition to the above, Substack allows for a special ‘Founding Member’ tier of subscription, which consists of a special one-off donation to help support the work on this site, and become one of its founding members – one of its ’golden builders’, perhaps in Blake’s terms! In addition to extra material and posts available only to founding members, you’ll also be able to communicate directly with me through a one-hour phone call or Zoom/FaceTime session or in-person meeting with me if you like, and if you have written on Blake yourself I would be happy to read and review it, if that might be something of use or interest to you – and even potentially publish it on this site and provide publicity for it here.
It would be wonderful for this level of the Substack subscription to allow a much fuller and deeper engagement with others working on similar projects in the process of shared, communal, imaginative building – which is exactly what Blake meant by the term ‘Golgonooza’! This subscription level is usually £100 but to celebrate the launch of the project on Substack the first 20 founding members will be able to subscribe for a specially reduced price of £80.
If you can, please consider supporting me through either a monthly or annual subscription … or consider become a Founding Member for even greater opportunities for communication and involvement in this new project.
Coda
I hope that you’ll find Golgonooza an exciting, stimulating, and imaginative space, and somewhere we can explore the expanding world and work of Blake together. I do welcome any feedback – any ideas and suggestions you might have for this site, and what you’d like to see in it. This is a new platform and project, and I’m new to it as well – it’s been a huge learning curve even putting it together and getting this far! So please do let me know if you have any ideas or suggestions for what you’d like to see on the new site or how you’d like to see it develop, to make it a really responsive, collaborative, and creative experience.
Thank you. x
Rod Tweedy
Email: rod@golgonooza.net
This site is informed by the work of Joel Bakan, Camila Batmanghelidjh, Owen Barfield, Jill Bolte Taylor, Fritjof Capra, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Louis Cozolino, S. Foster Damon, Sigmund Freud, Northrop Frye, Ben Griffin, Dave Grossman, Martin Heidegger, Carl Jung, Jiddu Krishnamurti, R.D. Laing, Karl Marx, Iain McGilchrist, Adam Phillips, Rupert Sheldrake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Eckhart Tolle, Alan Watts, John Archibald Wheeler, and Sarah Wheeler.
