Between small things for sale

I invent worlds, commercial campaigns and artistic moments with language at their heart. I’ve spent my life thinking about what writing can do. If you favour my ideas and style then please consider sharing my website with the ambitious brand owners and sensitive artistic patrons in your life. I’m an independent practitioner and I do what I do through building partnerships. Here is a list of some people I’ve worked with so far.

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Arthur Edward Waite (1857–1942) was a British poet and scholarly mystic who wrote extensively on occult and esoteric matters. He’s *most* famous now for being the co-creator of the tarot deck you probably think about when you think of tarot decks.

As anyone who has tried will know, being a poet and scholarly mystic doesn’t pay the bills. So AE Waite also worked for Horlicks. Horlicks is a sweet, malted-milk drink powder invented in 1873. Their advertising has been … eclectic.

In 1931 the company invented a condition called ‘night starvation’ which was supposedly relieved if a mug of Horlicks was consumed before bedtime. On a similar theme but toned down a little from you’ll-probably-die-if-you-don’t-buy-this, 1961 saw a TV campaign with the tag line ‘Horlicks – the food drink of the night.’ Which is another totally made up thing.

And in 1952 they sponsored a Dan Dare Pilot of the Future radio show. Here’s an advert for the Horlicks Spaceman Club.

AE Waite worked for Horlicks in the early 1900s and was put in charge of a magazine they sent out across the world.

He promptly packed it full of the esoteric, strange, magical and spooky. Including the first outing for Arthur Machen’s amazing proto-folk-horror novella ‘The White People’.

Nothing, I think we’ll all agree, says lovely malty milk drink as much as a young girl being found ‘poisoned – in time’ at the foot of a pagan statue.

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I’m very interested in which people and what things are remembered. How much it depends on chance. How often the achievements that people and institutions think are their main vibe … are not what future generations regard as their actual legacy.

Which do you think will last longer in our collective cultural memory – Horlicks or The White People? I genuinely couldn’t predict.

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I have a beautifully fluid Creative Director role with Cubitts, the spectacle brand. Amongst various other bits, I work on their marketing campaigns and edit their twice-yearly magazine. In the Horlicksy grand tradition of Modernist companies exploring the esoteric, this magazine is very happy to get weird.

Last week I and a crew of starbabes from the brand stayed overnight at the amazing creative retreat Dut18 to do a meditation called CE5 which, supposedly, contacts and attracts UFOs through consciousness.

Pick up a copy of the next issue from any Cubitts store to see what happens. It’s strange and spooky. You’ll need a malty milk drink to get to sleep afterwards.

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Two of my recent projects, ‘Love is the running towards’ for London Fire Brigade and ‘Sculpture doesn’t do. Sculpture is.’ for the Henry Moore Institute have been shortlisted for a pencil in this year’s D&AD Writing for Design category.

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However, this Cubitts advert which appeared in the latest issue of Modern House magazine wasn’t shortlisted. Such are the vagaries of what gets selected to be culturally remembered. But I still love it. Not many brands are cool enough to let their hero product shot to be used as punctuation.

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I’m currently working on a year-long project about witch executions. Every two months, on the new moon, I’m visiting a place in England where women were murdered for their beliefs, practices or – as in so many cases – simply for being old, poor, uneducated and female. It’s a collaboration with artist Geraldine Hudson. The piece is about othering. At the end of the year I will have written a magickal working which folds time in on itself.

Last week we visited Manningtree in Essex, reputed to be the smallest town in England. This was the home of Matthew Hopkins, the self-styled ‘Witchfinder General’ and location of some of his killings.

Below is a still from ‘Witchfinder General’, a classic 1968 rural-darkness film which, alongside the countryside nihilism, inevitably makes it all quite sexy as well.

There’s another form of cultural remembering though. In Manningtree we sat at the site of the executions of four women. A tiny triangle of grass at the top of a steep street, surrounded on all sides by expensive looking Georgian houses. Looking up at a tree we saw four nails driven into the trunk. Those women have not been forgotten.

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This Friday, May 26th, at 6pm UK time, I’m going to give an online talk about the writing in my latest book (second printing now on sale). You can sign up to the talk for free here.

People have been saying nice things about the book. Here’s one.

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So to end with a poem. It’s the only one of mine that’s ever been published by not-me. Appearing in Poetry London. Appropriately it’s a vanitas. Paintings that remind you of the impermanence of it all. Warning you not to worry too much about legacy or recognition or take any of it too seriously really. Reminding you that you can’t control what is remembered. That goes for brands, as well as poets and mystics. The poem takes the objects you traditionally find in vanitas paintings – hourglasses, meat, flowers, quills, bubbles etc. – and places them in a Post Office window. Mainly so I could make the pun in the title.

Post Office Vanitas

Between small things for sale
last summer’s flies lie stopped,
mummied in dust, window-warm,
shadowed by boxed biros, a watch,
bubbles for kids, cards for occasions
and fake flowers, unsold, grown pale.

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Thanks, as ever, for reading. Please like and share the post if you value it. And feel free to add comments or email me directly. I’d particularly be very interested to know what you’d like to hear about in future Substacks. And do be careful of night starvation.