Fragments of Arcadia
If you follow this link to a Google doc, you’ll discover the full text from the lecture element of an event I staged on Wednesday at Bridewell Hall off Fleet Street.
It’s a fifty minute lecture, so quite the read … but if you attended the event you might be curious about revisiting some of the thoughts. And if you didn’t come but would like to get lost in a secret garden of ideas, here’s the old wooden door. Look how the paint has been blistered by the sun.
I say lecture element because on Wednesday this academic exploration of Arcadia, pastorals, Pan, fragments and the unravelling of my book The Idyllegy, was surrounded and interrupted by very non-academic music, sound and ritual.
Towards the end of the lecture I quote Robert Graves’s The White Goddess. He is talking about the Sun god erasing and rewriting the Moon goddess’s verses.
‘… with that poetry becomes academic and decays until the Muse chooses to reassert her power in what are called Romantic revivals.’
That describes Wednesday’s experiment as well as anything.
I co-wrote this lecture with Ellie Robins. Ellie is a brilliant writer whose work circles imagination, the otherworld, and the great female mystics. You should definitely subscribe to her Substack.
She was one of five collaborators on this one-night only Happening, and in a future Substack I’ll share some details about the process of creating the event … as well as *why* I think it’s vital for a writing practice to be brought into live experiences.
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