Sanctum is one of the best! An amazing creation, a latter-day Book of Kells; I'm very privileged to have a copy and treasure it a lot. Still, it feels wayback..like before the storm. It's Lifehouses now and perennial "unmonasteries" - though not necessarily in the Sassi! Illich makes a good companion to dance around our God-shaped hole; there are riches in the Rivers North of the Future, btw.
May 10, 2023·edited May 10, 2023Liked by Dougald Hine
Onwæcnaþ sangeras! (Wake up singers!) You are describing what I was calling the small magic a few years ago — the smæl rún — or slow whispers, half-remembered, in the dark. I've looked down one of these tracks a long time — why have we had such diminishment of reason from its mythic capacities or what Voegelin described as the classic, full-fledged experience of reason when it was first differentiated from myth into the language of philosophy, not cut off from its mystic ground, but still as Plato says, a type of theology.
You branch off into the attenuation of the arts as an aspect of modernity in ways I didn't see before for its connection to the problem of wanting a poetics of relation as simply the lingua franca of living cultures — no commodity, no celebrity — just a gift economy of letters and differently abled masters and novices, ordinary practitioners and appreciators.
McGilchrist is helpful here too, a fun discovery from you and Caro, for clues as to why there has always been a struggle (or loss of the tension) in individuals and groups to balance the need to get stuff done and make a living with the distracting, consuming pull to bring alive the symbols that make life luminous for its truths — like Martin Shaw pushing through his herds of bears to find the one that needs to be turned toward us today for its story.
Dana has returned to finish a master's thesis that touches all of this by daring to ask what music really is — in a place where ethnomusicology can admit a few elders and wisdom keepers who say first we must understand everything is singing.
Your thoughts and your friends' contributions to these long winding conversations are very much in our minds and hearts. Something must be spreading, or maybe many people are finding their way on similar tracks. A good and hopeful thing.
Looking forward to your episode of The Sacred, and to participating in the Work in the Ruins workshop. So many synchronicities over the past year, for me, that has led to my emergence in whatever this is. Somehow these things all came together: Humbling, Hospicing, Brickshit; then: The Sacred, The Nearness, The Ruins. What seems to be emerging next for me is some sort of reclaiming of the role of artist as an explorer of and collaborator with sacred mystery. That’s exciting because artist is where I’d started and where maybe I always wanted to be, but which always felt impossible and unattainable and even unappealing within the context of modernity.
After hearing about Dark Mountain for years, I finally decided to subscribe. If the quality of work is anything like what I just read, it will be well worth it!
It's a bit self-centred but all I can think of is what's the best thing now for 'scientists' to be doing. I was just reading 'The Dawn of Everything' when you posted this and noticed that Graeber and Wengrow said they initially saw the book as a sort of fun distraction from serious academic work. I came to this essay with that in my head and, by the end of it, I was thinking 'popular science is more important than science now.' Maybe it has been for a long while.
Sanctum is one of the best! An amazing creation, a latter-day Book of Kells; I'm very privileged to have a copy and treasure it a lot. Still, it feels wayback..like before the storm. It's Lifehouses now and perennial "unmonasteries" - though not necessarily in the Sassi! Illich makes a good companion to dance around our God-shaped hole; there are riches in the Rivers North of the Future, btw.
Onwæcnaþ sangeras! (Wake up singers!) You are describing what I was calling the small magic a few years ago — the smæl rún — or slow whispers, half-remembered, in the dark. I've looked down one of these tracks a long time — why have we had such diminishment of reason from its mythic capacities or what Voegelin described as the classic, full-fledged experience of reason when it was first differentiated from myth into the language of philosophy, not cut off from its mystic ground, but still as Plato says, a type of theology.
You branch off into the attenuation of the arts as an aspect of modernity in ways I didn't see before for its connection to the problem of wanting a poetics of relation as simply the lingua franca of living cultures — no commodity, no celebrity — just a gift economy of letters and differently abled masters and novices, ordinary practitioners and appreciators.
McGilchrist is helpful here too, a fun discovery from you and Caro, for clues as to why there has always been a struggle (or loss of the tension) in individuals and groups to balance the need to get stuff done and make a living with the distracting, consuming pull to bring alive the symbols that make life luminous for its truths — like Martin Shaw pushing through his herds of bears to find the one that needs to be turned toward us today for its story.
Dana has returned to finish a master's thesis that touches all of this by daring to ask what music really is — in a place where ethnomusicology can admit a few elders and wisdom keepers who say first we must understand everything is singing.
Your thoughts and your friends' contributions to these long winding conversations are very much in our minds and hearts. Something must be spreading, or maybe many people are finding their way on similar tracks. A good and hopeful thing.
Looking forward to your episode of The Sacred, and to participating in the Work in the Ruins workshop. So many synchronicities over the past year, for me, that has led to my emergence in whatever this is. Somehow these things all came together: Humbling, Hospicing, Brickshit; then: The Sacred, The Nearness, The Ruins. What seems to be emerging next for me is some sort of reclaiming of the role of artist as an explorer of and collaborator with sacred mystery. That’s exciting because artist is where I’d started and where maybe I always wanted to be, but which always felt impossible and unattainable and even unappealing within the context of modernity.
THIS! Masterful
After hearing about Dark Mountain for years, I finally decided to subscribe. If the quality of work is anything like what I just read, it will be well worth it!
Love this essay Dougald- you are on the nail here, thanks so much for articulating what I am sure many of us have been sensing for some time.
It's a bit self-centred but all I can think of is what's the best thing now for 'scientists' to be doing. I was just reading 'The Dawn of Everything' when you posted this and noticed that Graeber and Wengrow said they initially saw the book as a sort of fun distraction from serious academic work. I came to this essay with that in my head and, by the end of it, I was thinking 'popular science is more important than science now.' Maybe it has been for a long while.