Notes From Overground #1
Travelling Onward, Strange Initiations, Making Kells & An Ark
In the autumn of 2019, having handed on the last of my responsibilities at Dark Mountain, I began writing a series of essays that were published by Bella Caledonia and also as a podcast. Notes From Underground was the title I borrowed for that series, because I wanted to write about what lay below the surface of the new climate movements that had erupted over the previous year. When Covid arrived, I broke off from the longer series I had planned, although traces of it surface in the book I finally wrote this year.
Meanwhile, as I start to find the rhythm of publishing here on Substack, I thought that Notes From Overground might work as the title for those instalments of Writing Home in which I bring together new work that I’ve had published elsewhere along with other public manifestations of the web of friendships and collaborations that I’ve been fortunate to be part of weaving. Think of the contents of these posts as a basket of mushrooms, the part that shows up above the ground, the fruiting bodies of a larger and less visible web of mycelium.
Thanks to everyone who has commented on or replied to or shared last week’s opening post – not least to those of you who have already signed up as paid subscribers! I’m aiming to bring you a new Writing Home essay next week, but meanwhile, I hope you find something to savour in this basket.
The Onward Journey
When the editors of Adventure Uncovered asked me to write for their autumn issue, I said yes without knowing what I’d end up writing. What came out was a story that begins in my last year in sixth form, when Mr Hester asked the small group of us who were taking A-level music, ‘Have you ever travelled onwards? You know, not gone somewhere and come back again, but just kept going, day after day?’
When you grow up in a small place, all the longing of adolescence can end up focused on the idea of getting out, striking out for the big world and the adventure that it promises. This is not a mistake, exactly, and later I could feel a certain pity for the people I met who had grown up in comfortable metropolitan surroundings: for all their seemingly effortless self-confidence, I had something they lacked, because I was aware that I hadn’t grown up at the centre of the universe.
This piece is a tribute to the grown-ups who encourage your sense of adventure – but it’s also about what it means to travel onwards when the direction of history no longer seems so certain.
Perhaps the promise of the onward journey was itself a product of a short historical window, between the arrival of affordable air travel in the later decades of the twentieth century and the point at which the costs of this way of living began to come home? And yet, I want to say that this is not the whole story.
If you want to know why, then you can read the whole piece on the Adventure Uncovered site.
Strange Initiations
Back in July, I gave a keynote at the European Gathering of the Global Ecovillage Network – and at the end of an intense day, Clinton Callahan and his team got me in front of a camera to record a long interview that went to some places I wasn’t expecting.
When I’ve written about initiation and liminal experience, I draw on what I’ve learned from folks like Martin Shaw, Malidoma Somé and Charlotte Du Cann. But early in our conversation, Clinton put me on the spot and asked me about my own experience of initiation. What I found myself saying was that there are experiences I can make sense of in hindsight through what I’ve learned about how initiation has worked in other times and places – but that didn’t come packaged as anything of the kind. So I talk about busking, hitchhiking, working as a door-to-door salesman, hanging out around a Thursday night comedy club for a couple of years.
Come to think of it, maybe it was this conversation that set me writing about experiences from my teens and early twenties.
The full conversation runs for about an hour – and if you prefer an audio-only version, here it is on Clinton’s podcast.
Making Kells
Five years ago, I co-edited SANCTUM, a special issue of Dark Mountain on the theme of the sacred. I’d just come to the end of two years as leader of artistic development at Riksteatern, Sweden’s touring national theatre, and that had given me cause to think about what makes something an ‘artistic process’. It was several years since I’d last taken a hands-on editorial role on one of our books, so coming back into that, I wanted to see how far we could take the format and whether it was possible to approach the whole book as a work of art, rather than a publishing project containing works of art.
If we got close to achieving that, much of the credit should go to Thomas Keyes, who brought together a gang of artists – part monastic scriptorium, part graffiti team – to illuminate the letters of the book’s writers. All the artwork was painted on parchment that Thomas had made himself from the skins of roadkill deer.
Since then, I’ve watched in awe as Thomas goes further in studying, reconstructing and reinventing the techniques of insular manuscript art, even while remixing it with his own street art background.
He’s just launched a crowdfunder for a project to spend a year remaking one of the most complex pages of the Book of Kells. His advisors on this include most of the world’s leading manuscript experts.
It’s well worth checking out – and, if it lights your imagination, then give him some support.
An Ark
Finally, the new issue of Dark Mountain is just out – and it’s a collaboration between the Dark Mountain team and the Wilderness Art Collective which has pushed even further at the limits and possibilities of the journal as an artwork. There’s wonderful writing in its pages – and if it’s anything like the SANCTUM issue, then the print run of ARK will sell out quickly, so don’t be slow if you want to get your hands on a copy.
Thanks for reading – and for all the encouragement so far as I get this Substack underway. If you have thoughts or suggestions, then write back to me, or leave a comment on the post.
DH