Comments on: for Minnie

By: Minnie

Minnie — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 16:44:18 +0000

“Willing” of visions. Hmm. Self-hypnosis can produce visions. Maybe Blake was unusually willing to go where his unconscious took him. You know from your work that doing visual arts heightens visual acuity, opens paths leading to surprising connections, and encourages intuition. Add that to tapping into the Akashic records, Jungian archetypes, or whatever other phrase would tidy up such exploration, plus sensitivity to social and other changes going on in his lifetime, and you might end up with a Blake.

A developmental disorder certainly could explain some of his difficulties.

Anymore I don’t have the stamina for epic anything and agree that much literature from Blake’s era is at least a century beyond my ken. I will eternally be in thrall, though, to “The Tyger”. When I was very young, my father often read it to me in the evenings. The imagery and mysticism got me and still holds on.

Now I have to go bone up on Samuel Palmer to be ready for your large painting.

Oh, your horse looks like he could use a bag of oats.

By: coozledad

coozledad — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 01:19:04 +0000

I always wonder what kind of crazy Blake was. It’s not schizophrenia: there seems to be an element of ‘willing” his visions. Wordsworth said he was mad, but didn’t offer any details besides the qualifier “obviously”.
Maybe he had some developmental disorder that harmed his ability to interact socially.
Some of his epic poems strike me as good natured babbling, but the tastes of his era are admittedly beyond my comprehension.
I’m preparing to steal a bunch of his (and his pupil Samuel Palmer’s) conventions to graft on to a large painting I’ve been flailing at for about a year. I’m hoping they will help me make it fit the late eighteenth century feel of the room I plotted it out for.

By: Minnie

Minnie — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:41:54 +0000

Oh, my! Considering Blake’s prickly nature I can’t say whether he’d approve, but I avow that the spirit is there. That is much more desired than a line by line copy.

Don’t we all have something or another raging in our noggins.