![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The English Eerie
Apr. 12th, 2015 11:01 amFascinating if lengthy article on 'English Eerie...' in literature and artistic perception
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/10/eeriness-english-countryside-robert-macfarlane.
I commented on it as follows:
Interesting article. There is a resonance across the sceptred isle, part of our collective cognitive dissonance. Many of our forebears were forced from the countryside; the cities were dire, but at least there was something rather than nothing. You would be filthy and abused in the city just as you were in the country, but you were less likely to starve.
And yet, there is still this love of the countryside because it looks the way we dreamed it,home, not the province of a few parasites. We believe it to be ours, when it has always been used by the unscrupulous few to farm poisoned/ tortured produce and now turn their attention to creating a wasteland devoid of all life that isn't immediate profit.
We don't know how to approach this issue. We want to believe the whole archaic system is somehow romantic and right, rather than the development of a cruel and immensely short-sighted business cartel which has always abused the people and systematically abuses our environment and animal life - something we have been conditioned into accepting. But the truth about the Matter of Britain is that we cannot go home to the Green and Pleasant land until we accept that many of our inherited ideas are incorrect; the ghosts prowling the twilit fields are not children of a disturbed imagination. They are us.
Thing is, I have been unable to connect to the English Eerie since the attack. it is as though I have lost all the ability to thrill to the subtle creepiness of being alone in a field or lost on a road; the English Eerie has been a major part of my inner landscape and I can't reach it, can't feel it, can't be afraid of it, can't write about it. Lack of fear is a great thing, lack of resonance and connection isn't.
So I have to make/find a different landscape. Maybe things will spring back, but for now, all I can do is go with what I am feeling, which is very different. And my work has to reflect that.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/10/eeriness-english-countryside-robert-macfarlane.
I commented on it as follows:
Interesting article. There is a resonance across the sceptred isle, part of our collective cognitive dissonance. Many of our forebears were forced from the countryside; the cities were dire, but at least there was something rather than nothing. You would be filthy and abused in the city just as you were in the country, but you were less likely to starve.
And yet, there is still this love of the countryside because it looks the way we dreamed it,home, not the province of a few parasites. We believe it to be ours, when it has always been used by the unscrupulous few to farm poisoned/ tortured produce and now turn their attention to creating a wasteland devoid of all life that isn't immediate profit.
We don't know how to approach this issue. We want to believe the whole archaic system is somehow romantic and right, rather than the development of a cruel and immensely short-sighted business cartel which has always abused the people and systematically abuses our environment and animal life - something we have been conditioned into accepting. But the truth about the Matter of Britain is that we cannot go home to the Green and Pleasant land until we accept that many of our inherited ideas are incorrect; the ghosts prowling the twilit fields are not children of a disturbed imagination. They are us.
Thing is, I have been unable to connect to the English Eerie since the attack. it is as though I have lost all the ability to thrill to the subtle creepiness of being alone in a field or lost on a road; the English Eerie has been a major part of my inner landscape and I can't reach it, can't feel it, can't be afraid of it, can't write about it. Lack of fear is a great thing, lack of resonance and connection isn't.
So I have to make/find a different landscape. Maybe things will spring back, but for now, all I can do is go with what I am feeling, which is very different. And my work has to reflect that.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}