EPISODE 17; IN WHICH APOPHENIA IS DISCUSSED.

Welcome to my blog. It is unique.

I have been reading ‘The Apophenion, A Chaos Magic Paradigm’ by Peter J. Carroll. For those that find the word magic provocative, he suggests replacing it with ‘psychological and para-psychological technology’ instead. I’ve always had a dual relationship with the word magic. In the past I’ve written stories and scripts essentially embracing magic as a part of life and have, I suppose, characterized it as a bumbling benevolence that somehow makes things either beautiful or bearable. In my late teens I came across Aleister Crowley’s, Magick, and was very influenced by the ideas while not caring for rituals of personal power designed to influence events or others. Maybe it was my catholic background or my experience with the black pigs at night but for all my rebranding of Merlin (cf my novel, ‘The Return of King Arthur’), modern magicians struck me as a bit dirty or entirely dishonest. In turn, however, I came up with an Indian guru and for a while attributed to him powers well beyond the scope of the magicians I mocked.

I wouldn’t mock Peter Carroll. He’s far too clever for that and far cleverer than me. His book is stunning. Here’s a taste of his style.

Apophenia means finding pattern and meaning where others don’t. Feelings of revelation and ecstasis usually accompany it. It has some negative connotations in psychological terminology when it implies finding meaning or pattern where none exists; and some positive ones when it implies finding something important, useful, or beautiful. It thus links creativity and psychosis, genius and madness.

The second chapter, ‘Panpsychism – Philosophy,’ begins with a deconstruction of the concept of ‘Being’ and in it he states, ‘We inhabit a universe of events, not a universe full of things. Phenomena can give the macroscopic impression of having ‘being’ or ‘thingness’ but only because they actually consist of ongoing processes.’

Of course ‘being’ does imply doing; a doing of existence. It is true, however, that we tend to think of things existing apart from their doing. Rather than saying this concollocation and coincidence of vibrations we call ‘stone’, we imply that a stone has properties. (I must point out that in Shaivism, Shiva-Shakti, being and doing, sat and chit, are inseparable. As is ananda, bliss, but I don’t understand that yet.) For Carroll ‘being’ is a redundant tautology; doing will suffice. “I conclude,” he writes, “that I do not have any sort of ‘being’, I consist only of the totality of what I do. I proceed through time as a process.”

  Dismissing ‘being’ as a ‘neurological and linguistic illusion’, Carroll proceeds to outline the consequences, in his opinion, of the solipsism of the being-doing dichotomy that include ‘the misconception of a spirit-matter dualism…and to a mind-matter or mind-body dualism…that gives rise to insoluble but illusory problems and paradoxes in philosophy, psychology, and in our ideas about consciousness.”  He then posits, ‘Perhaps mind constitutes a fundamental property of matter, and all matter does mind activity of some kind and we should not regard it as dead and inert’.

   As Carroll says, the idea that all ‘things’ are alive, or are possessing spirit or being possessed by spirit, is not new to mankind and indeed is close to being a definition of pantheism. With industrialization, science, enlightenment et cetera, mind/spirit and matter split and theism became to seem rather silly. Modern physics, especially quantum theory, has, because of its findings, had to describe quanta in terms of what they do, rather than what they are. Is it a wave or a particle? When it does one thing it is a wave, when it does another it is a particle. What decides what it does? Is it random, predetermined, willed?

   Carroll writes: Quantum Panpsychism (i.e. ungodded pantheism) ‘depends on the idea that the basic quanta of matter and energy exhibit mind-like behaviour. Both mind and quanta exhibit a mixture of apparently causal and random behaviour.’

   Mind, like being, should therefore be regarded as a doing word, as a verb, for after all we can only detect mind by its activity, i.e. thinking. If we permit all matter to do minding then we no longer have to explain how minds ‘emerge’ in complex biological nervous systems. Rather than being some epiphenomenon of matter, minding is intrinsic to matter.

  On page 35, Carroll turns his attention to the construction of the Self and I would describe his description of the social defining of Self as masterly. Of particular interest to me is his observation of how much the singularity of Self is emphasised.

   ‘The singular self remains a defining feature of monotheist and post-monotheist cultures. It confers a greater sense of personal responsibility than our pagan forebears would have felt comfortable with.’

This saddling of responsibility on the self is bewildering to us, is it not? Even those with the stiffest of upper lips will find themselves saying, ‘I don’t know what got hold of me’, ‘I wasn’t my proper self’, ‘I was stressed,’ when they’ve behaved inexplicably. Crimes of passion can still engender sympathy and leniency. Is it personal irresponsibility, economic hardship, mob mentality, self-sabotage, moral degeneracy or deliberate bloody minded wrong doing for the sake of it, that caused the riots? Is depression an illness or a selfishness? Is obesity ignorance, laziness, or genetics? When studies show how early upbringing affects the workings of the brain, how can we possibly hold anyone responsible for anything? Do any of us know what we might think in three thoughts from now? And so it goes.

   Thirty-five years ago, my guru told me (and everyone else for that matter) ‘to meditate on your Self’ and he ran a program, called an Intensive, in which he said (according to his translator), ‘I promise you an experience of the Self.’ I still don’t know what he meant. For a fairly long time I kind of concluded intellectually there was no self while continuing to experience myself as being something. Whatever I was, I thought contentedly, would die when my body did. Recently I began to reconsider this. I don’t yet know what death would be, if anything, in the hyperspherical universe that Carroll talks about but if I ever get to have an opinion, I’ll surely let you know.

  An alternative to the monoself model is a multi-self model which is managed, says Carroll, with ‘stochastic’ techniques. This model I recognize and have done since I was 14. (One of my first guides being Herman Hesse’s books though he, as I recall, was dualistic in his picturing.) Only today the retiring head of Apple was complaining about the lack of polymaths. Could this be connected to the monoizing of the individual?

  ‘The Mono-Self type acts predictably and with restricted creativity, and has a cellar full of demons and discarded angels. The full-blown Multi-Self type can act creatively and unpredictably, but erratically and dysfunctionally if communication between the selves breaks down.’

   The Apophenion is published by Mandrake.

   Now back to completing my corrections to Sad Sam’s Sexual Adventures in Cyberspace. I so hope my publisher likes it.

  

EPISODE 16; IN WHICH THE AUTHOR CELEBRATES AND ALSO LOSES HIS TEMPER.

Welcome to my blog which is the visible manifestation of my self-obsession(s) although it claims to be a regular dip into the life of a writer as he closes in on his goal of success. Or doesn’t. In between irregular and inaccurate reports of his progress, we learn far too much about what he has been thinking about.

Two days ago I completed the first draft of a novella that I shall perhaps advertise as the 21^st Century Portnoy’s Complaint. It is titled ‘Sad Sam’s Sexual Adventures in Cyberspace.’  I actually began it, writing 13,000 words, sometime last year and then put it aside because although I thought it was going well, I couldn’t imagine a publisher taking it on. Indeed when I began this account and drew up a list of what I might work on, Sad Sam wasn’t even on it. I don’t know why, therefore, I sent along the unchecked first bit on spec to a publisher asking for submissions. He said he loved it and would like to make an ebook of it when it was finished. I’ll know soon whether, now that it is completed, he will still want to do it.

On July 10^th I re-read the first 13,000 words. Since then I have added a further 17,000 and brought it to a point whether it can either be the end or the end of part one. Mostly I am pleased with a day if I can get 1,000 words done.  Towards the end, however, I speed up because the plot all comes to a head and suddenly I can feel the final pieces of the jigsaw in place. In fact I probably finish too quickly (no jokes please) because a few scenes from the end I start to intuit the last lines and they pull me forward.

When I write ‘THE END’ I feel both happy and sad: Happy to have being on the crest of a wave, in the zone as it were, and to have brought things to a satisfactory conclusion: Sad because I’m suddenly bereft of my companions and the tension that has remained within suddenly collapses. I know there are a host of emendations and corrections to make but once the first draft is done the uncertainties are over.

If my potential publisher deserts me I will turn this into an ebook myself. Quite what an ebook is, I don’t know. Obviously it isn’t the same as having a publisher invest in you and make sure your book is reviewed, displayed, and hopefully bought. On the other hand an ebook puts me in a global market straightaway without the need of anyone’s permission. It’ll be particularly appropriate for ‘Sad Sam’ because it is partly, or mostly, about internet porn, and partly because it is utterly filthy.

At some point other than now, I’ll apply rasa theory to the novella. Right now I can’t think about because the head gasket has blown in my car. My car that I’ve only had two weeks but had already come to love. For three and half hours I have been waiting for the garage from six miles away to come and do something about it. At six in the morning I have to go to Birmingham for two days to look after my grandson. How am I going to do that if they won’t give me a courtesy car?

And it is raining yet again. No summer, yet again. Vitamin D deficiency all around.

Yesterday I was told that someone has discovered a link between lack of vitamin B12 and cancer. Must be good if true, no? Okay, I’ll get informed.

Last night I got home from a day’s looking after my grandson in Birmingham and an hour spent in a traffic jam in Bristol and parked opposite my house to unload the car (which is now working again). This small Council House estate road has a convention that we park on one side of the road, the other side to mine. Since the building the road in the 1960s car ownership has become the norm and many people have turned their front gardens into car parks, thereby preventing the road space in front of these gardens from being used by anyone else for parking (as well as taking away the land which is meant to drain the water). Consequently finding somewhere to park on the road is becoming increasingly difficult. On the day I first moved in here, some twenty years ago, I’d been here about five minutes when there was a thunderous knocking on the front door. When I opened it I was greeted with a torrent of angry abuse from the man who lived opposite because, he said, I was blocking the entrance to his car park garden. Did he need to get out or in at that moment? No. Unable to get sense out of him I probably responded in kind. Over the following ten years the scene was repeated two or three times when friends of mine, not realizing the heinous nature of the deed, would briefly park in front of his house. He died. His widow doesn’t drive. I moved away, came back eight years later. For moments during the moving-in process we’d block the entrance, then move the car. No problem. So why did the stupid woman come sailing out of house last night to whinge about the entrance being blocked when it fact it wasn’t at all? Maybe I shouldn’t have immediately shouted at her, ‘Don’t start woman,’ and maybe I shouldn’t have called her stupid cow and maybe I should have remembered about petty tyrants but for fuck’s sake…

…Then some other neighbour shouted at me that I should calm down. Twat. It’s a weird place to live, this street, with its super inbred rednecks and a few spaced out hippies. Not a happy mix.

So this morning, even as I continue to fume, I buy some flowers for the cow. Can I bring myself to take them over to her?

...I did but she wasn't in. I didn't try again.

EPISODE 15: FROM 21st CENTURY BRIXTON TO 10th CENTURY KASHMIR

Welcome to my blog. It will make you think. What it will make you think, who knows?

Last week I went to the Brixton Splash; a street festival organized in part by my son. I lived in Clapham and Brixton for six years between 1977 and 1983 and hence was around during the first riots. In fact as a co-operation between community, police and council, the Splash is a response to those troubled times. Because of the early rain the attendance was initially low but the vibe was good and better when the sun came out. I chatted to my son’s boss and told him how proud I was of my boy and how pleased to feel the changes in Brixton. An hour later my son was locked in a pub while axe carrying marauders ransacked Curry’s.

I have other children living in Bristol and Birmingham, so I feel a little involved and although I know it is all part of the bad news agenda I have discussed previously, I am sucked in to comment.  First must come the acknowledgement that few in power will want to make, i.e. that the rich have the poor’s money. They may justify it through inheritance, through hard work, through their value to society, through their education, through their risk-taking, through their arms dealing etcetera: nevertheless whatever wealth they have is raised from the poor.

In my previous entry I mentioned the Lord’s Club, the spiritual view of society presented in the East in which everyone is theoretical equal, (by virtue of all being one god playing out the different roles) and that the business of life is a bit like a worker’s co-operative where you rotate the jobs on some seasonal basis and all get paid the same. Philosophies like this can be more tenable when you happen to be a fat Brahmin and less so when you’re an Untouchable destined to spend your (much shorter) life with the dirty and the dead. You could just decide that this particular member of the Lord’s club, this spark of divinity, will become a rampaging and murderous one. David Cameron today talked of the tradition in this country of ‘policing by consent’.

Do you consent to poverty while we walk away the all the toys? No? What’s wrong with you? Here’s a lottery ticket, here’s a crap education, here’s £6 an hour, now fuck off and make something of yourself.

Don’t get me wrong. I hate all those obnoxious, foul mouthed, violent, ignorant, and vulgar manifestations of humanity as much as you (if you do) but let us not believe that their petty thieving is anything compared with the murdering, pillaging and exploiting of our leaders and money-makers.

Now, just to show I’m down with the kids, here’s a picture of Abhinavagupta

in an epoch pen-painting in which he is depicted seated in Virasana, surrounded by devoted disciples and family, performing a kind of trance inducing music on the veena while dictating verses of Tantrāloka to one of his attendees - behind him two dūtī (women yogi) waiting on him.

A legend about the moment of his death (placed somewhere between 1015 and 1025 depending on the source), says that he took with him 1200 disciples and marched off to a cave reciting his poem Bhairava-stava, a devotional work. They were never to be seen again, supposedly translating together in the spiritual world.

I will allude to the scene at the beginning of the second Boggy Starless novel in which my hero emerges after a number of years in a cave with an Afghani Sage and Hashish grower.

Among Abhina’s manifold achievements were contributions to the theories of poetics and drama attributed to the Bharata Muni, the 5^th century BC musicologist who laid down the aesthetic rules of drama that still underpin all Indian classical dance and theatre. Muni claimed that when humanity began to suffer from pride and the joyful life became full of suffering, the god Brahma created drama—with its attendants music, poetry, and dance—to uplift humanity morally and spiritually by means of aesthetics (rasa).

Abhina elevated the theory of rasa, (lit. juice, essence, flavour) by equating aesthetic rapture with spiritual exstasis.

The eight basic rasas were identified as Love, Comedy, Sorrow, Anger, Energy, Terror, and Disgust. Astonishment. Later a ninth was acknowledged, shanta-rasa, ‘the specifically religious feeling of peace which arises out of world-weariness’. Abhina likens it to the string of a jewelled necklace; while it may not be the most appealing for people, it is the string that allows the jewels of the other eight rasas to be relished. These rasas, (which of course need not be limited to or defined by these terms), these flavours, are what an artist is intending to evoke in his audience. Why? Why put them through these emotions when already their lives are full of quite real dramas, emotions, comedies and tragedies et cetera? What excuse is there for that?

The answer, according to these sages, is that art is otherworldly or ‘Alaukika’ in its nature and when the right conditions are in place the true aesthetic object does not simply stimulate the senses but also stimulates the imagination of the spectator. Once the imagination is stimulated the spectator aesthete gets transported to a world of his own creation. This emotion deindividualises an individual by freeing him from those elements which constitute individuality such as place, time etc. and raises him to the level of universal. 

The aesthetic experience is the manifestation of the innate dispositions of the self, such as love and sorrow, by the self. It is characterised by the contemplation of the bliss of the self by the connoisseur. It is akin to the spiritual experience as one transcends the limitations of one's limited self because of the process of universalization taking place during the aesthetic contemplation of characters depicted in the work of art. Abhinavagupta maintains that this rasa (literally, taste or essence) is the summum bonum of all literature and art.

The significant word here is ‘transcend’. Why would a philosopher-concern himself with the theatre and the arts? Why, when all your teaching is about spiritual union with Universal Consciousness, would you involve yourself with the fakery of the stage? Answer? Because although the drama is pretence, it has the ability through the rasa, through the aesthetic experience, to take the ‘sensitive spectator with positive taste and mind’ to a higher state of awareness in which they transcend the emotions and experience bliss.

For a moment there, I almost had it, but something slipped away.

Rasa, according to Abhina, ‘Is the universal bliss of the Self or Atman coloured by the emotional tone of a drama,’ and, ‘the developed relishable state of a permanent mood.’ Rasa is characterized by a peculiar state of awareness that simultaneously ‘transcends’ (lokottara) the ‘objective’ configuration and the corresponding ’subjective’ emotion, but is nevertheless, unlike the introversion of a yogin, both receptive to and intent on enjoying the sensory impressions.

I mentioned earlier the love of creation that pervades Shaivism and talks of the world, of which we are part, as Shiva’s garden. Tantra particularly embraces sensuous pleasure as a spiritual path with the idea of transcending an experience at its most intense moment of manifestation. Abhina, perhaps an exemplar Tantric Master, applies the same approach to the arts and hence can conclude that the pleasure one derives out of a real work of art is no less than divine pleasure.

In opening Episode 14 I outlined a number of issues about story-telling that I have been mulling. What have I learned at the feet of the Guptas? Not enough of course: that the creative process is spontaneous, natural and divine; that the aim of a work of art, of kavya, is to give pleasure ‘but this pleasure must not bind the soul to the body’: that the senses are the spectators: that wise spectators, connoisseurs, can experience an aesthetic rapture identical to spiritual bliss.

I know I’m close but not quite there but my feeling about the value of writing is strengthened.

For wiser words on Abhina and Rasa cf //www.svabhinava.org/abhinava/Sunthar-integral/index.php

 

Ps for my audience: In order to appreciate and to enjoy anything beautiful or wonderful one must have taste and approach with a sense of aesthetic appreciation, responsive imagination, the capacity to identify with aesthetic objects, and intuition. (Abhinavagupta).

So sharpen up please.

EPISODE 14: IN WHICH THE AUTHOR AGAIN DISCUSSES THE NATURE, POINT AND PURPOSE OF CREATION

Welcome to my blog which frequently concerns itself with the nature and purpose of writing and the writer’s life.

 This morning I have been thinking again about my grandson and his love of story, about the success of J.K. Rowling and the innateness of story patterns, about the game of peekaboo, about the seduction of (personal) narrative, about the spectators in the Shiva Sutras, about the point or purpose of writing a blog, about the impulse to communicate, about rasa, and about Abhinavagupta, the 10^th century philosopher from Kashmir.

These are not new considerations for this mind; far from it. They are interconnected and concern issues I, perhaps, am still just grasping at, whereas finer intellects than mine can digest and spew out the complete Abhinavagupta compendium at the drop of a pandit. But we are where we are and I was saying to Trevor the other day, we’re all members of the Lords club with allocated roles which are equal in essence. Ho Ho!

Abhinavagupta has appealed to me since I first heard his name over thirty years ago: he and Kshemraja made Kashmir Shaivism romantic for me. Kashmir Shaivism is one of the two major systems of Indian thought espoused by my guru, Swami Muktananda. The other was Vedanta. Abhinavagupta, Abhina to his mates, was one of India’s greatest philosophers, mystics, and aestheticians. He was also considered an important musician, poet, dramatist, exegete, theologian, and logician – ‘a polymathic personality who exercised strong influences on Indian culture’.  Although Kasmir Shaivism predated Abhina, he synthesized the four strands that were preeminent and wrote commentaries and elucidations on many of the major texts, including the pre-eminent Siva Sutras.

 The appeal of Shaivism, (which is probably the oldest religion in the world) is that it can seem more life-embracing than its nihilistic counterpart. Of course no philosophies, belief systems, religions etc. are true. A best, they are models and manuals: and as such are not always easy to connect with what it is you actually do when you attempt to follow the manual. One is what you do; the other is an attempt to describe what you do. Often it helps to have a guide to show you what the manual means – but sometimes it doesn’t. Philosophies, especially those of the East, were meant to be practical guides to reality and the guru was the one whose job it was to lead you from the darkness of your present knowledge to the light of understanding. Gurus, even more than philosophies, need testing for the vast majority, as in any field, are charlatans, liars, or just plain ignorant.

Abhinavagupta is, I believe, the one to explain to me why writers write and why being an artist is a good thing and how it is ‘that the experiences of the hero, the poet, and the aesthete are identical’ as claimed by no less than Abhina’s teacher in dramaturgy, Bhatta Tauta.

In Kashmir Shaivism the creator is called the Supreme Artist. The creation of the universe is seen as a compulsive artistic act. (Elsewhere in this blog I refer to this five-fold act of creation, sustenance, withdrawing (destruction), revelation and concealment) in which creations are produced solely for the heck of it, for the pleasure of the artist, for the experience of bliss, or rasa, that this artist has throughout the whole process. You are feeling happy, you burst out in song, and then the song makes you happy:  maybe one could call this the supreme self-expression.

Whether I recognise this as so, or not, it begs the question, why do I want other people to read my book/blog/creation? What’s in it for them, what’s in it for me?

Shiva Sutras 3:9-11

9: Nartaka Atma:

The Self is a Dancer. Or, ‘Such a one (who is awake) is always immersed in the consciousness of his essential nature and is a Self that is only an actor (on the world stage.)

10: Rangontaratma:

The inner Soul (i.e. the subtle and causal aspects which contain the inner life of the individual) constitutes the stage (Of the Self that is the actor).

11. Preksaksani indriyani

The senses (of the yogi) are the spectators (of his acting).

So in Sutra 11, I get an answer to my question posed some weeks ago, namely, who are the spectators to the cosmic drama? Essential to the concepts of Shaivism is the axiom, ‘As Above, So Below’ - though they have a number of ways of putting it. Shiva is the jiva, Universal Consciousness and Individual Consciousness are the same thing, the cosmic process is the same is the individual creative act, As Here, So Elsewhere etc. Or, as the Prtayabhijna Hridyam says, ‘Even in this condition (of empirical self), he (the individual soul) does the five (cosmic creative) actions like Him (i.e. Shiva.)

In my first discussion of this sutra I was wondering why an artist creates, or rather, for whom? The cosmic answer appears to be for the enjoyment of the creator. So how does the creator enjoy the creation? Through the senses.

I have three translations of these sutras. The one I’m familiar with is Jaideva Singh’s. After each Sutra (pithy saying) he writes an extensive translation and an exposition. The opening part of the translation for Sutra 11 is: ‘The senses like eyes etc. of the yogi witness inwardly their inmost Self full of the delight in exhibiting the world drama. By the development of the performance of the drama, they provide to the yogi fullness of aesthetic rapture in which the sense of difference has disappeared.’

Iyengar’s translation of the sutra is: The Organs of Sense are the Audience. And the exposition: The eyes and other sense-organs of the Yogi introspectively see his real nature, filled with the pleasure of manifesting the drama of the world. They attain by the excellence of the play, the state where distinctions are abolished and they are filled with the appreciation of the wonderful play.

The third translation is by I.K. Taimni. Today space does not permit any fair reflection of his approach but the translation adds an ingredient which, ultimately, may help me relate the cosmic process to the individual one. The sutra reads like this in his hands:

The other Jivatmas (living beings) witness the part played by a particular Jivatma on the world-stage through their sense organs. They are not able to see the Atma (true Self) of the actor but only the extended part s/he is playing in the world.

I would like to draw all this to a rapid and meaningful conclusion. But I can’t.  Another time; next week perhaps. I’d like to think I’d get another 5,000 words of my novel done by then because the last two weeks have been extraordinarily slack.

See you.

EPISODE THIRTEEN: IN WHICH THE AUTHOR CONSIDERS GRANDPARENTING, THE INNATE NATURE OF STORIES AND PROUDHON'S DICTUM THAT PROPERTY IS THEFT.

Welcome to my blog which is recording a writer’s life in a weekly update on is professional progress (should there be any) and the life that goes on while he makes other plans.

This week I have been a grandfather, looking after Francis, an eight year old, in his parent’s house in Manchester, while they were working from 8am to 6pm. Ten hours a day for five days. No television, no computer games. Now it is over I can’t quite see why the days seemed so long and why by six I couldn’t get down to writing or anything because I was too knackered. It reminded me of those times as a parent of four spent conserving every ounce of energy to get through the day because even when you are apparently relaxing, you’re waiting for the next call on your attention whether it is to sort out a sibling fight, cook some food, bounce on a trampoline, attend to a hurt, wash or change some clothes, pretend to be King or a fool, jolly the flagging, share a joke, divert some tears. With Francis there is a lot of pretending involved. Mostly I’m Darth John, lord of the daftest droids in all the worlds.

Francis is an only child. He loves stories to the point that most of the day he is living in one. He’ll sometimes sit for hours listening to Harry Potter while creating and acting out fantasies primarily based on Star Wars. If you had to imagine a future writer/director/actor, Francis is your boy. I’ve always thought J.K. Rowling is so successful because somehow she has tuned into and expressed a universal story-telling archetype. Francis’s love of story is a product of the same innate structuring of the mind. At his school he has studied a book published in 1916 called ‘The King of Ireland’s Son’ by Padraic Colum in which:

‘In vigorous and rhythmic prose, the author recounts the adventurous wooing of Edelman, the enchanter's daughter, by the King of Ireland's son, and relates the many strange adventures they had on their journey home, weaving many short tales from the Gaelic tradition into the fabric of the narrative.’

I would never have tried to read this to my own children – although I did read them Lord of the Rings – yet the class of 8 year olds have lapped up the structure of it because it is an archetype they recognize, or at least Francis does. George Lucas and Spielberg have, I believe, based their work on the archetypal myths, particularly the hero myth, as identified by Joseph Campbell, Jung etc.  And, I suppose, my own characters, less heroically, follow much the same trajectory, or should if they want mass appeal.

One day I took Francis and his friend Jake to a forest where they’d been a couple of weeks previously on a school trip which had been truncated, for Francis, when he’d fallen head first onto some rocks in the river. Our plan on the return journey was to work on a dam that Francis had begun before his accident. After quite a long trip there, the kids jumped out and made their way down a forest path to a little bridge where they’d played Pooh Sticks previously. Hungry, they sat down to eat the first of their sandwiches and then began to explore. By the bridge was another path that cars could drive down if they needed to get to any of the forest properties. After a while a car stopped and the elderly couple in the front watched the kids playing for 5 minutes before the woman climbed out and started shouting out to Francis to ‘stop pulling up the trees’ and to ‘go away from private property.’ It was a puzzling tirade in a forest marked out by public footpath signs and housing a Visitor’s centre. Unfortunately if there are two words that press my buttons they are ‘private property.’ Even at 14, Proudhon’s ‘Property is Theft’ struck a chord with me and a lifetime of incidents of being rudely disturbed by gun toting loud shouting landowners has riled me beyond measure.

About 15 years ago, when I was in my forties, I was in a field in Devon when I suddenly became overwhelmed by nostalgia for my parents and began to cry. At the same time the landowner appeared with his gun and two howling dogs and began shouting at me to get off his land. When he finally got near he bellowed, “What the hell are you doing here?” “If you must know,” I replied, “I’m missing my mummy and daddy and I can’t stop sobbing. Will you please leave me alone?” And he did.

To the woman I was rude. Which probably upset the kids too because they’re not used to that sort of thing in adults (I think). She called me ‘an ignorant bastard’ and drove off with her husband. Francis was traumatized. For five minutes he wouldn’t speak. When he did, his mood had changed completely and it was all I could do to persuade him to carry on and when he did he grumbled on and on about private property until I felt like saying ‘for god’s sake, that’s enough.’ Finally he and Jake climbed up nearby hillocks to look for the termite hill their teacher had spotted. Just then the woman’s husband leaned over the fence of his house and shouted at them to come down and ‘leave nature alone’. This time I said, “Please, they’ve been looking forward to this for ages, leave them alone.” And he did.

Twenty minutes later, Francis was swinging across the river on a rope swing with a broad grin on his face and shouting, ‘Geronimo.’ I don’t think any child ever could have looked happier. The Dam building wasn’t that successful. As Francis pointed out, I lacked the skills of a beaver. We’d taken spades to dig up mud to act as cement but they broke straightaway. The boys went back to the rope swing; I sipped tea from the flask and noticed each half hour as it passed. I discovered later that Francis had had a similar experience of the property owning class a month ago when playing with his father in a stream outside his other grandfather’s house. Surely these petty tyrants appear in the traditional children’s literature that Francis is so fond of. If I really had a readership I could send you off to identify the right story for me and thus armed, I’d return to Francis with a heroic rather than insolent response to the greedy bastards who usurp the right that is truly all of ours. As Rousseau put it:

 "The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying 'This is mine,' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."