The Matrix Is Breaking
Weekly Newsletter - 12th May 2024
This week began with me returning from a visit to see David Cordes and to do some work together. We recorded an excellent conversation a few weeks back which you can watch below if you missed:
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that, both while spending time with David, and while being back at home base, I’m having far more conversations with everyday people on topics that would have been taboo even a year ago. This includes the idea of Covid jab injuries - something I’ve had discussions with close family members about - but also topics like how climate policy is destroying our ability to feed ourselves, how democracy itself might be part of why we’re in the situation we’re in, and more.
I do feel we’re coming to a watershed moment in terms of realising how much false narratives have been wreaking havoc with our lives, not just withing the past few years, but for decades even. And as more people come to terms with this realisation, the onus will be on those further along that path of realisation to hold space for those coming into their new perspective on life and history, not with an insult, berating comment, or “I told you so”, but with compassion and love. I remember the fear I felt when realising so much of the image I’d built in my head around the world I was living in was wrong. The last thing I needed was people having a go at me for not getting there sooner.
I’ve selected a few pieces this week that are vaguely along the lines of these ideas. The first of those being something…
From Poets Past
A somewhat impulse purchase I made a few weeks back while I was visiting friends in Salisbury was a second-hand copy of “The Penguin Book of Italian Verse”, for a very reasonable £1.99. I thought it would be nice to select a poem from here to include in this section of the newsletter. What I did not expect to find, however, is that the very first poem I opened to at random would be quite as profound as I was expecting it to be.
Giacomo Leopardi is regarded as one of the finest Italian poets of the 1800s, and the poem “Night-Song Of A Wandering Shepherd of Asia” is an excellent demonstration of why, exploring the envy that the narrator has for a flock of sheep who seem oblivious to the pains of living. It’s a sentiment I know I’ve certainly grappled with in the past and perhaps takes on new relevance in modern times. In this context, this piece also becomes a reflection for me on the futility of having this sort of envy and ‘othering’ of others who do not see the world in the same way as me. I’ve included A.S. Kline’s translation of the piece, in full, below:
Why are you there, Moon, in the sky? Tell me why you are there, silent Moon. You rise at night, and go contemplating deserts: then you set. Are you not sated yet with riding eternal roads? Are you not weary, still wishing to gaze at these valleys? It mirrors your life, the life of a shepherd. He rises at dawn: he drives his flock over the fields, sees the flocks, the streams, the grass: tired at evening he rests: expecting nothing more. Tell me, O Moon, what life is worth to a shepherd, or your life to you? Tell me: where does my brief wandering lead, or your immortal course? Like an old man, white-haired, infirm, barefoot and half-naked, with a heavy load on his shoulders, running onwards, panting, over mountains, through the valleys, on sharp stones, in sand and thickets, wind and storm, when the days burn and when they freeze, through torrents and marshes, falling, rising, running faster, faster, without rest or pause, torn, bleeding: till he halts where all his efforts, all the roads, have led: a dreadful, vast abyss into which he falls, headlong, forgetting all. Virgin Moon, such is the life of man. Man is born in labour: and there’s a risk of death in being born. The very first things he learns are pain and anguish: from the first his mother and father console him for being born. Then as he grows they both support him, go on trying, with words and actions, to give him heart, console him merely for being human: there’s nothing kinder a parent can do for a child. Yet why bring one who needs such comforting to life, and then keep him alive? If life is a misfortune, why grant us such strength? Such is the human condition, inviolate Moon. But you who are not mortal, care little, maybe, for my words. Yet you, lovely, eternal wanderer, so pensive, perhaps you understand this earthly life, this suffering, the sighs that exist: what this dying is, this last fading of our features, the vanishing from earth, the losing all familiar, loving company. And you must understand the ‘why’ of things, and view the fruits of morning, evening, silence, endless passing time. You know (you must) at what sweet love of hers the springtime smiles, the use of heat, and whom the winter benefits with frost. You know a thousand things, reveal a thousand things still hidden from a simple shepherd. Often as I gaze at you hanging so silently, above the empty plain that the sky confines with its far circuit: or see you steadily follow me and my flock: or when I look at the stars blazing in the sky, musing I say to myself: ‘What are these sparks, this infinite air, this deep infinite clarity? What does this vast solitude mean? And what am I?’ So I question. About these magnificent, immeasurable mansions, and their innumerable family: and the steady urge, the endless motion of all celestial and earthly things, circling without rest, always returning to their starting place: I can’t imagine their use or fruit. But you, deathless maiden, I’m sure, know everything. This I know, and feel, that others, perhaps, may gain benefit and comfort from the eternal spheres, from my fragile being: but to me life is evil. O flock at peace, O happy creatures, I think you have no knowledge of your misery! How I envy you! Not only because you’re almost free of worries: quickly forgetting all hardship, every hurt, each deep fear: but because you never know tedium. When you lie in the shade, on the grass, you’re peaceful and content: and you spend most of the year untroubled, in that state. If I sit on the grass, in the shade, weariness clouds my mind, and, as if a thorn pricked me, sitting there I’m still further from finding peace and rest. Yet there’s nothing I need, and I’ve known no reason for tears. I can’t say what you enjoy or why: but you’re fortunate. O my flock: there’s little still I enjoy, and that’s not all I regret. If you could speak, I’d ask you: ‘Tell me, why are all creatures at peace, idle, lying in sweet ease: why, if I lie down to rest, does boredom seize me?’ If I had wings, perhaps, to fly above the clouds, and count the stars, one by one, or roam like thunder from crest to crest, I’d be happier, my sweet flock, I’d be happier, bright moon. Or perhaps my thought strays from truth, gazing at others’ fate: perhaps whatever form, whatever state it’s in, its cradle or its fold, the day of birth is dark to one that’s born.
From Poets Present
While I’ve made mention to Aubrey Marcus in my notes before, I’m yet to actually include any of his spoken word pieces in my newsletter. Now seems like the time to do so. He has a playlist on his YouTube channel dedicated to all his poetry readings, which I can highly recommend. However, selecting just one for this newsletter was a very difficult task, but I settled on the “Ecstasy of Presence”, which was the first poem of his I ever came across if I remember correctly. And it’s a great one, inviting us to be fully present in the interactions we’re having in our lives. It’s a great compliment to some of the other ideas earlier in the newsletter too, asking us to focus on the tangible things in the “now” that make us uniquely human and to move beyond “senseless” narratives of fearmongering. Check it out below:
From Me
Firstly, a quick reminder that I’ll be doing some live readings for *all* my email subscribers (paid and free) via Zoom on Tuesday 14th May at 7pm UK Time for around 1 hour, with scope for a dialogue about why it is that I write what I write and what the role of different forms of creative expression can take in disrupting inaccurate societal narratives. I’ll be sending out all the details via email tomorrow evening UK Time, so if you’re reading this and you aren’t subscribed and want to join, use the button below to do so:
New Poems
This week, I released a slightly-revised version of one of the poems that came out of NaPoWriMo. “Production Line Sonnet” uses the connotations of a sonnet being about love, and a “love” for wanting to engineer the world around us to a cookie-cutter vision. Check it out below:
Lessons From A Writing Festival
I’ve released a few reflections from my time at the Bournemouth Writing Festival, which happened at the end of April. I’ve made the lessons I deem relevant to readers and writers alike available to all, while a few more of the nuanced lessons towards the end of the piece are available only for my paid subscribers. I highly recommend checking out the piece below; some of my take-aways might surprise you!
And Finally
Thank you for continuing to follow my progress. If you enjoy my works, consider checking out my poetry book, “Born Anew”, which you can find out more about below:
It's incredibly heartwarming to know you are here and believe in the work I'm doing, and I can't wait to be able to share more with you and the rest of the world soon.
With gratitude,
Tom