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Frank Faulk on William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience
84 Plays1 year ago
Mark and Joe talk to Frank Faulk about Mr. Joy and Woe himself, William Blake. They take a deep dive into what Blake's poetry, particularly his Songs of Innocence and of Experience, did to Faulk's view of life, the world and creation.
Find out more about this episode at https://re-creative.ca/songs-of-innocence-and-of-experience/ (don't forget the hyphens!)
Re-Creative is a co-production of Donovan Street Press Inc. in association with Mark A. Rayner.
Contact us at: joemahoney@donovanstreetpress.com
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Transcript
Religious Upbringing and Catholicism
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, Mark. Joe. Hey. I'm not going to ask you how you are because I know you're fine. I have a serious question. On the one day that I'm not fine. So sorry. No, no, no, I'm fine. Okay, yeah, I knew it. I knew you're fine.
Introduction to Frank Falk
00:00:22
Speaker
Okay, so when you were growing up, was there a religion in your household or religions that you were aware of?
00:00:31
Speaker
Oh, yes. Yeah. I was raised in a Catholic. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But okay, so why do you ask? Well, I thought it might pertain to today's conversation with Frank Falk. Yes, actually. There's your segue. Completely.
Frank's Admiration and Connection with Hosts
00:00:44
Speaker
Yes. Frank Falk, welcome to our podcast. I'm excited to have you here. I'm just going to do my gushing now and get it over with.
00:00:51
Speaker
You're one of my favorite radio documentary makers ever in my whole life. Whenever I heard there was a Frankfurt documentary coming on, whatever show it was, I'm like, oh, I got to listen to that.
00:01:02
Speaker
It's so bizarre, you know, our own sort of interior sense of ourselves, or at least my sense of myself. So I'm always, I'm delighted to hear that. And at the same time, I find it so, so interesting how my sense of myself can be so different for the better and for the worse. And I was like, really? You think that about me? Really? You think that about me?
00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah, a couple of ways. But I was very excited to see you're going to be a guest on the show. I'm thrilled and I'm especially thrilled because as I was saying to my wife, what's great is I'm talking to two people I really like. Like it's not so I feel really comfortable and I have so enjoyed your podcast and the atmosphere you create for your guests. It's just I thought I don't have to be afraid.
00:01:49
Speaker
I can't imagine that you had, I mean, I've known Frank longer than I've known you, Mark. I went to school with Frank at Ryerson. I believe that. You guys are really old. You know what, Mark? You'll get there too. Oh, I know. I'm old too.
00:02:05
Speaker
Uh, then we went on to, to work at the CBC at the same time. And you've always been a really good friend, but, and you know, from listening to this podcast and thank you for listening to this podcast. And we always appreciate your feedback that we get the guests to introduce themselves. And we wonder if you would do this, the honor of doing that for yourself today.
Frank's Career Reflections and Philosophical Views
00:02:25
Speaker
Okay. I was really afraid that you had asked me that question because I'm, I'm, I get thrown off and people out.
00:02:30
Speaker
a party I'm meeting, say, so how are you doing? You know, a friend or something. I go, how am I doing? That's a good question. So I thought about that. I knew you might ask me that. I was hoping. So I'm going to answer that in the spirit of William Blake. Okay. So if it sounds a bit precious, I apologize, but I just felt I had to sort of like, how can I be really honest about this? So I'm a former CBC producer of radio documentaries who is now retired. And I look forward to nothing.
00:03:00
Speaker
at least when I'm paying attention. And I lack ambition of any kind, at least when I'm paying attention. And the only two things I'm certain of about myself is that I'm going to die, and I don't know when, which is why I really think it's important to pay attention. So that's my introduction. Wow. Can you do us one favor with respect to the whole dying thing, if you could just refrain from dying during this podcast?
00:03:26
Speaker
I don't know, that's just it. I don't even know if Mark or you are going to be here in the next five minutes. Well, I got to say, you know, if one of us does snuff it during this podcast, it's probably going to be good for ratings. You know, it's so funny you say that because I was having that fantasy and I was thinking, I was going through this bizarre dark fantasy of being shot by someone bursting into the apartment while doing this podcast and thinking, Joe and Mark would have this amazing tape. I don't know why I went there, but you know.
00:03:54
Speaker
Well, so much for Frank. That's a really dark thought. It's
Exploring William Blake's Influence
00:04:01
Speaker
the kind of thing I think about sometimes, except usually it's a clown with the submachine gun. But okay, so we've mentioned William Blake and that is because that is who you are here to talk to us about today, William Blake. Yes, yes.
00:04:17
Speaker
I know that we usually, the podcasts, usually someone's talking about a specific piece of art. And in this case, I will speak of a specific piece of art by Blake, his book of poetry, Songs of Innocence and Experience.
00:04:35
Speaker
But I really want to, it's more of a portal into Blake. And I think it's a really, for people who are interested in Blake but haven't really ever taken him on, Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a really wonderful book to dive into. But I think it would be
00:04:51
Speaker
It's really important to talk about what he has done for me creatively. Yeah, I was going to say, I think it's a good choice though because it's probably the most approachable of his more well-known works, right? It's one that you can read and go, oh, that's okay. I think I get that. Whereas some of his other stuff can be a little bit hard to figure out what's really going on. Well, it's interesting, Mark, because I have all his epic poems, which I've kind of looked through some of them.
00:05:20
Speaker
I mean, I've read Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which is a wonderful book, and I've read a lot of his poetry and songs of innocence and of experience. But I began to read Milton because I had taken on Paradise Lost.
00:05:33
Speaker
and Blake's book on Milton is really a kind of a response to Milton, but it's set in the introduction. Now, many people have decided to take on Blake and start to read Milton or one of his epic poems, and a few lines in decide their sanity is more important than trying to understand what it is. Oh, boy. Oh, I guess I screwed up. I kept reading.
00:05:58
Speaker
And the thing is, I've made my way through quite a bit of Milton, and it's wonderful. I still sort of feel like reading is going to be like doing a marathon, and I'm not quite sure why, because I do these little jogs through it, and I go, oh, that's so beautiful. That's amazing. So I think having now read Paradise Lost, which is amazing, I'll have a better understanding of what he's critiquing about Milton and his epic poem, Milton.
00:06:22
Speaker
And maybe you're not having that negative response because you are ready in this time in your life and everything that's gone before.
Frank's Journey with CBC and Spirituality
00:06:30
Speaker
And with that in mind, I wonder if we could set the stage for this because some people listening may not know your background. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and the work you did for CBC and how that informed your choice to talk to us about Blake today?
00:06:44
Speaker
Okay, so let me just ask you, so you really want me just in terms of my career at the CBC, we're not talking about. Well, I was born on a snowy day in Manhattan. It's your choice. I mean, I think one of the things I loved about your documentaries, Frank, was just how thoughtful they were and cerebral they were. And I mean, I think we share similar interests in the idea of spirituality and religion and like how those things play out.
00:07:09
Speaker
in an individual's life so i think that is part of what i think joe's looking for absolutely how that connects yeah yeah just keep it less than 15 words that's right the clowns have been deployed in case i'm terrified but it's funny too
00:07:32
Speaker
for Mark's sake, because he's a professor who teaches in an academic setting, he might appreciate this. So I'll start with going back to Ryerson just to say, I dropped out of high school in grade 10 and did a whole bunch of stuff, moved out to the country, built a log cabin, or a bunch of stuff, but decided around the age of 30 to go back to school. And it turned out to be really a great experience. I mean, funnily enough, it was I had to do a kind of a qualifying year because I didn't feel that I could handle the academic load.
00:08:00
Speaker
because everyone is an Ontario scholar who gets into RTA. I was sadly disappointed. Very sweet people like Joe who were like just kindred spirits, even though they were like 10 years younger than I was. But anyway.
00:08:17
Speaker
So I go to RTA, go to do that, and then I worked on some shows, like probably don't know the Shirley show, it was like Canada's answer to Oprah Winfrey. Not really, but that's what I thought it was. And then I ended up getting work at the CBC as a researcher on Marketplace, and then ended up as kind of the executive producer of Man Alive, I think it's easier to say that. So I was doing Man Alive because I've always had a
00:08:42
Speaker
a deep interest in the spiritual dimension of life, or he's been drawn to that. And so with that, the CBC, I ended up, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I never had any thoughts of going into radio, by the way. That's the interesting thing. No interest in radio whatsoever. I was interested in children's television. I worked on Degrassi doing PA stuff for a year, but I ended up, when I took over Man Alive,
00:09:08
Speaker
That was great, but they were trying to kill it. So that was very frustrating. They kill shows by moving them all around. And then I ended up on another show where I was deeply unhappy and the vice president of radio, Jane Chalmers at the time, who was the only manager who actually got to know me ever took an interest in me. I like Jane. Yeah. No, I said, and I was working on this show and it was horrible. It was stressful. And I said, Jane, I don't think I can, I have to leave the CBC. And she said,
00:09:38
Speaker
I have to leave that show. I might even leave the CBC." And she said, don't leave the show. You know I'm here. I have your back, but it's important that you stay on that show because there was a bunch of young people and they were doing crazy stuff. And so I had enough one day and I called her up at home. She said, here's my phone number. Call me up at home if you ever are actually seriously. I called up and said, hi, Jane. It was a Saturday afternoon. I've had it. I'm quitting.
00:10:07
Speaker
don't. We'll figure something out. Don't quit." That was amazing. I think it's amazing. She was in radio, so I said, well, I'd love to do radio. She said, I can't put you in radio, but if you can make things happen, I can
00:10:20
Speaker
certainly then helped with that. So I ended up doing a first personal for the Sunday edition on my father's death, and then I pitched a story to tapestry called My Interest in Tarot Cards, whether this was a sign of insanity. Were these creative tools to work with? I'm not for divination. I never thought they were for divination.
00:10:41
Speaker
And that's where I first kind of got a chance to have my voice heard. In fact, Bernie, look, it was the executive producer of ideas, heard that piece and began to use it in his class that he taught at Ryerson as kind of a personal voice. So that was very encouraging. And then I ended up doing a documentary on my father called Deep in the Heart of Texas. It was really after 9-11 it was, and he had been blacklisted during the McCarthy era. And he had always said that it was a terrifying time.
00:11:09
Speaker
He would say to me, Frank, nobody, you don't know what it's like to live in a country that's ripped in terror and fear. And I was feeling that. I was feeling, oh, you know, is this happening again? So I pitched a story and that kind of opened the door to radio documentaries and kind of a personal approach, personal documentaries. We called them kind of docu essays, if you will.
00:11:32
Speaker
And fortunately, I was given quite a bit of free reign and got to explore more fully my interest in the spiritual issues of faith, what faith is. In fact, I did a piece and then I'll end it here for tapestry. And it was called God and Other Dirty Words.
00:11:53
Speaker
And it was really dealing with the difficulty of the lexicon of faith because I realized that when I was working on Man Alive, someone had asked me who worked on the show, do you believe in God? And I said, no. And she actually began to cry because we had bonded quite close around spiritual things.
00:12:09
Speaker
And I thought, now why did I say that? Because in fact, God is completely significant and central to my life. However you want to understand that word. But that is very important to me. Why is that? And I thought, well, I think because I think in this culture, especially at the CBC, you're perceived as kind of weak-minded if you say that you believe in God or you have some religious faith.
Blake's Critique on Enlightenment and Imagination
00:12:28
Speaker
It's simple-minded.
00:12:30
Speaker
And certainly there are a lot of people who do have faith in our simple-minded, but that's true about people who don't have faith in their simple-minded. A very strong cur to that, actually. The new atheist movement. Exactly. And I did a piece called...
00:12:44
Speaker
Mark called Walking the Edge of Reason and Awe, where I interviewed Chris Hedges, who was just furious about what he considered atheist, fundamentalist. He said, they're just a little bit fundamentalist. And I said, I notice you're getting angry. And he said, yeah, I am getting angry because there's a lot of, really, there's wisdom in the Bible. You shouldn't shut yourself off from that. Just kind of dismiss it and have people like Richard Dawkins say, oh, it's just the book of fairy tales. No, it's a bit more than that.
00:13:11
Speaker
Oh, yeah. You know, and that is, you know, Mark, you had asked about my religion at the beginning of the podcast. I said raised Catholic and I've always appreciated being raised Catholic because it did walk me through the Bible and I do have a reverence for it. Or at least illiteracy around it. I mean, that's, I mean, one of the big problems I see is lack of critical literacy, you know, critical thinking. People are scientifically illiterate and they're biblically illiterate. You know, they just don't know. Anyway.
00:13:36
Speaker
So just to get to Blake, so I was given the opportunity to do a documentary on Blake because it was the 250th anniversary of his death, I think. So that is what, I mean, I was familiar with Blake for having been, you know,
00:13:50
Speaker
a teenager in the late sixties and doing psychedelics and, you know, and all that really, you know, like Blake was there, of course, but never, he was more there as, you know, things like, you know, to see a heaven and a wildflower, you know, hold eternity in the palm of your hand. Those, I think I have that right. But this documentary really kind of made me really deeply appreciate what Blake was about and what he was doing and how radical he was, not just politically.
00:14:18
Speaker
but that he was not only a visionary, but he was a radical psychologist. His critique of what was happening to the subject's experience of themselves was brilliant, and it's relevant today.
00:14:32
Speaker
Yeah, he was revolutionary in a real sense, and he lived in a revolutionary time. He was writing during the period of the French Revolution, and the songs of innocence and experience came out in 1789, which is when the French Revolution started. But he wasn't really a revolutionary in that sense. He was revolutionary in the sense of, as you say, psychology. He actually understood something about human psychology that other people didn't
00:15:00
Speaker
It's interesting because he's kind of claimed by the romantics. Yeah, that he's not a romantic. But he's not really a romantic. And he's definitely not an enlightenment thinker in the traditional sense, right? He's not about science and rationality. He's all about imagination.
00:15:16
Speaker
and the inner life. Okay, I'm going to get you guys to stop down right there and just a few words on romantics versus enlightenment for those people who may not be familiar with that. That's a good question. Well, I mean, the enlightenment is where science comes from. It starts in the Renaissance, but you know, the next century it starts to really build and people start to figure out, oh, we've got this thing called the empirical
00:15:39
Speaker
process and we can actually figure out how the world really works. We don't have to just listen to what, sorry Joe, the Catholic Church tells us about how the world works, which of course had an influence on the world in a pretty major way. And so eventually we got to a point where I would say it was kind of a reductive idea that we are going to be able to describe exactly how the universe is.
00:16:03
Speaker
via science. What was happening with science is when what he was, he wasn't anti-science by any means. What he was anti was that it was, this is the only way to the truth. We reveal the truth. He's already seen that with religion. And what he was really concerned about in terms of what you're talking about empiricism was the rise of the empirical self.
00:16:25
Speaker
And the notion of the empirical self is that human knowledge comes predominantly from experiences gathered through the five senses and that we reflect on these experiences and then we act upon these experiences.
00:16:37
Speaker
but we're passive observers. And what he realized and what neuroscience completely validates, because I interviewed a neuroscientist for one of my documents. A couple of hundred years later, it's worth noting. Yeah. Blake, he saw that thinking and perceiving, which we have thinking and perceiving as two separate acts. We perceive, and what we perceive is just what is there. And then we reflect on that, right? Or we assume that what we're thinking is an objective representation of what is happening.
00:17:08
Speaker
So, perception is seen as a passive act. And in fact, the more you could eliminate the subject from what you're perceiving, the better, because then you have objective knowledge, and objective knowledge is the most important, don't you know? Yeah, but what about me? Screw you. What he realized and what neuroscientists think that thinking and perception, thinking, they interpenetrate each other.
Romanticism vs. Enlightenment
00:17:27
Speaker
Thinking shapes perception, right? And our perception then shapes thinking. It's one process. We don't so much think about reality, we think reality.
00:17:36
Speaker
And that's a radically different way of understanding how we are and what's happening. Because to your point about, Mark, when you said, you know, this kind of reductionist approach to the world and that we could kind of figure out all the parts and make it all work and everything, the reason why we will never solve the mystery of nature is because we ourselves are part of that mystery.
00:17:57
Speaker
It's like no matter how fast you turn around, you're not going to see the back of your head. You can't even see your face. You don't even know really what you look like. You know what your reflection looks like, but you don't know what you look like. I mean, that's pretty wild when you think about that because we have images of what we look like and we assume that other people see that image, right? True. Yeah. We can't even agree on what blue is or if the dress is blue or white. The fool and the wise man do not see the same tree.
00:18:23
Speaker
Yeah. So just to get back to the whole continuum, because I don't think we quite got there. Because I think what you've done, Frank, as you've pointed out really well, how Blake is kind of at that fulcrum point between what we consider the Enlightenment, which is about, you know, these laws that we're trying to discover. And, and a lot of them might in the thinkers, to be fair, were daists, they believed in God, and they believe that they were using these processes to describe what God had created. Reasonless.
00:18:51
Speaker
Yeah, reason was paramount in that view. And then really, romanticism I think is a reaction to that in a sense. And so the importance of emotion becomes the sort of raison d'être, that's a pun, of like the romantic movement. It's like it's all about the emotional outpourings that the artists want to explore.
00:19:14
Speaker
And there, you know, there isn't a huge number of romantic scientists that we can point to that would be, you know, romanticists and scientists, but some, because they would say, yeah, you know what, there's an important part of science here that's being left out. And that's where we are now, right? Where we have, like you say, neuroscience is actually exploring kind of the intersection of these things.
00:19:39
Speaker
And, you know, advanced physics is really in a way as well. And so that's why Blake is, to me, I'm fascinated by Blake. He's always interested me as a literary character and as an artist. Because I think it's important to mention that he was, in addition to being a writer, he was
00:19:58
Speaker
He was an artist. He's just as well known for his engravings and paintings as he is for his poetry.
00:20:13
Speaker
clients saw nature as something to control, manipulate. And the romantic movement was kind of a return to nature, kind of meditation on nature, that nature was revelation in a sense, you know, and that, that, that, that you would feel the sense of uplift by being with nature and, you know, as opposed to, you know, torturing nature. Yeah, no, that's a really important point. That was definitely a very, and if you look at romantic painting, that's really what romantic painting is about. And that way,
00:20:40
Speaker
Blake is a little bit like, yeah, he's a predecessor essentially of that. But he's suspicious of nature too. He doesn't talk about mother nature. He thinks nature can be quite cruel. The Garden of Eden wasn't a wilderness. It was a garden. So he sees the human imagination as humanizing creation, transforming creation through the human imagination.
00:21:02
Speaker
Right. That's true. So you said that he's had a huge influence in your creative life. And I'm interested in how that's the case because I'd be happy to do that. Well, what he made me aware of was that the imagination is not simply something that happens at certain moments.
00:21:21
Speaker
And I think unfortunately, because we've all been so cut off from our inherently creative capacities, you know, we have people who are artists who create and
Imagination's Role in Reality
00:21:30
Speaker
we have people who are the consumers of that art and often want to create, you know, so we have writing court, we go to work, you know, we all I mean, I was before I went to the CBC, I explored many ways to express myself.
00:21:42
Speaker
But I was in many ways, I felt very, don't mean to be crude, but very constipated creatively. That's a great way to describe it. We've all felt that constipation, Frank. Yeah. And many of us have had that view of our creations after we've created them. A friend of mine, who's a visual artist, and I think I've shared this anecdote with Joe. I was visiting him once in his studio, and he was drawing. And I said, so how's it going, Doug?
00:22:12
Speaker
He said, well, sometimes I squint at it. I think, God, this is brilliant. And other times I squint at it and go, this is a piece of shit. It all depends on how I squint at it. It's all depends on how you squint at it. So in terms of how what he made me realize or what he helped awaken me to, not realize he awakened me to that the imagination that in a sense, we're all artists.
00:22:38
Speaker
because we're always creating. We're actually always in a process of, in a sense, improvising our existence moment to moment, because you haven't lived your life before. I haven't lived my life. As I said, I don't know what's going to happen if the clown that Joe has called to come in and assess it will be coming in in 20 minutes. So in a sense, the question isn't whether we're creative. Let's pretend we're all jazz musicians and a great jazz band, and we can't leave. We can't leave this, so we either can listen to each other and play really well and make music,
00:23:09
Speaker
Realize that we're all kind of improvising and it's a creative process and because we're always imagining our lives. Our imagination is what gives shape to reality, our sense of who we are. It's a shaping force in our life. So it was kind of a creative XLACs, if you will. You're a creative rank. You don't have to try to be creative. You are creative. The question you have to ask yourself is, are you doing it well?
00:23:32
Speaker
When I was listening to your podcast yesterday, Mark, I thought it was a really important point is that we're not innocent bystanders in life. We're all involved in life. There's no such thing as kind of like, well, just stand aside and watch it. And I keep on having these moments and I think we all do at different times where everyone else, oh, no, this is the meaning of it. This is it.
00:23:53
Speaker
as I think as lovely Tom was famous for saying, you know, it's not a dress rehearsal, right? Right? Yeah. Not doing something is a choice. It's doing something. Exactly. I find this going back to these kind of ridiculous contradictions or these, these things that are presented as being kind of smart, but when you really take them to the, they contradict themselves. So for, you know, you often hear life has no meaning. And of course we're made to feel that way because of course it's just a material process and we're just a part of that material process. And
00:24:22
Speaker
Consciousness is just synapses going off in your brain and it's nothing more. Yes, that would be the very reductive view of, yeah. No, I heard a person, do you know Michael Schurmer? Yeah. I want to say his name because I think he should be criticized for this. He's the editor of Skeptic Magazine. And he was on Tapestry, a show on CBC that's supposed to deal with spiritual things. And he says to the host at one point, he says, really, when it gets right down to it, we're just brains observing brains.
00:24:51
Speaker
And I'm going, wow, what dark place are you in? As opposed to somebody that you refer to frequently, Abraham Joshua Heschel, who says that actually, if we stand around and look at what's really going on, we would be in a state of constant radical amazement.
00:25:07
Speaker
Well, he talks about the capacity for radical amazement that we should never become adjusted to life. It's a bit of a perspective though, right? Because some people will say things are really terrible. And my observation is like, well, you know, it seems like lots of things are going right.
00:25:24
Speaker
Yes. Like we're still here. We're still talking. We're still, you know, we're still living our lives. It's not a nuclear slag heap, which it could very well be. Well, I do like to remind people that the news is really just a distilled version of reality. And it's not distilling the good stuff. It is.
00:25:41
Speaker
It's not even a distillation of reality. It's a particular perspective on reality because there's all sorts of different news that you hear complete contradictions. If you read The Toronto Sun, you're going to get a very different perspective than The Toronto Star. Is it because The Toronto Sun lies and The Toronto Star tells the truth? No. It's because they're bringing a different perspective to reality. But my point is, and what Blake's point is,
00:26:04
Speaker
We're all involved in this together. We're actually creating, participating together. So it's not a question which kind of saves you from sliding into kind of a postmodern kind of thing, although there's no objective reality and whatever you make it. No, we are in this together. We're creating together. We are responsible for what is going on. The problem is not out there. It's in here. It's in consciousness that we share. He's pointing at his head, listening.
00:26:34
Speaker
But you know what? To Mark's point, because it kind of speaks to something that Blake wrote, which is something you introduced to me, Frank, in which I love the whole business of joy and woe. The news basically just focuses on the woe and leaves out the joy. But as Blake would point out, life is an interweaving of joy and woe. Right. Right. But he would also I think he would be a wonderful critic of how media
00:26:59
Speaker
basically has taken over our mind. We literalize what we're hearing on media. This is actually happening. What actually is happening when we're watching the news is we're looking at either listening to the radio and these sounds are coming out and being put together and we're hearing this. Other people will hear different things. It's not just that they're just focusing on the whoa and we need some good news. This isn't to say all news is fake. I'm just saying we lose awareness. These people are just like us.
00:27:26
Speaker
The people who make the news, you know, I worked up the CBC. I know they're neurotic. They have insecurities. They have their biases.
William Blake's Life and Artistic Legacy
00:27:33
Speaker
They have their assumptions. And if we're going to actually get along and really listen, then we need also question our own assumptions. And believe me, as you know, Joe, I spoke to lots of people who are in editorial positions. I don't know where anyone gets this idea that anything's objective. I mean, these people are like making decisions, editorial decisions that they're not even aware of because they don't like the way this person talks.
00:27:56
Speaker
Yes, that's very true. It's teaching young journalists is one of the hardest things. The thing I find most frustrating is, and I think this is really true in a lot of people who work in the media, is they have a certain narrative in their head, and that's the story they're going to tell. And that's not necessarily the story that's there to be found.
00:28:14
Speaker
And that's why curiosity is so important because if you can be curious about things, then it's possible to go, okay, that's not what I had in my head, but this is actually a much more interesting idea. Let's follow this idea. So I mean, I was having this problem with a friend of mine.
00:28:31
Speaker
who worked in news for a long time. And I wasn't expressing it well. So she heard what she heard me saying is that it's all fake news. That's all fake news. I'm not saying I'm not saying it's just everyone's opinion because there are some opinions that are worth listening to. When you go see a doctor, if he's a good doctor, the doctor will say you might want to get a second opinion. Well, yeah, you have to employ your critical faculties as you're as you're listening to this. Exactly. Exactly. The thing that I find disturbing
00:28:56
Speaker
is that people seem to think when they're looking at their TV, at the news, it's a window. They're looking at it. No, you're not looking at a window. You're looking at an electronic box that is... To bring this back to Blake, this is where Blake is like, hey, yeah, facts are important, but we also have our inner life you have to bring to it. And that was, I think, more his perspective was bringing the imagination and
00:29:20
Speaker
Well the childhood perspective which is what the songs of innocence is about, right? Yes. To the facts. Yeah. But no, before we get into the songs of innocence though, Frank, can you humanize Blake Force? Yes. There's no way we could do this in an hour.
00:29:35
Speaker
Sorry. That's okay. Yeah, just tell us a little bit about the man. Yeah, that's good. That's good. So he was born in 1957. Wait, are we talking about a different place? I'm confused. He was born in 1757, died in 1827. He was basically, as a young child, he was apprenticed at the age of 10.
00:29:57
Speaker
He went to an art school and then he was apprenticed to an engraver. He did have visions as a young child. He saw angels and trees, so he was very sensitive to the unseen world, so to speak, or very, very rich imagination. I see him as a patron saint for every artist who is ahead of their time or likes to believe they're the head of the time, and that's why no one's buying their
00:30:19
Speaker
broker listening to them. He is the patron saint of artists who are not commercially successful, not only not commercially successful, but are ridiculed and made fun of because he was ridiculed. It's quite heartbreaking. He put on his own show because no gallery would show his stuff. It was ridiculed. Basically, the person said he's mad and he should be put in jail.
00:30:44
Speaker
Fortunately, his madness seems rather harmless, so maybe not. Maybe that would be going too far. But no, he was considered just crazy and not appreciated whatsoever. And he loved children. He was married to a woman named Catherine. They never had children. They lived in poverty. Basically, they lived pretty well hand to mouth. And he was buried in a pauper's grave. So when he died, he was put in a grave that already contained, I don't know, three other bodies.
00:31:13
Speaker
Holy cow. Yeah. So it's not like he enjoyed it in another way and in a much more serious way, not just in terms of like, you know, if you're not a successful artist, think of Blake, he wasn't successful. I guess what he really has awakened and made me appreciate was process. It's all process. It's all process. Whatever the end is, there will be another beginning.
00:31:35
Speaker
What do you mean by that? What I mean by that too, to do the work because you need to do the work, not because you're going to get famous or because you're going to get rewarded for it. I mean, surely, you know, any artist creates because they want to communicate. And I'm sure it was very heartbreaking for him that so many people thought he was mad because he only began to have a fan base when he was close to dying. You know, some young people really took an interest in him. I think they were maybe even young romantics, you know?
00:32:01
Speaker
But he did have a, he had a slight fan base. He had a few people who were, I mean, that's one of the interesting things when you read about the songs of innocence and experience is like, he did his initial, the songs of innocence came out in 89 at 1789. And then I can't remember when he put the volume of- 1794. 94. Okay. So, so that was, you know, five years between books. I don't feel too bad, Joe.
00:32:26
Speaker
But he had people asking for the volume for the rest of his life, so he continued to print editions of the book. And it was always different, slightly different, because he decided to change something, and he was an engraver. That was his trade. I mean, in some ways, you could argue he was a very successful artist.
00:32:46
Speaker
in the sense that he made his living with his art, you know, he never really had a job in the sense of, you know, he didn't work for someone else he produced. No, he did. No, he he and the time that he didn't live in London, he was living in the south, the east of England working for a poet who hired him to illustrate his manuscripts. So, right? Yeah, man. Yeah. We wouldn't know their name now because William Blake, isn't that funny? He's a giant in comparison.
00:33:13
Speaker
So, it depends on your perspective, really. I'm sure for him, it was very hard to not be accepted. And now, just to fast forward because I want to get to the songs of Indicine. At his death, there's a story that a woman who was present, she had a very strong reaction to his death. Are you familiar with that story, Frank?
00:33:32
Speaker
No, I just know that he was singing when he died. Wow, that's wild. What was he singing? I don't know, but it was just a simple, it was very joyful.
Themes in 'Songs of Innocence and Experience'
00:33:41
Speaker
He was reading a song and then he just kind of died. I read somewhere that he sung a lot of his poems. He had a song that went with a lot of his poems. Well, I do know that the songs of innocence, which are very
00:33:54
Speaker
like were were written with children in mind and had music were supposed to be sung now the music is lost or whether he used there's just tunes they used at that time that were common you could just sort of use but they were meant to be sung and of course he wrote one of the most famous hymns of all time Jerusalem yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah no no and that's and that's that's that's in these epic poem that's actually in Milton not in his epic poem Jerusalem yeah which I found bizarre
00:34:24
Speaker
That's the one, Joe, that in Monty Python where the guy, wherever you ask about beds, he puts the paper bag on his head. I can't remember what the sketch was, but they have to get into a tub or something and sing Jerusalem.
00:34:43
Speaker
Monty Python's a tribute to Blake. Yeah, those aren't the right lyrics. Okay. I do just want to say before we get to songs of innocence, just to answer a question you had asked me earlier about because I think it's important that Joy and Woe, in terms of my work, when I did the documentary on William Blake, one of the women who I interviewed, because all the people I interviewed were basically talking as though William Blake was still very present in their life.
00:35:09
Speaker
He was a doctor, he was a poet. And one of the guests that I interviewed used the term luminous companion, and I love that term. So I refer to him now as my luminous companion. There are certain other thinkers I go, they're a luminous companion. I mean, they illuminate my life for me. I love that. Boy, that's going to be a takeaway for me from this conversation. It's beautiful. I will remember that forever because I think we all have luminous companions.
00:35:35
Speaker
Yeah, who are very present. You feel they're very active. You hear their voice when you're kind of in a dark place and you read them. So Abraham Heschel, certainly a luminous companion, certainly Blake. But I just wanted to say it because it's important. One of the things that she said was she was talking about how she discovered Blake and that she had just grabbed a book of his poems. She had gone down to Florida and gotten this little sort of crummy little motel room because her boyfriend, who she was going to marry, had dumped her.
00:36:01
Speaker
And she said, and I was just like, I was just devastated. I didn't know what I was doing. And she said, and I open up Blake. And it's the wonderful poem, All the Rees of Innocence. And in that, she said, there's a wonderful part where he says, it is right. It should be so. Man was made for joy and woe.
00:36:21
Speaker
And she said, to hear that when your heart is broken and you feel your life is over, she said, I just felt awesome. The blue room I was in became like a blue egg and I felt it just cracked open and the heavens were above me and I just felt transformed. And I was so moved by that because she was so, yeah, we've been, we all been those places.
00:36:42
Speaker
dark, dark darkness. And so that really became something I internalized, just those, you know, joy. And well, I mean, I read the whole poem in the larger context, and it's one of the few poems, at least parts of it that I can actually recite. But believe me, it's a powerful mantra, especially if you're in a very going through as I was at that time in the CBC, a very dark time. And when as we rightly know through the world, we safely go. Exactly, exactly. And I was always I love that show, because I always I, yeah,
00:37:10
Speaker
Once you know that, you're safe. You're not surprised. You're not blindsided. It's like, oh, right. Yeah, right. Go enjoy. And tragedy is a dimension of life. There is such tragedy all the time. So to deny that is to live a very superficial life, as far as I'm concerned.
00:37:26
Speaker
Well, to me, it's actually like a key, like it's a master key to life. Because when you do understand that concept, of course, there's joy and woe. That's as if... They're all been fine. It's not like there's joy right here and there's woe here. No, they're together. Yes. So when something bad happens,
00:37:44
Speaker
Yes, it's horrible and it's bad and you've got to deal with it and you've got to process and whatnot, but you also understand in your gut that that's just the way that it is. And also, as Joe knows, my sister has stage four metastatic lung cancer. And when she was diagnosed with that, obviously it was devastating for me. She's my only surviving sister, only family member, and it was devastating for her. But in the process,
00:38:08
Speaker
She's of course discovered she has wonderful friends who have just been there and the health care that she's got, the doctors and nurse. So there's joy in that. That's the joy amidst the tragedy. There's also joy, the affirmation that people are kind, people are kind. And that's to your point, Mark, that you made earlier. That's why we haven't blown ourselves up because the capacity for human kindness, for simple human kindness has not yet been destroyed. And if it hasn't been destroyed yet,
00:38:36
Speaker
probably won't be destroyed because we are connected, we are related, we know that.
00:38:41
Speaker
Okay, in the remaining 30 seconds of this podcast. So let's get to your choice. That's hilarious. Songs of Innocence. There it is. He's holding it up. Oh, that's a nice looking addition. Can you describe the cover of that, Frank? Well, the cover has Adam and Eve seeming to be cast out of the garden, engulfed with these flames and engraving. It's the Songs of Innocence and of Experience, showing the two contrary states of the human soul.
00:39:11
Speaker
Now, fire, on one hand, you can look at this fire and think, oh, well, that's the cherubin at the gates of Eden, right, with a flaming sword. But fire, for Blake, was a cleansing, was consumed and cleansed. And so it could be a very purifying image that we're seeing here, even though they had been cast out. Because for Blake, the fall is the fall into self-division, right?
00:39:40
Speaker
the fall into subject object, the fall into I must control the bad me or the good me, the I and the me, the me as the object. So there's this world of division that we fall into. And so the book, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the book of poems where he looks at the two contrary states of the human soul, the times when we have that sense of innocence, but also experience. And of course, we associate innocence with our childhood.
00:40:07
Speaker
So a lot of the poems in his Innocence part, in the songs of Innocence are very sweet. And I think, but what's wonderful about the book is that it does really deal with the creative tension between the polarities of life. So, and the two poems that I picked that really capture this, though there's lots of poems throughout it through that kind of mirror each other. There's a poem in Innocence called The Lamb. There's the world, the poem that a lot of people are familiar with, Tiger, Tiger, which is an experience, right?
00:40:37
Speaker
So just to say the songs have experienced you're quite right, Mark. And it was first issued as a separate work in 1789. And then by 1794, they were being sold together. Right. Yeah. And there are only a few copies were made. Like literally handfuls. I think I read somewhere there was 26 copies of the combined volume sold over the years.
00:41:01
Speaker
I mean, the brilliance of his work is that he decided he figured out how to not only write and do the pictures, but publish. Basically, he became his own publisher because he developed a technique of engraving and illustrating so they could be seen together. 26 self-published copies. Yeah. Yep. So indie writers take heart.
00:41:29
Speaker
In 200 years, someone might be talking about you. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So the lamb, I'll just give you, it's fairly short. Should I read or just read a few? Please. Yeah, absolutely read the poem because it's a great one. So the lamb is a very, the illustration that goes with it is really pastoral, as you can see. It's a young shepherd boy with a she. It's very,
00:41:58
Speaker
It's just lovely, lovely. He says, little lamb, and you can almost hear it reading this to a child. Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Gave thee life and bid thee feed? By the stream and o'er the mead, Gave thee clothing of delight. Softest clothing, woolly bright, Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the veils rejoice. Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?
00:42:25
Speaker
little lamb, I'll tell thee, little lamb, I'll tell thee, he is called by thy name. For he calls himself a lamb. He is meek and he is mild. He became a little child, I a child and thou a lamb. We are called by his name. Little lamb, God bless thee, little lamb, God bless thee. Now, you know, just in reading this slowly, you know, I haven't read it for a few days.
00:42:51
Speaker
It just has so much there actually, because what he's really done in a very nice way is he's kind of joined this unity between the divine and the human, right? And symbolizes Christ, the child, but the boy is a child like Christ, they're together. It's just this wonderful, and Blake was very much about that, the particular and the universal together. That's why you can see heaven in a wild flag.
00:43:17
Speaker
or a world in a grain of sand. It's always the particular and the universal, not one or the other. They're always arising together, right? It's also heretical though, right? In the sense that it's, yeah, Jesus didn't make the lamb. God made the lamb. Of course, though, but many Christians believe that Jesus was God, right? Yes.
Blake as Artist and Radical Psychologist
00:43:38
Speaker
But in his society, that would have been seen as a strange thing to say. At that time, yeah.
00:43:45
Speaker
Now, compare that, that feeling and that kind of the way it was very gentle and everything to tiger, tiger. So interesting about the tiger is that the spelling, it's not T-I-G-E-R, it's T-Y.
00:44:03
Speaker
There are different theories for why that is. One that seems to be is that tiger, the way it's spelled here, is an obsolete and archaic spelling of tiger. And Blake chooses this word to add a layer of exotic and archaic flavor to his poem. Like he's trying to refer to the world at an earlier stage, right?
00:44:23
Speaker
So he goes, and this is kind of driving me to, tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forest of the night. What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder and what art could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat,
00:44:53
Speaker
What dread hand and what dread feet? What the hammer, what the chain, In what furnace was thy brain? What the amble, what dread grasp? Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
00:45:06
Speaker
When the stars threw down their spears and watered heaven with their tears, did he smile his worth to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee? Tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forest of the night, what immortal had your eye, dare frame thy fearful symmetry? So in the first lamb, the poem of the lamb, you have the question when the child says, do you know who made thee? God made thee.
00:45:36
Speaker
Now, Blake doesn't answer that question. He says, did he who makes these? But he doesn't answer the question. He's really, to me, what's so powerful about that is the sense of the joy and well. I mean, the joy is really that feeling of openness.
00:45:55
Speaker
And now this whoa, it's like God is terrifying, you know, this kind of meta kind of reflection on the dark side of God. And of course, in the Hebrew Bible, in Isaiah, I think it is, God says, I am God. I created evil and I created good. I created dark, I created light. Which really is a very different sense of what happens in the New Testament that gets all split into two. The devil becomes the dark and God is all good. And Jesus is, you know, it all becomes very kind
00:46:25
Speaker
The point being, and I think Blake was, so that poem, Tiger, Tiger, is a lovely companion. Lovely companion. It's a nice, it's a sister, it's referred to as a sister poem of the lamb, and captures very much or expresses, gives to that, the polarities of life, kind of, and to hold those both, and to know that there are things about life that are terrifying.
00:46:53
Speaker
and that fill you with terror and also at the same time as those tiger, great beauty. That's the sense of the sublime or the encounter with the numinous, that sense of terror, but also
00:47:08
Speaker
Ah, ah, the word is ah, which is overused. Awesome is an overused word now, but it's too bad because ah does, I mean, just the act of saying it, ah, like your mouth goes open. You can't not open your mouth and you say ah, because it is talking about the numa, it's just talking about just being,
00:47:27
Speaker
overtaken by, but yeah, you're gobsmacked. You're overtaken by this reality. It's like, oh my God. Yeah. And he does that all through both books too. Like there's a bunch of poems that he opens. Like I actually, I was, I was wondering if you were going to talk to me about the chimney sweeps. He has a poem in the, in the, in the innocence about a chimney sweep. And it's quite, there's a dark tone to it because of course it's a child. It's a child who's been forced to spend his life
00:47:57
Speaker
sweeping out chimneys. And this is this was a thing that happened in that in that era, that children were put in chimneys to clean them. And then in fact, it was so horrible that they actually even passed the law back then that said, you know, you can't have kids younger than eight doing this.
00:48:13
Speaker
There's a poem in the Songs of Innocence that is actually about a chimney sweep and it's actually kind of sweet in a way because it's talking about, like you say Frank, the things about life that are still about living that are still joyful. Whereas in the songs of experience, it's not nearly that joyful. It's more about the dark side of it. And he does that with a bunch of poems.
00:48:36
Speaker
What's interesting to me is that sometimes he would move the poems from innocence to experience later on when he was doing like these one-offs when people would ask because people would say, I've heard this is fabulous that I'd like my own copy. And so he would print a copy for the person who wanted it and he'd change poems then. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Because it's very dark. Yeah.
00:48:59
Speaker
There's wonderful poems like London, you know, and one of the great lines from London is, mind forged manacles. And I love that. When they're mind forged manacles. And I think that really sort of like speaks to because part of just to get back to the empirical self that he was so critical of.
00:49:15
Speaker
is he saw the negative consequences of that belief that we exist as isolated subjects encountering an objective material reality and gives rise to the belief that material reality is all that's actually real. It's the only certain solid and knowable reality.
00:49:32
Speaker
And the subject or the self feels itself, we feel ourselves to be isolated, kind of lonely. We have these thoughts, but there are private thoughts. They don't really matter. And of course, it's a lie. So that's why we have such a profound sense of estrangement and alienation and mental health. I mean, from the past 40 years, like people talking about a sense of life has no meaning,
00:49:56
Speaker
It's a tale told by an idiot, right? It's a tale told by an idiot and my life is meaningless. And of course, and that's all reinforced. I mean, when, when you, your main message that I certainly got going up was life has, has no meaning in itself, but we give it meaning. So being, meaning isn't given with being. We give being meaning. And I think, I don't think, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not how it works.
00:50:24
Speaker
because the meaning and significance to life is what we all share, that meaning and significance. We all are part of that beingness. We share that being anyway. I'm getting a little off topic. But I do think, and I think Mark will agree with this, that the songs of innocence and of experience is a wonderful introduction. And maybe as far as you go with Blake, people have attempted to read Milton and decide their sanity was more important than understanding
00:50:52
Speaker
Milton. I'm finding it quite interesting. But you're clearly insane, Frank. Thank you. Yeah, I think we share that, Frank. This is sanity. I'm happy to be considered insane. But I would say, not only is Blake a wonderful artist, and you'll be enriched by
Blake's Lasting Impact on Creativity
00:51:11
Speaker
his art
00:51:11
Speaker
but he actually is a radical psychologist. And if you actually get into his critique of modernity, he's one of the early critics of modernity and the implications of that and the alienation and the trauma of materialism, basically. When you have this belief that the ground of existence is just simply matter, because then there is no place for you really, you're just kind of,
00:51:37
Speaker
As someone explained when we were talking about consciousness and the Darwin's theory of evolution. I don't know. It's sort of like it's secreted by matter in some way and the way that you're only secreted by the kidneys. It sort of happens. No explanation. No explanation. Don't know why I'm here. And there is no reason for me to... You know what I mean? He was really wonderful at articulating the inner experience of the subject with the experience of being a subject.
00:52:03
Speaker
I was trying to think of some pithy way to wrap this up, but I think you just did that, Frank. So thank you. Well, I want to thank you both so very much for inviting me to be part of this podcast. I think you guys are doing great stuff.
00:52:19
Speaker
And so it was a real pleasure to get to speak to Mark. This was a real pleasure. Thank you, Frank. Frank, thank you very much for being on our podcast, Recreative. OK, we'll talk later. Yes, absolutely. Bye. Bye.
00:52:47
Speaker
Joe, I'm really enjoying this. This has been fun, but I don't want to do this podcast anymore. You're talking about stopping the podcast. No, I'm just kidding. But I do want to take August off. I just had like a heart attack, Mark. I was just trying to get that rise out of you. So yeah, I think we should take August off. I think we should end of July and come back after Labor Day. I think that's a terrific idea. Why don't we do a special episode to finish the whole thing off? A very special episode? Very special episode, yes. And we're going to launch your book, right?
00:53:13
Speaker
Yes, we're going to launch my book Adventures in the Radio Trade with a special live edition of Recreative. That sounds perfect. So we'll do that on the 30th. Sunday the 30th will be a special live edition of Recreative, after which we'll take August off. And then we'll be back on... After Labor Day. After Labor Day. I'll take my white pants off at that point. Your white pants. Right? Because you're not supposed to wear white after Labor Day. Do I look like someone who pays any attention to that kind of... Do I look like someone who has white pants?