With the help of my awesome consumerism students and TAs (Larry Butz and Derek Woods) I reiterated today my oft repeated claim (repeated by me for about twenty years) that Blake is more like a Rasta than a hippie. A moody apocalyptic urbanite trapped in Babylon, thinking a mystical consumerism and connection to a personal divine rather than a return to (mechanized, though disguised) nature.
Blake is a dub poet.
He made dub books, expanded, remixed unbelievable books.
And OOO is dub philosophy:
How do you know but ev'ry bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight clos'd by your senses five? (Blake)
Hey, FBI, I am the sky--who are you? (Lee Scratch Perry)
I never noticed this: Blake's art LOOKS like Rasta art!Check out the movies "Countryman" (still free on Netflix I believe) and "Rockers" (which also is, and has some scenes of dreadlocks in the act of painting on various things).
ReplyDeleteAnd you just quoted Scratch next to Blake. I think you've pretty much done everything now.