I feel nervous, so I'm doing it.
I haven't used Tumblr since 2019. Apparently I used this one for the last time a couple of years before that, and before that it wasn't since I was in high school.
I'm here because I want to write about Philip Pullman, and His Dark Materials, and the Book of Dust. I just finished The Rose Field. It's a beautiful treatise on the power of human imagination. I've been a student of Pullman since I was in, what, grade 4? That was over 20 years ago.
I used to be much more creative. The last time I used Tumblr, in fact, was as part of a project for a creative writing degree I was pursuing, in which I wrote heavily and often about Pullman. Daemon Voices had just recently came out, and dovetailed neatly with a lot of the writing I was trying to do, as well as my love for Joseph Campbell's work.
Since completing my degree, and realising that one has to (unfortunately) make money, I started working in marketing as a copywriter, and then ChatGPT happened, and it made my job a lot easier, and I forgot how to think or imagine or write. In short, my daemon died.
At the very least, she's not well. I imagine her as a magpie. Years and years ago I made a promise to myself that if I saw a magpie it meant I was having a good day. In Melbourne, you see a lot of magpies, so you have a lot of good days. I got one tattooed on my arm to add to the guarantee. We haven't spoken in a long time, though. I wish to revive her.
My instinct has always (or often) been to learn more - to read more, listen to more, consume more. I want to act more - practice more. I want to write for no/minimal audience. I want to do nice things in silence. However, I'm still going to read, and if I'm going to read, I'd like to do it with focus.
I had this idea last year, actually - a little curriculum for myself. I adore Pullman. I want to trace back the lineage, arriving again at the end of Book of Dust. Pullman was hugely inspired by John Milton, so we're using that as our sort of guiding direction.
We start with...
The Iliad/The Odyssey by Homer, which lead us to...
The Aeneid by Virgil, who was the guide in...
The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, which inspired...
Paradise Lost, by John Milton, who inspired...
The poetry of William Blake, which was a big influence on...
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman.
That's the gist. From there, I'd like to look at who Pullman has influenced. I'm kind of hoping that ends up being, y'know, myself. I went through the acknowledgements in The Rose Field and found all the authors, because I think that helps develop a constellation of influence on Pullman. I think the better I know his mind, the better I can see it's similarities/differences to my own...or something. These are his acknowledgements:
Anatomy of Melancholy
John le Carre
Donald Heiney/Macdonald Harris
Brian Mountford - Liberal Christian
Caradoc King - Problem Child
Carlo Rovelli - physicist
Chiaro Marletto - physicist
David Deustch - physicist
Dinah Birch - critic
Iain McGilchrist - psychiatrist/philosopher/neuroscientist
James Hawes - HISTORIAN
Jonathan Kingdon - zoologist
Kristen Poole - Pullman/religious academic
Neil Philip - mythographer/illustrator
Rowan Williams - archbishop
Suzie Sheehy - physicist (AUS!)
Tim Brighouse - educator
Philip Goff is in there too, but I didn't add him because I already have a copy of Galileo's Error which I'm probably going to read next.
I don't know if this is interesting. I feel like I write that a lot when I write stuff into the void. Who cares. It's interesting to me. I'm trying to get better at saying that. I'm going to do a lot of reading.