In the last Reversing Climate Change podcast episode, Tom Mills and I started talking about "Jerusalem ["And did those feet in ancient time"]" by William Blake (1810), and the 1916 hymn by Sir Hubert Parry that seemingly all Brits know in their souls.
I only knew about it due to a childhood obsession with the dvd boxset of Monty Python's Flying Circus, where in the S1E4 episode, "Owl-Stretching Time", Eric Idle sings this song while being seduced. Unfortunately, I cannot find a good link to this sketch... I can't say I ever fully understood what was happening beyond just the earnestness and absurdity of the situation, but somehow Tom helped me unlock it.
In any case, this is a very very quick dip into Romantic poetry (industrialism bad, nature good; analysis bad, intuition good; simple good, complex bad), William Blake's prominence in films like Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man and HBO's tv series Westworld by way of his poem, "Auguries of Innocence", and how the sometimes something can actually be this simple and stand the test of time.
Resources
Check out my new show, Climate Workers Anonymous
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
Subscribe to the Reversing Climate Change Substack
Subscribe to the Climate Workers Anonymous Substack
