Thursday September 20, 2018

A fascinating line from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell where, through a persona he insists on calling “The voice of the devil,” Blake professes, “Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.” Contraries appear because defined by one another. Being and nonbeing co-constitute. When we draw our magic circles, we define for consciousness what lies outside it. The act conjures both figure and ground. But it requires, so Blake suggests, Soul or consciousness to recognize in its self-possession not just a house host to the Self that calls itself Logos, but a whole pantheon of emotions, desires, creative powers, “demons.” The fully human. A body that in dance becomes possessed by the energy of Dizzy Gillespie’s ‘Afro-Cuban’-versioned “Night in Tunisia,” possesses in consequence a consciousness expanded beyond Reason’s bounds. Filled with delighted exuberance. Orthodoxy to Logos, meanwhile, culminates in material impoverishment and departure from physicality. We must nourish the body, but assume that the imagination extends beyond it. Then again, as Brenton Wood says, maybe I’ve got my fools mixed up. Where in this “marriage” is that groovy thing called Love? Wood frightens and intimidates on “Runnin’ Wild,” but sounds far more loving and merciful on “The Oogum Boogum Song.”