This blog is three books in the process of being written, in the form of initial drafts of the sections, posted in the intended order, a project for which the overall name is Explorations. The three books are a continuation from Hidden Valleys: Haunted by the Future (Zero Books - 2015), and also from On Vanishing Land, an audio-essay made by myself and Mark Fisher (released by Hyperdub/Flatlines on 26th July, 2019 - https://hyperdub.net).
Explorations: Zone Horizon (1 - 18)
Explorations: The Second Sphere of Action (19 - 30)
Explorations: Through the Forest, the River (31 - 50)
This writing project is beginning to come to an end. I am aware that it has developed in ways that I could not have anticipated - that it has continuously transmutated and worked back across itself. Put up a sail, and eventually the wind will catch it. I am also aware that an attempt has been made - without this having been my aim in writing - to deterritorialise a zone within the academic world, and another zone within the writing of fiction.
For now this index, with its notes, is as much a work in progress as any other part of the work, but for the purposes of the blog it seems like a good starting-point. For the purposes of reading the text, if your primary interest is fiction you could start with Sections 8 and 13, and then go to 16, 26, 27, 43 and 28. Otherwise it's probably best to start with Section 1.
The Sayan Modality
Lao Tzu
Tao Te Ching Sections 12, 48
Florinda Donner
Shabono Sections 17, 39
The Witch’s Dream Section 47
Being-in-Dreaming Section 20
Carlos Castaneda
The Teachings of Don Juan Section 3
Journey to Ixtlan Section 3
Tales of Power Section 20
The Eagle’s Gift Section 47
Taisha Abelar
The Sorcerers’ Crossing Section 20
Gilles Delueze and Felix Guattari
A Thousand Plateaus Sections 1, 3, 6, 36, 39, 47
Ursula K. Le Guin
References to Le Guin primarily relate to City of Illusions, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word for World is Forest, the ‘vision of immanence’ section in A Wizard of Earthsea, The Lathe of Heaven, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, the last life story of Always Coming Home.
Sections 17, 39, 42
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spoke Zarathustra Section 30
Maximal development of the two sides, respectively, of the Arkadian Modality
Shakespeare
(Shakespeare primarily refers here to The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the “on such a night as this” speech from The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello and Macbeth).
Sections 7, 23, 30, 47
Ingmar Bergman
Fanny and Alexander Sections 3, 7, 46
Virginia Woolf
The Waves Sections 17, 30
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Spinoza
Ethics Section 23
Note The world of ordinary reality is a patchwork of different kinds of delirium, with the specifics varying, mostly in the case of religious and national delerium, and with the conjoined delirium of scientificity (different to, but arising from science) varying to a much smaller degree. Through the human world in which ordinary reality functions there runs a current of liberatory intent, a current which has a profound but hard-to-abstractly-perceive connection to the planet, in relation to the planet being fascinating, heartening, inspiring, a stimulator of thought.
Note 2 If a poet starts to use philosophical concepts in their poems this will be regarded as a failure (the same applies for novelists and playwrights and writers of tales in general). And yet everyone recognises that a fundamental aspect of poetry is that poems are expressions of insights (which in fact are outsights) about human lives. In general, however, no-one takes this further and applies the lesson of this method to philosophy: at depth the key point is that the communication of the knowledge toward which poetry tends is arrived at not by employing established, customary philosophical concepts (which are in fact part of the underpinning of ordinary reality) but by means which have far more in common with poetry in that they consist of outsights expressed by new descriptive means. This does not mean that the knowledge toward which poetry tends is poetic knowledge - it is definitively philosophy, or metamorphics. The difference is that concepts are used, but in the form of new concepts, and occasionally radically re-applied concepts. However, ultimately the challenge is to express philosophy in a maximally accessible way that has the minimum of what stand out as concepts in the customary sense, and to employ concepts which would be understood at first glance as figurative expressions as opposed to concepts.
Note 3. The world is profoundly mysterious. This is shown by it being sublime (largely ignored) and by it being predatory in the extreme (again largely ignored), and by all the delusional accounts of it - in particular those of religions, but also those of scientificity - which would not have gained traction if it were not for all the anomalous experiences that human beings have, which is to say, they would not have been successful if the world were not as strange and perturbing as it is (religions produce a delusional account, and scientificity fends off - the one-two of the system of ordinary reality). It is also likely to be shown by personal experiences of the anomalous, but, when detailed, no arguments can be drawn from these for others, although they can be a valuable lens for looking at the world, and can function as a stimulus toward reconsidering and generating experiences. However, the escape-path leading away from the ongoing disaster is clearly visible - its existence is a simple philosophical fact. This escape-path is a serene, liberatory pragmatics of focused deterritorialisation, waking the faculties, escape-alliances, and of active holding open of an awareness of the tremeral unknown.
Note 4. Despite the importance of exploration dreams (which seem generally to be very rare, as opposed to urgency dreams) dreams in sleep cannot in any way be regarded as the most important form of dreaming. They are a singular zone within a sub-domain which also includes semi-trance experiences, sexual and romantic fantasies, reveries, and the reveries involved in writing fictions, and beyond this sub-domain are dreams about the future, our dreamings about the nature of the world, and dreamings in the form of anomalous tales / tales of the anomalous. These last three are all closely interconnected, and ultimately have a profound connection to questions of intent. For instance there are dreams about the future which are passive and get in the way of action, and then there are dreams about the future which are embodied, and as such are active processes of transforming the virtual into the actual. And to see the world differently from how ordinary reality presents it is an act of navigation - of directions and patterns of attention, and of modalities of envisaging - and as such is an act of intent.
We live in a world of anomalous tales which all along are governed by ordinary reality: dreamings which perpetuate the structures of scientificity, good and evil, interiority, the external societal malignancy, and the two-dimensional love-couple. There is an intensifying ongoing disaster taking place on the planet. What is necessary are dreamings which consist of outsights about the escape-path leading away from the forms of existence that constitute the disaster. At the level of envisaging, these dreamings need to include immanence and the escape-alliance / escape-group as primary aspects, and the outsights in question need to involve the faculties, affects, becomings, impersonally heartening departure-alliances or comradeships, the waking of the body, the planet as fundamental focus, the love-couple taken over an upward threshold, and a courageous exploration which is simultaneously a non-indulgent adventurous delight, and which has the warrior or explorer-traveller tonality of people escaping together in a vehicle from a disaster which is still looming behind them in the rear-view mirror, and which functions as reminder that their actions must be impeccable. These dreamings also need to express the awareness that although the societal expressions of control-functionings are immensely powerful and deadly in multiple ways, the source is the interestablishment, which is an attenuated, suppressive formation of the faculties that is constitutively in effect in every one of us, and which can also be called the control-mind, or the interiority.
Lucid oneiric critique of sexuality
Angela Carter
The Erl-King Sections 11, 47
Semi-wilderness / wilderness terrains
The Sayan mountains Sections 12, 29, 44, 45, 48
Forested areas of the Patagonian Andes, in particular from Epuyen to Alumine, but also as far south as Calafate.
37, 38
The Asturias mountains 16, 38
The Pyrenees 38
The Carpathians 43
Anomalous states
Dreams in sleep that have a serene but charged quality of exploration of a terrain, and charged, non-urgency dreams in sleep which not only have the feeling of a view having been broken, but which turn out to be effective lenses, outsights.
24, 37, 38, 45
Trance experiences 34, 41
Semi-trance experiences 24, 25, 38, 44
‘Bad trip’ experiences 6, 40, 34, 46
The circuitous (and dangerous) path
LSD 6, 44
Amphetamines 6
Datura 41
Yopo 34
DMT 41
Marijuana 40
Note
Because it is a circuitous and dangerous route, the first general principle I would derive from my experience is - don't. The second principle is - beware of mixtures, and be aware that what for most people has a minimal impact, might in certain cases have a very high intensity effect.
The third is: stay away from any drug which on one level frees you up, and on another level is a tranquiliser or analgesic. And this applies equally to drugs of this type which create a temporary total immunity from anxiety and drugs which produce hallucinatory experiences. Alcohol, heroin, other opiates/opioids, cocaine, ketamine (the recurrent sense of immanence that arrives through ketamine has alongside it a muddy, disturbing aspect at the level of the affect, an alarm bell telling you emphatically to stay away from this substance). Marijuana is liminal in this respect, because its effects are so varied.
Areas of the planet
South America
Patagonia 13, 38
the Yanomami 24, 34, 39, 22, 27
Central America 20
North America 42
Eurasia 45
Warwickshire 11, 15, 17 (note), 18, 24, 25, 30, 40, 45 (note)
Africa 30, 41, 48
Australasia 24, 33, 35
Becomings
becoming-woman 1, 24, 41, 44
oneiric-real entering-into-composition with the planet 18
the Zone 18
escape-path 18
tremeral philosophy 1
nexal philosophy 31
oneirosphere 10
oneiric-real 1
love-and-freedom intent 48
liberatory intent 48
Sayan modality 48
metamorphics 47
Arkadian modality 48
lucidity 47
dreamings 1
dreaming, faculty of 47
escape-group 18
the second sphere of action / the second awareness 19
oneiric affect 50
brightness 1, 47, 50
planetary affect, serendacity affect, affect of brightness 50
threshold-crossing oneiric affect, escape-path oneiric affect 50
the planetary sublime 47
the interiority 1
the interestablishment / the control-mind mode of functioning of the faculties 1
the principle of exteriority 50
outsights 19
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