guitar and vocal: T.S. Taylor

note:
“Blake wrote the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. If I have written of their divorce, this is not because I think myself a fit antagonist for so great a genius, nor even because I feel at all sure that I know what he meant. But in some sense or other the attempt to make that marriage is perennial……This belief I take to be a disastrous error.”
—C.S. Lewis in his introduction to The Great Divorce

Over the years I’ve had a number of college professors write to tell me that they have played this song for their students in classes where Blake is being studied. I have always felt humbled when receiving such communiques, since I am certainly not a Blake scholar and consider myself somewhat of a novice when it comes to anything approaching extensive knowledge of his formidable body of work. Prior to writing this song back in 1984 however, I felt something of a kindred connection to him; creatively unpredictable and often misunderstood, he was largely ignored and sold little of his work during his lifetime. While I, like Lewis, have not, and will not ever, attain his level of genius, (or hope to achieve his posthumous popularity, for that matter!), I do take comfort in knowing that, like Poe, Philip K. Dick, Van Gogh, etc, even a man of Blake’s creative stature suffered the consequence of relative obscurity throughout his lifetime.

Some say William Blake (1757-1827) was (please allow my bluntness) a religious nut-job, madder than The Mad Hatter. While it is true that Blake, at the very least, was idiosyncratic, there is no doubt he was a creative genius far ahead of his time. An English poet ( a seminal figure of the Romantic age, along with the likes of Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley), painter, and printmaker, Blake called his poetry his “prophetic works” and wrote that he embraced the imagination as “the body of God.” Not only did he write poetry which contained a private mythology and complex symbolism, Blake also expressed a loathing toward what he considered to be the oppressiveness of organized religion. It can be argued however that he was a deeply committed Christian, despite holding what many consider to be a number of questionable religious views. The counterculture “hippie” movement (along with poets Ginsberg and Snyder) adopted the long dead Blake as their reigning poet laureate because of his fervent objection to religious “prudishness” and, subsequently, his advocacy of so-called “free love,” a belief which, as he got older, he greatly modified. Considering his somewhat libertine views concerning sexual relationships, it is important to note that Blake was an extremely devoted and, some minor speculation aside, faithful husband to his beloved wife Catherine for all of his adult life.

Blake’s collection of poems entitled “Songs Of Innocence,” and especially his poems “The Lamb,” and “The Tyger” captivated me when I first discovered them and their author in my early thirties. I went on to write the tribute bearing his name which made its debut on Daniel Amos's 6th studio album Vox Humana, released in 1984. The song’s lyrics naturally contain various references to Blake’s work, including a reference to the mythological god Pan who Blake alludes to in “The Tyger.” His reference would, over four decades later, inspire a particular chapter in author Kenneth Graham’s The Wind In The Willows, which I count among my most treasured books in the Children’s Literature genre. One is tempted to equate Blake’s wildly unpredictable and nonconforming artistic aspirations to that of Mr. Toad and his “wild ride,” which the reader will also encounter in Graham’s classic.
Blake claimed to have had several supernatural visions throughout his life which, as referenced earlier, compelled some of his contemporaries to question his sanity. I will not (or rather cannot) argue for or against the veracity of these visions, (God knows, i.e.“….time will tell”), but I do know that at the very least Blake was a genius of imagination (“…who wears the crown?”) and that however unorthodox, confusing, or simply erroneous I find much of his theology, (C.S. Lewis himself wrote The Great Divorce in part to counter what he strongly believed was Blake’s theological confusion), in my opinion this is eclipsed by the singularity of Blake’s imaginative powers. Is it any wonder that I place him in a prominent position among those artists and authors whom I consider to be my most artistically inspirational?

If you are at all interested in Blake’s work, you might want to check out Vintage press’s William Blake anthology which, interestingly enough, is edited by the one and only Patti Smith, American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and poet who became an influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with the debut of her first album, 1975’s Horses. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this stripped down reinterpretation of DA’s “William Blake.”

Until next time, be well kids. You’re the best!