DRAFT

I extracted the two pages from the sketchbook that had writing in them this is what she wrote.

Questioning my purpose. I could dream being as successful as Salvador Dali or Andy Warhol. These are just dreams, I am not I am nowhere near talented enough to make it as an artist. But what else would please me to extent that creating art does? I love music, but cannot create it. Rather I create from it. Live it music feeds me, and I live in it but it is not what I can be. It Is forever inspiring, but it is to does not emerge from my mind. Psychology... Sociology, both things that are highly attractive to me. Interests circling, and being; the human mind. Philosophy always questioning; why his soul. I have got such interest, that are so out of my grasp? Bound by probability it tears the to know it pains me to know the that hurtful truth I was just not last my talents so cherishable as these. tried me out sought tired tried me out for something hungry out hung me out to dry your a package" "a deal "home "a gift that comes with a special prize surprise one that Ultimately Spells out being

And then I'm reading from the outsider by Colin Wilson page 222 Chapter 8 The Outsider as visionary on page 222 he quotes the story by Duke of Chi and is no my it tells how Wheelwright saw the deep reading, and called to ask him what the book was about. " in one of sages, " the Duke explained. " my and scum of bygone man, " my said; and when he and when the irritated Duke asked him what the devil he meant by this, the wheelwright told him home " There is an art in wheel making That I cannot explain to my son. It cannot be put into words and is why I cannot met him take over my work, And I am still making wheels myself at seventy. It must have been the same way that the sages : All that was worth handing on died to them. the rest they put in to their books, and is why I still that is why I said you are reading from lees and the scum of dead men. "

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE OUTSIDER AS VISIONARY

THE VISIONARY IS inevitably an Outsider. And this is not because visionaries are a relatively small minority in proportion i to the rest of the community; in that case, rat-catchers and steeplejacks would be Outsiders too. It is for the very different reason that he starts from a point that everybody can under- stand, and very soon soars beyond the general understanding. He starts from the ‘appetite for fruitful activity and a high quality of life’, the most profound and ineradicable human instinct. And before long you have him making statements like this:

I assert for myself that I do not behold the outward creation, and that to me it is hindrance and not action; it is as the dirt upon my feet, no part of me. ‘What,’ it will be questioned, ‘when the sun rises do you not see a round disc of fire, something like a guinea?’ Oh no, no, I see an in numerable company of the heavenly host crying: ‘Holy, holy holy is the Lord God Almighty.’

Poetic allegory, perhaps? Then consider that Blake told Crabb Robinson that he had seen the ghost of Julius Caesar on the previous evening, and that he spent more time con_T versing with. spirits than with human beings. This is either madness or a very strange order of sanity. Another mystic who was also a brilliant scientist and a first-rate engineer stated that he had made a complete tour of heaven and hell, not in poetic fancy, like Dante, but actually, like a Sunday afternoon bus excursion, and that he habitually held conversations with angels. Nevertheless, there are thousands of followers ot Emanuel Swedenborg today who believe his books to be as sane as Newton’s Principia and as objective as the Kinseyre-’ port on sexual behaviour. It does not simplify the question to

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THE OUTSIDER AS VISIONARY 222

iy that ‘sanity’ is a relative term, especially where religious ts are concerned. Swedenborg and Blake prodaimed their

hts to be real, correspondiifg to some real object, much as

ells, made that claim for Mind at the End of Its Tether our experience with Wells’s pamphlet should have made us cautious about pooh-poohing these claims.

In this chapter I intend to deal with two Outsiders who brmulated a religious solution to their problems, and who also sserted that they had developed a certain faculty for seeing

as a consequence of their attempts at solution. Their eniperaments were completely unlike: George Fox was pri narily a man of action who needed a physical outlet for the impulses that stirred in him; Blake was at once a clear thinker and a dreamer, an obstreperous iconoclast and an other worldly poet. Fox’s name became known from end to end of agland; Blake remained in unrelieved obscurity all his life. hese two men achieved, by sheer strength of Will, an inten j of insight that few men have known.

In speaking ‘of them, it is necessary to remember that what they left recorded on paper was the least important part of their lives. It is the lesson that is expressed in the Chuang Tzu book in the story of the Duke of Ch’i and his wheelwright. It tells how the wheelwright saw the Duke reading, and called to ask

a what the book was about. ‘The words of sages,’ the Duke lained. ‘The lees and scum of bygone men,’ the wheel right said; and when the irritated Duke asked him what the evil he meant by this, the wheelwright told him: ‘There is an rt in wheel-maki that I cannot explain even to my son. It

t be put into words. That is why I cannot let him take over my work, and I am still making wheels myself at seventy. It must have been the same’ with the sages: all that was worth banding on died with them. The rest they put into their books. at is why I said you are reading the lees and scum of dead sien.’

This lesson should be especially taken to heart in reading the works of the visionaries dealt with in the following chapters. ..ie essentials of what they saw died with them. Their value