Citizens of Nowhere

I’m doing my Masters in Creative Writing at the very cool University of East Anglia part-time, a delightful day a week.It gets me thinking in different ways.Here is a short story I wrote pretty quickly after overdosing on Kafka and Borges.I performed it as part of the New Writing Live! series which has made a welcome return to Dorothy’s Bar in Norwich, .Have a listen; it’s a lovely way to experience it, or of course the text is below. Enjoy. The Book in the Mall.Have you seen the book everyone’s talking about? The one at Chantry Place? The Mall? If you haven’t you should get down there, honestly. It’s the biggest story in books right now. And it’s happening right here in Norwich. That’s why we’re all here eh? Why we chose to live in Norwich, UNESCO City of Literature. Cos we know books matter. Well, this one matters more than most. For those of you who don’t know, the book is a real doorstopper. It’s sitting high up on a steel ledge on the inside of the main entrance to the mall, that’s the one across from Wagamama. So, it’s sitting high up on a steel ledge. You can only see the front cover by craning your neck on the way out. Almost everyone’s started doing that, after it went viral on BookTok, but before that, no one seems to have noticed it, but security camera footage shows it’s been there for as long as they store security camera footage, and now everyone’s posting images showing that it’s been there for years, perhaps from prior to the construction of the mall, hovering in the air, but there is no way to confirm or deny the authenticity of these. Cos AI. The point is that until recently, no one had noticed it, and now that it has been noticed, no one is quite sure what to do. We know the name of the book. You can see it with binoculars. It’s called Works Additional to the Complete Works of Franz Kafka by Franz Kafka. A book that has no ISBN. You cannot buy it on Amazon. You cannot find it at independent bookshops. It only exists on that ledge. So we can see the front of it, but not the back cover material, if there is any. That’s obscured by the nest of a protected form of seagull which has somehow made its home behind a row of pigeon spikes. From the front and sides we can see it’s hardcover, bound in cloth and comprises 743 uncut pages. Like I say, binoculars have been used to verify all this. It’s impossible to gauge the weight because no one has ever picked it up. Which should make us wonder about all those pronouncements about the weights of far away planets. The book is very like an extraterrestrial planet, in fact, in that we can’t get to it. Health and safety regulations. None of the people who are certified to work at height can get qualified to handle rare books and none of the people qualified to handle rare books can get certified to work at height. A maverick window cleaner had a go, but obviously all his equipment is about abseiling down the outside of the glass and this book, as I’ve said, is on the inside. Probably for the best. No one wants to risk damaging the book, which may be extremely valuable. All in all it’s an extremely niggly situation. Those who want to leave the book in place as a tourism draw far outnumber lovers of literature who would like to read it. It’s got to the point where bringing down the book would bring down a pilgrimage economy that’s bringing more people to the mall than Zara. It’s even spawned a literary festival of sorts where parodists gather to speak aloud their best guess as to the contents of the book of which this very story that I’m telling you right now won the inaugural competition in six weeks time. So as far as anyone can tell this story is in the book and it’s not by me Arthur Meek at all. It’s written by Franz Kafka. What an honour for me to be namedropped by Franz Kafka. All in all I reckon it would be a downer to take it down. So up it stays, and it might be there forever, but it might not, so if I was you, I’d get on down to the mall, look up and check it out. If you choose to eat at Wagamama, by the way, tell them Arthur Meek sent you. I may earn a small commission at no cost to you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arthurmeek.substack.com

Voices of Gallipoli is a remembrance project.Its purpose is to remember the experiences of kiwis at war by speaking their words out loud at Anzac commemorations and events. This is the voice of Hartley Palmer, spoken aloud by Stuart Devenie. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arthurmeek.substack.com

Join me for my next live video in the app This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arthurmeek.substack.com

I’ll write more about how this one-season wonder came to be. But for now, just enjoy it. Context free. Though I will say I got to make it with my hero, and now fellow Substacker - Matt Heath.And/or RESTACK this thing. Restacking is a new and better commenting, because it goes into the Substack network and might get seen by people other than me. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arthurmeek.substack.com

I met Justin Welby, the now or soon-to-be former Archbishop of Canterbury, at Methodist Playgroup a few weeks ago.Not in person. Much more intimately. I found one of his books and read it.He introduced me to the true nature and character of Mammon. And the anti-dote. Hear all about it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arthurmeek.substack.com

“Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. no one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time....”[Winston] Churchill by Himself, 574This manifesto is a love letter to democracy.It’s positively charged with optimism about the ability and the will of our collective conscience to most effectively serve the common good and to enable human flourishing. This manifesto is pro-democracy. It is anti-authoritarian, anti-communist, anti-corporatocratic, and anti-fascist. It is anti-oligarchic, anti-oligopolist, anti-kleptocratic and anti-aristocratic. It is anti-anarchic, anti-feudal, anti-plutocratic and anti-imperial. It doesn’t know what ergatocracy is and can’t be bothered to google. It is anti-ecclesial, anti-imperial, anti-kleptocratic and geniocracy-curious. It’s anti-plutocratic and surprisingly anti-technocratic. It’s anti-military dictatorship. It’s anti-tribal, anti-kakistocratic, anti-logocratic and anti-meritocracy (despite being geniocracy-curious). It may come off a bit anti-social, but it’s quite the opposite. It’s anti-bureaucratic. It believes technology has a simple but significant role in facilitating all this. It has a healthy respect for monarchy as the default political orientation of humankind, but it prefers the symbolic pomp of the British Royal Family to an active, decision-making crown.It’s anti-mob. Mob rule is the bugbear that justifies all sorts of [pejorative]-ocratic appropriation of the means of government. It believes the architecture of democracy (to date) is designed to simultaneously glorify and thwart the will of the people.There is a better way.It was practised in microcosm, in Athens, the birthplace of democracy, during democracy’s formative years. I doubt it was the first born form. “It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election. -- Aristotle, Politics, Book IV”I call it Lottocracy. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arthurmeek.substack.com

I often find myself having an incredible conversation in the middle of a banging party, and wishing there were some way to capture the juiciness of the interaction then and there.The main problem is that it hasn't been possible to make it work technically, soundwise. Until now.When music is playing in the background and dozens of other people are also chatting away, it’s traditionally been impossible to capture the sound in a ‘clean’ fashion.When I was a cast member on the final season of Go Girls, we’d shoot party scenes pretending to dance to music which would be added in post-production.I picked up a pair of wireless lavalier microphones - which are the things with a blue and green light on Louis and my lapels. They cost £40! A few years ago they would have been 4 figures and required a sound operator to monitor. Now I plug a small transmitter into my iPhone, clip the mics onto the speakers’ lapels, and I’m ready to roll.These things are miraculous. They capture the sound of our voices, and only our voices - despite the hubbub around us.I’m so excited by this conversation. Primarily because of my interlocutor, Louis Pisano, whose opinions grace the pages of Harpers’ Bazaar and Nylon France among others - but of course I think you should read him on his recently launched Substack - hairybradshaw.substack.comLouis is such a ‘get’ that you’ll see I get a bit discombobulated, and even claim to be an Australian at one point… I test high for agreeability at the best of times. This was the end of the night and I was giddy with the whole everything.Anyway, this is a lot of writing, when the point of this post is the video.I hope you dig watching it as much as I dug making it.Now I know how to do it, there will be more of this kind of thing to come. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arthurmeek.substack.com

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit arthurmeek.substack.comTrigger warning.You’re going to get a handwritten letter in a few weeks. It’ll be addressed to you. It’ll be from me!Though I might write as a character. I might address you in terms of familiarity and describe events that did not occur. Be in good cheer. Have your pinch of salt ready.I don’t know if it’ll be fiction exactly - but it’ll be creative.But I mean, duh, you knew that right?Yeah probably. But the truth is I’m triggered because I sent one of these kinds of letters, albeit unsolicited, to one of my oldest and dearest friends and it led to 6 months of terrible strain on our friendship. He took the things written as true… I explain a bit more detail in the video 👆, and indeed the whole situation makes me look like an idiot. But what’s worse is that it stopped me from pursuing what I think could be a really interesting and different experience for both of us.I’m going to write you a letter every month. Maybe it’ll be a serial story. I have something in mind. There’s a bunch of technical stuff involved in doing and sending that I’ll have to work out too… so let’s just see what happens.No promises except you’ll get a letter every month, and it’ll be interesting for both of us. And hopefully I won’t have to go back toSo, let’s not fall out. Let’s fall in to a really lovely pattern.If you haven’t given me your address yet, you can do so by clicking the button here:Resistance is futile. if you don’t, I’ll chase you via direct email.Arthur.

I've seen several articles pop up in my Substack Notes about the evolution of AI and referring to Samuel Butler's short essay that originally appeared as a letter to the editor of the Christchurch Press in 1863.It's called Darwin Among the Machines.It's cited as one of the first (if not the first) in the 'what if machines evolve superior intelligence and kill us/make us our slaves??’ genre that we all know and love from, well, innumerable pop culture references.So I thought I'd read you Darwin Among the MachinesIt's an early piece of writing by Samuel Butler. You may or may not know I have spent a lot of time with Butler's writings, and created a show Erewhon thoroughly steeped in his novel, er, Erewhon.What's it all about then?The briefest of context… from Wikipedia, not me, just to whet your appetite to watch/listen."Darwin among the Machines" is an article published in The Press newspaper on 13 June 1863 in Christchurch, New Zealand, which references the work of Charles Darwin in the title. Written by Samuel Butler but signed Cellarius, the article raised the possibility that machines were a kind of "mechanical life" undergoing constant evolution, and that eventually machines might supplant humans as the dominant species.WikipediaI hope you enjoy watching/listening to it.And please tell me if you do by leaving a like below. You can also watch the video and read the full text at www.arthurmeek.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arthurmeek.substack.com

I’ve gone down a particularly delightful rabbit hole. Julian of Norwich lead me there. She’s always leading me to interesting new people and places. I was googling her and came upon an episode about her in this podcast. I’ve now listened to every single one. It’s the perfect style and tone for me. It’s hosted by two academics - Alberto De La Cruz who interviews and queries domain expert Dr. Carlos Eire, T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University.They discuss the people who are most notably and articulately involved in the practices of mysticism. What the hell is mysticism?“Broadly speaking, I understand [mysticism] to be the expression of the innate tendency of the human spirit towards complete harmony with the transcendental order, whatever the the theological formula under which that order is understood.”Evelyn Underhill from her book Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness (1911)Mysticism seems to be an internal practice, which primarily revolves around contemplative prayer and meditation - but for some people, in fairly consistent ways, with great regularity over the course of human history (there are pre-Christian, Islamic and Buddhist accounts of it too) - this interior practice seems to manifest startlingly external phenomena. Like flying. Which reminds me that the first time I heard of human beings flying is my friend J- whose father is Cambodian and says he has seen a (Buddhist?) monk flying across a valley. The same way someone else might ride a bicycle. That would have been in the 1960s or 1970s.I have no trouble believing his father when he tells me about fleeing the Khmer Rouge in the hull of a shallow river boat that was straffed with machine gun fire, mercifully sparing him but killing dead the unfortunate person beside him. Nor have I reason to dispute his account of a flying monk.Both stories told so matter-of-factly. Offhand. But it’s all nonsense of course!My beloved father-in-law hears these stories, hears of the hundreds of witnesses to Joseph of Cupertino levitating, and getting stuck in a tree holding a lamb, and having to be fished down from a belltower, and he seeks the trick; seeks the artistic license that is describing something that did not happen, as happening.Fair enough. Personally, I feel that one of the most compelling arguments for the reality of St Joseph’s levitations is how unimpressed and frustrated many of his contemporaries were of them. His feats were the opposite of celebrated by the powers that be - his abbots and superiors - who were trying to live a contemplative life themselves and were constantly being distracted by Joseph’s (unintentional) antics, and mobs of people - from villagers to kings of Europe - who strained their capacity for hospitality by turning up at Joseph’s various monasteries.They kept moving him about because these physical phenomena of mysticism were such a pain in their ass. Remember, these folks didn’t have our contemporary issue of demanding acceptable signs of the presence of the transcendent in their world. They knew how to read what we might now call the less obvious. Another interesting point…The Christians who invoke him today don’t ask him to help them fly. They’re seek his intercession with God to help them pass an examination that they’re un(or under)prepared for. This is based on a much more relatable and much more practical miracle from the life of the intellectually disabled St. J: when he miraculously passed an examination he was totally incompetent to pass. Here’s the prayer.O Great St. Joseph of Cupertino who while on earth did obtain from God the grace to be asked at your examination only the questions you knew, obtain for me a like favour in the examinations for which I am now preparing. In return I promise to make you known and cause you to be invoked.Through Christ our Lord.St. Joseph of Cupertino, Pray for us.Amen.And then there are the bilocations…Sister Maria of Ágreda never left her tiny town in Spain… except for the times she went into a trance and was also mystically present in New Mexico and other places in the present day American southwest and Mexico - where she did some remarkable work converting Native Americans to Christianity. Apparently they wandered into a Franciscan monastery in New Mexico seeking baptism. The monks had never heard of them, let alone had any prior contact, but the visitors assured them they had been sent by the ‘blue lady’. This was in the 1600s - so it all took some time to piece the story together. The stigmatics, I think, are the most easily ‘explainable’ in modern terms An intense psychosomatic response to contemplation of the Passion of Christ?To me the most convincing case of the reality of these things is that in almost all cases - levitation, bilocation, stigmatism etc (there are more)…They hurt and are neither asked for, nor particularly wanted by the recipient. They’re endured. The mystics constantly attest to the pain of these physical phenomena. Then accept them as a grace, though often pray to have this grace taken away from them. Which it sometimes is. Sometimes not. I read about a levitator who managed to make the levitations stop after much imploring. Not one of these people sought out fame or recognition for these phenomena. Though hucksters throughout the ages have turned them into business operations. And ultimately they’re a sideline - a byproduct of the true work of the mystic. Purgation, illumination and union with the transcendental order of the universe. But boy, do they make a great story. My own relationship to these phenomena is complicated. I’m one of the likes on this review of Carlos Eire’s new book They Flew by a fellow I know from New York - Stephen G. AdubatoEire welcomes the space that postmodernism has afforded to post-secular narratives, while–as a historian–being critical of the relativist reading of miraculous events. At the end of the day, either “they flew,” or they did not.I rather think they did. I observe these phenomena a little like watching a great Olympic feat.Part of me is delighted at the seemingly limitless bounds of human possibility.Part of me is bummed that I don’t feel capable of actually doing such a thing myself. Part of me dismisses it, really, as just a matter of persistence and training.Part of me is envious at the idea that there’s talent involved too. And I don’t have the persistence, training or talent - or it may be too late. Part of me is reminded that it hurts - so I probably don’t want it anyway.Then - to continue the Olympic metaphor, which has clearly bled into the mystic phenomena comparison…I think, well, I might not be able to run a marathon in 2 hours. But it wouldn’t hurt me to go for a 20 minute jog. And I do. Ultimately it fills me with wonder and curiosity.It spurs new action in me. New habits. New horizons. What, of the mental and spiritual and physical phenomena of mysticism can I experience in my own small way? Personally, so far in my life, the closest I get to physical experience of the transcendent is through music. So I’ll leave you with this. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arthurmeek.substack.com

My first book report. I want to do these things differently. No hot takes. I'll only talk about books I've read twice (or more). No preprepared readings - I flick to a couple of sections and read aloud. If it's a good enough book, those sections should hold up... and these ones do! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arthurmeek.substack.com

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit arthurmeek.substack.comThe pilot of an innovative new (occasional) series in which I sample municipal tap water from interesting places around the world and propose its relative pros and cons.