Paradise (Hell lecture)

 500 people, Syracuse University Art Museum. Thank you thank you to Edward Morris and Susannah Sayler! 

Timothy Morton · Paradise

Earth Day Rant from Hell

 I made MAGA. I did. Well not just me. 

1. I can only take responsibility myself for what I see in the world. 

2.  People like me stopped talking about God to our students. 

3. Ecological language is Old Testament revenge speak and Joe Truck Driver has something BETTER: Jesus loves him anyway.

4.

5. Seriously I never got the memo about not speaking about God from theory class, at which I am a bona fide alpha plus student. A never given grade at Oxford which I got for my theory exam. The top is alpha minus. Believe me I can destroy you using Hegelian Marxism. But I shan't. Because it sucks. 

6. Until people like me talk forgiveness and mercy and Jesus we have ceded a HUGE area to the ultra right. 

7. This is the main reason I wrote Hell. It's coming. 

8. All the scientistic yelling has done jack lshit. 

9. Scholars created the internet as the Wild West forgetting about the legacy of slavery and what would happen if there was a new Wild West. 

Hellspike for Earth Day

 The single fang of Björk and the molars of books versus the triple snaggleteeth of Hell LOLOL

"The Marriage of Religion and the Biosphere" (massive awesome interview (MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF BLAKE))

 

Great New Interview

 

Hell Launch in Houston: What Happened

 I can do no better than send you extracts from an email I sent to my publisher and others: 

Club night was amazing. Stefano [Cagol] came FROM VENICE (he had invited me to give the first ever Hell lecture, in the Dolomites on Zoom, last year). Ed came from Syracuse (yes, that Ed[ward Morris], from that lecture! [I gave one at Syracuse in February]). Paul [Miller aka DJ Spooky] was so great not only behind the decks but as an amazing host. 

We sold so many copies of Being Ecological! Many many! It was lovely to sign them.  There was a huge line. 

Lecture was also amazing. I’ve done dialogues many times and that was the BEST. Paul was very enthused about the book and he knows everyone. He wants to launch it in NYC. He got Cornel and Slavoj together at the New School last week. He wants to hook up with Columbia etc etc. If anyone can make it work in NYC it’s Spooky. 

So much lovely conversation. I have a thing about “I have a dream” [MLK] that is much more than even in the book now, I’m so happy with it. And I felt at home with the U of H Downtown students, many continuing ed, genuine, emotionally connected people, great students of all ages. There is now other stuff that isn’t in the book. I researched the original Greek in “But deliver us from evil”—it’s really really really powerful and nothing like what I was taught, ever. 

I was TERRIFIED. Not since my first big keynote in 2005 have I been terrified like that, with cotton mouth. I talked about it and made people laugh. I read Thomas Merton’s “Moral Theology of the Devil” at the start. I did a really heavy powerpoint like I haven’t done since Hyperobjects. Ed [Morris], an artist who had persuaded me strongly to do a presentation, was impressed. 

I handed out the 100 flyers for the book promotion at Brazos Bookstore! 

It was such an honor and a privilege to launch the book this way. 

The Sound Resounds Underground

 Thanks to Andrew Melchior for sending me this incredibly interesting article about recordings of life in the soil. 

Register free for this Zoom lecture on Blake and ecology and religion: 11:30 LA 1:30 today CST, 2:30 EST, 7:30 London, 8:30 Europe

 It's gonna be so great to talk to the Blake Society! 

https://blakesociety.org/product/timothy-morton/

Order Hell from My Favorite Store and Get a Signed Bookplate Designed by Me!

 Brazos Books is one of those local treasures that you just want to live in, hidden in a corner. It's like a bakery of books, that freshly baked book smell. They do readings and all kinds of events. And right now they're running a promotion. If you order the new book from them, they'll include a bookplate I've designed (based on the art of William Blake, with a lovely quotation that Blake genius Andy Wilson found), and more, signed by me. 

Here We Go

 My fourth Hell lecture, the first specifically about Blake, the first ever for the Blake Society. I'm nervous! 

There's still time to register. It's at 1:30pm my time, 7:30pm UK time. 

International Music Summit next week

 

Register Free Here for the Hell Club Night in Houston!

 Ten days from now, two world class DJs will spin Hell into existence (as it were LOL) along with celestial cocktails and more, at the acclaimed Avantgarden club in Houston. You can register free here. 

New Website: Christian Ecology

 I decided to start a Facebook page dedicated to the subtitle of Hell. It's going to be less intense than the YouTube page, more contemplative and softer. Take a look if you wish and I would be honored if you followed it. 

I'm Honored to Be a Part of the National Book Awards This Year

 What a lovely thing that I was invited to be on the Nonfiction panel. 

I Am on TikTok (Heaven Help Me?)

 ...Heaven indeed, for I am Professor from Hell. I'm posting little things about the book and the launch (4.18, Houston, Avantgarden!)

If You Use ADT, The Burglar Is Already in Your Home

From the Daylight Robbery Department: 

 "I am rejecting this response because: No other loan I have ever paid off early requires me to pay the interest I would have paid if I had not paid it off early. None. I am paying two mortgages. I have paid off two mortgages. I have bought three cars. I am paying one mortgage off in half the time (approximately), 15 rather than 30 years. ADT's "early termination fee" would be like the mortgage company charging me for the 15 years of interest I saved. Or like having to pay the rest of my car loan's interest after I paid off the loan in four years rather than ten. This is entirely unacceptable and, I suspect, not legal. This is a scam. I want this bill rescinded and I want no further contact from ADT. 

I am the author of 25 books (46 translations in 19 languages), and I have a fairly big presence in the media. There are pieces about me in The New Yorker, New York Magazine, and the Guardian. I have worked for the BBC, I have made a movie with Jeff Bridges and have written a book with the pop musician Björk. If ADT persists in trying to charge me for interest I SAVED by paying early for the equipment, I will immediately start a conversation with my media contacts. I suspect ADT must be doing this to a large number of customers. 

Sincerely,

Timothy Morton"

Context: I paid about $2500 for alarm equipment because Treena's mom (in Jamaica) was terrified of gangs of armed MAGA thugs. I bought it early. ADT are charging me over $2500 as an "early termination fee." 

"Further to my response to ADT, I would like to add the following: 

1. Throughout the complaint ADT have lied about when I was charged for the full amount of the equipment. I was NOT charged when I asked to cancel my account. I was charged after an error that they did not tell me about. 

2.Throughout the complaint ADT have lied (perhaps based on a false technician's report) about the incident with the thermostat. The technician declared that he was unable to fix the thermostat. It had not been connected to the internet or bluetooth for weeks. 

3. Since getting ADT they have been confusing, discourteous and drastically prone to error. One customer service person told me I had a thermostat they had not sold me, and nearly made me break the existing one. My method of payment was stopped when a machine ate my card, and they didn't tell me. They just started charging me late fees and sending me red letters. I believe that this is the cause of me being charged the full amount for the equipment, without warning. At no point did anyone call me to alert me to the problem with my account." 

Those Hell Blurbs

 ...and they rock so hard, there's no need for a description on the back. It's all there: 

Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology/Timothy Morton

  

“What a massive relief to have another book about the biggest disasters of our age from the hilarious, wise, and brilliant Timothy Morton. Wild and free, Tim’s ideas give me hope.”

—Laurie Anderson

 

“Timothy Morton journeys with the restless and radical spirit of William Blake through Hell, seeking synthesis and reconciliation between the methods of science and the spirit of religion. Signaling to us through the flames of their own personal hell, Morton shapes a space where we—freed from Cartesian subjectivity and the demands of old, vengeful gods—may glimpse the prospect of a new Jerusalem, one built on love.”

—David Dorrell, writer, curator, cofounder of LOVE, member of M/A/R/R/S

 

“Hell is an ecstatic sermon beamed in from another dimension, one far stranger and more human than our own. I often think that dimension is where Timothy Morton’s consciousness resides, and we are so very lucky for it.”

—Laura Hudson, journalist, editor, writer

 

“Reading Timothy Morton is something between watching a gifted comedian and experiencing a religious conversion. This book is classic Morton, and it’s more. It’s William Blake’s ‘mental fight’ reimagined for our contemporary world. It’s religion reloaded after a major born-again experience (yep), British colonialism, ecological catastrophe, and the efflorescence of diversity on every racial, sexual, and gender level one can imagine (and then some). Hell is a trip, and a flip. Get ready. You probably already are.”

—Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else

 

Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University and director of the Cool America Foundation. They are the author of more than twenty books, including Hyperobjects, Dark Ecology, and Ecology Without Nature. Morton has collaborated with Laurie Anderson, Björk, Jennifer Walshe, Susan Kucera, Adam McKay, Jeff Bridges, and Olafur Eliasson.

 

978-0-231-21470-4 cloth

978-0-231-21471-1 paper