I have recorded an abbreviated version of my talk at the International Society for the Study of Surrealism conference in Houston last November. It lacks all the digressions and asides that filled the 20 minute slot, and is probably the better for it.

The focus is one of Leonora Carrington’s plays recently if belatedly published in the Fage edition of her writings, Judith, which gave me an excuse to open with a reading of the Old English poem. Feel free to skip ahead a minute or two if you wish to be spared that. I manage to work in a wide variety of possible resonances both for Carrington and for the potential audience and consider how it would have been to see a performance (obviously highly speculative).

I hope to do more of this; in lieu of pursuing publication, that is. Now that I’m about to be unemployed I feel little urge to engage with the always tedious process of academic publication. I have been lucky enough to have some good things come of it, I should admit, but life is short and I have a lot of things to do. This seems the simplest way to assuage the curiosity of a handful of people who would like to hear things like this, so I will endeavour to add some lectures as I work on other things.

I do have a few academic events on the calendar, including a date in Tallinn to talk about Saltburn, The Talented Mr Ripley and eating the rich, heh. A couple of opportunities to talk about Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, too, and Scotland’s first flight in 1507 at WorldCon and the summer MAPACA event. I may well do the fall MAPACA conference because that means meeting up with friends (as likely PCA in New Orleans next spring also will mean). I put in a proposal for ISSS this fall in Paris but quite specifically without my academic hat (which hat I shall reveal if anything comes of it). My presentation at Magickal Women is a ritual about ritual: while it requires a lot of research I can’t claim it as a strictly academic pursuit and I am glad, actually.

I’m tired of academia.

I will have to seek some kind of remunerative employment after this last course ends in June. What that will be I don’t know. I’m too old to be of use to most people, but too young to retire. I went into academia because the whole of my being cried out against the great injustice of regular employment (name that quote) but even academia has been ground down into just another capitalist product. I may cycle through a few things before I can finally retire. Who can say?

As Octavia Butler will always remind us ‘The only lasting truth is Change.’ It comes whether you wish it or not, so might as well aim for the head winds and keep your eye on the horizon.