Texts From William Blake

by Mallory Ortberg · October 23, 2013

blakehi
hi
I got you a present
you did?
I drew you something
oh wow
is it horrifying?
no
do you promise?
William?
do you promise me that it’s not horrifying?
i drew you something
William
you know what I mean
what do you mean by horrifying
is anyone being
flayed alive in it
or committing suicide
or does something have eyes that shouldn’t have eyes
you know what I mean
horrifying
never mind
sorry i bothered you
William
it isn’t that
you know I like your drawings
i know
I just already have so many watercolors of flayings already
I wouldn’t know where to put another one
you could put it in the kitchen
you don’t have hardly any of my flayings in there
so it is a picture of someone being flayed
well
sort of
i mean they’re already flayed but they’re not getting flayed
it’s not like a double flaying
ooh wait
hang on

 

Bring me my Bow of burning gold
William what are you talking about
Bring me my Arrows of desire
You’re not allowed to have arrows
has someone let you have arrows?
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
William
you don’t have any of those things
and there aren’t any clouds out
it’s a very nice day
why don’t you come outside in the garden for a little while
it’s a very nice day out here
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I can’t do that, I’m afraid
but I can bring you a cup of tea
would you like me to bring you a cup of tea?
William?
would you like that?
it’s no chariot of fire but I’ll put lots of milk in it
bring me a cup of tea
I’ll get you a cup of tea
a cup of tea of fire
what’s that?
hmm?
what?
nothing
just a normal cup of tea with no fire in it yet
at all
not yet
ha ha ha ha ha

 

When the Sun rises do you not see a round Disk of fire
somewhat like a Guinea
I guess it could look like that
O no no I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host
oh
crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty
I guess it could be that too
either the money or the screaming angels
WOULD YOU QUESTION A WINDOW
what?
WOULD YOU QUESTION A WINDOW
I suppose not
I suppose I wouldn’t
THEN NEITHER WILL I QUESTION MY CORPOREAL NOR VEGETATIVE EYE

 

Every thing in Dantes Comedia shews That for Tyrannical Purposes he has made This World the Foundation of All & the Goddess Nature & not the Holy Ghost
are you drawing pictures of Hell again
Keep just as you are – I will draw your portrait – for you have ever been an angel to me
okay
okay I’ll keep real still
take all the time you want
what do you think would happen
if Heaven and Hell got MARRIED
I don’t know
a Line or Lineament is not formed by Chance a Line is a Line in its Minutest Subdivision[s] Strait or Crooked It is Itself & Not Intermeasurable with or by any Thing Else Such is Job
are we
are we still talking about Hell or are we talking about math now

[Image via Wikimedia Commons]

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Mallory Ortberg

Mallory Ortberg

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47 Comments

  1. icebergmama +27

    Such is your magic that I have never heard of William Blake but I feel as if I know him now, and I enjoyed this immensely.

    1. bustedsneakers +24

      This is the hardest I have ever laughed at Jerusalem, ie: the best hymn we never got to sing at school ’cause of the tricky bridge in the middle and the piano teacher’s smallish hands.

      1. bustedsneakers +23

        I’m pretty sure “did someone give you arrows” is the suppressed nightmare of all of our educators. They took out the arrows verse, generally. Also the whipping verse from Lord of the Dance, and the grave verse from Three Kings. Sedition!

    2. LaughableWalrus +2

      Same! I want to learn more about him now so this will be even funnier (the starting point for a lot of my historical/literary research these days). Torn on whether it’s too early to look into something that might end in double flayings, or if that might just help me save on coffee.

  2. fourieriste +33

    I have always liked the way that Blake could not convincingly draw old women, or even women of middle-age. Old men he could manage but his women always seem to have paused somewhere in their twenties and merely grown whiter of hair. In my head this was because he could not really see age in women, so it never occurred to him to draw it.

    I mean, it’s not as if he never had any chance to work out what older women looked like – think of all that time he and his wife spent chilling naked in their back garden.

  3. gorebooth +14

    Oh, poor William, having a rough day. Maybe you can get him to sit and build something in the green and pleasant land. Jerusalem, maybe?

  5. tragicallyludicrous +16

    My dad did his bachelor’s thesis on William Blake, back in the day. Now he does communications law and seems fairly well-adjusted, so I’m not sure what any of that means.

  6. dakimel +39

    I guess it could be that too
    either the money or the screaming angels

    I love “texts from” with the fire of a thousand burning angel coin suns.

  7. Lu2 +20

    Oh my god. You have a special genius for these. I think it is the voice of the second person in all of these, the “normal” interlocutor commentator, that makes them super-special hilarious. <3

  8. Lu2 +4

    And yes, the “Jerusalem” lines are just magical here. LOL. I love that song. As an American, I first heard it in Monty Python sketches, and then I noticed it was everywhere.

      1. Alli525 +26

        Disagree! Geometry is bullshit, algebra is where it’s at.

        this has been #MathTrolling with Alli525

      2. LaughableWalrus +9

        Math is like Lucifer, beautiful and terrible. I’m just bitter because the reports I’m trying to do right now are flaying my mind; I’d eat the apple just for a complete and instantaneous understanding of all statistics can do.

      3. highfivesforall +16

        It’s when you get to the math that doesn’t have numbers in it anymore that it gets good.

  11. abbeyroadmedley +6

    do you promise me that it’s not horrifying?

    Ahahaha, that’s amazing. I adore crazy Blake and his tygers and little children lost and pictures of hell and anti-slavery awesomeness.

  12. mbculver +17

    Sitting in my kitchen with hardly any flayings in it, and drinking my normal cup of tea with no fire in it yet, and loving this (as always).

  13. yahtzii +77

    i did a portrait of the cat it is her birthday.
    is it really the cat?
    or is it a portrait of a red dragon like the last eight cat portraits
    the cat is a red dragon
    the cat is not a red dragon
    also you said it was her birthday two weeks ago
    the cat has seven heads and ten horns and eleven birthdays

  14. mollyculetheory +28

    Wondrous.

    Once for Christmas I went to not inconsiderable effort & expense (for a grad student anyway) to get my boyfriend (English literature at Oxford Romanticism fanboy) an actual Blake lithograph. And not even a flay-ey one! And to this day he has never hung it up because it’s “too depressing.” ):

    Blake goddamit.
    the lambs of joy upon the lea gambol not here sry

    1. ladonnapietra +1

      I have a framed poster of Blake’s illustration of Canto Five on my bedroom wall. It is kinda depressing, but also awesome.

  15. Katie Carlson +40

    Nineteenth-Century British Lit. professor here. Sending this to the printer for posting on my door in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

  17. elliemowforth +33

    Mallory, I marvel at your ability to craft sentences that have probably never, ever been uttered before in the history of humanity, but which are so perfect that once I read them I feel like they’ve existed ever since the universe began, waiting to be discovered.

    “I just already have so many watercolors of flayings already”

  21. thebadfeminist +9

    just a normal cup of tea with no fire in it yet
    at all
    not yet
    ha ha ha ha ha

    ^ I lost it.

  22. jackspratt823 +3

    Thank you so much for this. It took me hours to recover my composure. I have reblogged it.