JOIN OUR NEW BOOK CLUB – Specifically for Artists, Reading books that speak to the cultural, artistic, literary & historical meanings of today’s world and our place as artists within and resonating with those meanings. Because this is going to be run by Cypress (Me!) of the Monarch Writers, I hope to explore a lot of underground and occult, esoteric and counter-culture books. So I will put up a list of prospective reads that I personally would like to cover. And getting underway in August and September 2022 we are starting with the book ‘Occulture: The Unseen Forces That Drive Culture Forward’ by Carl Abrahamsson. But as we continue of course we will be open to input and will vote on what to read each month beforehand. And then the discussions will again be focused on how the material pertains to artists. So whether the book has specifically to do with art, or some aspect of writing or painting or what have you, we will then gear the discussion to a multi-media intersectional application, hopefully in an enhancing way! I would like to record to discussions and post them as a creative commons podcast as well. I will facilitate each discussion with an outline and some questions just as a guide to keep the discussion on track but will leave it mostly freeform what people want to discuss about the books, and encourage you to take highlights and notes while you are reading. Make it your own! If the book inspires you to make a speech, treat it like an open forum, so long as you respect others, feel free to share your ideas!
Our History
This is a book club related to but not directly tied to the members of The Monarch Writers. Both are facilitated by Cypress Butane and some members will likely participate in both. But otherwise they are separate entities.
“If I do not describe the details of our work it is because we were busied with things which lie beyond speech and which therefore elude the spell that words exert. But everyone will remember how his mind has labored in regions which he cannot portray, whether it were in dreams or in deep thought. It seemed as if he were groping for the right road in labyrinths or sought to unravel the figures among the patterns of an optical illusion. And often he awoke wonderfully strengthened. That is where our best work takes place, and so it seemed to us, too, that in our struggle speech was still inadequate, and that we must penetrate into the depths of the dream if we were to withstand the threat against us.”
Ernst Jünger,
quoted in ‘Occulture: The Unseen Forces That Drive Culture Forward’ by Carl Abrahamsson
Prospective Books List for Readers Ingenious:
The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization
by Arthur Herman
Great Mambo Chicken And The Transhuman Condition: Science Slightly Over The Edge by Ed Regis
The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate that Changed Our Understanding of Time
by Jimena Canales
The Monarch Writers 