Winter's Rain Refills the Aquifer

Cold, clear water to share

Here, the winter continues to be wet and cold. Each day the sky is a flat and dirty white, far-off gulls speckle it like grit on an ill-advised hall carpet. I listen to them chatter and call. There is a tentative excitement in me but I have been waiting for the right moment to share it. And although nothing seems externally different today, the blankness above and the chill in the air are the same as yesterday, there has been an almost imperceptible shift. In the season? In myself? I don’t know.

Hwæt.¹

I want to live more deeply in a spirit of generosity as taught me daily by the land where I forage for materials, by the spring that I tend near here in Dorset, by the ongoing example of my friend

Adam Wilson

and by the inexhaustible nature of the Tao, the Way of The Great Mystery.

On Tuesday, I cupped my hands and drank from the spring after watching the water flow over the old well steps for a while, and knew it was time to write this.

I am going to trust in connexion and reciprocity and in the intrinsic value of what I offer here.

Spring rhythm for Uncivil Savant

From today the archive of all my movement classes, chi kung and Heartwork will be freely available to all subscribers at no cost. Do have a look, if you enjoy it, there’ll be an online class sometime in March, I will let you know.

Future online classes will also be at no cost, although people will need to register as a ‘paid subscriber’ I will happily comp you for free if you reply to this or any future posts. This ‘paid subscriber’ system helps me avoid the need to deal with anonymous trolls and also means I won’t be spamming thousands of people with class details they don’t wish to receive. It’s not the perfect set-up, but it’s a good and simple one with the benefit that I know it works.

The same still applies to commenting on posts. It’s open to all ‘paid’ subscribers, whether you paid or not, for the same reasons.

Founder Members will receive a signed copy of my new book Drawn From the Wild when it comes out in June 2025 as a big thankyou from me. Of course, anyone can buy my books from me, online, or from bookshops any time, so I don’t feel like that’s withholding anything. From today, I will also donate a book to a library / community arts group / school, etc for every founding member. I’ll share details when I do. Founders, if you have a suggestion for such a recipient, let me know!

I intend to post three new posts per calendar month at Uncivil Savant (still published on Monday mornings at 7am, whenever possible). On the fourth weeks, I will share an old post from the last two and a half years’ Archive. If there’s a fifth Monday in the month, I may well take it off! ²

I will still post good things to Notes, especially when I come across great writing or art to share.

The Podcast continues as a place where all my audio is collected and as a way to reach people who are not yet on Substack.

There’s a new Practical Posts section on my page for all useful things audio, visual and human-made.

This year there will be a few more videos, podcasts and interviews when I have them, one is coming soon from my time with Ingrid of Forest of Thought. If subscriptions allow, I will have help from my partner filmmaker

Jonny Randall

in producing some films and interviews for Uncivil Savant.

All the original photography, artwork, writing, poems, instructional information and any other audio or visual aspects of Uncivil Savant are made by me or my guests and are not made with AI. I am aware that programs I use, such as Word, Descript, Substack editor and so on, use AI, but I do not use them to write, draw, suggest or artistically change any aspects of my work.³

Why remove the paywall?

I read and enjoy a wide variety of work here on Substack whose writers differ vastly in how they charge for certain aspects of their writing, tuition or art, or choose not to do so at all. Almost all the approaches have merit and work, as the writers have stuck with them and seem happy. So, for me, there has never been a sense that there is a right way or a wrong way. After all, it is whatever way feels right and doesn’t leave a bad taste in the mouth. Pundits exhort us to ‘monetise our content’, to withhold certain things to reward payments. I have an uneasy relationship with this approach, as I have benefitted so much in my life from bursaries, scholarships and grants, having come from what was at the time considered a financially ‘poor’ household.

There is also the fact that the response to my movement classes was so positive, and that a significant number of people asked for comps so they could come, as they could not afford the cost of a month’s subscription ($7). I am keen to make sure money is not a barrier to anything I offer, that’s one of the reasons I write instructional books, they really are cheap, last a lifetime, can be shared and loaned. They will not be wiped off your hard-drive at the whim of a digital overlord.

My working life is not a simple nine-to-five affair, indeed, I have never had a Monday-Friday type job. With my in-person classes which I teach in art materials and crafts, I charge the usual going rate for such classes and I offer bursaries whenever I can, in conjunction with venues. The books I write are sold in the usual ways, and once a year the publisher pays me the royalties due. I donated 10 of my first book to libraries, community groups and local arts centres around the world and I’ll do the same with the next one when it comes out in June. Added to my two Substacks and the teaching, this is how I currently make a modest living. If I had the land, or owned a home, I would hope to offer what I teach or make with no financial barriers at all, asking for my costs to be met by gifts, in a similar way to how Adam does. Our contexts may currently differ but our hearts are deeply aligned.

I have been mulling it all over since visiting Sand River Community Farm last October, and for much longer than that in the back of my mind. This month, it struck me that there were some ways I could move towards deeper trust in generosity and reciprocity, even from the somewhat conventional position I find myself in, as a renter, a self-employed person, in a capitalist western democracy, with no family money or inheritance to bolster me. In short, in the same position as most ordinary people I know. I have always been anxious about where money will come from, so it is a radical change of heart, even though it may not look like much from the outside.

I felt the best way to allow gifts in was to start giving away more.

What I hope to do

At heart, I want to be able to afford to set aside more time for the reading and writing that feed Uncivil Savant and my books. To delve deeper in to what I want to write about. What was supposed to be a reading sabbatical has now had to become a materials research time too, so the longing in me for a time totally absorbed in books is strong.

I hope to move towards teaching closer to home in the UK and online and make writing three quarters of my working life (rather than the half it currently is) by summer 2027, when two more of my books will hopefully be published. This will be far more sustainable both environmentally and regarding my own energy. For the first time in a long time, it is also time to consider someone else’s wishes in my planning, which is a welcome change.

Simply, my aim is to not burn out, but to make the best books, writing, art materials instruction and creative projects that I possibly can. To collaborate with the great people who have approached me for teaching and projects, and to deepen my ongoing research. To be there for my family and friends and, most importantly, my partner.

What I am inviting you to do

I hope you’ll want to continue to read or listen to Uncivil Savant. I still have so much I want to write about along the contours I have outlined so far, and in new directions.

If you feel able to, I hope that you’ll take up a paid subscription, whether for a month or a year, as a Founder, or just by sometimes buying me a coffee. Whatever feels right for you. I can’t do this without your help.

On this Substack all content is for everyone, whether on paid or free subscriptions, so you can just keep reading for free if you want.

For those who become Founder Members, though the Substack content is the same, I will send a physical book to your home and from this week onwards another one will be sent out elsewhere as a donation.

If you’d like to comment on posts, but can’t afford a subscription, just reply to any newsletter and I will comp you.

If you want to write to me in confidence about something I have written, you can also just press ‘reply’. I always read every email.

That’s it until next week, apart from this week’s good thing. Thanks for accompanying me on this journey. Thankyou to all of you who already to support my work and to those of you who are just about to do so. I’ll end with this: the nearby spring I tend along with other locals is full after the winter rains.

This week’s good thing: Absolution by Jeff Vandermeer. I am a huge fan of Vandermeer’s writing, particularly the Southern Reach Trilogy, which I quickly devoured when they were published a decade ago. Now he is back with a prequel to those books, set again in Area X, to round-off what has been one of the most thrilling, confounding and unexpected SF reads ever. If you’ve seen the Netflix film Annihilation, based on the first volume, you’ll get a little taste of the series as a whole. I would encourage you to read them in order and then settle down with Absolution. It is perhaps not a bedtime read but it has changed some of my ideas of what fiction can be and can do. Hallucinatory, deeply ecological, full of fierce images and fractured, compelling characters often lost in the transformed Florida of Area X, this is the winter read you need.

1. Hwaet meaning. Also HWAET! is a very good zine.

2. For one year, I posted every week. For the second year, I posted 49 of the 52 weeks, despite saying I would only post every other week. Committing to 3 new posts and an old one feels just right for me right now. I don’t want to leave it at only 26 weeks of the year. I would miss the writing rhythm.

3. You can read more about my approach to all of this here.