Psychogeography: What a long, strange trip it has been

Introduction

The subtitle mischievously implies a knowledgeable psychogeographer reflecting on his work. This is not the case; all I know is that I know nothing. I had been peripherally aware of psychogeography for about a decade; the concept appeared pretentious and excessively bloated with philosophical posturing. Everything changed in that weird liminal space between Christmas and New Year 2024. Disparate interests that psychogeography embraces magically coalesced. I do not understand the alchemy that transformed my scepticism into fascination. Now, psychogeography frames my sense-making and inspires my writing.

There is a high literary wall surrounding psychogeography.  Pity the limitations of those who haven’t read Debord, Benjamin, et al.

Thankfully, benevolent intellectuals kindly espouse radical change on behalf of the less knowledgeable.   It all smells a bit like the intellectualism characterising contemporary universities. My list of references was always bigger and more critical than yours.  Once upon a time, I would have excitedly applied for my library card only to lose myself in the contested terrain of psychogeography literature. Today, pragmatically, I have neither the time (lifespan) nor the intellectual insecurity to embark on a psychogeography literature field trip.

The single amulet I chose to take on my journey was Merlin Coverley’s Psychogeography. There were other potential books. When I read his book, the psychogeography magic felt right. I have spent too long searching for life in literature; today, belatedly, I choose life. Coverley’s informative overview features in the inspirations below, but first, I must clarify my favoured meaning of psychogeography.

The study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously and unconsciously or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals. (Coverley, 2018:120).

This is taken from an Internationale Situationniste glossary. Now, there is a name drop for you. This definition captures the central interface between geography and psychology, not limited to urban cityscapes. The reference to emotions speaks to the importance of lived experience and reflexivity. Greater acknowledgement of history informing physical and human geography would be good, but I take that as embedded in this favoured definition. Also, an openness to occult strangeness is integral to psychogeography.

I could happily drift through the next few thousand words discussing and contrasting definitions. Today, however, impatient and purposeful, rather than a discipline, psychogeography inspires.  

The pleasing vagueness of psychogeography

Coverley (2018) warns about the pleasing vagueness of psychogeography and the peril that we are all psychogeographers now.  He critically concludes that perhaps too much has been written about psychogeography. Is this a call to subvert an orthodoxy that scholarly gatekeepers pejoratively maintain?

In academia, I encountered a definitional critique about a word that means everything to everybody but suddenly means nothing to nobody. Yes, if the goal is to advance the objective study of psychogeography, then definitional critiques are an academic best practice. However, life is not purely an academic exercise.

The deep-rooted willingness inherent within psychogeography to embrace subjective vagueness is an inspiration, not a shortcoming. Coverley (2018:27) cites Debord’s frustration: “the subjective realm of human emotion remained stubbornly resistant to the objective mechanisms he chose to employ”. Similarly, explaining Blake’s contribution, he notes “… the precedence given to the subjective and the anti-rational over more systematic modes of thought” (2018:43).  I appreciate that systematic, rational and objective psychogeographic studies serve performative academic agendas.  However, occult strangeness isn’t objective, and it isn’t rational. I am inspired to go on very different psychogeography field trips.

As a child, I wanted to look at nature; today, I want to do psychogeography

As a six-year-old, adults asked me what job I wanted to do when I grew up.  The expectation was an exciting and purposeful job such as a racing car driver, fireman or astronaut. My Mum told me my verbatim answer was always “I want to look at nature”. Frustrated adults then tried to turn this foggy and passive notion into remunerative labour, missing the subtlety of my muse. I did plenty of remunerative labour between then and now, but my childhood ambition was sound. Today, I garden and ramble, but most importantly, I look at nature. Psychogeography inspires us to look at nature beyond the exclusively visual.

Psychogeography and imaginary voyages into isolation

Coverley (2018) discusses Robinson Crusoe, highlighting the twin motifs of Defoe’s novel: an imaginary voyage and isolation. As part of a mass thought experiment in the late sixties, youngsters were exposed to multiple repeats of a black-and-white adaptation of Robinson Crusoe throughout their summer holidays.  Crude dubbing into English only added to the otherworldliness of this grainy European production.  The accompanying orchestral music was wonderfully drenched in frustration and melancholy.  Robinson roamed about a little island with very little happening.  As children, we joined him in our imaginations, and his isolation was our isolation, over and over again.  Psychogeography frames understanding imaginary voyages into isolation.

Psychogeography and the seduction of existential novels

A little older, now a lonely teenager, existential novels offered life meaning. Hesse, Dostoyevsky, Camus and Kerouac spoke loudly from different geographies and times.  I anticipated existential literature featuring more prominently in Coverley’s (2018) overview, although, in mitigation, it was an introduction.

Sal Paradise and his companions aimlessly drift across America in On the Road, hitching rides on random goods trains. In this novel and others, Kerouac catalogued the changing landscapes and emotions that Sal encountered.  The magical hallucinatory experiences achieved through drink and drugs, which accompanied these journeys, finally swallowed up Kerouac’s life.  Another way psychogeography frames the understanding of increasingly painful imaginary voyages into isolation.

Psychogeography, subversion and suburbia

Today, I happily live in a small suburb (Saltdean) a few miles outside Brighton. Unlike the city, you can still walk along the pavements, and people are neither rushing nor scrolling while walking. Coverley’s (2018:148) citation of Ballard had particular meaning: “In the suburbs you find uncentred lives … So that people have more freedom to explore their own imaginations, their own obsessions.”

In front of my home, the sea and behind my home, the South Downs, I reside in the space in between. I have an Easter Island (Moai) figure in my garden. One day, Moai and I decided to go on a subversive little trip together.  Moai posed whilst looking out over the English Channel.  Far removed and out of context from Easter Island (see here).  In later life, I randomly enjoy roaming the countryside on my doorstep.  Saltdean hinterland now speaks to me, and I have the time and inclination to listen.

Known pasts, rather than unknown futures

For three decades, I studied organizational change academic theories and practices.  The focus was on managing from a known present to an unknown future. We rarely acknowledge that an unknown metaphysical future was exciting and problematic for theory and practice. Consequently, theory and practice worked with an implicit assumption about a known future.   Psychogeography appears to reverse the known future logic.

Psychogeography looks towards physical and emotional landscapes and magic to engage with competing explanations of known geographies.  Art and inspiration are embedded in different ways of viewing known landscapes.  Today, I find competing and contested accounts of the past more meaningful than assertive future prophesies.

I like the musty smell of psychogeography in the morning

A landscape without history is merely a view.

Coverley (2018) invokes Baudelaire as a man not so much of his time as a man out of time.  My interest in history noticeably increased in my early sixties. The sad epiphany was that I have far more history than future to reflect upon.  History has more meaning than the future offers reassurance.

The season for my psychogeography studies is autumn. I stroll purposefully in the woods with the decaying leaf mould beneath my feet, holding the hand of someone I never quite got together with.  There is a slight smell of dampness in my home before the central heating is turned on for winter. Increasingly, I crave the spring seasonal resuscitation, hoping it will not be the last one.

We all eventually return to nature, woodlanddecay.com and psychogeography

I began writing woodlanddecay.com posts back in 2011 with neither plans nor ambitions. Best practice prescribed having a unifying theme. However, I was more interested in writing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.  Even the woodlanddecay title wasn’t that sexy. However, it became more applicable as my decay became more imminent.

An interesting academic exercise is to ask, does the theory fit the practice, or does the practice fit the theory? In my case, it is both.  Psychogeography concepts, theories and practices could be applied to some of the posts on this site, whereas other posts have nothing to do with psychogeography.  As I return to looking at nature, I detect an unintended emotional undercurrent in my writing. This is most explicit in posts about music and adventuring in nature. A Place to Rest on Iford Hill, is illustrative.

The post features a short ongoing account of a memorial bench high on the South Downs. Over three decades, this bench has slowly decayed. Nature reclaims the bench as the memories of the deceased fade.  In parallel with the decay of the bench, I appreciate that I am in the process of my final return to nature. I wrote about this bench before I had read or heard about Martin Coverley’s (2018) book. In retrospect, I believe my practice fits his theory.  Reading his book now inspires me to go beyond describing the natural world and engage with such landscapes more deeply. Today, psychogeography offers a theme for my rambling posts on this site.

Psychogeography as an antidote to aphantasia

Approximately 2% of the population does not have visual imagination.  Thankfully, we have a label to unify and reassure us: “aphantasia”. As a small child, I was at the other end of this spectrum, having imaginary friends for company. In my teens, I could conjure the fantasies teenagers conjure up, but by my late twenties/early thirties, my visual imagination began to depart. A treasured long-time companion (visual imagination) has gone forever.

More positively, my imagination is strong, there is just nothing showing on the internal movie screen. For example, I imagine changes to my garden conceptually rather than visually as I play with my back garden topography.  I only see the garden when I have invested the physical time and labour, working from a conceptual mental map rather than a visually descriptive image.  Psychogeography nudges us out of the realms of landscapes as literal paintings and into the realms of a more multi-sensory experience.

Psychogeography is ok with magical thinking

On leaving academia in 2019, I enthusiastically reoriented my non-fiction reading focus towards books on esoteric, occult and mystical practices. In hindsight, I gave two fingers to the more rational and theoretical literature, which defined most of my working life. More positively and proactively, I read the literature I’d always wanted to read.

The Book of English Magic, Magic: An Occult Primer and The Master and his Emissary were particularly enjoyable in different ways. The commonality was their respect for magical thinking, the unconscious and the importance of intent.  It is symptomatic of scientific/intellectual arrogance today that anything strange or unusual is disparaged as “magical thinking”. We used to be fascinated by and respectful of the strange and unusual, particularly in the natural world.  Psychogeography consciously embraces and engages with magical thinking today and celebrates the magical thinking of yesterday.

Psychogeography and journeying to other worlds

Coverley’s (2018:93) discussion of Breton’s concept of deambulation intrigued me: “… a medium through which to enter into contact with the unconscious part of the territory.” Accessing this unconscious territory means everything to me. However, it is neither as well signposted nor as unambiguous as conscious territory.  What I liked most about Martin Coverley’s book was his encouragement to visit the unconscious part of the territory. I had begun to do this intuitively, but his vivid illustrations of how respected authors visited and mapped unconscious territories were informative.

As part of my mystical literature review (see previous section), I delved deeper into shamanism in different parts of the world. The Hawaiian Huna practices made the most sense in my quest.  I have been fascinated by shamanism for decades. Shamans are my archetypal psychogeographers in their ability to combine nature, emotions and magic. This is most impressive given that they haven’t read Debord, Benjamin et al.

I was fortunate to attend a series of Saturday Schools facilitated by two wonderful local shamanic practitioners, Susan Greenwood and Brian Bates.  As students, we sat in a circle, and Susan asked us to imagine a place in nature. I imagined the undercliff walk on the seafront near Brighton at the bottom of the chalk cliffs. As we began, the sea was calm, a beautiful warm day in summer.  Susan changed the beat of her shamanic drumming, and the water became blood-red and turbulent. The landscape in front of me had changed dramatically and emotionally.

On another occasion, after an intense and informative Saturday School, I was lying on my bed, tired but awake.  I became a salmon swimming through the forest. I became the landscape, exploring this territory from a completely different perspective.  If I could repeat a single journey from my lifetime, it would be that salmon’s eye perspective of the forest.  Sadly, the aphantasia shutters came down (see earlier entry), and such visual journeys are now out of reach.  Psychogeography feels like my best chance of journeying into other unconscious worlds.

This year, I will be mostly tripping through landscapes, emotions and imaginations

Books teach us to imagine other worlds, empathise with characters’ struggles and process complex emotions. Source: Stefano Hatfield, i Newspaper 30/12/24 (Page 24)

Hatfield wasn’t focused on psychogeography in this article, but by association, writing involves imagining other worlds, empathising with characters’ struggles and processing complex emotions.  In 2025, I hope to write further woodlanddecay.com posts. The following is a fluid and flexible agenda; after all, the only authority is myself, but provisionally:

• Walking through London as part of the 1990 Poll Tax march.
• Mapping the haunted houses at the bottom of my childhood garden.
• Using a poster of the best pubs in Brighton (1990s) as the map for a reflective wander through the city.
• Depictions of Saltdean and Newhaven in crime novels.
• A day trip to the Crossness Pumping Station in London.

Today, I enjoy imagining, empathising with and processing the strange trip that is everyday life. I make no claims to be a flaneur, to know any of the poems of Baudelaire or to have ever been to Paris.  However, something within psychogeography excites and gives purpose to my tripping. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed reading Psychogeography by Martin Coverley (2018). His concise book located a portal into another world.  The philosophy bouncers will never let me into Strollers – the psychogeography night club – but at least now I know where they meet and the way in.

Connections

I have embedded book links into the text.  On this post, comments are open, alternatively, I respond promptly to constructive feedback via the Contact page.

Psychogeography What a long strange trip it has been