Hidden Valleys

Book excerpt: The future is alongside us, sometimes closer, sometimes further away. Hidden Valleys starts from the perception that the human world is an eerie place, particularly in relation to its stories and dreams. It also starts from events that took place in North Yorkshire, in 1978. A work of philosophy, an account of experiences, and a biography of a year, it is simultaneously a challenging cultural analysis, drawing on novels, songs and films. It argues for lucidity over reason, becomings over conventional gender and familialism, groups over state politics, and for an escape to wider realities in place of the delusions of religion. Most centrally it breaks open a view of a futural dimension that coexists with the present, and which intrinsically involves a heightened awareness and evaluation of the planet, of women, and of the abstract. Inseparably it is also a detective investigation into the causes of the eerie human predicament. The book reaches the planetary by starting from a singular place, it reaches reality by starting from dreams, and it reaches the future by finding a doorway in the past.