What you seek
A review/recommendation of the TV show Small Prophets
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Small Prophets is both terrible and beautiful. I say this because I’m an anxious watcher of TV shows that are not flat out comedy and I always end up empathising with the person who is going through a hard time, so much that I stop watching the show midway. And unlike with books, I don’t feel compelled enough to finish it. So this too induced a sort of edginess about the protagonist Michael Sleep and his weird hobby being found out. But it is also the same taut tension that makes it so beautiful. When his father (played by Michael Palin who seems to know just enough to be letting on) suggests that Michael create homunculi in his garden to find answers about the latter’s missing girlfriend, things take a palpable turn.
We binge watched this over a weekend, not knowing what to expect. My partner kept saying, for the first few episodes, he didn’t know if the homunculi would be real or be a metaphor for lost hope and disappointment, i.e. the feelings and facts that Michael was scared to confront. Would this end in gritty realism (‘there are no magic beans in the real world’ as my partner put it) or was there more to this divination ritual?
At the current moment, I guess I would be right in saying that divination is popular. But actually, it always has been. I’ve started learning (practicing/reading — whatever you wanna call it) tarot for no particular reason other than I was drawn to it. I’ve had a horoscope drawn for me as a child, like a letter I have not read until now but only heard my parents speak about from time to time. I’ve studied my own birth chart via Hellenistic astrology and tried to make sense of how celestial bodies can shape me. I still, of course, believe in free will. All of this is pattern recognition, storytelling, working creatively with whatever resources you can find. I also understand that, as someone from the oppressor caste, delving into astrology can be seen as reinforcing that identity. I can also say that I never have and never will use astrology as an excuse or means or a scapegoat to reinforce painful and tyrannical hierarchies. Astrology or tarot, I study it as storytelling1; there is no ultimate truth anyway, except perhaps change.
Divination is that which you seek, that which requires your participation and when Michael’s father suggests he look into growing homunculi, it feels like a suggestion to seek something from the larger cosmos and from himself, irrespective of his beliefs (disbelief in something is actually a way to probe into it a bit deeper). It remains a very abstract thing until Michael (and my partner) actually discovers that homunculi are real. And he immerses himself in that process — procuring herbs, silver coins, manure, and burying the paraphernalia as a process of incubation. The whole process reminded me of gardening, the work with the earth, the dedication, nourishment, and the toil involved to partake in the gestation of a magical living thing and then witness its eventual ruin. I suppose gardening/growing food is also a sort of divination; we seek knowledge of the future that is hidden to us, which plants and seeds are already aware of. But there is the anticipation (sometimes a sort of fearful apprehension) that things can go wrong. Sometimes it does2! Spoiler alert here (if you care about that sort of thing): the homunculi are indeed born but only have a short time before they perish and Michael has an ultimatum to ask his question. What he does ask and what happens next is something I will leave you to find out.
Small Prophets is magical realism — Michael and his neighbours live in a sleepy cul-de-sac, he works a mundane job with a micromanaging boss (played by Mackenzie Crook with a long, greasy ponytail), his younger neighbour is obsessed with what Michael is up to in his shed, there’s a sullen teenager circling round on his bike — but the magic part isn’t just the divination, rather it’s the other prosaic and wonderful things hidden beneath the surface. The friendships and the yearning for one. In this show, marvels are buried under to be revealed at the right moment; treasure seems to be hidden in a pile of boxes that is believed to be trash; and something more precious falls from the sky. This is a real wonder-in-the-ruins show; reality is a fantasy but more importantly, fantasy can be reality.
Tarot, astrology, homunculi, cartomancy — whatever the practice is — is a kind of perception. Ideas too, are a similar thing. All of the above can come from everywhere and everything. You don’t necessarily have to believe in something for it to exist but those that exist beyond belief are a metaphor for life. And sometimes, well, life itself.
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shoutout to Nikkitha Bakshani’s tarot and creative writing salon that helped further immerse myself into this!
I carefully tilled the dirt and sowed lavender seeds last year only to find that weeds took over; sometimes it’s not meant to be.
Loved this! I might have to watch this show. When you write “seek something from the larger cosmos and from himself,” it made me think how so many things that matter are a similar plea, from writing to scientific study, which ties neatly to the point on perception you end on, things that are most impactful are somehow always this mix of being open to the world and trying to see where its seams are
Love this!!! Thank you!