Andy Marshall's Genius Loci Digest: 30 May 2025

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I’m stepping back from the journey today—just to pause for thought, to gather in all that I’ve taken on board over the last six months and weave it into the warp and weft of what I’ve learned. In recent times, I’ve noticed a shift in my emotions—a kind of angst driven by the current state of the world, followed by a re-purposing of how I want to navigate it. As you know, I’ve been helped primarily by my travels, but also—during that time—by a holy quartet of books, which I reference in the words below and share with you later in the Digest.

PHOTO-HOARD

Chelfie (church selfie) taken this week at Burford Parish Church during Member Powered Photography.

WORDS

Home-Thoughts, from Abroad

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

Robert Browning

OBSERVATIONS

The Loss of the Poetic Universe

Do you still use television to send you fast asleep?
Can you last another week? Does the cistern still leak?

Clifford T. Ward

Partly as an echo of the residual anxiety that followed my breakdown—and partly as a consequence of the Covid lockdowns—I became, for a short time before I began the Genius Loci Digest, caught up in a miasma of online interactions: social media, notifications, and the endless pursuit of likes. Immersing myself in the digital ecosphere brought fleeting comfort—a simulacrum of connection, the buzz of instant gratification. Like many, I fell into the loop—checking the weather, a message, a headline—and found myself, hours later, still doomscrolling. The digital realm quietly became my primary frame of reference—urgent, immersive, and all-consuming.

I soon began to feel the symptoms: a deep unease, a creeping sense of erosion. As Steven Lovatt puts it, I had become “complicit in, extraordinarily wasteful and careless habits of thought.”* I had been swept into a system designed not to nourish but to harvest—my time, my focus, my capacity to attend. It was a system that rewarded envy, anxiety and outrage.

The buildings, objects and places around me became secondary, as if seen through a smeared lens, or rendered in low resolution. In fact—although I didn’t realise it until much later—my online presence started to dilute the relationships I held with the non-human world. My physical and fixed points of orientation were being erased.

I suppose it might be reasonable to ask about the impact of the ‘attention economy’ on communities as a whole. Jenny Odell says that “…patterns of attention—what we choose to notice and what we do not—are how we render reality for ourselves…”** It raises a difficult question. How can places, culture, buildings and objects persist in a system where qualitative relationships with the physical world are no longer rendered—where the niche, the poetic, the queer, the romantic and the nuanced are eroded by an invasive monoculture that prizes speed, volume, and conformance? And how might the erosion of analogue connection affect us, not just individually, but collectively?

Hugh Conway Morris reminds us that “Each place is endowed and saturated with meaning.”*** And yet, when our lives are shaped by metrics and momentum, we risk losing the ability to connect with that meaning—not because it has vanished, but because our ways of perceiving have been changed. Imagine it — all that meaning, the wisdom that sits in objects and places, drifting by unnoticed?

I’m writing this to thrash out and bear witness to my own thought process. From my experience, I’ve come to recognise just how subtly the digital world can take hold. I have noticed its effects more widely, particularly among younger people in our towns and cities. So many seem to grow up shaped by their screens—heads bowed, attention drawn elsewhere, their gaze dimmed by the constant stream of content. I’m not judging here, for I think technology is an important part of our society—but perhaps not in the way it is being harnessed. I do worry about what we lose in the process: our imagination, our sensory literacy, our ability to truly notice and navigate the world around us.

Not all communities are like this—I know that. There are vibrant, connected groups everywhere, and many people, young and old, are resisting in their own ways. But still, it troubles me deeply. Because I know what’s at stake.

As a child, I was sensitive and a touch obsessive. I’d lose myself in fantasy, in stories, in objects and places. That sensitivity didn’t sit well with the world I found myself in—it made me feel out of step. I was told it was a weakness by my working class peers. To survive, I tried to overwrite it with performance. I got into fights. I mimicked toughness. But in doing so, I lost something vital. I severed the very part of me that made sense of the world.

Ignoring that sensitivity—denying that so-called “weakness”—was a factor in my breakdown. And it’s no surprise, really, that when I emerged from the worst of it, I was briefly seduced by the glitter of the digital realm. It promised so much. But it didn’t feed the soul.

I’m fortunate, I think, to be part of a generation that still has a foot in the analogue. I knew that somewhere in me, that there was another way. And so I began to claw my way back.

But what of the generation that has no experience of the analogue world to measure themselves against?

This Digest is, in part, a way forward for them and us, as well as a record of my return. A weekly rhythm, a ritual, a living archive. It’s a way for an average bloke with a sensitive disposition to try and make sense of the world—of the seismic shifts in how we live and interact. It’s a map of my search for meaning beyond the performative churn, beyond the digital blur. A slow and steady countercurrent.

I know now that curiosity, attentiveness, and a reconnection with rooted, place-based wisdom can transform our lives. They reconnect generations and help regenerate culture. They offer an alternative frame of reference that resists the metrics of speed and spectacle.

We should champion these values as if our lives depend on them—because perhaps they do.

My journey through place has been less about geography than it has about returning to the sensate world. A movement into presence. The rhythm of walking streets and lanes, of studying corbels and lintels, has loosened the grip of the attention economy. Reawakening my curiosity has grounded me in a living culture and returned a sense of agency.

In honouring the world around me, I’ve learned to honour myself—and that is no small thing in a culture that so often asks us to perform for others benefit rather than to be ourselves.

It’s a beautiful reciprocity: when we care for ourselves, we start to care for others. And that care radiates outward—into communities, landscapes, and the future.

There have been moments—clear and profound—when I’ve felt something shift. A shimmer of insight, a recalibration. These aren’t grand epiphanies, but silent reckonings: a glint of light through stained glass:

the grain of a weathered medieval door:

the hush and sheen of an empty street at twilight:

And I’ve realised that the work I share here—through camera, pen and brush—is not rooted in the places I visit, but in the part of me that notices. That so-called vulnerability is the very thing that allows me to see.

Vulnerability, so often labelled as weakness, is my strength. It’s a tuning fork. It helps me attend to what doesn’t shout. It gives me space to respond rather than react.

A sea of steps.

A cuticle sunrise.

A domesticated yew.

These things don’t clamber for clicks—but they hold a different kind of value. One that asks not for performance, but for presence.

Jenny Odell writes that “Nothing is harder to do than nothing.” And yet, in those very acts of pausing, walking, sketching—of doing ‘nothing’—I find renewal.

I return to the world with more to give. Not for approval, not for metrics, but as a participant. A witness. A companion.

Steven Lovatt speaks of this attentiveness as a form of being part of a living culture that helps restore our responsibility and our values. And Magsamen and Ross remind us that “Creative expression, the arts, and aesthetics serve a core purpose. To birth new thoughts and ideas. To mirror back to one another what is important and what is needed. To weave together common threads of humanity. The arts empower us to reimagine, re-envision, and reconnect in order to create a better future together.” ****

To this, I might add Hugh Conway Morris’s words: “All art can have the power of poetic revelation about the material world — it can reveal the ensoulment of the universe.” A reminder that creative work doesn’t just reflect our world, but animates it—allowing us to sense again what is sacred, and to rejoin the flow of meaning we so often forget.

And so, I’m leaning in now—nourishing this Digest with ways of seeing, sharing the hows and the wherefores. That, in essence, is why I send this Digest each week: not just to share a photograph or a place, but to offer a gentle tether. To share my way back. A resistance to all that numbs and monetises our attention.

It is a reminder that to see—to truly notice—is a radical act. One that reconnects us with our senses, with our stories, and with one another. And in these disorienting times, the simple act of noticing may be our most enduring form of hope.

*Steven Lovatt, Enchanted Ground.

**Jenny Odell, How To Do Nothing: Resisting The Attention Economy.

***Hugh Conway Morris, The Architecture Of The Poetic Universe.

****Magsamen and Ross, Your Brain On Art: How The Arts Transform Us.

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HOTSPOTS

The Genius Loci Digest

I've been reading Browning, Keats and William Wordsworth
And they all seem to be saying the same thing for me
Well I like the words they use, and I like the way they use them
You know, Home Thoughts From Abroad is such a beautiful poem.

Clifford T. Ward

It’s only recently that I’ve come to realise just how much the Genius Loci Digest has become a container in its own right—a kind of rattle bag, really—of thoughts, places, drawings, fragments, and feelings gathered over the years. When I first began, I was writing out of necessity—trying to re-thread my connection with the world. But now, almost three years on, I can see how much it holds.

There’s a depth here I didn’t quite expect—layered week by week, place by place. What began as a simple practice of noticing has become something more enduring. A kind of archive, yes—but also a companion. A way of seeing the world that doesn’t just record but reimagines, questions, and sometimes just sits with things that don’t have tidy answers.

And so I’d like to offer a few earlier digests to revisit—especially those on Ways of Seeing and Mental Health. Not because they’re definitive, but because they might meet you where you are. There’s something in the act of pausing and looking back that reveals just how much has been unwittingly gathered.

In a way, these 176 digests form a kind of long conversation—with place, with time, with self - and, of course, with you.

I think this matters now more than ever. We need spaces that aren’t engineered to extract, but to nourish. We need companions—be they people, practices, or paragraphs—that can walk beside us as we make sense of things. And I hope the digest might serve in that way for some of you.

So if something here feels useful, or beautiful, or even just true—please do bookmark it, pass it on, or keep it close. These pages were never meant to be consumed—they were meant to be kept.

The Digest On Developing Your Curiosity And Ways of Seeing

The Latch

Just Another Brick In The Wall

Thirty Six Views

The Digest on Mental Health and Wellbeing

The Golden Light Digest

Mental Health and the Historic Environment

Threshold

The Digest on Caring for Your Heritage, History, Community or Landscape

About Eustace

Looking Through Olive's Eyes

People Like Us

A Year In The Life

I recorded a full year of my life out on the road - you can access all the entries here:

VAN LIFE

Things Fall Apart

ON MY COFFEE TABLE

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My Digital Detox Gazetteer:

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I stay for a few days in a late C17th farmhouse next to the baby Wharfe.

A remarkable insight into the conservation of the Pandora ceiling at Wollaton Hall.

Member Powered Photography has taken place this week at Burford and Widford in the Cotswolds

There are plans afoot to photograph Southwark Cathedral

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