Art, not Nature

It was increasing impatience with (or even revulsion from) woolly Romanticism which led in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to movements in art and literature where form and colour were pursued as if for their own sakes, to create new worlds of experience, which in a sense parted company with Nature.

“The nature of a work of art is to be not a part, nor yet a copy of the real world (as we commonly understand that phrase), but a world in itself, independent, complete, autonomous; and to possess it fully you must enter that world, conform to its laws, and ignore for the time the beliefs, aims and particular conditions which belong to you in the other world of reality.” (ACB 1901)

“Oui, l’oeuvre sort plus belle
D’une forme au travail
Rebelle,
Vers, marbre, onyx, émail.

. . .

“Sculpte, lime, cisèle ;
Que ton rêve flottant
Se scelle
Dans le bloc résistant !”

(Yes, the work comes out better when the form is resistant to being worked on, as in verse, marble, onyx, enamel. . . . Carve, polish, chisel; may your floating dream be sealed into the resisting block!) (TG 1852)

I suppose I am retracing my steps. In the Sixth Form at school I discovered a famous poem from Émaux et Camées and it came with all the force of religious conversion; or was it a deprogramming from the cult of romanticism, as its author Théophile Gautier intended? Never mind which. I find myself as if by hazard rediscovering the way out of an impasse: same way, different impasse.

Writing—synonymous for me, in these days, with blogging—has become an essential part of the survival equation. Caged birds, they say, sing the sweeter. Never mind that the bars of my cage may seem like freedom to others, for I’ve been granted the gifts of time and freedom from cares known vulgarly as “retirement”. Perhaps the cage consists in accepting to live in the cheapest part of town, a little more squalid and rat-infested than free choice might have dictated.

I haven’t been able to prevent myself from constructing a kind of formula or rulebook for my writing, as an angler constructs his own mythology for successful catching of fish: this weather, this time of day, this spot on the river-bank, cunningly-crafted flies to persuade the fish to rise and be hooked. I have encouraged in myself the religion of instinct and tuned to the sharp impulses of the hunter-gatherer, from which the inventive intelligence arises, like a sort of libido to be quenched in wood and metal—or the fashioning of prose. Those impulses pull me outdoors to long treks, whose aim is not hunting for herb or hind, but inspiration which can be preserved for translation into language. But then the actual fashioning of verbal strands (adornments of feeling and reason) must be done when mind is clear and blood is fresh: therefore in the stilly caverns of darkness before dawn.

I must confess to a profound flaw in my modus operandi till now. (Perhaps the difference between art and engineering is this: that in art, flaws may be tolerated.) I have confused the catalyst with the thing itself. So, in my last, I confessed this:

“In this Northern hemisphere, it is Spring, but I cannot begin to describe its beauty, only respond to the urgency of its summons to my soul.” Such was my ecstatic worship of Spring, that I chided myself for not singing its praises; and equally chided myself for being so preoccupied with everyday chores as to miss various stages of the procession of miracles that constitute this season: the emergence of leaf-buds, blossom-buds, changing songs of the birds in trees and on chimneytops . . .

So, to summarize, I was hemmed in by the rituals which trial and error had revealed to be necessary offerings to the Muse; overstuffed with high ideas of the edification my writings should engender; whilst being consumed with daily lust for the writing of something meaty, shapely, lively, cheeky, alluring.

Now the floodgates start to open. I’ll publish this, and get on with the next.

The Muse is a jealous mistress

I hold the art of writing in too high regard to dare call myself writer. I think I shall change my Profile: occupation Gentleman. Writing, like any pastime fit for this kind of person and the female equivalent, is an arena of infinite striving, especially when, as in my case, its only object is to express what cannot be said. I’m obliged to content myself with harvesting a little from the infinite ocean of what can be said; but to do it in a manner worthy of Nature, the only deity I acknowledge.

For I maintain that every creature recognises its kinship to Nature, whether consciously or not; whereby Nature is our Mirror and is made One through its manifest kinship with ourselves—as in the sense “we are one family, because all these are related to me, and I to them”.

These musings are inspired by the thought “The Muse is a jealous mistress”, which arrived in my head yesterday out of the blue.

I may not be a writer, in any professional sense, but it’s my constant wish to surrender to the creative Muse, renouncing all other gods, for she is an aspect of Nature, in her role as patron of Creation.

She (Nature and my Muse too) is conservative: her laws are broken at our peril. Creatures and things must obey their own nature. We are the creatures of DNA, and DNA holds the accumulation of Nature’s wisdom.

In this Northern hemisphere, it is Spring, but I cannot begin to describe its beauty, only respond to the urgency of its summons to my soul.

I have said “The Muse is a jealous mistress”: the assertion must be supported with further words, or discarded as mere fancy. Well, she punishes me for neglecting her; even though, when I consider myself attentive enough, the favours she shows me remain scant. Must I dedicate myself entirely to her service?

Oh, I have scribbled, but my endeavours have yielded nothing but fiaschi (which is the Italian plural of fiasco, flask) when I wanted to fashion the most delicate pieces, expressing what cannot be said. Legend has it that when Italian glassblowers messed up, they would try to make a flask instead. Never mind, the fiaschi have been garnered in their own spot, and this morning, in the hours before dawn, when the Muse whispers in my ear, she offers me this motto: “Failure’s no shame”. To see some recent fiaschi, look here and here; or follow the link at left.

In desperation I have been exhausting myself in a less demanding medium than words: plywood. It started when I found in a second-hand shop a handsome bookshelf, just when I had been asking the Universe to provide one. (Yes, Cosmic Ordering works for me, but I prefer to obey the existing Cosmic Order rather than to disturb its tranquillity with my concupiscence.) I installed it in the shelf on my side of the bed, but it wanted a mate, according to my mate. So like Geppetto making a son Pinocchio for his barren wife, I built one (a shelf, not a son) from plywood. They looked good together, but there was plywood left over, so I built them a connecting bridge whose canopy-edge has a motif echoing the same curves. I'll show you the snapshot when the camera batteries have charged.

Now, my Muse, shall we go tripping again, along Spring’s burgeoning paths, fashioning garlands of words, as of yore? Soon, soon.

The Faculty of Wonder

Faculty? I mean the university rather than the human kind. Well, both. Over at Hippocrates Got Lost, we were talking about hospital chaplains: ostensibly the conundrum of who should pay them. This has led to a discussion. We all agree that they help the patients get better, or give them palliative comfort. So this led to the question “How?”

Scientifically, it’s called the placebo effect, said one commenter—and none of us have yet denied that. Perhaps it’s a discussion for another day. This is an extract from my comment:

If it were my bag to be an academic high-up in university administration, I would love to start a prestigious department of “Placebo Studies”. I don’t know what faculty it would fit into, and what name it would bear. “Miracles and Wonders” would be good.

It would be very dynamic because under the one roof would be a rainbow alliance of sceptics and practitioners, atheists and mystics; thrashing out the wheat from the chaff like students in the first (12th-century) universities—Paris, Bologna, Cambridge etc. Only in their case it was the ongoing dispute between Nominalists and Realists, corresponding roughly to Aristotelean versus Platonic.

Asclepius responded:
Where do I sign up?! I'm very much of the opinion that the best academic progress comes from putting two opposing ideas in a box and seeing what comes of having them interact.

I saw that we might have something here. Who needs to be an academic high-up in university administration, when we have the University of Blogspot ready to start the faculties and departments of our choice? Has there ever been a time since the twelfth century when the spontaneous disputation of young and old has been more possible, prevalent, universal and vital?

I propose a blog with a team of members who may post, someone who’ll correct members’ apostrophe placement where necessary; hoping we’ll attract the passing trade of commenters from somewhere in the wired universe whose disputations will provide the lifeblood.

I propose a strict editorial neutrality between scientific evidence-based scepticism and subjective reportage of experienced phenomena. The term “placebo effect” pulls strongly over on the sceptical side of the balance, I believe; so it wouldn’t be practical as a title. Here’s my evidence, from Wikipedia’s Placebo (disambiguation) page:

Placebo, a treatment without intrinsic therapeutic value, but administered as if it were a therapy, either in medical treatment or in clinical trials

That is not the agreed scope of our school of disputation, but a permissible point of view to be argued within it. The agreed scope would be something like “Something unexplained happens: what is it, how valuable is it, how and when does it work?” It would not be about the experience of researchers, drug companies or medical practitioners comparing prescription drugs with sugar-pills—on the grounds of their inevitable bias.

I confess I have ulterior motives for starting a separate Faculty in the fertile plains of the Blogosphere, beside the River of Oblivion. It’s to placate Ghetufool, whose approval I am addicted to and whose scorn makes me flinch like a whipped donkey. Recently he wrote (I’ve corrected his spelling and punctuation, as usual):

“Spirituality baffles me, it irritates me. . . . I started reading Vincent’s blog when he was not that spiritual. Now I cannot dump him, though I wish to.”

There. Satisfied now, Gf?

Microcosm

It’s 3am and I can’t decide between tea to wake me up or hot milk to send me back to sleep. Why not both together? I end up improvising Indian chai, brewing some tea with ginger, cloves, cinnamon, allspice and dark sugar all boiled in milk. It tastes authentic enough.

Decision-making is not my strong suit. A week ago I decided to post here every day: you can see that that failed. I can’t please everyone but sometimes I do manage to please myself, as with the chai.

A gentle rain patters on the windowpane and gurgles down the drainpipe. Otherwise it’s quiet, except when a car purrs to a stop and the driver gets out quietly. All the taxi-drivers in this town seem to be Muslims from Pakistan, Kashmir, Afghanistan, and many live on this street. One occupies a house facing mine and since I’ve never learned his real name, I call him the Assassin. One day he reversed his taxi to find a better parking space whilst I was crossing the road. It’s a one-way street so one tends not to look both ways: not, that is, until one has been hit by a car reversing the wrong way. I forgave him that and suffered no lasting injury, and we’ve often joked about it since.

Unfortunately, news gets out that I’m handy with tools. My next-door neighbour was very worried about a rat seen crossing his kitchen floor. His kitchen was recently renovated by some Poles but they didn’t finish the job properly. The outpipe from his clothes-drier shouldn't have been left poking out of a jagged hole in the brickwork. But perhaps they felt they had not been paid enough. I’d told myself I would do no more little jobs for him but this one was obviously urgent as he was worried about the safety of his grandson. By way of return favours, his wife cooks occasional meals for us, delivers them on paper plates. She’s a good cook: curry, dhal, rice, parathas—that sort of thing. And he helped me with a tall ladder to fix some brickwork on my house. But when anyone asks my help, I’m careful to point out that I’m busy, now and in the foreseeable future. Then they say, “Oh, I don’t mean any time soon. But if you will just come over to my house, perhaps you could look at . . . and say what you think.”

The Assassin has looked worried lately when I’ve bumped into him in the street—not literally, I hasten to add, or I might not be here to tell the tale. He’s the landlord of a property four doors down from mine, a mere sixteen yards away when you take into account that our houses are all twelve-foot wide and joined together. He was expecting a new tenant for a room whose lock didn’t lock properly. So I took a certain pride in doing an efficient fix and he was most grateful. A few days later he knocked on my door, looking seriously worried. His downstairs tenants keep the heating on day and night, opening the windows when it gets too hot, resulting in heavy gas bills not covered by their fixed rent. I thought that in his shoes this would worry me too, so I agreed to try and help. He wanted a cover fitted over the timer switch to prevent the tenants altering the settings. I made a modest estimate for the work.

My search for a ready-made solution proved fruitless so I designed a box from aluminium sheet, hinged on one side and padlocked on the other.

The trouble was, I didn’t have free access to make measurements or fittings, and when I went to the house with the landlord, it was clear that the tenants, a young black couple, were not cooperative. They complained that this is England, the weather varies from day to day; and if it rains they have to dry their clothes indoors.

I may not be a good decision-maker, but I make up for it with an excess of imagination. Though I enjoyed making the box, I felt very stressed and didn’t understand why. I felt like “a certain lawyer” who asked “Who is my neighbour?” (Luke, 10:29) Consciously I was playing the Good Samaritan, helping the landlord neighbour. Unconsciously, I recoiled at the symbolism of restraining the tenants’ freedom: as if I were smithying manacles for a slaver’s voyage.

When my handiwork was complete, I discovered it was too tight a fit. So I told the Assassin that I was too incompetent to execute the contract, and moreover, my efforts to be a good neighbour would also make me a bad neighbour. He professed not to understand and asked if the tenants had been talking to me. Well, not directly, just with their eyes. I hope he puts the word around that it’s no use asking me for help.

I ask myself if I have learned anything, and if so, what; and how much it matters if I haven’t learned anything.

Wanting

“We all want. We all need. When want overpowers need, our perspective gets skewed. I say, want all you want—wanting motivates. However, need very little and you will almost always be satisfied.” (Pauline’s latest post made me think, and my comment on her post expanded afterwards into the stuff below.)

Yes, but when I need very little, I don’t buy the shiny new car. When enough people think like me, General Motors goes out of business. The house of cards collapses.

In 1949, when war-time ration-books were finally ended in England, I would eagerly read National Geographic magazines from the USA. They had full-page colour adverts for Coca-Cola, which I’d never come across in real life, but which—because of the adverts—I started to desire greatly; also adverts for silverware to treasure as family heirlooms in the future (an odd concept to a child brought up in houses overstuffed with stuffy heirlooms); Hammond organs shown uniting the family in home music-making.

Meanwhile we still had bomb-sites where dwellings had been destroyed and not yet rebuilt; some children were still going to school without shoes. The satisfaction of wants was an enticing dream which took the mind away from unmet needs, and in some parts of the world still does.

Out of those very bombs and shortages (the sacrifice paid for challenging Hitler) there emerged a determination to meet the needs of the people, which took shape according to the blueprints of economist William Beveridge, who designed the Welfare State. Today Britons are guaranteed not to be left hungry, homeless or without medical care. The meeting of needs, in short, is taken for granted, like the air we breathe, the water, gas and electricity piped to our homes. Stuff to meet other needs is imported from countries where they work for paltry wages. The only growth, the only lively parts of our economy have been aimed at the creation and immediate gratification of wants. You must want, it’s your duty to civilization. If you don’t watch TV (how traitorous!) you are still bombarded with junk mail and flyers. Spend less on “discretionary purchases” and things collapse like a house of cards. Jobs disappear, flower-growers in Kenya or Belize go bust.

Till recently, no one had envisaged that en masse we’d want to spend less: inflation and growth were the wonderful boons with which money could reproduce itself with very little effort. “Buy now, before it goes up!” has always been a good slogan for shifting things that nobody needs. Commerce has striven for sales as if fighting the ultimate war of good against evil, though actually the spur is competition, not idealism.

“No money to buy a house? No problem! We can sell you the house and the money to buy it with too. Then we’ll sell your debt to someone else, along with the uncertainty as to whether you’ll ever pay it back. But it doesn’t matter! The value of everything goes up! Nobody loses!”

How shall the person of goodwill, who wants to help save the world, behave now? Shall Mr Obama and Mr Brown encourage me to buy things as before, so that people have jobs and nobody starves? Shall I buy a Hammond organ, silver-plated monogrammed silverware, or the modern equivalents, I don’t know, iPods, Blackberries, a replacement for the car that cost me £100? I don’t know where to start. I Google “must-have luxuries” for ideas. I start to have wants never previously imagined, such as a chocolate body-wrap massage.

It’s the lack of clear direction that bothers me. Will there be a reprise of the Dark Ages? In that “period of cultural decline or societal collapse that took place in Western Europe between the fall of Rome and the eventual recovery of learning” (Wikipedia), the barbarians were all over the place, leading to centuries of economic decline after the high times of the Roman Empire. I guess that was the era when Christianity was more of a comfort than ever before or since, and monasteries were refuges of sanity in a world on the edge of Armageddon. It doesn’t offer the same comfort and certainty now.

I admire the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and hoped for some guidance in his recent Ebor lecture in York. He was talking about the environment rather than the financial situation, but they are linked, for economists who don’t understand a remedy without growth are not going to help the planet.

He warned that God does not give guarantees of a successful ending.

Unless there is a change of heart in the human race, Dr Williams said, the world might meet several tragic fates including the final calamity of being asphyxiated, submerged, or malnourished through mankind’s folly.

The archbishop believes it is a reckless delusion to believe that the environment will regulate itself to be consistent with how we affect it.

He thinks that while the world can survive, mankind may not. The planet belongs to the Lord and the human race cannot own it and treat it however it wishes, he said.
(This summary by Alan Marten, Fair Home website. For the full text, see the Archbishop’s website.)

I wish he would tell the G20 Summit what the Lord wants us to do.