Life and Art

Writing is not easy. The trouble is, I’m too full of ideas. They come in bunches and I don’t know quite what to do with them. My monkey-mind thinks they should be cut into neat shapes and sewn into a quilt for posterity, so I spend hours trying to fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle. The task becomes sickening, for it’s a little crazy. A sensible person would write about one thing at a time, but as John Muir said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” And now I feel the urge to research Muir and discover whether he was sensible, or a bit like me. I’ve always been like this. “Mr Mulder, you have a butterfly mind,” said my tutor in Italian, Dr Carsaniga. I’m tempted to take a walk in the rain, and let it wash away these words.

There’s another way, as taught by Natalie Goldberg in her shot at Zen-in-the-art-of-authory, Writing Down the Bones:

If you give your mind too much time to contemplate a beginning when you sit down to write, your monkey mind might meander over many topics and never quite get to putting a word on the page. . . [A] list . . . helps to activate your writing quickly and cut through resistance. Naturally once you begin writing you might be surprised where your mind takes the topic. That’s good. You are not trying to control your writing. You are stepping out of the way. Keep your hand moving.

To which I am tempted to say “Thanks, Natalie. That’s the easy part.” Perhaps that’s why I find myself stuck at an early chapter of her book, finding excuses all the time not to read on—to the parts which might really confront my inadequacy. In any case I can’t see myself like an eager student in class, taking notes and doing every exercise she sets. I’m too old to follow anyone or learn new tricks. What works for me are little phrases sent by an angel-messenger, either directly to my unconscious mind or through other people, such as these:

One of the things I like about this post is that you let your guard down in places. . . . some people hide behind studded leather jackets. (Bob)

my work [i.e. my art] IS me and so it does matter if it stands still, doesn't evolve. (Natalie d’Arbeloff)

Yes, so maybe I should be less guarded, blur the distinction between the self and its productions. Which gave rise to the idea that one’s “me” is multi-layered. Everything one displays to the world is what you may call one’s art, which also acts as a guard to protect the more sensitive layers that lie within. So, for one person the outer layer is art in the conventional sense, for she has studied drawing and painting over a lifetime. In another it’s her care to be soignée when she goes out. She’s paid attention to her nails, hair, clothes, shoes, the way she carries herself. This outer layer could be art, or it could be a bony carapace which stops us evolving, unless we are prepared, from time to time, to cast off the exoskeleton and let it wash up on the tideline along with everyone else’s flotsam.

Writing a non-fiction blog centred on the pronoun “I”—as I do—one does need to keep up one’s guard, both for appearance’ sake and the sense of safety. In the marketplace, nakedness is not becoming. One’s productions are careful constructs. Perhaps they are separate creations like a suit of armour loosely modelled on the human form. If we are more daring they may be skintight and revealing. Either way, we must shed the old skin if we want to grow. To others, the “new” person emerging from underneath will closely resemble the old one; just a little fresher, maybe. The old one will be left behind on the tideline, for Time to dispose as it sees fit. And what is the cast-off skin? It has my DNA, but is dead, destined to fossildom or dust. “Fingernails are human too, but they don’t have rights,” says John Myste, long-time visitor to this site, offering me another thought about the relation of “my art” to “me”. [link here]

Another writer who’s taught me recently is Nicholson Baker, in his novel The Anthologist:

If you have something to say, say it. Don’t save it up. Don’t think to yourself, I’m going to build up to the truth I really want to say.

Easier said than done, and written by its author as much-needed advice to self.

I have left it till last, I’m afraid, but here is what I have to say, as triggered by Natalie G, Natalie D’A, Bob (aka Rob), John and Nicholson:

Instead of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, as jotted by Thomas Jefferson in the middle of a war while thinking about what his side was fighting for, and what it would do post-victory, I’d propose different ideals:

—that we each and everyone be conscious artists, painting our existence on to the canvas of each new day
—that we let happiness pursue us, and don’t wait for the current war to be won. Life is too short.

England Have My Bones

“God keep my soul and England have my bones.”—T. H. White, after Shakespeare

I suppose we all have an idea of what constitutes real living. It’s not all those compromises we endure while we bridge the gap between yesterday and tomorrow. Real living is when we can say “this is it!” asking nothing from tomorrow at all. By this criterion, my real life has lately begun.

The evening sun was calling me, so I went to Saunderton Lee. It’s a place K & I have got to know well over the last nine years without ever thinking of it as a place, having approached it in different seasons from different directions, and counted them simply as walks, among all the others. I went alone this time but she was with me in my mind. When you share a closeness over the years, you find yourself each bound to the other, able to share everything. And when you recall a shared moment, for example by passing through the same spot, it brings a lively sense of that person’s presence. And if you’re separated for any length of time you feel a pang of absence, which, when absorbed in busyness, you don’t notice consciously. Then it comes back strongly when you are carefree and fully attentive to the present. In such a state, I see that the days of our life are a pattern of union and separation, like the play of sunshine and cloud on these fields and copses, altering our moods accordingly.

It’s a network of footpaths between and through fields. After the recent harvest they’ve been left as stubble or ploughed. In any landscape there may be some routes we’ve actually trodden, and others we’ve traversed simply with yearning eyes—something I did for years when I could only walk for yards at a time. One such route runs southwards through this narrow plain till it disappears in a fold in the landscape and thence beyond the horizon. Many times I have looked in wonder, imagining that “beyond” as a cherished destination of our prehistoric ancestors, or a storybook picture from my childhood reading. In fact we’ve probably trodden those paths, coming here from the opposite direction. And if you follow that fabled route to beyond, through the fold and over the horizon, you reach our house in town, five miles away.

While I scanned these fields, the sun was planning its descent below the Bledlow Ridge skyline, but there was still time to follow one or two trails, and reach those wooded slopes still gilded with light. Each clod on the ploughed field stood proud with its own shadow. My own was fifteen foot long.

Despite a few modern houses scattered around, this place has a majesty and solitude, but you wouldn’t come here for any particular views, wildlife or scenic grandeur. Have no expectations, no thoughts of elsewhere. Then you may see Eden, freshly restored to its state before the Fall.

Many are those, and I am one, for whom heaven is to be on foot in a landscape. And when it’s not quite heaven, it still offers a meditation, one which bears fruit immediately. The best landscape to be in is one showing 360 degrees of skyline, encircling you in its embrace. No photo or painting can show how it responds to the observer; it swivels and transforms as you follow your route. Hidden parts are revealed, prominent features hide. The church spire to the left of the barleyfield is now on the right. Every horizon hides a further landscape beyond, but offers it up to the will of your trudging feet. No map can tell us what any of this looks like; for it has no definite existence or duration. I have a sense of owning this landscape, or of its owning me. An enchantment is involved. It’s not diminished by knowledge that the rules of perspective are mathematical. They can be aped in “virtual reality”, which does not resemble being here, in this scene. For I am literally part of the landscape, part of England, part of the All. Perhaps I could survive here for a day or two, on these hedgerow blackberries, sloes, haws and apples. My riches could be the silver brooches of these dried thistle-heads shining in the late sun. I could be a clown’s comedy version of King Lear, not banished and lost but found, not blind like Gloucester but seeing as never before.

As I pass under the powerlines and round a pylon, I feel this is my home, if it will have me. Let England have my bones! I don’t give a damn where they put my remains when I’m gone—who does?—but still, I suggest they may scatter my ashes in this landscape, perhaps under this very pylon, where the public footpath goes over a little stile. Then they could come, park nearby, and walk across the fields, no matter the weather on that day. And then, who knows, they might share this feeling that I don’t know how to convey. If it’s a nice summer day, they could bring a picnic.

Now I’m at the spot where I did my first pastel, nine years ago. We were sitting together under this tree, and I drew— or is it painted?—from life. I proudly published it with these words alongside:

I’m just learning how to use these chalks (oil pastels), but was quite pleased at the result. We sat on a rug with a hedge behind us, and I peered over the ripening wheat field (in case you can’t recognise it) to view this scene.

They were very cheap pastels and I didn’t have a proper range of colours, and the intense effort of painting in this new medium was quite exhausting. The very next day my camera expired and it seemed as if the Japanese technology inside committed hara-kiri from shame at its inferiority. So I thought from now on I must master this new medium, take infinite pains teaching myself (like my namesake Vincent) to capture the dark mystery of those trees on the skyline, the colours, textures and above all the emotional truth, just as it struck my heart, of what I see, instead of this instant clicking. But my new mania didn’t last long and these days I just take snaps, as with this one, which shows how the same scene looks today. The copper beech in front of Chiltern Cottage has grown bigger.

I don’t imagine these farmers arranging bales of straw on trailers will see these fields as I do—a creation brimming with love—but there’s no way to be sure.

At some point in my walk I recalled a woman in the market earlier that day, asking me if I wanted to be saved by Jesus. There’s an organized group. They give food and clothes to the needy, preach, sing “Bless the Lord, O my Soul” with guitar accompaniment. I’ve found a picture of her at the same spot, near their regular stall. She puts out chastely for Jesus. A certain type of Christian is so moved by the sacrifice of the Cross as to imitate in their own lives and I think it may impart a kind of erotic thrill, to be moved by the Spirit and move others. Thus they become in their own eyes beautiful, which makes them indeed beautiful. Up to this point, I see no losers. But then comes the decline and the exploitation, endemic in sects or regions; which gets worse when it feels threatened. Such is our humanity.

Time and again I’ve stood up for religion in the sense of it carrying some spiritual flame that must not be blown out, some connection to the Divine, whatever that is. And this in spite of my having no religion, no system of beliefs— nothing but Nature-meditation and a sense of universal oneness.

It’s easy for outsiders to think all religions are the same. After being accosted on the street by an invitation to the love of Jesus, I went into the Parish Church, its entrance being a few yards away. It dates back to 1086; was restored to its current state in 1889. Like the market square, which it overlooks, it’s a public space offering continuity through the centuries. Its role is civic as much as spiritual, with a dozen services each year for local and national commemorations. A meet-and-greet volunteer was there, sitting at a table. As my visit had no particular purpose—I’ve gone round often enough gazing at the antiquities—I joined the table, introduced myself as a non-Christian child of the Church of England. We talked of the building’s role in the community, preserving a common heritage, and how you don’t have to be a Christian to feel at home here. At some point I mentioned the Book of Common Prayer by Thomas Cranmer, who suffered public martyrdom by burning at the stake. This was all fine stuff, and the lady knew where I was coming from. But a man at the same table who’d hardly spoken till that point fixed me with a baleful glare and asked permission to “say something”. And then he preached like Jeremiah, on the lines that pretty much everything in the past was terrible and we should not carry forward its iniquity but burn the influence of history in a cleansing fire. I tried to make clear that I wasn’t a congregation, just someone else like him; but he raged as from a pulpit in his anger and his shame—against his own country (South Africa) and Great Britain too. I felt it was time to go, before he went into detail. The traumas he still carried were burning hot, I should stop distracting the meeter-and-greeter, who was there to offer him needed balm. So we exchanged names and shook hands. I offer the vignette as an image of the Church of England today: a “broad church”, inclusive, kind, tolerant, not putting itself forward, not kicking out those who seem to decry its values.

The English in general are known for politeness and a sense of humour. We are pretty good at hypocrisy too. You need all three, perhaps, to calmly watch as our freedoms are threatened from all sides. Nothing new there. How though can one be tolerant of intolerance, and those who don’t believe in freedom as we know it, and reject our notions of a critical approach to beliefs and ideologies? It’s not my role personally to solve the world’s problems, but these questions have been causing me disquiet ever since coming to live in this part of town.

Such thoughts must have nudged me into reading a book by a Somali-Dutch-American refugee/politician/activist/academic, and to put the images of book and author on this post. She’s taken head-on a set of issues which I’ve glimpsed from my doorstep. I feel simultaneously horrified at her content, and relieved at her trenchant stance, her clear and compelling writing; and most of all her courage. These issues are spread world-wide, and are none of my business. Yet I cannot quite say that, for they are on my doorstep, literally. “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” So I shall try and practise lovingkindness, respect, cleanliness, tolerance—of the person, not his intolerance.


I did actually say to myself “England Have My Bones” when I walked under the powerlines, and it wasn’t just inspired by that sweet moment of communing with nature, it was all of the moments, all of the kindness and tolerance I’ve received; a sense of the privilege to be here. For I was born elsewhere, like many whose writing has been infused with love of England and Britishness, such as Rudyard Kipling, George Orwell, T H White (author of The Once and Future King). Those three were all born in India, but educated in England. I’ve had White’s memoir for years, on my Tsundoku pile—see previous post—being impressed greatly by its title, but little else so far. Then, when looking for its origin, I came across another book, Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, and found the following:

In England Have My Bones White wrote one of the saddest sentences I have ever read: ‘Falling in love is a desolating experience, but not when it is with a countryside.’ He could not imagine a human love returned. He had to displace his desires onto the landscape, that great, blank green field that cannot love you back, but cannot hurt you either.

And if not for her book, I wouldn’t know about his affinity with my county:

In England have My Bones, he describes Buckinghamshire in a similar way, through what it is not. His county lacks outstanding qualities, beauty and historical significance, and so it avoids the attention of the world. It is safe. When White goes on to explain how Buckinghamshire ‘concealed its individuality in order to preserve it’ but is ‘secretly exuberant in its private way’ you realize that he is writing about his own character. More disguises. The mirror works both ways. The lines between the man and the landscape blur. When White writes of his love for the countryside, at heart he is writing about a hope that he might be able to love himself.

I’m saddened too that White had such a tortured life. For if he had found a human love returned, he could have loved himself, and then he might see that a great blank green field, at least in moments, can love you back.

detail: click for full panorama

late blackberries; wild apples; haws with budded ivy; sloes

thistles shining like silver brooches

maybe under this pylon if you like

first attempt

the same scene one evening 9 years later

I watched a team gathering straw bales

getting high from telling the good news on the street

I did the pastel & the photo from under the bigger tree

What’s this old machinery? It’s at the gate to a . . .>>>>

shocking, yet offering a glimmer of hope

title page of an item from my tsundoku pile

>>> . . . farm, & offers water for any thirsty dog

Following in White’s footsteps

Tsundoku

I’m writing this for Rob, to celebrate the fact that we have known one another 42 years, and that he rang me the other evening, and it was good. When we have been in touch he has been generous, but we have also fallen out a few times. When I was in need he was quick to let me stay under his roof and when I found a place of my he own gave me pots & pans, a hi-fi, CDs, a giant van Gogh poster; and much tolerance, which I sometimes stretched beyond his limit.

He reads my blog sometimes, and finds it complicated, with long words. He’s not alone in this. I frequently despair of it myself. If I remember rightly, years ago he asked me how he could set up a website. It’s a pretty big deal, I said. Then I pointed him towards Blogger, and he started his own blog, writing simply & succinctly. He soon acquired a devoted following, including Darius, Hayden & Jim—of whom more in my footnote.

When I woke up this morning, the day seemed full of promise. From my bed, I saw the dawn sky, the rising sun reflected on the walls of the Victorian factory opposite, chasing the shadows downwards. It’s not a factory any more. It will be a students’ hall of residence, but at present is a building site where most days nobody is working. The promising day chased away memories of an eventful dream. It was set in a building somewhat like the hall of residence I soon hope to see. Wandering through, I had fruitful encounters with various ex-fellow-students, & many intriguing adventures, all of which I’ve forgotten except for one conversation. His face is familiar but I can’t remember his name or where I know him from. I ask him what he does now and he reels off a string of projects, some of which are so rarefied I can hardly guess what they’re about. I conclude he’s become an amateur historian in his retirement. I marvel at how little he’s aged since long ago, when we knew one another—as students? And now I remember that after Rob’s call I managed to find a recent mugshot of him online, and see that he looks a little older than we last met. It dawns that this character in the dream was Rob: the the same curly hair, the same thoughtful smile.

The day is still full of promise, a feeling so precious that I wonder if we can all feel this, and what gets in the way. We get caught up in things, attached to the fruits of our actions, as I think the Bhagavad Gita puts it, instead of floating above it somewhere. As I write this, “floating above it somewhere” doesn’t sound right at all. That’s merely an intellectual idea of detachment. The real thing is to love the world: all of it.

What is the world? As Werner Herzog said, & I’ve adopted as a motto for this blog, “The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.” For this is what I do to get uncaught-up in things.

click to see drawings of other untranslatable words

And as Natalie Goldberg, writer and teacher of writing, said, “The deepest secret in the heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world.” I quoted this in a post from February 2012, and it has stuck in my mind. But it wasn’t till today that I got her book, Writing Down the Bones. Its content is so inspiring that I only read one page before learning I can write a different way, or perhaps in the way I used to write. To pen these words, I set the book aside, on a heap of other books I’ve yet to read. The Japanese have a word for it: tsundoku.

But I have just gone back to take another peek, and then another:

-----She has a wonderful word “uneducation”, whereby you can free your writing by unlearning the rules you thought yourself bound by

-----And there’s this: “. . . I studied Zen formally with Dainin Katagiri . . . About three years ago, he said to me, ‘Why do you come to sit meditation? Why don’t you make writing your practice? If you go deep enough in writing, it will take you everyplace”

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Hayden, Darius, Jim
When I started my new blog—this one—in April 2006, I was fortunate in acquiring some readers from Rob’s blog. Hayden visited frequently and last commented in May 2012. Darius later used his real name Paul Maurice Martin, published his book Original Faith & last commented here in September 2009. He suffers from “a debilitating, progressive, and undiagnosed disease” and I’ve heard nothing since to verify that he’s still alive. As for Jim, he suddenly deleted most of his blog and disappeared in September 2008. I think he may have gone to jail as his chequered past (Army deserter?) may have caught up with him. Not long before his disappearance he asked me if there was any way to save his blog posts. I saved them in a document and sent it to him. I might still have a copy somewhere.