(no subject)
A friend of mine complained that I never write enough. He told me I needed to go out into a field and sit there and write whatever I was inspired to...
The Crime of Aestheticism
26/05/05
Having decided to write I ventured outdoors. Paper, pen, a bottle of cold beer and no inspiration. For some reason I imagined I would write better in the outside, unhindered, unenclosed, soaking in nature and spewing it forth onto the page.
As I walked through the field, a wind rushed through my hair and across the top of my bottle. A resonant low whistle rang out; I would imagine an A, or a G#. And without thinking I drew the bottle to my lips and blew, creating more or less the same effect, but with my breath as the wind.
I sat under a tree, wishing I had a camera with me. The tree’s limbs stretched and twisted, broken off at the ends. Dry, shattered wood splaying forth in innumerable directions. It would make for a wonderful photograph, I mused.
I sat, still with no inspiration to write. My Muse simply lay there, growing with such sloth it was invisible to the naked eye, and doing what grass does best; next to nothing. I spoke to her and her only response was a shake of her head, from left to right as the wind enabled.
I had an overwhelming desire to capture the scene in a fresh way; to immortalise it in words. If I only I had had the foresight to bring paints or pastels with me. Art was no forte of mine, and yet somehow in a bout of aesthetic vanity I imagined I could capture the sun. I dreamt that I could draw the clouds down from the heavens and paste them onto my page. I fantasised that in some way I could give nature a meaning. The purpose of all is for man to desire to give it purpose.
How arrogant my thoughts and how shallow my motives.
Why am I so deficient as to be unsatisfied at the symphony of the wind played upon my glass bottle? Why must I feel the urge to replicate it as a matter of necessity? Am I trying to prove a point to nature? Am I trying to declare my independence; my human self-sufficiency?
How foolish my desire to capture the beauties of the shattered tree! How cruel for me to find pleasure in its broken limbs and dead dry bark; to glory in its disability.
Tribal folk may believe that to photograph somebody is to steal a part of their soul and I cannot help but feel they have a point. In photographing a tree I am stealing from it something of what makes it so glorious; its very independence.
Surely what makes a tree desirable to be captured and contained is the fact that it is neither captured nor contained. Am I so jealous in my human bondage to restrictions and laws that I will not be happy until I have removed all freedom from trees and plants, and sun, sky, moon or grass?
Is it possible that my insatiable desire to tear the Heavens from their Sistine ceiling and to impress them upon my paper might be a severe crime against the very nature of nature itself? The man who makes it his occupation to bind those around him is truly the least free of all, for he is bound inextricably by a need to be the one who binds.
Man seeks to explain the world in terms of physical laws and vast hypotheses but in so doing is he actually rendering the world a thoroughly unworldly place? I see a bird in the sky and, admiring the beauty of his unhindered ability to fly freely, I purchase one and put him in a place where he can do no such thing.
The modern scientist professes to be enchanted by the vastness of the universe, and then he imprisons it within laws and theorems. Do we pay our respects to nature by removing the very attribute we respect most?
My trite melodies and inadequate pastels are far less beautiful than the things themselves for the very reason that they can be explained. It is undoubtedly my lips that provide the breath to play upon the bottle, and yet nobody sees the lips of God creating the wind. One can trace the painting to the paintbrush to the painter, but who can see God’s palette as He paints the stars in the sky? Who can observe as God prepares the canvas and sweeps in the watercolours, allowing them to spread and create the firmament and all its clouds? The beauty of this natural art is that it is inexplicable, and when we try to explain it, all aesthetic value is lost. The clouds become the mere taps that water the earth and beauty is replaced with functionality. The world becomes nothing more than a device.
Is the artist any less guilty of such a crime than the scientist?
How, then, should we respond to nature? By locking it away in an attic or a picture frame? Or simply by standing as a natural man in a natural awe of nature itself? It is the wild and natural man who best appreciates the things of nature by recognising beauty and allowing it to remain. It is the Aesthete who least respects the truly aesthetic.
Chesterton remarks; Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.’
I fear I may too often be Wilde, and not often enough, Wild.
The Crime of Aestheticism
26/05/05
Having decided to write I ventured outdoors. Paper, pen, a bottle of cold beer and no inspiration. For some reason I imagined I would write better in the outside, unhindered, unenclosed, soaking in nature and spewing it forth onto the page.
As I walked through the field, a wind rushed through my hair and across the top of my bottle. A resonant low whistle rang out; I would imagine an A, or a G#. And without thinking I drew the bottle to my lips and blew, creating more or less the same effect, but with my breath as the wind.
I sat under a tree, wishing I had a camera with me. The tree’s limbs stretched and twisted, broken off at the ends. Dry, shattered wood splaying forth in innumerable directions. It would make for a wonderful photograph, I mused.
I sat, still with no inspiration to write. My Muse simply lay there, growing with such sloth it was invisible to the naked eye, and doing what grass does best; next to nothing. I spoke to her and her only response was a shake of her head, from left to right as the wind enabled.
I had an overwhelming desire to capture the scene in a fresh way; to immortalise it in words. If I only I had had the foresight to bring paints or pastels with me. Art was no forte of mine, and yet somehow in a bout of aesthetic vanity I imagined I could capture the sun. I dreamt that I could draw the clouds down from the heavens and paste them onto my page. I fantasised that in some way I could give nature a meaning. The purpose of all is for man to desire to give it purpose.
How arrogant my thoughts and how shallow my motives.
Why am I so deficient as to be unsatisfied at the symphony of the wind played upon my glass bottle? Why must I feel the urge to replicate it as a matter of necessity? Am I trying to prove a point to nature? Am I trying to declare my independence; my human self-sufficiency?
How foolish my desire to capture the beauties of the shattered tree! How cruel for me to find pleasure in its broken limbs and dead dry bark; to glory in its disability.
Tribal folk may believe that to photograph somebody is to steal a part of their soul and I cannot help but feel they have a point. In photographing a tree I am stealing from it something of what makes it so glorious; its very independence.
Surely what makes a tree desirable to be captured and contained is the fact that it is neither captured nor contained. Am I so jealous in my human bondage to restrictions and laws that I will not be happy until I have removed all freedom from trees and plants, and sun, sky, moon or grass?
Is it possible that my insatiable desire to tear the Heavens from their Sistine ceiling and to impress them upon my paper might be a severe crime against the very nature of nature itself? The man who makes it his occupation to bind those around him is truly the least free of all, for he is bound inextricably by a need to be the one who binds.
Man seeks to explain the world in terms of physical laws and vast hypotheses but in so doing is he actually rendering the world a thoroughly unworldly place? I see a bird in the sky and, admiring the beauty of his unhindered ability to fly freely, I purchase one and put him in a place where he can do no such thing.
The modern scientist professes to be enchanted by the vastness of the universe, and then he imprisons it within laws and theorems. Do we pay our respects to nature by removing the very attribute we respect most?
My trite melodies and inadequate pastels are far less beautiful than the things themselves for the very reason that they can be explained. It is undoubtedly my lips that provide the breath to play upon the bottle, and yet nobody sees the lips of God creating the wind. One can trace the painting to the paintbrush to the painter, but who can see God’s palette as He paints the stars in the sky? Who can observe as God prepares the canvas and sweeps in the watercolours, allowing them to spread and create the firmament and all its clouds? The beauty of this natural art is that it is inexplicable, and when we try to explain it, all aesthetic value is lost. The clouds become the mere taps that water the earth and beauty is replaced with functionality. The world becomes nothing more than a device.
Is the artist any less guilty of such a crime than the scientist?
How, then, should we respond to nature? By locking it away in an attic or a picture frame? Or simply by standing as a natural man in a natural awe of nature itself? It is the wild and natural man who best appreciates the things of nature by recognising beauty and allowing it to remain. It is the Aesthete who least respects the truly aesthetic.
Chesterton remarks; Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.’
I fear I may too often be Wilde, and not often enough, Wild.