Wise Words: Trust Art

Trust it. Art is an act of faith; first for the artist herself and foremost for the audience. It is necessary to believe that there is something here worth having and to persevere into the other world of the artist which will reveal itself with a little work and a little patience. It is a love-affair and anyone who has fallen in love will know that outside of that moment of recognition, the beloved is only another face among faces. What changes is not the beloved but our perception of her.

…

I know of no better communicator than art. No better means of saying so precisely those things which need so urgently to be said. It has been a baton handed on to us across centuries and through difference. It is an act of courage. 

(Jeanette Winterson, from the essay ‘A Veil of Words’, in Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery, Vintage: London, 1996, pp. 96 and 99)

Telling the New Stories

I wrote most of what follows several weeks ago, originally as part of my post about Jeanette Winterson and the importance of reading, This Strange Agency of the Soul. Yet I decided that post was becoming too long and unwieldy. There were things in it that were of great importance, but that I wasn’t yet ready to say. Now, after some further thought, I think I am ready. Though all this can ever be is incomplete.

*

Jeanette Winterson has written: ‘I do not believe that art (all art) and beauty are ever separate, nor do I believe that either art or beauty are optional in a sane society’ (1). I fancy this says a lot about the collective psychological state of our culture, which seems to be getting uglier and more insane by the day (though beauty still shines out, if you know where to look). She goes on to say:

If the arts did not exist, at every moment, someone would begin to create them, in song, out of dust and mud, and although the artefacts might be destroyed, the energy that creates them is not destroyed. If, in the comfortable West, we have chosen to treat such energies with scepticism and contempt, then so much the worse for us. Art is not a little bit of evolution that late-twentieth-century city dwellers can safely do without. Strictly, art does not belong to our evolutionary pattern at all. It has no biological necessity. Time taken up with it was time lost to hunting, gathering, mating, exploring, building, surviving, thriving. Odd then, that when routine physical threats to ourselves and our kind are no longer a reality, we say we have no time for art.

Paleolithic cave paintings, Sierra Madrona, Ciudad, Spain (Wikimedia Commons)

If we say that art, all art is not longer relevant to our lives, then we might at least risk the question ‘What has happened to our lives?’ The usual question, ‘What has happened to art?’ is too easy an escape route. (2)

What has happened to our lives?

Humans tell stories. It is one of the things that we cannot help but do, in order to make sense of the world; and those stories, whether we are aware of it or not, actually create the world, influencing the ways in which we live, and even how we think, perceive and relate to the world. Yet, something has gone terribly wrong, for we are teetering on the edge of global destruction—climate change, mass species loss, never-ending violence, political and corporate corruption and greed, and so on and so on. Therefore, it seems fair to say that at some point in the past, something went awry with our stories.

The founders of The Dark Mountain Project, Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine, have written that we have been ‘led to this point by the stories we have told ourselves—above all, by the story of civilisation’ (3)—namely, by the myths of progress, of our separation from nature, and of human centrality and supremacy. We are destroying the Earth, yet many people seem to think it is our destiny, as humans, to do so, because they believe in these ‘myths’.

The word ‘myth’, in this context, means a widely held but false belief or idea. It is not used in the sense that Alan Garner means when he describes myth as ‘a complex of story that, for various reasons, human beings see as demonstrations of the inner cause of the universe and of human life’ (4). Those myths are quite a different thing, necessary and valuable. Indeed, those myths provide us with a fertile soil from which our new stories can be grown. 

Thus, we need to start telling new stories. Stories that (re)connect us with the wild world once more, make us part of nature, humbly enmeshed with all other beings. After all, the words human, humble, and humus are etymologically related. We are literally creatures of the earth, and must show deference to Nature.

Kingsnorth and Hine say, 

writers, artists, poets and storytellers of all kinds have a critical role to play. Creativity remains the most uncontrollable of human forces: without it, the project of civilisation is inconceivable, yet no part of life remains so untamed and undomesticated. Words and images can change minds, hearts, even the course of history. (5)

So, if we change the stories we are telling, we can change the world. Art can truly be that powerful.

This is one of the reasons why I write as I do, about the subjects I do. I want to write myself back into relationship with the natural world. For if I begin with the imagination, writing of rabbit-girls and bird-women, green-thumbed gardeners and wise old women, then perhaps all that weedy wildness will begin to spill over into my everyday life. At the very least, I want to change my world. 

It is why I read as I do too. Mainstream books, for the most part, do not interest me. I want wildness, myth, magic, beauty; writing that challenges, that inspires. I don’t just want entertainment; I want to step outside of time, be shown alternative ways to live and be (including nonhuman ways), and to nourish my soul in the process. As Ursula Le Guin puts it, ‘I want to recognise something I never saw before’ (6), for transfiguring visions to leap off the page and into my heart.

And maybe art doesn’t just nourish our souls. Maybe it nourishes Earth’s soul too (after all, we are all small parts of that larger, encompassing soul). All the more reason to read (widely and wildly), to make art, and to daydream, because these untamed, timeless activities are a rebellion against the forces of civilisation that sneer at stories, at art, at dreams, soul and Spirit, and that have brought us to the brink of extinction. ‘The soul, after all, is our inner wildness’ (7), the complement to the outer wildness of nature, and we need both to survive. Therefore we must be mindful to feed our souls well.

So let’s read and write, paint and sculpt, sing and dance. Let’s uncivilise our souls, and tell the new stories that will create the new world we so sorely need. We might just save everything in the process.

The two photos above (with a little creative editing from me) are pages from the most recent Dark Mountain book, Issue 10: Uncivilised Poetics, showing billboard art by Robert Montgomery. You can see more of his work here: www.robertmontgomery.org

References
1. Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery, Vintage: London, 1995, p. 5
2. ibid, pp. 20–21
3. Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine, Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto, 2009, p. 10—you can read the whole thing here: http://dark-mountain.net/about/manifesto/
4. Alan Garner, The Voice That Thunders: Essays and Lectures, The Harvill Press: London, 1997, p. 27
5. Kingsnorth & Hine, pp. 10–11
6. Ursula Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination, Shambhala: Boston, 2004, p. 268
7. Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and the Psyche, New World Library: Novato, California, 2003, p. 15

This Strange Agency of the Soul

Back in August 2014 I was lucky enough to attend An Evening with Jeanette Winterson at the Sydney Opera House, and a couple of months ago I reminded myself of that night by watching the video of the event. 

In her insightful and very entertaining speech Winterson spoke of the great importance of books and stories—indeed, all art—in opening up ‘emotional resonances’ within us, feeding our souls, and showing us new possibilities and ways of living; and therefore, that reading should never be considered a ‘guilty pleasure’. It is, in fact, a vital necessity. 

She also emphasised a very interesting idea: that there is no such thing as linear time in storytelling (which, as a writer, I find a very exciting concept); and the same applies to the reading of stories. When you are reading, dwelling within the space of a story,

then you are actually stretching time. There’s more happening than can possibly happen when you are watching the clock, when you’re racing around … Stories seem to me to be a great challenge to the way that we live our lives. And in there, not only do we find different ideas, different experiences, different emotions, different possibilities, we find a direct challenge to this hustle and hassle culture of the 24/7 economy. (1)

Indeed, in the modern world, time itself has become a commodity, and anything that is not deemed to make productive use of it (such as reading or daydreaming), is thus considered a waste of time. This is where reading, as an escape from clock-time, and as a soul-nourishing activity, rather than an outwardly productive one, is a challenge to the modern world, a subversive, rebellious act. 

The modern world is Time’s fool. Art is master of itself. (2)

For me, reading is also a haven, a retreat in difficult times. When my health is at a low ebb, sometimes reading is almost all I can do, so many books have been keeping me company over the past couple of months. I know, of course, that there is much more to life than books (this is one of the lessons that I tried to explore in my story The Pear Tree). Yet books feed me with life, for when I cannot go out into the physical world as much as I would like, I can go into the world of a book instead. The world of the imagination has its own reality. And in exploring the world imaginatively, I can imagine myself back into relationship with the physical world too. At least, this is what I hope and strive for, in my writing as well as my reading.

I had intended to read less this year in order to make more time for writing, yet I have slowly come to realise that reading is not something I can just put aside. It is an integral part of my gathering of ideas and inspiration, my own nourishment. I never know when something I read will spark a thought, an image, a story. Put simply: I need to read in order to be able to write. The two activities are intertwined and inseparable.

In the end, as Winterson says, ‘by making the time for the book we are actually making time for something much larger, which is this strange agency of the soul’. (3) And this strange agency of the soul is, I believe, intertwined with and inseparable from the creative life, so it cannot, must not, be ignored. And thus I read—books, blogs, articles—and I digest, store away, ponder, take notes; I nourish my imagination, and it grows inside me, fed on stories of flying girls in rural Wales, of Frida Kahlo’s complex and colourful Mexico, and tales of magic and love in old Erin. And from this inner space interacting with the outer world emerges life.

Art does not imitate life. Art anticipates life. (4)

Perhaps today, of all days, when such fear and uncertainty has been unleashed on the world, we need art more than ever. 

So, dear readers, what books have been nourishing your souls recently?

References
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMnSEhZVRq0
2. Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery, Vintage: London, 1995, p. 90
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMnSEhZVRq0
4. Art Objects, p. 40

From Out of Patience and Searching

I feel a need to slow down, to rest. To continue my ongoing search, of course—for my Self, for meaning, for stories, for life amidst my sometimes non-life—but to do so slowly, with patience. 

It frustrates me that there is so much I could do, yet at the moment there is not enough energy to do even half of it. I have no choice but to go steadily, to let life and the creative process take me where they need me to go, at a pace that I can keep up with.

This past week I’ve been heartened by rereading Jeanette Winterson’s Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery (1995). I first started reading Winterson’s work when I was a teenager, and I admit, I did not fully understand her then, though I was certainly beguiled; now, older and a little wiser, with much more reading behind me, I do understand her better (though not perfectly, I am sure), and I love her work all the more. 

Initially, what drew me in were the fantastical elements of her stories, which, nonetheless, I would not have described as ‘fantasy’ in the usual sense. To me it seemed more like she had taken reality and skewed it sideways slightly, so that the impossible suddenly became possible. As she writes in Art Objects, ‘I wanted to create an imaginative reality sufficiently at odds with our daily reality to startle us out of it’ (188). I think this is, perhaps, one of the things that the best books do: they startle us into seeing our own reality with different eyes, with greater intensity, and our imagination kicks in, allowing us to believe in and dwell in other worlds.

Reading Winterson is something of a challenge—I often feel like a tiny intellectual minnow to her grand Salmon of Knowledge—but it is worth the effort. Art Objects, especially, is replete with insight and wisdom, so much so that I have typed out almost nine pages worth of quotes for future reference! 

I particularly identify with Winterson’s approach to life. She says:

I like to live slowly. Modern life is too fast for me. That may be because I was brought up without the go-faster gadgets of science, and now that I can afford them, see no virtues in filling the day with car rides, plane rides, mobile phones, computer communications.

If you deal in real things, those things have a pace of their own that haste cannot impose upon. The garden I cultivate, the vegetables I grow, the wood I have to chop, the coal I have to fetch, the way I cook, (casseroles), the way I shop, (little and often), the time it takes to read a book, to listen to music, the time it takes to write a book, none of those things can happen in microwave moments. I am told that the values I hold and the way I live are anachronisms paid for by my privilege. It is a privilege to make books that people want to read but why would it be more appropriate, less anachronistic, for me to spend the money I earn on a flashy lifestyle instead of funding my own peace and quiet? (158–159)

Remember that she was writing this in the early- to mid-1990s, before mobile phones, the Internet and all the other technologies we take for granted had become as ubiquitous as they are today, and therefore I believe she was, and remains, a woman ahead of her time in striving after a way of life that is real and nourishing, yet to so many seems ‘behind the times’. In some ways I could describe her, and her writing, as being outside of time. If you have read her books, you will know what I mean, for she often plays with time; also, as she has said, in stories, whilst writing them and reading them, time as we know it ceases to exist. It is clear that Jeanette Winterson knows what is important, necessary to life, and necessary to the making of art: peace and quiet; a lack of haste.

I need this peace and quiet for myself, this slow pace, for I often have a tendency to rush rush rush, and it does me no good, physically or mentally. (Does it do anyone any good?) Though don’t get me wrong, I appreciate what technology, in particular the Internet, has given me—information at my fingertips, connections with people near and far, and the opportunity to share my work publicly, by blogging. Yet, sometimes I long for a return to a pre-Internet, pre-technological life, in which I would have more time, and would use it more wisely, forming a better relationship with the world around me. In which there would be less distraction, less digital/virtual intrusion into physical reality and my own imaginative realms. That day may yet come (whether through my own choice, or by technological collapse), but for now I must find my own ways to live with less haste, to use my time (and energy) wisely, and to walk the creative path with patience and trust. 

Life takes time. Art takes time. I must be patient.

Winterson writes:

My work is rooted in silence. It grows out of deep beds of contemplation, where words, which are living things, can form and re-form into new wholes. What is visible, the finished books, are underpinned by the fertility of uncounted hours. A writer has no use for the clock. A writer lives in an infinity of days, time without end, ploughed under. 

It is sometimes necessary to be silent for months before the central image of a book can occur. I do not write every day, I read every day, think every day, work in the garden every day, and recognise in nature the same slow complicity. The same inevitability. The moment will arrive, always it does, it can be predicted but it cannot be demanded. I do not think of this as inspiration. I think of it as readiness. A writer lives in a constant state of readiness. For me, the fragments of the image I seek are stellar; they beguile me, as stars do, I seek to describe them, to interpret them, but I cannot possess them, they are too far away. At last and for no straightforward reason, but out of patience and searching, I find that what was remote is in my hands. Still uncut, unworked, but present. (169–170)

I am going to take some advice from this, to invite silence in, and pursue Nature’s Time in favour of clock time. To live by the slowness and rightness of the turning seasons, the sun and the moon, and my own internal seasons and cycles. To read and think every day, and to spend time outside, walking or just sitting in the garden, watching the birds and insects and newly emerged skinks, listening to the living, speaking Earth around me. Trying, as much as possible, to remain in a state of readiness, so that out of patience and searching, what I seek will at last arrive glimmering in my hands. 

Violet Medicine, Nestling into Spring and a Garment of Weeds

I recently discovered that the leaves and flowers of violets are edible, and especially good for gently cleansing and detoxifying the body—thus perfect for a spring clean. They grow all over the place in our garden, the friendliest (and now most useful) of plants. So every day or two over the past few weeks I have been drinking a mug of violet tea (a subtly mauve liquid with the merest hint of green), and munching on a few of the bright heart-shaped leaves. Both the tea and the young leaves are fresh and mild-tasting, so not at all difficult to consume.

Violet is the diminutive form of the Latin Viola, the Latin form of the Greek name Ione. There is a legend that when Jupiter changed his beloved Io into a white heifer for fear of Juno’s jealousy, he caused these modest flowers to spring forth from the earth to be a fitting food for her, and he gave them her name. Another derivation of the word Violet is said to stem from Vias (wayside). (Maud Grieve, A Modern Herbal, 1931, p. 834)

Mythological derivations aside, I have found these ‘modest flowers’ to be of particular help at this time, a ‘fitting food’ to calm and cleanse body and mind, and bring me back to myself (an ongoing process), in readiness for going deep into the spring that gets stronger and closer by the day, and welcoming whatever the season brings.

Other purplish flowers have also beckoned to me: rosemary, which I have taken cuttings of and dried, in readiness for use in herbal potions for hair and skin; and lavender, as I rest with a lavender-scented pillow gently weighing down my tired eyelids.

Purple is a colour I particularly associate with the sacred, with Spirit, so I am seeing it as an ally at this time, revealing itself through these spring flowers which can heal both internally and externally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. 

Not long ago I came across a fallen bird’s nest on one of my frequent walks (two in fact, a very short distance from each other, though I only brought one home to photograph). Both were empty, and neither had any sign of broken eggshell, either inside or nearby, so I assume (hope) that they had fallen before they had had a chance to be used. Being palm-sized (and my hands are small), they were probably made by a honeyeater, or another very small species, and were beautifully constructed from pine needles, bits of some kind of nylon twine/thread, and, in the case of the one I brought home, lined with downy feathers. 

It made me think of how all creatures have a nesting instinct, a desire to make or dwell within a place that is home. The animals manage it quite effortlessly, while we humans tend to have much more difficulty. As Jeanette Winterson wrote in Written on the Body (1992):

Very few people ever manage what nature manages without effort and mostly without fail. We don’t know who we are or how to function, much less how to bloom. Blind nature. Homo sapiens. Who’s kidding whom? (p. 43) 

Finding the nests seemed an apt reminder to further nestle myself into spring, and into this land that is my home, and to let it energise and inspire me. Perhaps I am already nested here, more than I consciously realise. 

It’s so easy sometimes to get carried away by my own trivial human worries, and to forget that nature carries on regardless, and that I am one small part of her constant unfolding. She is always there to help me, if I let her—medicine emerging through violets or bird’s nests, mist over the mountains or a magpie singing in the rain. It is Mother Nature who can show us how to bloom.

I am also pleased to reveal that after several months (!) of doing, undoing and redoing, I have finished knitting a cardigan. Hurrah! As the colour of the wool was rather unpoetically named 0098, I have decided to refer to it as my ‘Donegal cardigan’, after the make of yarn (and because the colour makes an Irish connection apt). Though I could also call it my cardigan of weeds, for it is far from perfect, and a little weedy in appearance. Though I’m sure it will serve me well as a light garment for this in-between season, a fitting article of clothing for wandering into spring’s wild weediness.

And here is a galah. Just because.

A Poem: Tree Woman

I think it will become obvious, if you keep reading my blog, or have looked at my art on Redbubble, that I have something of an obsession with trees … and increasingly birds too, but let’s not get sidetracked …

I haven’t written much poetry, but occasionally an idea or image demands to be written in that form, and I can only obey.

This poem was, on the whole, inspired by the Jeanette Winterson quote below. However, as I noted beside the first draft in my notebook, I was also thinking of a sad little Japanese folktale called ‘Willow’, about a man who marries a woman who is the spirit of a much-loved willow tree (found in Collected Folk Tales (2011) by Alan Garner).  

Tree Woman

‘There are plenty of legends about women turning into trees but are there any about trees turning into women?’

~ Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

I saw a woman in a tree.

There was something 

in the curving form of the trunk,

the grace of the branches,

the head-held-high canopy.

She had weeping willow leaf hair—

sunlit green—

welcoming arms,

and a blush of lichen 

on her cheeks.

She cast an elegant, 

if hairy, shadow,

with lush limbs 

reaching out to me,

beckoning me 

to worship below her

(as if at an altar),

and to climb, 

to reach as she does

towards the encircling sky, 

wrapped around the Earth’s orb.

I went to sit in her shade,

to gaze up and admire her beauty

and the way she attracted—

with looks alone—

birds and butterflies and breezes.

What if I could have such beauty, 

such bearing?

Could I turn green?

Could I offer my flowers 

to passing bees?

Such generosity!

If I sit here for long enough 

perhaps I will become 

a small patch of moss,

growing at her feet.

I will grasp her and 

she will embrace me,

two lovers of the green, 

growing together,

held close 

in verdant sisterhood.

A euphoric union 

in the sun and shade,

wind and rain.

White Tree II, 2005