Mirror

A mirror confirms my existence, captures my breath, a trembling eye, the very fact of me. Still here then.

A mirror traps or contains. Fear. Safety. An entrance, an exit. To a world known or unknown. Where occasionally panicked crows choke the sky. Mirrored words, said and unsaid, rising, flapping.

A mirror is all inwardness. A Keeper of Change.

Picture credit: The Mirror, 1885, William Merritt Chase (source: WikiArt).

Acknowledgement to Simon Armitage.

From journal, July 2023.

Left

Always turning left when told to head straight. Always turning left when told to go right. Always turning left in every area of life. Even the body follows that command, go left, go left. Unusual. Uncommon. Atypical. Natural or imposed, against impulse. Always left. The hand that writes, the leg that leads. An alien landscape for so many.

Picture credit: Woman with a Parasol, also known as Study of a Figure Outdoors Facing Left, 1886, Claude Monet (source: WikiArt).

From journal, July 2023.

Voice

Distinguishing truth a challenge, surreal times.

Where is the voice or voices really telling it like it is? Always something made up, faked, misinterpreted.

Who can understand the complex workings of minds? Chemically, emotionally? Too individual. Begged and borrowed. Fluid.

Picture credit: Freeing the Voice, 1975, Marina Abramovic (source: WikiArt).

Inspired by Jackie Kay's introduction to Bessie Smith.

Written June 2023.

Jus' the Day

Then it was June, and the sun shone fiercely. Eyes inward on memory, laughing outwardly at Granma and Grampa. Still figuring, still drawing patterns in the dust with a stick, though the dust be a table and the stick a finger tracing its surface. Still feeling out of sync with the machine, goggled and muzzled like the driver sitting in the iron seat. Goggled mind, muzzled speech. Oughtn't to talk as I do, should keep my views in my head. Should only in my protests (with and against the world) sell Good Used Cars.

Preachin's a kinda tone a voice and preachin's a way a lookin' at things. Listen for a change of tone, a variation of rhythm. Is it telling or instructing? Fella has a story: It's a free country. The concrete road a mirror under the sun.

Well, I don' know what the country's comin' to. I jus' don' know. But it ain't the people's fault.

They only knowin' the results, not the causes. Results, not causes. Losses. The road.

Disliking sun and wind and earth, resenting food and weariness, hating time. Cars from all the country. All headin' west. The road full a them families.

This here's California, an' she don't look so prosperous. This here's a murder country. This here's the bones of a country. This here is California.

Acrost the desert such purty country – all orchards an' grapes an' yella oranges, an' lan' flat an' fine with water thirty feet down, layin' fallow. Good lan' ain't worked. Ever'thing in California is owned; ain't nothing left. Purtiest goddam country ever seen.

Land and food. Good green fields. Earth to crumble, grass to smell. Fallow fields a sin; unused land a crime. Jus' layin' there. Or raisin' one thing – cotton, peaches, lettuce. A temptation. It ain't our'n.

This here's Hooverville. Ever'body lookin' for work. Ain't no work. Ain't no crop. The work's done. Movin' on, shovin' north, a-going south. Take what we can get.

Workin' an' getting' our pay an' eatin'. Eatin' good for twelve days. Layin' pipe; good job, but it ain't gonna las' long.

Always scuttling for work, scrabbling to live. An' lookin' for pleasure.

A wave of bathing – children, men scrubbed clean. Best clothes, freshly washed. Hair braided and ribboned. A string band: guitar, harmonicas, fiddle. A dance. Sets people up an' makes them proud. Makes 'em think of ol' times.

Odour of sweet decay: ferment and rot fills the country. Sorrow. Failure.

Goin' in ever' gate, walkin' up to ever' house. Lookin' for somepin ain't gonna find. A-gettin' tired. Got to get bread an' meat an' coffee with sugar in. No slip, no groceries.

Ever' little step fo'ward, slip back a little, but never slip clear. Can't get straight. Crackin' up. Ain't no fambly now. Ever'body's gittin mean. Ever'body.

Cotton Pickers Wanted. White cotton like popcorn. Got a bag, a good cotton bag? Lines of people movin' across the field, talkin' across the rows. This is good work. Good pickin'. Until a great cotton-pickin' machine come an' put han' pickin out. Cotton's done.

Jus' try to live the day, jus' the day.

Picture credit: Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona, 1940, by Dorothea Lange (source: WikiArt)

See The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

Written June 2023.

Tap, Tap, Tap

The memories we hoard, the photos, the audio files, the stories, ours and those related to us. Words on a page become not just words on a page telling a story, an entirely unconnected story, but personal memories. Like a bird tapping with its beak, they tap, tap, tap and unlock them. The mind is flooded while the eyes still roam over the page where this other story of other lives is being told.

Food does it best. A tin of evaporated milk is mentioned and I see it, taste it, smell it, remember it poured on cereal, corn or bran flakes. Carnation. (Am I confusing it with condensed? It was likely there was both in their unmistakeable tins.) Meat wrapped in paper and I see ham sliced by the village butcher, feel the paper. Sensory doors have been opened.

Sometimes it's characters. I see myself in them – as I was, as I am – or I understand their perspective. Or I see in them a relative and perhaps appreciate what I overlooked or failed to grasp. Or I answer them back, argue with them, for they have touched on a subject I knew but didn't know how much I was sensitive to. Schizophrenia.

Why speak of it? Why think on it? Because we are all stories, many stories. Because dead is not dead.

Picture credit: Woodpecker Tapestry, 1885, William Morris (source: WikiArt)

See Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood.

From journal, May 2023.

Hammer-blow

Sit up straight, don't slouch. Stand up straight, shoulders back. An instruction given by adults, an instruction I now tell myself, and still, as always, gradually slide into a lazy posture. I can be attentive in this pose, or at least I think I can, although perhaps I'm only semi-listening, semi-taking-in whatever is being said or whatever my eyes are running over. My mind is possibly wandering aimlessly elsewhere, it's attention only a little caught by some word or sentence vocalised or written, which sets it off again in another direction.

This is happening quite a lot with Margaret Atwood, because her stories seem to prod and poke old thoughts, old memories, old times, or impart, like a teacher, aspects of a question or text I hadn't considered. Robert Browning's The Last Duchess is looked at with the eye of a student and an examiner; the whole plot of Hardy's Tess of the d'Ubervilles is described in a single paragraph. 'Tess had serious problems.' My mind sees Gemma Atherton as Tess and Eddie Redmayne as Angel Clare. Were either, I now wonder, right for those parts? Was the version they starred in like the book? Have I read it? I can't remember. Hardy was not a prescribed author. Seamus Heaney was, as was the bloke who wrote Z for Zachariah, and, of course, Shakespeare. It's only in adulthood I wish Hardy had been a set author, like I wish a different Shakespeare play – we did A Midsummer Night's Dream – had been assigned. It's still today my least favourite. Okay, I hate it. We pulled it apart and dissected it too much, and, in truth, I thought it silly.

But then I think myself silly too, in both senses. My over-active mind runs away on its own, to lands unknown or to mapped territory, and gets lost. Hesitates somewhere, departs from the way, and pours over, some years later, the missed or not taken turnings. My musings the same as Atwood's: Have I missed my own future, the life I was supposed to have? Where was the point I missed it? Did a hammer-blow, delivered by my three-old-cousin with a grown-up tool, to my eight-year-old forehead dampen my spirit and cause a chemical imbalance? Has owning a flat and furnishing it with my own possessions slowed me down, shut me off from what should have have been mine?

There are too many whys, too many maybes. If that other place, that other future ever existed, it's gone now.

Picture credit: Painting to Hammer a Nail, 1966, Yoko Ono (source: WikiArt).

See Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood.

From journal, May 2023.

Knitting a Yarn

Commence at the commencement, where only fairy tales begin. Once upon a time there was a spinster in her cradle, cut out for spinsterhood long before her birth. When older, and well established as a spinster, she thought she'd perhaps had a voice in the matter, had perhaps chosen this course for herself. Her purpose not to procreate but to read, often absorbingly, sometimes mechanically; to at all times keep her eyes and fingers employed. And indeed she may be right, for, if reading and a little life experience had taught her anything it was that a crowd out for fun could easily become a mob out for blood. She did not dispute this truth but rather feared it.

Picture credit: The Artist's Wife Knitting, 1920,William James Glackens (source: WikiArt).

From journal, May 2023.

Bukowski

Whiskey, scotch, beer, wine, vodka, gin. One more drink … Left thumb dead, liver shot, high blood pressure, haemorrhoids, ulcers and Christ knows what! Cigarette after cigarette. And symphony records.

Picture credit: Alcoholic Calavera, 1888, Jose Guadalupe Posada (source: WikiArt).

See we've got to communicate by Charles Bukowski.

From journal, April 2023.

On the Method and After Descartes' Meditations

A method, the method, his method, an instrument for action. It alone effective; it alone – in rooting out error and welcoming doubt – leading to certainty; it alone unifying thought, all thought, his thought. Mathematics. The sciences underpinned by it; our structural understanding of the external world governed by it. Descartes, a thinker, spectator rather than actor in the comedies/tragedies played, writing a fable – a moral instruction – to awaken the mind. Examples to perhaps follow, examples to perhaps not copy. Our thoughts, made and unmade by others, informed by observation and experience, entirely our own.

*

Certain that he is; he is, he exists. Certain that I am; I am, I exist. He thought he was a man; I think I am a woman. But what is a man, a woman? A 'whole machine made up of flesh and bones'. I am, I exist. He was, he existed. I am, he was, something. A thing that thinks. And feels. But what Descartes asked, I ask now: if I cease to think, will I cease to be, to exist?

What thinks? The mind or the soul? Are they one and the same? Immortal?

Picture credit: Rene Descartes and a Moving Matter, Alexander Roitburd (source: WikiArt).

See Discourse on Method and The Meditations by René Descartes, Penguin Classics.

From journal, March 2023.

Shakespeare and ...

Perhaps with … with … revised by … by Shakespeare and … Thomas Nashe; George Peele; George Wilkins; Thomas Middleton; John Fletcher. No consensus. For/against. Credit given where the play seems weak; not where it is strong. Any shortcomings, dissatisfactions with structure, style and quality must be due to collaboration. God forbid Shakespeare have an 'off' play. But is there convincing evidence? Yes and no. It's debated; the plays in question – Henry VIII (aka All is True) being one – are compared to those held to be sole Shakespeare; portions in supposed dual-authored texts are attributed, to no end, however. And as no agreement can be reached, interest shifts, falls away. What does it matter? Well, it just does, doesn't it? If Shakespeare questions, examines, the nature of truth, then we should do the same – consider the alternative: allow the sun to shine on other names.

Picture credit: The Plays of William Shakespeare,1849, Sir John Gilbert (source: Wikipedia).

From journal, March 2023.

Clashing of Swords

A critical clashing of swords. A writer criticised for what he/she has or hasn't written. They give in their works no direct mention of monumental events – events they're lived or are living through: war, epidemics, economic depressions; whereas other writers define themselves by doing just that – write into their fiction the changing politics and social conditions; use their pen or literary reputation to protest, to voice what they've observed or have identified as truth. Their truth; the people's truth.

Is that what literature should do? Speak for (and to) the marginalised? Reference history in the making or history made? I'm not sure it's a writer's – unless a journalist – responsibility. I don't agree there should be rules or standards. A writer should be free to write what he/she wants, and that includes mentioning or omitting what he/she feels like. Perhaps they want to be loose with time. Perhaps they see – in their present moment – no point in flinging more words, more mud, more truth, (even in novel form) at a subject. Perhaps the event itself was or is still too fluid. Perhaps writers should be let alone to do their work. Perhaps their works should be let alone during their lifetime and after their death.

Picture credit: Sword Rack, 2003, Dana Schutz (source: WikiArt).

From journal, March 2023.

Bench

I wish I felt comfortable alone on a bench. Enjoying the view, thinking my thoughts. Basking in the fresh air, the sun. A summer's day. But I don't, never have. Even with a book I feel unrelaxed. Conscious, perhaps, that I'm taking up a bench – nobody will sit next to a single person in case they strike up a conversation. I wouldn't. Okay, I might, if the silence felt awkward or the stranger's presence was too difficult to ignore, restless. It's so difficult to be comfortably alone – in the open. Conscious, perhaps, that I look nervous or suspicious. Too conscious, perhaps, of people, none like me, on their own.

Picture credit: Bench, 1881, Edouard Manet (source: WikiArt).

From journal, March 2023.

Annes

A buzz of words; a sheet of paper seized: can any be made sense of? can any be grasped and set down?

They swirl around like leaves or snow, as if blown by a pesky wind. Thoughts filled with Annes – Annes with an 'e': Austen's, Montgomery's, Brontë, my mother. Anne Elliot. Anne Shirley. Anne Brontë. Anne Francis (née Ralls). Fictional and real Annes. Orphaned Annes and Annes with siblings. Courageous Annes and overshadowed Annes. Forgotten Annes, sidelined by history, by everybody. Serious and searching Annes, determined to form their own opinions. Annes content to let others lead, for they will find their own narrow way. Single Annes and married Annes. Aunt Annes and Mother Annes. (What will they impart to their nieces, their daughters?) Arguing Annes. Secretive Annes. Annes forever slipping out of view.

Picture credit: Anne Bronte (from a group portrait) by her brother Patrick Bramwell Bronte (source: Wikipedia).

From journal, March 2023.

High-rise

A hankering for a high-rise apartment with basement laundry, mail room and garbage chute. A cubbyhole in the sky, higher than my three above the street. Maybe eight floors up like Helene Hanff or a penthouse on the sixteenth like her friend Nina, with above, below, on the same floor convivial human and dog neighbours and cat suitors. A building with a front step to sit out on and pass the time; with a night doorman who offers car-and-driver services as a sideline. A hankering for New York City of the 60s, 70s, 80s. For block parties and parades and Thanksgiving Days. A dream city, for though it is still there I would not find it as written. It would have changed – as all cities do – and I'm not the type who likes getting lost. Nor do I like constant noise and bustle and bright lights. I would not make a good New Yorker; only in dream could I adopt the city as my home.

Picture credit: Apartment View, 1993, Wayne Thiebaud (source: WikiArt).

See Letter From New York by Helene Hanff. 

Written March 2023.

A Third-floor Lady

In these rooms there is stillness, a tense stillness. Something must happen. Movement. The air agitated, water run so the breakfast dishes can be washed, cupboard doors opened and softly closed. Chores. A third-floor lady going about her morning routine, thinking as she does them 'what comes next', or ruminating on some problem, some thought, or sentence lately read. Another lady had said: 'A decision leaves one free. Hesitation and doubt leaves one surrounded by undone things.' Regrets, is that what she means? thinks the third-floor lady. Perhaps the folly of nothingness, of clinging to places? Perhaps … A questioning mind, such as this lady possesses, finds perhapses all the time.

Picture credit: Room in Brooklyn,1932, Edward Hopper (source: WikiArt).

Written March 2023.

Building Upon Sand

A third of life spent in the world of dreams, building upon sand. Building, deliberately toppling. With feet, with spade. Building, with hands. Patting it carefully, proud, before waves crash over it and drag it out to sea. Nothing itself, everything something else. Fear: kick and scream, or retreat. Detachment: observe; examine. Herd: deciding emotions; overriding inclinations. Run; scream. A human machine.

Picture credit: Beach at Le Pouldu, 1889, Paul Gauguin (source: WikiArt).

From journal, February 2023.

Sky and Earth

Words circle protestingly, a page of solid ink. Sky and earth. Meeting. The sky so strong so enormous settling everything, choosing what glories – what weathers! what tints! what beauties! – to bestow on earth. A city of gardens; a noble river; exotic sun-scorched or leafless trees and bursted flowers. Words breathed into the cool night air, floating like clouds, swelling the atmosphere. Chandapore. India.

Picture credit: Indian Home, 1927, A Y Jackson (source: WikiArt)

See the opening to A Passage to India by E. M. Forster. 

From journal, February 2023.

World

An unruly world controlled through the presence of spirits (fairies, ghosts, Weird Sisters) and the power of magic. He/she who has the knowledge, like Dr John Dee, confers authority, can influence politics.

A world governed by suspicion to the point of paranoia (plots to murder). A world turned – should these double agents succeed – upside down. Cities of dreams, places of nightmares.

An expanding unsettling Elizabethan world (a global system) replete with exotic riches: sugar, fine horses, and gold, peddled perhaps by travelling legs following a mental map … Unless the salesman be disguised, a Catholic priest on the run, so a room – in secret – could become a church.

Picture credit: Orbis Terrarum, 1590, Petrus Plancius (source: Wikipedia).

See Shakespeare's Restless World by Neil MacGregor. 

From journal, February 2023.

Cell

A cell, a cave at the foot of a mountain. One or many in mountainous regions of the desert. A singular withdrawal from modernity or a monastic community. St Paul criticised for solitude, St Hilarion criticised for sociability. One seen not at all, one seen by many. Like St Jerome I feel only admiration for these first inspirators (fathers) of faith; a monk's life is so much more attractive than a nun's.

Living in a flat is a little like living in a monastic cell. The body hurt by the slightest cold or heat, the tongue falls silent about one's self, and so though much time is spent in literary activities little literary output is achieved. For no first or second-hand account could ever provide a full description of inner life or daily behaviour. Everything in the end – in speech or print – gets censored, because once set forth, as Horace said, it cannot be recalled or deleted.

Picture credit: St. Jerome in His Study, c.1475, Antonello da Messina (source: WikiArt).

From journal, February 2023.

Time's Nightingale

Many possible worlds, all playing with time. Time's nightingale trapped in a bell jar. One circular, lives lived over, nothing temporary; everything repeated precisely, no variations. Another, time visible everywhere – clock towers, wristwatches, church bells telling the hours with exquisite regularity. Safe; predictable; undoubtable. In yet another time passes but little happens; or its texture sticky, stuck, as are the people in this world, stuck at some point in their lives, of pain or of joy, stuck alone. Or in a place where time stands still, frozen, for eternity. Perhaps a world where there is no time; perhaps a world with no memories. Each dawn the first dawn, each eve the first eve. All without a past; ghosts. Unlike those who live in a world where time flows fitfully, who see their future. All guaranteed success, no risks. Unless obsessed with speed, with not standing still. Unless in a world where time flows backward, with many false starts; or one in which life is lived for just one day, one sunrise, one sunset.

Time a sense, quick or slow, dim or intense, orderly or random. For some infinite, for others uncertain.

Time a quality, it can't be measured. No clocks, no calendars, no definite appointments. Events triggered (and recorded) by something other than time.

Time a visible dimension, births, marriages, deaths.

Stops, starts, signposts. Intervals of action or nothingness. Minutes; decades. Fixed, with clock-like inevitability, A corridor of rooms, one in use, one prepared. Time bouncing back and forth, confusing past, present, future. Time shifting, fleeting dreams, floating clouds. Time fidgets, flutters and hops; jumps and flies; but trapped – stopped – it withers and dies.

Picture credit: Clock, Jacek Yerka (source: WikiaArt).

With acknowledgments to and freely quoting from Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. 

Written January 2023.

From Ariel

A line of breath. A cut. Poppies in October and in July. Little hell flames. The dead bell, the dead bell. The widow with her black pocketbook and three daughters. The grasses unload their griefs; the yew tree points up. The clouds are like cotton, armies of them. A thick grey death-soup.

No day is safe from news, looked for like mail. The world hurts God. The rector, the midwife, the sexton, the agent for bees. The butcher, the grocer, the postman. The magician's girl. A Roman mob, my god, together!

Red scar in the sky, red comet.

Sir So-and-so's gin. A briefcase of tangerines.

Darkness so pure, vacuous black. Stars stuck all over, bright stupid confetti. Glittering.

Dawn gilds the farmers like pigs. Mad, calls the spider, waving its many arms. Desperate butterflies, pinned any minute, anaesthetised. Colour floods to the spot. It is over. The world purrs, shut off and gentle.

Picture credit: Trunk of an old yew tree, 1888, Vincent van Gogh (source: WikiArt).

See Ariel by Sylvia Plath. 

From journal, January 2023.

Stein Consciousness

A stream of consciousness. A rhythm – water tripping over stones; a word portrait – a face made up from, out of words. A question, many of them, a Cubist answer. The limits of language stretched, and stretched. And yet they still do not say, do not convey, all that the writer wanted. But each word is at least animated – new life given to it, rebuilt differently to than before. The neglected remembered and the old reinvigorated; then joined. A new city fashioned from the tired, calling to itself (and its creator) all eyes, all attention. Inside and outside, a citizen and tourist attraction in hurried, harried lives. Out of all the novel works of that generation Stein's ironically have survived.

*

Putting something across … Something put across … What? Chattings and still-born thoughts, that is, those that aren't quite ready. Fragments that join, unite to make a riddle. Writing in little pieces and in little places, opening many little doors and causing other little doors to close. 'Culture is power. Culture.' And 'the thread is the language of yesterday.' That is not the modern way, that is the Cubist way. The method used by Stein, a fascinating mind, even more of a puzzle than Joyce or Proust. 'There are ways of admiring something.' Yes, and by writing of her writings I am doing so. And by quoting from I am doing so again, hoping that by scrambling her lines I will find some clarity, that I will throw off some of the exhaustion that comes with reading her longer pieces; that winding stream is harder to follow. 'A cloud of white' briefly lifts, some partial understanding is gained; 'a chorus of all bright birds' pipes up, and then just as suddenly as they commenced to sing stop; the cloud again descends and casts a white-grey light over the page.

The shorter pieces in Geography & Plays are more the thing. The thing that puts something across.

*

'Put something down. Put something down some day … in my hand … in my hand writing. Put something down some day in my hand writing.' It's like she gets stuck, stuck like a needle in a groove, repeating the same lines over and over, adding to or varying them, changing the order of their words or amending one or two to vary the sense. This can go on for some time. The reader enters a kind of trance, eyes skimming, taking nothing in. Not reading, not reading. Another one.

*

Many words read appear English, but their combination at times displeases; joined as they are all sense is distorted, and no sense is made. They are a doorway to a rare find, a rare mind. To Stein: living in thinking, 'You have to feel what you write.' But the reader does not.

*

STEIN SPEECH

'What have I to say. I cannot understand words. There is a way of speaking English … anybody can begin and go on … by twice repeating you change the meaning you actually change the meaning. And finish. This makes it more interesting. I shall state what I think and study. Instinct. Instinct or reason. Instinct or reason. I study very much. And make lists. I will get so that I can write a story. I am going to conquer. I am going to be flourishing. I am going to be industrious. A beginning, no middle, no ending.'

Picture credit: Stein in 1935, Carl van Vechten (source: Wikipedia).

See Geography & Plays (with an introduction by Sherwood Anderson) by Gertrude Stein.

From journal, January 2023.

Sylvia

Acts of remembrance. Poems. Birthday letters. A history of a courtship, of a marriage. A history of Death, and of being left. A history, then, of ghosts and shadows. In biographic detail. A spill of words. The echo heard: Sylvia. For she won't be contained on the page, any page. By attempting to explain, to remember her, the flighty part of her escapes. She can be known but she won't be held. She were a whole Antarctic sea; she were pack-ice between this world and the next. She froze; she thawed. She was perhaps in league with, a little in love with Death. A strong, more urgent, whisper in her ear and she was gone. Her Father come to collect.

Picture: Sylvia Plath

See Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes. 

From journal, January 2023.

A Gentle Reader

A gentle reader, a silent room bar the ticking wall-clock and humming fridge. The world fallen away beneath a book: a timorous (now dead) poet enlarging heroisms; a venerable elder teaching lessons, lending His Word to thought and pausing the clock of centuries.

See The Hawk in the Rain, Ted Hughes' first collection of poetry. 

Written December 2022.

Stein-inspired

In the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling. In the morning there is meaning. In the meaning anything is anything, in the meaning there is everything, in the meaning there is nothing. In every space an absence of less, in every space a hint of more. In the evening there is feeling. In feeling anything is sleeping soundly, in feeling anything is rising from its bed, in feeling there is dulled and heightened sensations, in feeling there is tension, in feeling there is knowledge, stiffening or loosening neck, back, and shoulders. In meaning and in feeling a clean dream is danced.

Picture Credit: Equestrian Fantasy with Pink Lady, 1913, Alice Bailly (source: WikiArt).

See Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein.

Written December 2022.

The Dance Begins

A lyrical dance, a fluid turn. A careless reader caught in flowing prose. Eyes racing on, mind giddy with words. Thoughts tripping over themselves, quite unable to appreciate all detail, its fine layers. Fitzgerald's misfortune, for turning back, re-reading repeats the effect. The dance begins, and details deserving notice are again glossed over.

An elegant step, a flawless note. A song sung by a reasonable tenor voice. A stranger, a pilgrim always ready to move on, to take to the road in birch-bark shoes. A follower of Tolstoy, reading his works and living his ideals in tribute to his memory. A writer of poetry in a peasant blouse. Selwyn Crane, a player of Fitzgerald's: accountancy at Reidka's (dear little Reids) his work, Tolstoy his passion.

Moscow. Old England. 1913. Popular agitation. Mirrored in 2022. Railwaymen out again, nurses and paramedics, and postmen and postwomen too, and teachers voting on industrial action. All out, out, out protesting their real grievances: pay and working conditions. Widescale trouble and strife, troops on standby. A tango or pasa doble between employers and employed.

Picture Credit: The Dance, 1912, Konstantin Korovin (source: WikiArt).

See The Beginning Of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald. 

Written December 2022.

Questions

Questions. Lots of questions. What is meant by art; what is good, useful art – is it art for which sacrifices are made, lives stunted; is all that professes to be art really art; is art's objective, as some have claimed, to make beauty manifest?

But then: What is beauty? Another big question much discussed over centuries, but no agreement come to. For, we each have our own idea of it, that is, our idea of it is individually determined. There may be in some pockets a general consensus, over, say, a crafted object or a work of art, but ask anyone outside that specialised (or cultural) appreciation and they will likely disagree - not find any beauty in it at all. Even the Russian definition of beauty in Tolstoy's time falls short of the mark, for if defined as only something which pleases the sight, then it neglects the other senses, when Europeans have long understood it to include hearing, touch and taste, anything which gives one pleasure and which could be described by one as beautiful.

So, if no definition of beauty can be constructed then no definition of art can be. For although the two are (I believe) separable, that is, they do not depend on one another, the question of determining in general what they are poses the same difficulties. Art does not have to contain beauty or be considered in some way beautiful to be art. Finding beauty in it may determine whether one finds it good or bad, but forming that individual opinion again does not prevent it from being art. Art is then everywhere; there are no limitations to what could be included. The simplest answer to Tolstoy's question What is Art? is perhaps: Art is a means of communication; though what may “speak” to one may not necessarily “speak” to others.

Picture Credit: Question Marks, 1961, Saul Steinberg (source: WikiArt).

See What is Art? by Tolstoy. 

From journal, written December 2022.