The Way/My Way

The greening of the leaf. It comes late at 1000 feet. No cherry blossom just yet. A day of sun will bring it on. This is the cherry blossom of 2 or 3 years ago.

“First there is a mountain. Then there is no mountain. Then there is.” A poetic precis of enlightenment. A ‘phone conversation today bought up categorisation, Darwin, the Renaissance, maleness and autism. And in a broader sense, how the cognitive/intuitive understanding of primal societies morphed, particularly  in Northern Mediterranean/Northern European cultures, into knowledge based upon empiricism, speciality and analysis. 

How it is that such fragmentation of ideas and understanding, in science, religion, Art, have been promoted by a male mindset seeking to find knowledge in ever smaller compartments of investigation, which has had the effect of breaking reality into smaller and smaller and an ever greater number of shards with consequences for communication between related specialisations and “the big subjects” alike, with issues of power and control over minute dominions of practice. Are there not parallels between this behaviour and autism? A macrocosm of individual impairment of social communication and tightly defined areas of specialist knowledge.

It’s interesting that it’s in science, and quantum physics in particular, that there is a realisation that all is connected, that a holistic understanding of reality is necessary to comprehending the nature of all that makes up the whole. And just as fascinating that this seems to approach a return full circle to a more intuitive cognition of existence melded with a desire to understand, rather than just to know or believe. There was a mountain, then there was no mountain, and now there is.

“The Way“, not “My Way“

There’s something here about masculinity and femininity. And something about the symbols that appear on old, or continental playing cards. The vessel or chalice that became “hearts”, and the sword that became “spades”. Containment compared with slicing and dicing. Holding together rather than breaking apart. Contemplation as opposed to dissection.

May the 4th be with you

Today: After the early morning thunderstorm; painting a white door whiter. And a pale wall paler.

Astrid Kircherr’s scissors

To be at Art school, play in a band, wear shades a lot, have a foreign girl-friend, to have a studio in a foreign city. The primary desires of many young white males who aspire, and have aspired to, a counter culture that has become mainstream.

To be male in 1961 in England, you were either a kid in shorts, Clarks sandals and sporting short back and sides, a quiffed and dandy ted (it’s still just about possible to see the last vestiges of the original quiff and ducks-arse on men of a certain age in provincial UK towns), a duffel coated and whispy bearded beatnik or a pipe smoking bohemian in corduroys. Or just “old”.

When Astrid Kircherr cut Stuart Sutcliffe’s hair in 1961 (and Lennon reportedly laughed at it), she created a look and style, that combined with Sutcliffe’s life and interests, has lasted almost 50 years. The birth of British cool.

This wind, and all these leaves.

The stone head was found on a beach in Wales. It either knows everything or knows nothing. The antithesis of the compacted density of all those millions of years of everything or nothing is something like the wind through leaves. Leaves and words and wind and time. Always time: the long now and the precious meantime. This wind and all these leaves.