A long ago story

A tale of wonder... from the same little blue book (another one) that I mentioned in my post In a far country:

A long ago story

...The years fled away. And still the Great Tree stood among the mists, unharmed by time and the lightnings that felled so many of its proud neighbours. But still the years followed one another endlessly; and at last, old and withered, the Great Tree crashed and fell into the muddy waters of the swamp. Down to the bottom of the swamp it sank, crushed underfoot by the mighty reptiles that fought one another, bellowing and screaming and coughing through the short night hours ; or pushed and jostled, and rolled in the steamy ooze of the daytime, as they sought their prey. Deeper and deeper into the mud, at the bottom of the swamp, the tree was pressed, until at last it rotted and fell to pieces. But the ball of gum with the fly at its core was unharmed by the mud and the water. It was too small for the giant feet of the great reptiles to crush it, and so it lay there safely in the darkness of the thick slime. The years fled away in tens and in hundreds and in thousands. The sea broke over the land, and where the swamp had been, the little waves of a blue deep sea rippled from shore to distant shore.

Unnumbered and countless years flew by. Man appeared upon the earth, a little, helpless, naked creature, whose brain was to make him lord of all. And so, slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, man conquered the earth ; built upon it fair and wonderful cities ; and launched upon its seas his painted ships. And the great oozy swamps, the vast trees, and the crawling reptiles, were forgotten as if they had never been.

And then, but yesterday, a little boy walked along the beach, after a high spring tide had thrown the shells and seaweed a score of feet beyond the wonted tide mark. The sun shone, and the sand was warm and pleasant to his bare feet. Suddenly his bare toe touched something hard and round, and as large as a sparrow's egg. He picked it up, and gave a little cry of delight. It was amber. But it was rough and dull, and he did not dream of the treasure at its heart.

He took it up to the tiny shop upon the windy cliffs. And there the little old man, who spent his days polishing and cutting stones, set to work upon it. The little boy's fair hair and the old man's scanty gray were very close as the polishing proceeded rapidly. And then the little boy screamed out, and pointed to the piece of amber now as yellow as gold and as clear as glass. The little old gray man gasped. There in the very heart of the amber lay the body of a beautiful blue fly, with one glittering gauzy wing outstretched ; it was the fly that had died so suddenly in the young, young days of the old world.

Fly in amber

And now, set in gold, the fly-in-the-amber, that is older than the hills, rests in a case in a great building for all the world to see. And day by day folks passing by stop to stare at its wonderful beauty.

But the proud tree that boasted, in those far off ages, of its long, long life, was lost and forgotten before ever man came upon the earth ; little, naked, defenceless man, who was one day to be lord of all.

Stephen Southwold

Song of Albion 4

I have a lot of stuff I could talk about on the subject of music and perhaps I will in future posts, but for now I guess I want to express some of my gut-feelings rather than just quote interesting facts.

A while ago I wrote about wonder and the sort of music I enjoy most has this element. Andrew Marr writes about music and mystery and the ineffability of music. There are not too many things that are "too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words" so when one finds one it would seem to me to be especially worthy of attention. I suppose it is this quality above all that has attracted me to Bruckner and the same sentiment is in the quote "It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it" from my last post.

A necessary ingredient in ineffability is the element of surprise. Like when you make it to the top of a hill and a glorious panorama lays before you. Or when “Great globes (gourds) of yellow fruit hung from the trees—clustered as toy-balloons … He had meant to extract the smallest, experimental sip, but the first taste put his caution all to flight. It was, of course, a taste, just as his thirst and hunger had been thirst and hunger… But then it was so different from every other taste that it seemed more pedantry to call it a taste at all. It was like the discovery of a totally new genus of pleasures, something unheard of among men… For one draught of this on earth wars would have been fought and nations betrayed.” (Perelandra, Lewis).

Surprise, in turn, implies variety. I look forward to and greatly enjoy eating good old British fish'n'chips or iced doughnuts but can you imagine having them for every meal?

And variety is sadly missing in so much popular music now-a-days. Art (music is art) should explore the whole gamut of expression available to it. Pictures might use vivid colours or pastels, flat or exaggerated perspective, soft or hard lines - but not always the same, please.  Marr says "Complicated mechanical structures in music, in themselves, offer little sense of mystery and some of the simplest folk melodies sound as if they were whispered at the dawn of creation." Scarborough Fair being one such melody.

So - what makes some music ineffable whilst other is a monotony of noise? That is what I want to explore in future posts

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Iron man

Went to see Iron Man 3 this evening. Predictable amounts of action and nonsense. Entertaining I suppose but not really my sort of movie.  I preferred Avatar - why? - not for the plot, but because it had that wonder element, because I could imagine myself there, because it could have happened, because it was extremely beautiful, because it was a worthy benchmark in 3D technology.

On the way back I caught a glimpse of what might have been a meteor - it was green and larger that any I have seen before.

Rupert Bear

Rupert Bear Annual 1962

In a recent visit to the inlaw's house I found myself reading and reliving again a copy of the 1962 Rupert Bear annual. I was 10 years old when I read it first and I find I still remember the stories in detail.

There are two types of people in the world and only one love Rupert Bear stories. So what has made these stories appeal so much to me?  As a clue I admit to reading only the rhyming couplets and not the verbose story line at the foot of each page.

I love the Alfred Bestall's countryside, I love the sense of wonder and mystery the plots evoke. Above all I love the childhood freedom implied in the stories: Rupert's parents are cast as loving and caring and yet he is left free to explore miles of countryside without adult intervention. I identify with him as my eye explores the depths of pictures like these I photographed from this annual:

Frontispiece, 1962 annual

"And sees a group of trees he knows"

"The rabbits too have heard a sound"

"Jock knocks the ball high in the air"

Wonder

This is me wondering about something. I wonder what I was wondering about? Wonder is like that - it is gorgeously imprecise and incomplete. It always leaves the most important part to your imagination (a bit like my mother's stories when, in the middle of telling, she would go to the kitchen to get the desert and come back and all would be asking "and?" and she would say "and what?" and not be able to remember what she had been relating).

The slogan "The wonder of Woolworths" does not do justice to the word for me - except that it was in Woolworths that I was introduced to electricity. My father bought me a 4.5V battery, lampholder, a flashlight bulb, some hook-up wire and a switch, and the rest is history.

Here I am designing something way back before I
had discovered the ruler: I wonder what it was?

My glockenspiel and deep in thought
in the front room at 16 Broad Street 

I can wonder all manner of things in a sand creation,
and certainly have not yet grown out of doing so.

My favourite self portrait

I like stories, films, photographs, paintings that have an element of wonder in them.  It encourages you imagine more than is stated, so you get more for your money.  Some people say imagination is bad and quote the likes of Eze 8:12 but I say it is the precursor to creation. How can one be creative without first holding the thing in one's imagination?

Children's literature abounds in wonder. A good example is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's  The Little Prince. Long before the internet we used to take books out of the library to read to our children and so we chanced upon this book. Immediately I knew this was no ordinary children's book and I loved it, loved the pictures, loved the little prince himself. The joy is that so much is left out of the story to wonder at.

Fading light at Crackington Haven

Here is a picture I took long ago on my Agfamatic 200 of Crackington Haven that has a bit of wonder in it. One of those golden moments captured in film.

And here are a couple of pictures of below of wonder embodied.  The first is my nephew having discovered a drum set. The second is my grandson with his beloved dinosaurs. I might add that both of them are much older now. What were they thinking?

The term "wonder" can also mean "in awe", but it is really the same thing. We stand in awe because we do not fully understand something.  And who completely understands anything? We all totter through life with an amazing lack of understanding of who we are, where we came from, what is the point of it all and, most of all, of what will happen tomorrow. To quote "It's a wonderful world"!

Anxiety is another emotion fueled by lack of knowledge of the future. Anxiety ties knots in my stomach. Of course I know in theory that I should "have no anxiety about anything but with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let my requests be known to God" but you try telling my stomach that.

In contrast, the wonder of "wonder" is that it is based in security. Rather than worrying that we do know what will happen we rather revel in it, we joyfully allow our mind to explore all the possibilities. This we are very used to doing when reading a good novel or watching a movie knowing that the good guy will come out tops. It is not so easy in reality simply because we have not yet been fully convinced that we are safe.


O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?  If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in hell, you are there!  If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.

In a Far Country

It is father's day and I got a surprise phone call from my younger daughter who has just moved to Australia. Two of my own sons and the son of a close friend now live in Alaska.  My other daughter is en route to Switzerland but thankfully only for a week.  Fifty years ago emmigration might have been goodbye for good - at least we have the internet now - but, even so, I reckon that either Alaska or Australia qualify as "a far country".

I have a much cherished book entitled "Forty Tales" by Stephen Southwold.  It was my mother's and she has written her name very formally, as if she was young at the time, inside the front cover.  This book is one of the few links I now have with her and with my childhood.  One of my favourite tales from this book starts:

The water colouring is my older sister's work.  To this day I am haunted by any grassy hill that disappears into the horizon.  What is special about these tales is the element of "wonder".  I may write at more length about this in a later blog.  For now the title "Along the path and far away" is sufficient: it evokes in me a great longing for I do not know what.

A similar sentiment is found in Lewis's "The horse and his boy" -

"But he was very interested in everything that lay to the North because no one ever went that way and he was never allowed to go there himself. When he was sitting out of doors mending the nets, and all alone, he would often look eagerly to the North. One could see nothing but a grassy slope running up to a level ridge and beyond that the sky with perhaps a few birds in it."

There is also the traditional song Over the hills and far away which leaves one wondering what exactly is over the hills and far away.

I get a similar feeling seeing or reading about water meeting grass as in an overflowing stream or a flash flood.

Phantastes, George Macdonald: "And, stranger still, where this carpet, which I had myself designed to imitate a field of grass and daisies, bordered the course of the little stream, the grass-blades and daisies seemed to wave in a tiny breeze that followed the water's flow; while under the rivulet they bent and swayed with every motion of the changeful current, as if they were about to dissolve with it, and, forsaking their fixedform, become fluent as the waters."

A far country implies a new paradigm that touches the depth of our soul: In a Far Country, Jack London "When a man journeys into a far country, he must be prepared to forget many of the things he has learned, and to acquire such customs as are inherent with existence in the new land; he must abandon the old ideals and the old gods, and oftentimes he must reverse the very codes by which his conduct has hitherto been shaped. To those who have the protean faculty of adaptability, the novelty of such change may even be a source of pleasure; but to those who happen to be hardened to the ruts in which they were created, the pressure of the altered environment is unbearable, and they chafe in body and in spirit under the new restrictions which they do not understand. This chafing is bound to act and react, producing divers evils and leading to various misfortunes. It were better for the man who cannot fit himself to the new groove to return to his own country; if he delay too long, he will surely die."  

Somewhere it says "A certain man planted a vineyard... and went into a far country for a long time."  The so called "Christian" belief system has of late been rather dumbed down, I suppose, to make it more palatable for the masses - rather like A-levels.  But in the original version there was a whole lot of "digging deep" and "far country" and "long time".  These hard-to-come-to-terms-with's are more in accord with my own experience than platitudes, sickly smiles and miracles that don't stand scrutiny.