Category: Happenstance

Plants, potters, webs: On forms, usefulness and emptiness

With the clocks about to go back this weekend, autumnal hues cloak the body and seep into the skin. The piercing light of summer is almost emptied out. Weak threads of sunlight dissolve amongst russet, ochre and blanket skies of grey.

Here then, some small cups of blue:

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inked

……………upon the sky

blue

……………cupped

time

……………held

in a breath

≈≈≈

The potter makes the earthen pitcher out of earth selected and prepared specifically for it.  The potter … shapes the clay.  No – he shapes the emptiness.

Martin Heidegger

When posting the above image on twitter, I received, by return, a digital echo from Andrew Male, (@AndrewMaleMojo). A fragile image, of the same unknown plant, etched in glaze and fire; ‘cupped’ and bleeding into blue.

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(c) Andrew Male

The bowl  was made by the potter Beresford Pealing who ran a studio-pottery at Harnham Mill, West Harnham, Salisbury, Wiltshire from 1966-1972. Pealing created hand-thrown domestic stoneware оf а type pioneered by Bernard Leach working іn аn Arts & Crafts tradition.

Beresford Pealing
Beresford Pealing’s studio-pottery at Harnham Mill. (c) Wiltshire Museums

The image of Pealing’s bowl resonated with the image of that flower cupping light, sky and time and somehow reminded me of Martin Heidegger’s late thought, particularly his Bremen Lecture of 1949, Insight into That Which Is:  

When we fill the pitcher, the liquid flows into the empty pitcher … The thingness of the container in no way rests in the material that it is made of, but in the emptiness that [it?] contains. 

I’m not sure if Heidegger ever acknowledged it, but it seems too much of a coincidence if this passage was not influenced by the arguably more poetic rendering in the Tao Te Ching:

Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.

(Tao Te Ching: Chapter 11, translated by Stephen Mitchell, 1988)

or in an alternative translation:

Hollowed out,
clay makes a pot.
Where the pot’s not
is where it’s useful.

(Tao Te Ching: Chapter 11, translated by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1998)

A random moment this week threaded together that plant inked against the sky and Beresford Pealing’s bowl. Opening the front door, an empty form cupping the autumn light:

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Overnight, a dweller on the threshold had constructed possibly the perfect form of useful emptiness. A filigree construction allowing the world to pass through and bring whatever bounty may stick on the way…

And of the unknown plant?

When the photograph was taken, I had no idea what it was, although A, who is the gardener, told me that it would soon ‘explode’. She didn’t know the name either.

Fraser MacDonald @JAFMacDonald kindly identified it as Agapanthus and sent a link to this stunning time-lapse film. Enjoy the white stars exploding in all their glory. All within fifteen seconds:

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But there is one final act of synchronicity. Re-watching the film clip today and revisiting Heidegger’s lecture, I come across his thinking on the emerging technologies of 1949 (for example film) and specifically, their ability to collapse time and space. An example that he gives is:

the sprouting and flourishing of plants which remained hidden throughout the seasons is now openly displayed on film within a minute…

We can only imagine what his response may have been to the webs spun by modern technologies. Lots of un-useful emptiness? Perhaps we can learn from the spider. Spin the web, shape the emptiness and see what sticks.

Many thanks go to Andrew Male and Fraser MacDonald for their invaluable contributions to this post.

Now playing: Brian Lavelle – Empty Transmissions.

References:

Martin Heidegger, Insight into That Which Is, Bremen Lecture, 1949 (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2012)

Lao Tzu. The Tao Te Ching, various translations.

An encounter with the uncanny

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And we

………….who always think

……………………….of happiness rising

would feel the emotion

……………that almost startles us

………………………….when a happy thing  falls.

Rainer Maria Rilke – Duino Elegies 

≈

It often happens.  A sensation at the edge of perception. A glint of light, a fluttering of movement. The feeling that some-thing has flitted across the threshold of the senses.

Something there – but not there.

And so it was, walking along the tree-lined footpath by St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh. Looking up, amongst the trees it was difficult to see it clearly at first. Something metallic, floating, but also appearing to be entwined amongst the branches, merged with the sky. It was only when a light breeze, initiated a gentle rocking movement that the suspended human form fully emerged.

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From another angle, the drifting figure resembled a pencil drawing sketched on to the sky. A shaded human form floating against the blue canvas, slowly dissolving back into leaf and branch.

The gentle motion, both hypnotic and dreamlike conjured up thoughts of Solveig Dommartin’s character, Marion, in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire.  A lonely trapeze artist, inhabiting the space between ground and sky, who entices an angel down to Earth.

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Solveig
Solveig Dommartin as Marion in Wings of Desire

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I have subsequently read other people describe the St Mary’s work as “sinister, creepy or disturbing” and it certainly startles you when you first look up and see it. An experience that I’m sure would be intensified if you encountered it in the dark under moonlight. However, for me, the figure conjured up a sensation of something otherworldly, yet strangely familiar. A fluid form of substance and air, swinging silently, and like ‘Marion’ suspended between the earth and sky.

From a distance I watched for a short time as many people passed along the footpath. The vast majority did not look up or see the figure suspended amongst the leaves. Silently watching, waiting to transform the everyday city into an encounter with the uncanny.

 ≈

Now playing: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – The Carny

I have found out that the sculpture is a work called Spirit by Aliisa Hyslop, a Finnish/Scottish artist. Spirit is presently part of an exhibition at the Arusha Art Gallery.

The quotation from Rilke’s Duino Elegies are the last lines of the translation by David Young (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978). Wim Wenders cites Duino Elegies  as the initial inspiration for Wings of Desire.

Whilst looking for somewhere else

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The future is already haunting us

.

(whilst looking for the Anne Frank Huis, Amsterdam)

≈

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.

Cubist dreams

of glass and sky

in-worlds

bleed

out-world

.

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.

few bicycles

no canals

.

(lost somewhere between Amsterdam and Amstelveen looking for the CoBrA museum) 

≈

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in Amstelveen, still looking for the CoBrA museum

≈

Now Playing: Getachew Mekuria & The Ex & Friends – Y’Anbessaw Tezeta

An Almost Supernatural Manifestation…

I must have taken this journey hundreds of times. The railway crossing over the Firth of Forth, rumbling through the three red diamonds of the Rail Bridge.

The train window frames a changing canvas of sea and sky as weather formations dance in constant flux. Bright, clear days offer sunlight stained, glassy blues which stretch to the horizon, punctuated by the islands of Inchcolm, Inchmickery and Inchkeith. The abandoned World War II fortifications of Inchgarvie, lie directly underneath the bridge. Hollowed out shells, windows like mouths of gaping teeth, now colonised by seabirds. The gulls ascend to hover on the updraughts, peering into the train window, before coasting off and plummeting seaward – racing gravity.  On certain days, a tang of salt air permeates the hermetically sealed train carriage.

There is an excitement in looking out and observing the great diagonal smears of rain advancing up the estuary. Slabs of smudged grey – coming this way. Tumultuous skies billowing with angry clouds blown in by sea winds. The theatre of watching the weather arrive.

However, I have never experienced conditions such as observed this week. (Thursday 26th July c. 2.30 pm). A spectacular form of haar (coastal sea fog) appeared to manifest from nowhere on an otherwise relatively ‘sunny day’. Not so much the haar rolling in but an almost supernatural manifestation.

Thursday 25th August 2013

From the railway bridge over the Forth

a blue-tinged wash of elemental greys.

Sea and sky bleed

into a Rothko memory

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Taken just a few moments later, you can see some of the river tugs off to the right. The oil terminal at Hound Point is just emerging from the glaur, as the blue starts to break through again.

…

I posted the above photographs on twitter and a couple of days later Bob Reid sent me this one. Same place, different time.

The Forth: always different, always the same.

opr1-Bob Reid
(c) Bob Reid with thanks

Now playing: James Yorkston – When the Haar Rolls In.

The Poppies are in the Field: Pattiesmuir 26th June 2013

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The poppies are in the field

But don’t ask me what that means

– Julian Cope

The Poppies are in The Field I

There is no

long march of progress

in this field.

No future

enlightenment

to strive for.      

                                 Only

this eternal play

of returning.

A cycle of flowering flame

                           smouldering                                              

                                               to ash

in the rooted earth

underneath my feet.

 

The Poppies are in the Field II

That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe.

John Berger – The White Bird

The Poppies are in the Field III

Homer mentions poppies in the Iliad, comparing the head of a dying warrior to that of a hanging poppy flower.

The Poppies are in the Field IV

The god Morpheus made crowns out of the poppy flowers and gave them to those he wanted to put to sleep. Poppy flowers were used to decorate the temple.

The Poppies are in the Field V

The Greeks have a legend that explains how the poppy came to be called the Corn Poppy. The poppy was created by the god of sleep, Somnus. Ceres, the goddess of grain, was having difficulty falling asleep. She was exhausted from searching for her lost daughter; still she couldn’t fall asleep and had no energy to help the corn grow. Somnus cooked up a concoction and got her to take it and soon she was sleeping. Rested and relaxed Ceres could then turn her attention to the corn which began to grow. Ever since that time the people believed that poppies growing around cornfields ensure a bountiful harvest. And so was born the Corn Rose, or as we call it today the Corn Poppy.

Adapted from The Modern Herbal

The Poppies are in the Field VI

But the Poppy is painted glass; it never glows so brightly as when the sun shines through it. Wherever it is seen-against the light or with the light –  always, it is a flame, and warms the wind like a blown ruby.

John Ruskin –  Proserpina

Angel of History: Poppy Memories
Photo credit: cliff1066™ / Foter.com / CC BY

Angel of History: Poppy and Memory by Anselm Kiefer. 

A warplane fabricated of lead

wings laden with books of beaten lead sheets

stuffed with dried poppies.

The Poppies are in the Field VII

Now Playing: Siouxsie and the Banshees  – Poppy Day &  The Teardrop Explodes – Poppies in the Field.

Ephemera – A short visual drift through the Edinburgh New Town

P e d a g o g y

P e d a g o g y

~

C o n v e r g e / E n t w i n e

C o n v e r g e / E n t w i n e~

B r o u g h t o n  M a r k e t  w i t h  r a i n b o w

B r o u g h t o n M a r k e t w i t h c o r n e r r a i n b o w

~

T h e  O l d / T h e  N e w

T h e O l d / T h e N e w

~

B r o u g h t o n  S t r e e t  w i t h  s m u d g e  o f  m o o n

B r o u g h t o n S t r e e t w i t h s m u d g e o f m o o n

~

U r b a n  F o x

U r b a n F o x

~

Now Playing: Barbara Monk Feldman – The Northern Shore

4’33” on a train – John Cage Centennial, 5th September 2012

(c) Edition Peters

Our modest contribution to the John Cage centennial celebrations. On 5th September 2012, we decided to undertake a performance of 4’33″on the train from Falkirk High to Glasgow Queen Street. Raising and lowering the seat tray served to mark the three movements. During our ‘silent’ performance this is what we heard:

Low bass throb

                                              – of train thrum.

occasional>>>>>stabs

                                              – of pitched track squeal.

 

a sigh

a cough

a sneeze.

earphones fizzzzz and

crisps crunch.

 

fingers tap on digital screens

as turning pages            – fan

distant carriage whispers.

 

The shuddering recoil – from

                                                     – the slap of a passing train

all sound and silence cocooned

                                                    – underneath a bridge.

Out in the landscape

– an imagined Williams Mix:

Doppler-shifted siren,

birdsong and turbine whirr.

  

a ratttttttttttttling window

“tickets please”

tacet

the seat tray creaks.

Happy 100th birthday John Cage. In another place you are walking around Walden Pond with Henry Thoreau looking for mushrooms.

http://johncage.org/2012/

Now Playing: John Cage and David Tudor – Rainforest II / Mureau – A Simultaneous Performance (Part I)

T h r e s h o l d

trying

to catch

a thread

of time

when

theincomingtide

becomes

the o u  t   g    o     i      n       g        t         i          d           e

listening

ebb

listening for

flow

an inflexion

ebb

of breath

flow

inhalation

ebb

becoming

flow

exhalation

flow

exhalation

ebb

becoming

flow

inhalation

ebb

at the river

still standing

grounded

still standing grounded

at the river, still standing grounded  –  but different

Now playing: The Necks – Silverwater