A Difficult Thing Put Simply Is Not Made Any Easier

Fig. 1. Large Tortoiseshell Octagonal Box and Cover Inlaid with Mother-of-Pearl (Tang Dynasty)

'Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.'

James Joyce

Eugene and Caspar Jump Through Plato's Window

Fig. 1. Caspar David Friedrich - Sunrise over the Sea, c. 1826


EDMUND: You've just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They're all connected with the sea. Here's one. When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon in the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself - actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself! ... Then another time, on the American line, when I was lookout on the crow's nest in the dawn watch. A clam sea, that time. Only a lazy groundswell and a slow drowsy roll of the ship. The passengers asleep and none of the crew in sight. No sound of man. Black smoke pouring from the funnels behind and beneath me. Dreaming, not keeping lookout, feeling alone, and above, and apart, watching the dawn creep like a painted dream over the sky and sea which sleep together. Then the moment of ecstatic freedom came, the peace, the end of the quest, the last harbour, the joy of belonging to a fulfilment beyond men's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams! And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see - and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason! (He grins wryly.) It was a great mistake, my being born a man. I would have been much more successful as a sea-gull or fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death!

From Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill

The Sunday Six: Bill Viola - Ocean Without A Shore, 2007 (video installation)

Fig. 2a. & 2b.

Addendum #1:

Interview with Bill Viola at the Venice Biennale, 2007 (TateShots)

Addendum #2: Katie (thanks!) and ESVM's poetry corner...

Even though I live close to the Pacific ocean, seeing this Friedrich and reading the O'Neill passage (I so need to re-read Long Day's Journey!) make me think of the Atlantic ocean, and how much the sea meant to my Grandfather. I'm sure he had a similar sense of a bigger belonging when out at sea.

I'll lay off the ESVM for a while as I'm sure you're tiring of her, but she had such strong feelings about her beloved Maine coast, and I think she and Edmund would have been a good match:

Inland

People that build their houses inland,
People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
Tons of water striking the shore, -
What do they long for, as I long for
One salt smell of the sea once more?

People the waves have not awakened,
Spanking the boats at the harbour's head,
What do they long for, as I long for, -
Starting up in my inland bed,

Beating the narrow walls, and finding
Neither a window nor a door,
Screaming to God for death by drowning, -
One salt taste of the sea once more?

Addendum #3: Anonymous' (thanks!) poetry corner...

L'Homme et la mer

Homme libre, toujours tu chériras la mer!
La mer est ton miroir; tu contemples ton âme
Dans le déroument infini de sa lame,
Et ton esprit n'est pas un gouffre moins amer

Tu te plais à plonger au sein de ton image;
Tu l'embrasses des yeux et des bras, et ton coeur
Se distrait quelquefois de sa propre rumeur
Au bruit de cette plainte indomptable et sauvage.

Vous êtes tous les deux ténébreux et discrets:
Homme, nul n'a sondé le fond de tes abimes;
O mer, nul ne connait tes richesses intimes,
Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets!

Et cependant voilà des siècles innombrables
Que vous vous combattez sans pitié ni remord,
Tellement vous aimez le carnage et la mort,
O lutteurs éternels, ô frères implacables!

Charles Baudelaire (Les Fleurs du Mal)

Topic: No One Can Teach You How To Paint The Rain

Fig . 1. Vincent van Gogh - Rain, Auvers, 1890


'The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.'

Vincent van Gogh

Your Ears Will Orgasm #52: Singing The Rain - Mix (MixPod Player)

1. Rain - The Beatles
2. The Rain - K-Os
3. Tears In The Rain - Zomby
4. I'm Only Happy When It Rains - Garbage
5. The Rain Knows - The Wentletraps
6. No Rain - Blind Melon (THDP Remix)
7. Green Rain - Shugo Tokumaru
8. Singin' In The Rain - D.O.A.

Addendum: Katie and ESVM's poetry corner...

I've never seen this van Gogh; now I won't feel so bad that it's supposed to rain all weekend as I can look at this painting and be uplifted. Thanks for the soundtrack too!

Would van Gogh and ESVM have hit it off?

Eel-Grass

No matter what I say,
All that I really love
Is the rain that flattens on the bay,
And the eel-grass in the cove;
The jingle-shells that lie and bleach
At the tide-line, and the trace
Of higher tides along the beach:
Nothing in this place.

There Is No Science Of The Beautiful, Only Critique*

Fig. 1. Kutlug Ataman - Frame, 2009


'Frame is a lightbox of an enlarged replica of a photograph taken during the early 20th century in Eastern Turkey, when photography was a still a new medium. Because of the way in which it is framed the photo reveals more than its original subject - an army general with substantial political power at the time. The anonymous photographer ignored the logic of classical framing which is rooted in the rules created during the Renaissance in the West. Instead, the framing follows the rules of pre-Renaissance representation typical of Byzantium, where social status and political power determined the frame and size of the subject. As a result, the army general, as the centre of political gravity and the top of political hierarchy, is framed in the centre. The lower ranks around him are cut off by the frame, which is determined not by rationalism but power.'

Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz

* 'There is no science of the beautiful, but only a critique.' (Immanuel Kant - Critique of Judgement)

That's Right, Pop Never Did Eat Itself ... Or Its Gods

Fig. 1. Andy Warhol - Christ 112 Times (detail), 1986


'Mortal men ask God for good things every day, but never pray that they may make good use of them. They want fortune to wait upon their desires, but they are not concerned that desire should wait upon reason. They would like all their household furniture down to the last article to be made as beautiful as possible, but they are hardly ever concerned that the soul should become beautiful. They diligently seek out remedies for bodily diseases, but neglect the diseases of the soul. They think they can be at peace with others, yet they continually wage war with themselves. For there is a constant battle between body and soul, between the sense and reason. They believe they can find themselves a faithful friend in others, but not one of them keeps faith with himself. What they have praised, they reject; what they have desired, they do not want; and contrariwise. They lay out the parts of the buildings to a measure, and tune strings on a lyre to a hair's breadth, but they never attempt to harmonise the parts and movements of the soul. They make stone into the likeness of living men, and they make living men into stones; they despise wise men themselves, but they honour the statues and names of the wise. They claim to know about everyone else's affairs, although they do not know about their own ...

What a sorry state! We seek the greatest in the least, the high in the low, good in evil, rest in activity, peace in dissension, plenty in penury; in short, life in death.

I beg you, my friends, let us seek the same ends that we are already seeking, but let us not continue to seek them in the same place. The man who believes he will find a thing in its opposite is mad and miserable.

Farewell.'

Marcilio Ficino (from The Folly and Misery of Men, c. 1463)

I've Got A Brain In My Chest And A Heart In My Head

Fig. 1. Andrew Stevovich - The Truth About Lola, 1987


'The truth of a thing is the feel of it, not the think of it.'

Stanley Kubrick

So, How Long Is A String Of Novelties? (Per Valeria)

Fig. 1. Cai Guo-Qiang - Fetus Movement II: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 9, 1991


'The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is Curiosity. By curiosity, I mean whatever desire we have for, or whatever pleasure we take in novelty. We see children perpetually running from place to place to hunt out something new; they catch with great eagerness, and with very little choice, at whatever comes before them; their attention is engaged by every thing, because every thing has, in that stage of life, the charm of novelty to recommend it. But as those things which engage us merely by their novelty, cannot attach us for any length of time, curiosity is the most superficial of all the affections; it changes its object perpetually; it has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied; and it has always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness and anxiety. Curiosity from its nature is a very active principle; it quickly runs over the greatest part of its objects, and soon exhausts the variety which is commonly to be met with in nature; the same things make frequent returns, and they return with less and less of any agreeable affect. In short, the occurrences of life, by the time we come to know it a little, would be incapable of affecting the mind with any other sensations than those of loathing or weariness, if many things were not adapted to affect the mind by means of other powers besides novelty in them, and of other passions besides curiosity in ourselves.'

Edmund Burke