| The Visual Philosophy
Archive: 2008 |
December
If we're lucky enough, life is full
of options and choices, like escalators taking us to different levels of a
department store. To those for whom poverty or hunger mean that they have no
choices, our freedoms must seem like heaven. Yet it is the choices that cause us
to struggle with life and its meaning - do I REALLY want to do this or that?
So much of what concerns us is, from a global perspective, merely the froth on a
wave - to use one of Buddha's analogies. December and the New Year, as
well as being a time of family celebration, seems to me to be also a time of
questioning. What will the new year bring? What is happening to this shrinking
or growing family? What do I really want for Christmas? Where am I going?
And this is particularly true as we face the prospect of global recession
through 2009.
I have a hunch that, as we pass
through life, we construct multi-dimensional maps of our environment, marked
with point of significance and value for us. Looking into the map of our life is
rather like looking down into this stairwell of escalators. We see, passing one
way and another, different aspects of our life; some pulling one way, some
another. Ah - the confusions of existential doubt!
November
Is this art? The are parts of
the coast of southern Spain where graffiti thrive, enlivening almost any spare
chunk of concrete along the beach, or - as here - a suitable wreck. I
suppose, at one time, the owner of this boat, seeing his or her dream gleaming
new in the boatyard, would have thought the hull itself to be a work of art,
symbol of dreams, elegance reflecting a chosen lifestyle. (A small dream,
of course, we can't all have something the size of the Russian billionaire's
floating palace, so recently in the news.) But for the graffiti artist, the boat
is an opportunity, further scope for expression. In a way, I see this as giving
a second life to the old wreck - making it a point of interest once again.
And who's to say that the art of the spraycan is any worse than the over-priced,
self-referential, exhibitions or the emotional exhibitionists such as Tracey
Emin. There is a tendency to define art with reference to its market value.
If someone will pay good money for it, then it must be art. If they pay a great
deal of money, it becomes great art. Personally, I'll opt for the
judicious use of the spraycan. I suppose sooner or later this wreck will
get into a dangerous shape and have to be removed. But meanwhile, for me, it
provides a suitable icon of the world of change and decay, rather as Tibetan
Buddhists leave offering flowers to decay, as a reminder of the transience of
beautiful things.
October
 Okay, so I know its corny - the
image of life growing out of the grave; but I promise you this image owes
nothing to Photoshop.
The tree has grown quite naturally out of the grave.
To me it speaks of the naturalness of death (which is not to say that the
circumstances of death cannot, sadly, by hideously unnatural on occasions). We
are all swept along in the on-going steam of life, we are born, we die, and
without that process evolution and life itself would be impossible. Yet we cling
to the feeling that each person is special, deserves a permanent memorial. Hence
the monuments to the dead. But, as a visit to any graveyard reminds us, nature
has a way of mocking the permanence of anything.
I guess, for me, that suggests
the Buddhist ideal of accepting the reality of change, and of letting go of the
past. We all need memorials of one sort or another (and Buddhist culture has its
fair share), but they themselves as changing and decaying, just like the people
they commemorate - only a bit slower. Curiously, the person whose corpse
lies in that grave (and the name has worn away and cannot now be read - itself a
sign of impermanence), now has a rather
good new memorial in the form of the tree, although how much longer that will
survive... and so on, and so on.
All images on this
site © Mel Thompson
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