There’s a Roman site about an hours drive from where I live. I visited it earlier this year during one of the times we weren’t in lockdown. These three photos show you the three main parts of the site. First on the left is an amphitheatre. The guide says this kind of amphitheatre was used for performances, like plays and music, not like the different sort of amphitheatre they made elsewhere for gladiator fights. In the middle is the remains of a temple. Look at the extraordinary shape of it! Again, the guide says, it’s thought there was a Celtic temple on this exact spot before the Romans constructed theirs. On the right is one of the baths in an enormous complex of baths. You can sort of make out the floor level of the bath, and below that the area where they lit the fires to heat up the water. It’s an astonishing building with several different baths, each of which were apparently heated to different levels.
One of the things that astonishes me about this site, apart from just how big it is, is exactly which buildings were constructed and what they were constructed for – primarily you’ve got the cultural space of the amphitheatre, the religious space of the temple and the social/health space of the baths.
Now contrast that to a modern “High Street”! Or one of those rings of shopping malls orbiting a town or a city!
I look at this and I wonder…..is it time to shift our priorities? To put culture, spirituality and health at the centre of our societies and communities? How might that change our experience of life?
What do you think? I’m not wondering here about re-creating a copy of what the Romans did…..I’m wondering about what a contemporary or into the future equivalent would be if we picked up on some of those core values…..creativity, spirituality and healthy sociality. (is that a word? “sociality”? well, I hope you know what I mean!)
I love a blue sky. There’s something incredibly uplifting about seeing blue filling your whole view from horizon to horizon. But of course, not many places in the world see blue skies like that every day, and those which do, tend to suffer from a lack of clouds and, so a desperate lack of rain. So, it’s not that we should want blue skies every day. There’s a lot of wisdom in the observation that we need contrasts, that we need the dark to appreciate the light, and the light to appreciate the dark. There’s a Scandinavian wisdom in plunging into the snow and ice when you step out of a sauna!
I understand the need for these opposites and contrasts. But that takes nothing away from the joy and delight in what is….right here, right now.
Today the weather forecast is wrong again. I went to bed expecting to have a day of rain when I woke up, but instead I’ve woken up to a blue sky. I can see white clouds making their way across the low horizons, and maybe they will spread and bring rain later, but, for now, I’m enjoying the blue.
Perhaps that’s why this particular photo caught my eye this morning. You see these gloriously faded, distinctively blue signs all over France, but especially in the South. I’m no expert in colours but there is something about this particular shade of blue which evokes a whole culture for me. It’s the colour of France, the colour of the Med, it evokes memories of cafes and bars, of village squares and tables under spreading plane trees. It evokes vineyards, fields of sunflowers and hillsides of lavender. It entices me to buy a bottle of Rosé and a small bag of olives.
Amazing what a colour can do……
So, here’s my challenge for you today – find a colour somewhere – in the sky, in the garden, on your bookshelf, on your wall, in your closet……just find a colour that attracts you, that brings you joy, that stirs your heart and lifts your spirits, and allow your mind to recall the times and places that colour evokes, allow your mind to re-create those moments of beauty and happiness. Allow yourself to bask and bathe in those experiences for a little while. I have a hunch, it’ll do you good.
The “Little Owl” sitting in the plum tree at the corner of my garden is watching me, watching him…..as usual! On the right is a photo I took in a forest in Southern France last year. Can you see the carving of the owl at the top of the tree? Instead of just cutting the branches (I don’t know if there was something wrong with them, or they broke in a storm), someone has carved an owl at the top of one of the stumps.
These two photos make me think of our relationship to the world…..just how interactive that relationship is. I have many experiences now of noticing another creature noticing me. Maybe it just makes sense that we would both have the natural ability to be aware of each other, but when it happens directly like this, it shifts the experience into another gear. It’s a bit like when I do a whistling “conversation” with the Redstart who lives in the garden every summer. Those “call and response” sessions are delightful and they really do give me a deep sense of connection to the non-human, living world.
The carving speaks to another aspect of our relationship with the world brought about by our powers of imagination and creativity. The truth is we change the world every second just by living….just by breathing, just by walking, gathering, eating and drinking, just by our behaviour which is determined by our values, beliefs, our thoughts and our bodies. But this conscious interaction, again takes our relationship to another level. This fashioning of an owl changes the experience of this tree, and so, too, of the whole forest. It’s a point of wonder, of delight. It made me pause, raise my camera and take a photo. It made me wonder about the artist….who he or she is, when they did this, and why……what did it mean, and what does it mean, to them? The sculpture raises the awareness of the observer to the fact that the forest is full of life, not just of plant life, but of birds and other creatures, but given the symbolism of owls, for me, at least, it also raises my awareness of the wisdom of the forest, and the wisdom of Nature.
Seeing this example of human imagination and creative expression in Nature reminded me, also, of an article I read in “Le Monde” a few days ago, about another cave complex full of wall art in the Dordogne. This one near Cussac. It isn’t open to the public and has still not been completely excavated but has many, many drawings of animals, just like in nearby Lascaux, but in addition they have found the skeletons of six Paleolithic human beings. There’s something else different about Cussac – (click that link if you want to read a good English language article about this cave complex) there are, so far, four clear drawings of the female form. Yep, that’s right, the female, not the male, form…..gets you wondering, huh?
When I looked up at these trees and the sky above them, I saw the clouds as leaves on the outstretched branches of the trees….almost an impressionistic presentation of leaves of course….white, fluffy, almost like individual brush strokes painted onto the blue canvas.
Just a moment of imagination.
I didn’t at any point misconstrue the clouds. I knew they were clouds floating high above, and the trees were trees growing far below the blue sky, but in that moment of imagination the experience becomes a little magical, a little less mundane.
What’s the alternative? To notice severely pruned trees in the foreground and clouds in the sky above with absolutely no connection to what was growing down here on the surface of the Earth?
Well, that’s one of the reasons I like imagination…..not only does it enable us to see the invisible connections between everything…..in the same way that we humans have seen invisible lines joining stars at night into constellations which we can then use to navigate, or to know when to plant and when to harvest. But it enhances our daily experiences, giving them qualities which feel enchanting, delightful, joyful, or expansive. Qualities which would be hard to experience from a “simple” consideration of “facts”.
The world is not full of disconnected “objects” dispassionately viewed by disconnected “subjects”.
It is a whole, a fully integrated web of connections, contexts, environments, and flows of matter, energy and information, which is alive, vibrant, beautiful and awe-inspiring.
I don’t think we would realise that, were it not for the powers of our imagination.
I’ve long since been drawn to Romanticism. I feel they bring some extra, something deeper, something substantial to the dominant perspectives of the rationalist Enlightenment thinkers. It’s a funny thing, because in many ways I think I’ve lived with a foot in both camps. I trained in Medicine, practised as a General Practitioner for the first half of my career, then as a Specialist in what we came to call “Integrative Care” for the second half. That second half move was enabled by my training in Homeopathy which gave me a different framework to understand individual health and illness, as well as a set of therapeutic tools. We specialised in the care of people with long term conditions at the “NHS Centre for Integrative Care” in Glasgow, with the majority of our patients coming to us for help when they felt orthodox care wasn’t helping them enough. But we had a foot in both camps there, because our hospital was embedded within the Scottish NHS and we had access to all the tools, specialist help and advice of all that orthodox care could offer.
What does that have to do with Romanticism? I’m not sure, but I’ve recently been inspired to explore the Romantics in more depth, because I heard an interview with Eugene McCarraher about his new book, “The Enchantments of Mammon“. He talked a lot about the Romantics and I remembered that Iain McGilchrist had written about them too, so I picked “The Master and His Emissary” off my “most significant books bookshelf” (yes, I do really have such a shelf in my bookcase!), and yesterday sat down to re-read his chapter on Romanticism. One of the first lines in that chapter is
As always it was the clashes of theory with experience that showed up the cracks in the edifice of rationalism.
Well, that’s it in a nutshell……it was the “cracks in the edifice of rationalism” which opened the door to my enlarging my Practice to include a focus on the qualitative, and the “unmeasurable”. And, boy, was that a set of “clashes of theory with experience”!
Then this
Differences are as important as generalities
Now, this must be what became THE foundation stone of my Practice as a doctor. It still makes me a mixture of sad and annoyed when Medicine is conducted as if generalities trump differences every time. There continues to be a real struggle for individuals to have their stories heard and believed, especially when they don’t fit with either “generalities” or “theory”.
The idea of individual difference is central to romanticism
Well, if that is true, then I need to know more about romanticism, because the importance and the inescapable reality of individual difference lies at the heart of my life values.
What’s all this got to do with the photo I’m sharing today? Well, I just read this line
The Romantics perceived that one might learn more from half-light than light
OK, I’ve taken it out of the context of the rest of the chapter but Iain is arguing that a difference between the left and right hemispheres is that the left wants certainty, clarity and exactness, where the right is more interested in the whole, in the synthesis of opposites, in the distance between where we are and where we can almost see.
There’s real beauty here. There’s mystery and enchantment. There’s wonder and amazement. Well, I just love all of that.
This sculpture in the Glyptotek Museum in Copenhagen is called “Creation Fantasy”, and it’s by a Norwegian-Danish sculptor called Stephan Abel Sinding.
It reminds me of some of Rodin’s work, not least the “Hand of God“, which is one of my most favourite of Rodin’s works.
I love how the male and female bodies are emerging from, but are not separate from, the rock. It think this captures a deep truth – that we are not separate from the Earth, not separate from “Nature”, not separate from each other. But instead we emerge within all that exists, and we remain forever, embedded in everything. I think one of the most pernicious beliefs human beings have adopted is the notion that we humans are “apart from” not “a part of” Nature, that Nature is something “out there”, maybe even something to go and visit from time to time. Worse still, that The Earth and all that “out there” Nature is a resource to be plundered, consumed, polluted at will, as if none of that activity will affect “us”, we humans, because we are outside of Nature.
I hope we are beginning to move away from that terrible misconception. I hope we are beginning to KNOW that we emerge within Nature, and that we live inextricably within all that exists.
It reminds of me of the “Universe Story” – which tells how all the elements of the Periodic Table were created in the giant furnaces of stars throughout the universe, and how once the Earth was formed, all the elements which had been created in distant stars were gathered together, almost like being dealt a hand in cards. How every material substance which has ever existed on Earth has been made from those initial elements. The Earth doesn’t create new elements. She transforms what she has into every molecule, every cell, every organism, every substance which we find on our one small blue planet.
This sculpture makes me think of something else – the relationship we have between men and women. It seems to me we need to learn from sculptures like this one. For far too long we’ve built civilisations and societies on the basis of male dominance. It’s well past time to redress that imbalance and create more loving, more respectful, more mutually nurturing relationships between the sexes.
So, there’s my “Creation Fantasy” – that we are called to live by – that we humans emerge within Nature on this single planet, and that men should not dominate women.
I can’t stress too highly the importance of art in life. We seem to be the only creatures on the planet who have the immense creative powers to produce drawings, paintings, sculpture, poetry, stories and music (OK, I know, there are other arts you can think of, but I’m just choosing these ones today)
In the Glyptotek museum in Copenhagen you can find these three sculptures in a room filled with many similar gorgeous works of art. Part of the beauty we experience when we look at these images is created by the way the works are lit (and there’s another layer of creativity between my experience and yours because I’m the one who took these photographs).
At the top, are two sculptures about music. Look at the violins, the bows, and the musicians fingers….all carved out of blocks of marble. Aren’t they incredible? The one on the right is titled “Young Mozart”, and I’m afraid I can’t remember the title of the one on the left (if you know, maybe you could let me know in the comments?)
I read in Iain McGilchrist’s “The Master and His Emissary”, that one theory of language is that human beings sang before they spoke. It seems there is some evidence to support the idea that the first humans created a variety of sounds, and only later, turned some of those sounds into spoken language. Written language followed a long, long time later. Also, in his book, he explores how music works, not as a collection of notes, or moments or sound, but as a combination of notes and silences between the notes. When you stop to think about music it’s incredibly difficult to pin down what seems so simple – where is the music, actually? It’s not in the notes by themselves. It’s not in the spaces. It’s in the whole – in the phrases, the bars, the themes, the entire melody and the rhythm. I love how it seems to resist reduction – you can only appreciate it, and enjoy it, when it’s whole.
Another thing about music is how personal it is. I bet you had the experience when you were younger of your parents just “not getting” the music you enjoyed. Perhaps always telling you to turn it down? Or saying “That’s not music!” Then as you got older, if you’ve had children of your own, you might find they like a lot of the music that you like, but I bet you’ll also find that they enjoy some music that has you saying “That’s not music! Turn it down!”
Music is intensely personal. It’s one of the best, most powerful ways, to evoked memories. A certain song can take you right back to a particular moment years ago, or can evoke all the feelings you have for a loved one. It stirs us, moves us, changes our entire physiology, affecting our breathing, our heart rate, the mobilisation of chemicals and hormones in our bodies. It affects our muscles, our movement, our stomachs.
I saw a short piece on French TV recently about Melody Gardot, who at age 19 had a serious bike accident. She was in hospital for over a year and had many difficult neurological problems. At one point a doctor suggested music therapy and her mother bought her a guitar. She taught herself to play it, started writing songs, and made a full recovery. She is now an internationally famous, beautiful jazz singer. Check her out. Quite a story! And such beautiful music!
The lower photo above is of Anacreon the poet. Poetry, like music, is handled mainly by the right hemisphere of the brain (whereas language, words stories are largely handled by the left). Poetry is closely related to music. It’s not about conveying instructions or information. It evokes emotions, changes our bodies the way music does, and also has the power to evoke intense memories. In this sculpture, Anacreon has two infants in his arms….and doesn’t he so obviously love them? They are Bacchus and Cupid. Bacchus is the God of Wine, and Cupid the God of Love. Well, not hard to see why he loves them so, huh? Bacchus is also known as Dionysus. You can read a bit more about him here. He’s the God of a lot more than wine. Cupid, the God of passionate desire, of affection and attraction.
Finally, here’s an interesting fact connected to this issue of how our two cerebral hemispheres engage with the world in different ways. Iain McGilchrist’s thesis is that we’ve become a bit stuck in our left hemispheres and we need to develop a better integration of the two halves. One way to do that might be to consciously use the right hemisphere more – so, what better way than to start with spending more time each day listening to music and reading poetry?
One of my most favourite museums in the world is the Glyptoteket in Copenhagen. One of their permanent exhibits is a sculpture room filled with beautiful works by French and Danish sculptors. Many of them are utterly breath-taking. Over the next few posts I thought I’d share some photos I took during my visit there back in the pre-Covid era!
Look at this! Carved from a block of marble. I think it is astonishing. What incredible skill to make solid rock look like soft flowing fabric.
That’s what I wanted to focus on today, because I think when we pay attention to the perceptions and sensations of the everyday present, life seems better. And even though many of us are still living under stringent restrictions, we can experience sights, sounds, scents, tastes and textures every single day. I’m a very visual person. I take lots of photos, and I’ve been re-viewing and organising thousands of my images this year. Despite the fact I suffer from tinnitus and my hearing isn’t as good as it was when I was younger, I also love sounds. Where I live in the French countryside, I’ve been able to hear more bird songs this year than I’ve ever done before, thanks to the quietening of human activities – especially those human activities involving machines! I love music too, and a day doesn’t go by without me listening to, and/or playing music.
This image though, reminds me of the importance of the sense of touch. And with all this physical and social distancing going on, I suspect most of us are missing that kind of contact. Zoom calls, WhatsApp groups and so on can be good for communication but they aren’t a substitute for physical contact, are they?
So, I wonder if it might be an idea to focus on the sensation of touch for a day? What textiles are in contact with your body? How does that feel? What surfaces do your fingers touch today? How does that feel? How many different sensations of touch have you experienced today? And how would you describe them?
That’s my idea for today, inspired by this astonishing sculpture – take a day to consciously experience the sensation of touch. Notice each sensation and make a short note about it in your diary or journal……or in the Notes app on your phone. Then, at the end of the day, review what you’ve written. How does that make you feel? In other words, what emotions are created by the physical texture of your day?
I’ve got a lot of photos I’ve taken which are of this type. They are examples of Islamic art in Spain. Actually there are several different types in my collection, one of which is tiles, like these ones.
I adore these repeating, interconnected, geometric patterns. I love the stars you can see in them. There are small six pointed stars, small eight pointed ones, and small twelve pointed ones. Can you find examples of all of those? Then as the lines spread out from each star, they create hexagons, squares and diamonds.
What I see most clearly when I look at an image like this is a representation of the fundamental connectedness of creation – I see nodes and bonds – an intricately, inter-laced network where nothing exists in isolation and every part emerges from the creation of the web of connections.
Here’s a somewhat different example. Now, I’m not a scholar of art history, but I do know that there are elements of different cultures in this particular image. There is a hint of Islamic art, a thread of Celtic art, and across the middle there are three chimerical creatures – perhaps a “manticore”, a “mermaid” and a “centaur”?
I love seeing these interwoven influences of different cultures, and it isn’t hard to find examples in Spain which has such a rich history of different peoples living there at different, and even overlapping, times.
These chimerical creatures are really strange to our modern eye and they are often seen as imaginary beasts or monsters, but when I see them here in this panel embedded in webs of inter-locking links and lines, I wonder if they actually represent something of an origin story. Do these half man/half lion, half woman/half fish and half man/half horse actually remind us of our shared origins – we humans and the rest of creation?
We have such a tendency to see human beings as separate from Nature. In fact there is a long tradition in the West in particular of seeing “Man” as superior to “Nature” and even having a God-given duty to subdue and control all the other creatures and forms of Nature on the planet. There are strains of religious teaching in there, but there are also roots in the origins of the “scientific method” and, in particular in a certain strain of darwinism (not put forward by Darwin himself).
We lose a lot when we separate ourselves from the rest of the planet we co-habit with all other forms of Life. We distance ourselves from other creatures and that seems to free us up to treat them with contempt and cruelty. There’s something deeply mistaken in thinking of all non-human reality as “resources” to be “exploited”.
But there is another way. I’m aware of at least three strands of knowledge which contribute to a more holistic, more inter-connected, and, I believe, healthier model.
I start with complexity science, and in particular the concept of the “complex adaptive system“. When I view myself, others, or any phenomenon on the planet through this lens, then the whole of Nature is one inter-connected organism. Nothing exists in isolation. Every action, every thought, every behaviour is influenced by, and influences the actions, behaviours and thoughts of others.
Next I am fascinated by genetics and embryology. It has always been a source of complete wonder and amazement to me that a single egg cell can be fertilised by a single sperm, then divide over and over and over again, differentiating the cells as it grows, to create the billions of cells which make all the tissues, organs and cells of the human body. And all in the right place! It continues to astonish me that all of our cells can be traced back to just two cells – one from each parent. But on top of that, it’s been amazing to see the incredible degree of “overlap”, or perhaps more correctly, of shared origin in the genomes of humans and other creatures. It’s pretty mind boggling to discover how many genes we have in common with earthworms for example!
Thirdly, I’m convinced about Lynn Margulis’ “endosymbiotic theory” – the idea that all multicellular creatures have evolved not only from unicellular ones, but that the individual cell components of nucleus, mitochondria, ribosomes, perhaps chloroplasts, were all originally separate creatures which evolved to live together and form these more complex structures of animal and plant cells. Each cell can be thought of as a little community, and each cell exists as a member of a larger community. This places co-operation, collaboration and symbiosis at the very heart of reality.
I’m convinced the images we encounter daily influence what we feel, what we think and how we behave. In fact, I don’t just mean images such as artworks, adverts or photos. I mean how things look – including the shapes and sizes of buildings, the presence of trees, flowers and bushes, the colours of walls, the landscape or the cityscape, depending on where we live, and the decor, light and shapes of the rooms we live in, as well as the objects which surround us.
All of these images influence us deeply, and, largely unconsciously, creating moods, emotions and feelings which stimulate or inhibit well-being, and which change the course of our lives.
One dramatic example of that is in hospital design. There is a lot of research about this, but, to give one example, it was found that patients who had a view of nature from their hospital bed recovered more quickly, needed less painkillers, and had less complications than those who only had a view of a wall.
Of course the advertising industry is well aware of the power of the image. These days there is even a specialist area of knowledge and advised described as “neuro-marketing” which seeks to employ the findings from neuroscience to persuade customers to buy certain products. These things work at the level of image, sound and smell. Mostly, they work unconsciously.
So, I think it’s good to notice our here and now, our everyday reality. I think it’s good to be aware of the images we absorb as we work, play and relax in our home and shared environments.
Taking photos is a good way to become aware. When you look around, or go out somewhere with a conscious intention of photographing what you notice, then your awareness is automatically heightened. These days most of us have smartphones which are more than ably equipped to take photos. You don’t have to have a fancy camera.
These two photos I’m sharing today are of street art I noticed as I walked around the streets of Salamanca one day last year. The image on the left is like a work of modern art. It looks a bit “Miro” to me! What I really notice about it is how the artist has used the walled off entrance as a frame, using the concrete filling the space as a canvas, but, he or she hasn’t stopped there. They’ve spread their artwork beyond the bounds of that frame….reaching out to cover the left hand pillar. I like that. I like how it demonstrates how creativity can be opportunistic, inspired by what is already there (the walled-in entrance way), and how that inspiration can come from the most unlikely places. Would you have thought that entrance way represented a canvas? I like how the artist isn’t bound by that either. How they kept creating outside of the frame – thinking and creating “outside of the box”. This work inspires me to be creative, to see opportunities for creative work, and to refuse to be constrained by other people’s frames.
The second photo shows the power of stencil. I mean just look at this person holding their head. Are they in despair, or are they trying to figure something out? I can see both. So it’s an image of hopelessness which reflects something we all feel from time to time, but, instantly, it’s also an image of someone thinking, someone deep in thought, trying to come up with a solution. At least, that’s what I see there. How about you?
I know, with every interpretation we bring our own standpoint, our own sets of values and beliefs, our own moods and preoccupations. But that’s one of the great things about art, isn’t it? It isn’t just the power of the work to convey “percept and affect” (as Deleuze would say). It offers us the chance to wake up and change by engaging with it. And even if we don’t wake it, it influences us without us realising. It interacts with us, and we interact with it. It’s a relationship.
I welcome constructive criticism and suggestions. I will not, however, tolerate abuse, rudeness or negativity, whether it is directed at me or other people. It has no place here. ANYONE making nasty comments will be banned.
Heroes Not Zombies 