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Indra’s net

Posted in from the dark room, philosophy, photography on September 13, 2009| 1 Comment »

I spotted this be-dew-elled spider’s web this morning and immediately thought of Indra’s Net.
Interestingly, the entry about Indra’s Net on wikipedia illustrates the following quote by Alan Watts with a very similar image.

Imagine a multidimensional spider’s web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image

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Picasso’s Chateau de Vauvenargues

Posted in art, from the dark room, life, photography on August 23, 2009| 1 Comment »

The Chateau de Vauvenargues has never been open to the public before, but for four months this summer it’s possible to visit. I went yesterday and it was wonderful. It really is in a beautiful location as I’m sure the photos above will show. It sits at the foot of Mont Saint Victoire, which Picasso never painted. He had a deeply respectful attitude towards “Monsieur Cezanne”, as he always refered to him, and that seems to have led him to steer clear of painting the mountain which not only provides the backdrop to the castle, but part of it was even included in the title deeds of the castle itself. I think that was one of the big surprises. After all, Picasso had no qualms about revisiting the works of Manet and others!

The main surprise though, was what the guide refered to as Picasso’s “spartan” choice for the interior. He left pretty much the whole interior as he found it – didn’t redecorate it (apart from painting the plaster in the bathroom with a woodland scene!) and only “upgraded” the place by installing a new bathroom and central heating. There is very little furniture in the house which certainly does give a feeling of simplicity, and the walls and ceilings are faded and peeling. I was also surprised to learn that he didn’t paint the views he could see from the windows, but that he said that when he painted here his painting became more green! You can see this is true. There’s a lot more green paint used in the works he produced here. However, the ancient links between Barcelona and Aix allowed him to explore his favourite reds and yellows and even led him to have a huge Catalan flag as the headboard for his simple double bed.

Picasso and Jacqueline are buried in front of the castle with a simple Picasso sculpture over the grave – no headstone, no words.

Sometimes it’s the simplest of experiences which are the most intense.

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Learn to yearn

Posted in creativity, life, personal growth, photography on August 18, 2009| 3 Comments »

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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The need to fit in, and the need to be different

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, photography, psychology on August 12, 2009| 2 Comments »

Everyone has to deal with this paradox – how can I preserve my individuality, yet not be isolated? I think of it as a spectrum, with individuality at one end of the line, and shared membership of a group at the other. Our immune systems are designed to recognise anything that is “not me” and reject it, so our prime defence mechanism is to reject anything that we don’t recognise as consistent with our individuality. We all need a coherent sense of an individual self. We create that through the stories we tell ourselves and others. At the other end of the scale, solitary confinement is one of the worst imaginable punishments, used to control prisoners since time began. We need to belong. We need to know we are not isolated, unrecognised or unloved. I think we all juggle that paradox throughout our whole lives. It’s a dynamic. Some of us hover mainly around the individuality end of the spectrum and others hover around the group end, but we all need to satisfy both needs in our lives.

It’s this photo I took in Japan earlier this year which got me thinking about this. See how almost all the turtles are trying to crowd onto the one little rock! They need to be together! I say “almost all”, because if you look closely you’ll see one little guy out there on the right happily paddling his own way.

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Patterns

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, life, music, perception, photography on August 10, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Whether its due to synchronicity or something about focus, attention and awareness, I find that I often have the experience that something I’ve been reading about crops up in all kinds of places. At the moment it’s pattern-spotting. In fact, this pattern-spotting theme is a fundamental one for me. I think it’s an important part of the way I work, but sometimes it just becomes a more conscious issue. Last week I had to conduct a training session for a junior doctor about consultation technique and one of the things I mentioned was how doctors are trained to spot patterns. We do that to make a diagnosis for example (“Oh, I know what this is. This is a thyroid problem”) In parallel with this I’m reading the novel “Popco” by Scarlett Thomas (and thoroughly enjoying it by the way!), and the part I’m reading just now is about the links between code-breaking, mathematics and music – the link being patterns and the ability to spot patterns. While I was driving at the weekend I caught the end of a discussion in a programme on Radio 4 about musical scales, and Pythagoras’ view of harmony. Didn’t hear enough of it to understand what it was about, but then, last night the chapter I read in the novel explained exactly the role of Pythagoras in the connection between music and mathematics (subject of another post I feel!). How strange, isn’t it?

Here’s a photo I took recently. What I noticed here was the pattern of the flowers. I thought it looked like a constellation of stars in the sky.

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Light on the land

Posted in from the dark room, photography on August 6, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I love the way landscape changes with shifting sunlight.
When I was walking around Jupiter Artland the other day, I noticed that through a gap in the forest I could see what’s known as The Three Sisters. These are the remains of “bings” from coal mining in West Lothian.
Look how the colour of the land changes as the sun breaks through the clouds….

I love to watch the changing light on the surface of water too, whether on a loch, or on the sea.

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Sunlight on web

Posted in from the dark room, photography on August 5, 2009| 1 Comment »

I love the way the sunbeams sneaked through the leaves of the trees and lit up this web….

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Where water meets rock, look what happens

Posted in from the dark room, life, photography, tagged complexity science on August 3, 2009| 2 Comments »

One of my favourite walks locally is to the Bracklinn Falls in nearby Callander. I love to gaze at the peaty brown water tumbling and foaming over the rocks and to wonder (yes, with emerveillement) at the incredible way the water continuously sculpts the stone.

Isn’t that amazing? It makes me think of the interconnectedness of everything and of Deleuze‘s concept of becoming. It makes me reflect on how we shape our environment and our environment shapes us, because we are like the water, constantly moving, changing, making choices to go one way or another, our set of possible choices made in the world which we have partly shaped as the water shapes the rock. A constant, dynamic, where the path we take today creates the possible future paths of ourselves and others, as the rock the water shapes creates the water’s possible paths.

But most of all, it just absorbs me, captures my attention, and fills me with wonder.

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Mr Mistoffelees!

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, photography on July 30, 2009| Leave a Comment »

You ought to know Mr. Mistoffelees!
The Original Conjuring Cat –
(There can be no doubt about that).
Please listen to me and don’t scoff. All his
Inventions are off his own bat.
There’s no such Cat in the metropolis;
He holds all the patent monopolies
For performing surprising illusions
And creating eccentric confusions.
At prestidigitation
And at legerdemain
He’ll defy examination
And deceive you again.
The greatest magicians have something to learn
From Mr. Mistoffelees’ Conjuring Turn.
Presto!
Away we go!
And we all say: OH!
Well I never!
Was there ever
A Cat so clever
As Magical Mr. Mistoffelees!

He is quiet and small, he is black
From his ears to the tip of his tail;
He can creep through the tiniest crack
He can walk on the narrowest rail.
He can pick any card from a pack,
He is equally cunning with dice;
He is always deceiving you into believing
That he’s only hunting for mice.
He can play any trick with a cork
Or a spoon and a bit of fish-paste;
If you look for a knife or a fork
And you think it is merely misplaced –
You have seen it one moment, and then it is gawn!
But you’ll find it next week lying out on the lawn.
And we all say: OH!
Well I never!
Was there ever
A Cat so clever
As Magical Mr. Mistoffelees!

His manner is vague and aloof,
You would think there was nobody shyer –
But his voice has been heard on the roof
When he was curled up by the fire.
and he’s sometimes been heard by the fire
When he was about on the roof –
(At least we all heard somebody who purred)
Which is incontestable proof
Of his singular magical powers:
And I have known the family to call
Him in from the garden for hours,
While he was asleep in the hall.
And not long ago this phenomenal Cat
Produced seven kittens right out of a hat!
And we all said: OH!
Well I never!
Did you ever
Know a Cat so clever
As Magical Mr. Mistoffelees!