Next time you hear someone say that they are doing something because it is God’s will just ask yourself – how do they know this? How is it possible for any human to know what the divine wants? Anything written down by a human, no matter how well meaning and sincere, will always be filtered through the human condition. Indeed many generations of religious scholars have tried to interpret writings centuries old and tried to fit them to the modern condition. The true nature of the divine is unknowable. In the end I guess my philosophy, faith if you will, can be summed up by John 8:7
“…let him who is without sin cast the first stone…”
Somehow I think the world would be such a better place if we stuck to this and I guess I have faith that one day we might just do this.
On the odd occasion during our journey through life’s strange universe we can come across days which prove beyond any reasonable doubt that there is no great rhyme or reason to life but rather it is a bunch of stuff. As I was selecting this image iTunes started to play the video of the Pussycat Dolls’ Jai Ho which was released in conjunction with the film Slum dog millionaire (The video is below)
As I was watching this I started to think that this was not appropriate given all the problems of sexual violence aimed at women on Indian public transport. Smug in my liberal sensibilities I carried on searching for an image from the archives. As I did this it suddenly dawned on me I was behaving in a similar vain to the as the Fox News Expert, you decide how what expert means to Fox, who made some strange claim’s about the original city of Birmingham. Whilst I have read and seen reports about sexual violence in India I have not the first clue about the true nature of the crime, being neither Indian nor female. When you start going down this road most of us know very little about anything beyond our life experience and yet we feel the need to express an opinion all the same.
This then reminded me about how David Attenborugh once described his feelings on the divine. He said that human’s view of the world was very much like that of a termite in nest, they knew their place in the world but nothing beyond and so could never comprehend what it was like to be him looking down on them from the top of the mound. This wasn’t an argument in favour of a world beyond our own but it was one of the best descriptions I have heard about the true nature of nature. We just can say that we understand anything more than the smallest fraction it is possible to imagine and we should be very cautious of anyone who claims to be (another reason not to watch Fox News but I just can’t help myself!).
So why did I choose the image? In part because I’m going through a lazy phase and haven’t got around to make anything new but also, and this is me imposing hindsight on things, because it reflects how we might actually see the world before our brains promulgates it’s own view on things or perhaps it is just an image I created nine years ago of a puffin coming into land on Skommer Island, Wales or perhaps it is know of those things but rather a collection of electrical pulses when read by your computer they create the illusion of an image.
Perhaps life really is a box of chocolates we just don’t have the brains to see it that way.
I was rummaging around in my archives today and found a series of images I captured back in at this time in 2010. They were all taken in my back garden and as you can see there was a significant, by our standards, amount of snow on the ground. Fortunately to date we have not seen anything like this at all this winter 9 I guess this is how to ensure we have record snow falls over the next few days!)
Is this a sign that global warming is a real things or some crazy environmentalist conspiracy to rob petrol chemical companies and introduce socialism? Of course it is none of these things it is just one sample and misunderstands the connection between weather and climate. To have a better understanding of the problems we are facing is just to know that here in Britain the mean temperature has been the warmest year on record. There is plenty to debate what is the best way to deal with the unrelenting climb in temperature but denying this has any effect on things would seem to me to be the least satisfactory approach to take.
So we don’t seem to be getting cold winters here anymore what are well likely to get?
Anyone who lives along the coast last winter may well start to get used to far more of these than they have in past. Sandbag anyone?
Today was the start of a new art course and it actually felt good to be back in the class after the last few week’s illness problems. These are two pages the sketchbook I used.
If 2014 was I am Groot then 2015 may well be I am Chappie. Guardians of the Galaxy was in many ways the surprise film of last year Chappie may well prove to be the same for 2015. For those of you who might be aware of this new film it would appear to be a complicated mix of Robocop, District 9 and Elysium (I am sure film buffs may be able to point to other similar films but seeing as the film will not be released until March we will all just have to wait.
I guess you probably have seen this video already – it has 48m views – but it is well worth thinking about. I came across this from one of the blogs I follow – I know this is somewhat ironic given the message of the video – but it is worth thinking about. I also know that the message is somewhat laboured as well as using manipulative imagery but that doesn’t undermine the message. Look up
Lessons are being learnt every day, which is what life should always be about. Perhaps the best lesson I learnt yesterday is that you should never give up on something just because it has turned into a disaster area.
At one level watercolour painting is the most amateur of art forms. If you go around local art group exhibitions you will find time painting after painting made with watercolour. However the idea that ‘watercolour’ should be an the preserve of the amateur is, of course, nonsense. Most of the great artists over the centuries have a catalogue of watercolour paintings and some have made the medium their own.
So into this wonderful swirl of of paintings I have decided to dip my toes. Anyone who has spent anytime on YouTube know that there are countless video’s showing you how to make this type or that type of watercolour painting. As usual I have decided to ignore them and try to muddle through. These are two of my first efforts.
January is a really awful month, that is if you live in the northern hemisphere. After all the festivities of Christmas and new year you are left with a flat and grey expanse. In the past we also had snow but now, probably thanks to global warming, we don’t even have that but just a sense of having to endure. However, as I write this the sun has just come out replacing the rain and it looks really quite nice out which destroys much of what I am saying. Well actually it doesn’t. January is like that, it gives you hope and then cruelly dashes such hope – storms are predicted over the next few days.
I was reminded about this dark angst I feel for January as I walked around an exhibition of Georg Baselitz paintings and prints. They really are dark and gloomy (if you want a much more considered view my friend David Manley will be the place to go). For me they all seemed to be too bleak, much the same as Anselm Kiefer’s recent exhibition at RA. I can’t say either artist’s worked filled me with great interest, however it is important to view works which don’t conform to your own tastes in art as you may well be surprised. Also it means that you continually challenge what is and what is not ‘good’ art (A ridiculous concept I know but we all do it).
All this sombre Germanic reflections brought my mind around to the political leader of the early part of the 21st century Angela Merkel who just happened to be in London yesterday. When I was in Germany recently I mentioned to our two German friends how much Frau Merkel is admired in Britain and they admitted it was much the same across the political spectrum in Germany. There are questions over whether she stands again in 2017 and if she doesn’t I wish her well but the world will be a much emptier place without her steady head at a time when all around her male leaders OD on testosterone.
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