There’s nothing like turning a corner in the gently undulating countryside to be surprised by a sudden curving dip – like a caressing the curves of a body, hip, shoulder, belly – it’s very sensual and I can’t help but think in terms of the physical. I find a very personal satisfaction in such discoveries.
Even better on a sunny day. Turn a corner and suddenly dip into a flickering light, driving down the tree-tunnel road and I’m suddenly taken with a strange sense of both travel and stillness at one and the same time. The world becomes a zoetrope, flickering endlessly round and round, an illusion of movement about a still centre.
A kind of paradise, I think, and the feeling lingers long after I’m home…part of me longs to remain there, mesmerized by the gentle flicker of light and shade, a sort of Muybridge sequence that maps the world onto a succession of instants.
String them back together, spin the wheel, roll back down the road…
I live in hope that some may eventually be resolved, but some will forever remain impenetrable, such as ‘just what is it about Bluebells?’
Where do they get that extra-ordinary, almost hallucinogenic quality that somehow manages to transform – albeit briefly – even the most prosaic patch of woodland into a place of wonder? To make a simple walk in the woods like wading through some kind of mysterious lake, a trip into the wild blue yonder.
Perhaps it’s the colour. Nigh-on impossible to photograph satisfactorily (at least with a simple compact digital like mine), although I haven’t stopped trying. Even harder to describe properly, because whatever else they are, they’re not really blue, not in the normal, everyday ‘like the sky’ sense of the world. Closer to violet, often, but that’s not it either. It’s a strange colour, amongst the usual forest spectrum, and it shifts. Look at an individual flower closely and it can look dark, almost purple, depending on the light, but lift your gaze and take in the whole marvelous carpet between the trees and you’d swear it’s lightened several shades.
The scent is equally hard to pin down – not strong, not especially floral as such, not unpleasant either…I find it strangely vegetal, it creeps up on you. Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the path, peering intently at the screen on the back of my camera it takes me a while to notice…mind you, I’d be the first to admit I’m not what you’d call nasally acute.
It’s no surprise that they’re associated with fairies and the supernatural in many cultures. If ever a flower deserved to be described as ‘fey’ (in the original sense of ‘otherworldly’ or ‘unnatural’ or even ‘possibly dangerous’) the Bluebell is the one. For it’s extraordinary colour, strange scent, the dreamlike carpeting and not least for the impossibility of capturing or keeping it. Try and pick one (there’s always a sad few scattered on the path) and it will die so quickly you can almost see it fading away in your hand…unnaturally quickly, so quickly that it’s impossible to pretend it wasn’t you. You’re bound to have brought bad luck on yourself, at the very least.
Perhaps it’s their remarkable profiligacy – swathes and swathes of them, great drifts of that entrancing colour spreading between the trees with abandon.
Not like your normal woodland flower at all – small, close to the ground, usually a modest white or at most yellow and more likely to grow either singly or in small clumps – perfectly adapted to grow in the shade, with little nutrition on poor soils.
Even the splendidly baroque-sounding Yellow Archangel turns out to be essentially a posh type of nettle, and you have to look carefully to spot them.
Hard to miss the Bluebells, though; wonderful, mysterious, inexplicable as they are…
I eventually make it back to the car, and am more than usually thankful.
Thankful to have returned safely (as far as I can tell) from the wild blue yonder in the woods
I can never remember when each season is officially supposed to start, but am happy to report that after several false starts Spring seems to have arrived (at least in my neck of the woods)
The thing I hate most about winter (and there’s a lot to dislike, I often find) is the degree to which I find myself getting more and more insulated/isolated from the world around me. More and more layers of clothing, windows closed most of the time, drive more and walk less. Sometimes it’s lovely, I admit, snowy walks in the woods and crackling bonfires and all that, but most of the time it’s dark and cold, rains a lot and I find myself becoming more and more slothfully ursine and inclined towards hibernation.
So the gradual un-peeling of layers that takes place around this time every year is a process to be relished. Small sign-posts along the way assume un-anticipated significance.
Like sounds – this is the first weekend it’s been warm enough to leave the living room window open all day.
I often have the radio on for hours at a stretch, and living just off a busy main road I’m used to a constant background grumble of traffic, so it’s taken me a while to notice… an almost constant cascade of bird-song, flowing behind and between all the human rumpus.
I heard the first throaty coo of a wood pigeon (or is it a collared dove – I can never remember) this morning, on my way down the road to get the sunday paper.
It’s almost dark now, so it’s quietened down a bit, but all day I’ve been enjoying this lovely, free, sound-track, and feeling a bit more connected to the world around me.
The window in my living room is an old sash, and (despite the attentions of a serious man with a crow-bar and other carpentry tools last year) I can’t open it all that far.
Just far enough to stick my head out (like a dog in a car) and sniff the breeze, listen to the night…the first few stars are justs starting to twinkle on a field of dusky blue – the exact same shade that I always used to love amongst the powder paints at school, and always wanted to eat – and there’s a surprising amount of traffic for a sunday night (where on earth are they all going?)
Filter all that out, though, and it sound like Spring, and I’m grateful.
The excellence of ‘Mad Men’ notwithstanding, I have very mixed views about advertising in general (he announced, for no very good reason other than it’s been on my mind of late)
On the plus side there’s the high levels of craft skill usually displayed in advertising in most media. Something genuinely beautiful/astonishing/provoking happens along often enough for it not to be co-incidental.
Any industry – make no mistake, it is an industry – that comes up with something as daft and beautiful as this
can almost be forgiven for routinely (and apparently shamelessly) calling people ‘creatives’…and all the other crimes against grammer, punctuation, common usage and even common sense committed on a depressingly regular basis.
Who else would be mad enough to want to fill the streets of New York with plasticine bunnies…and then go and buy 3.9 tonnes of the stuff and hire 40 animators and actually do it, in real time with no special effects trickery ?
Worth putting up with hours of slick, heartless exhortations to buy rubbish for this, surely ? Hard to think of any other commercial (or even, dare I say it, artistic) context that would support such a wonderful realisation of an endearingly simple idea, or have taken it to such exhileratingly bonkers extremes. It’s a joyful thing, even though I suspect the multi-coloured bunnies will linger far longer in the mind than will the brand – Sony Bravia – that paid for their creation.
Even if you deplore the squandering of an alleged £10m (enough for several full length independent films) on what is claimed to be the most expensive add ever made, you’ve got to admire the sheer beauty of thing. I first saw this in a cinema, and had to restrain a strong impulse to burst into applause at the end of it.
Phenomenal amounts of talent, time and money are clearly being expended in the service of….well, what, exactly? Other than the commercial imperative, obviously….
Except even this last is by no means obvious. As far as I’m aware, there’s precious little serious research (as opposed to focus-group consultation, which is a rather different thing) to show that any of it actually works, that our purchasing decisions are influenced to any significant degree.
I’ve no evidence for this, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that the extraordinary levels of skill and ingenuity expended on TV/Film adds especially actually achieve little more than lodging themselves – the advert – firmly in our consiousness, and make little impact on our purchasing decisions. That what the best ads do is actually just advertise themselves, as distinct artefacts in their own right. A circularity that seems either pleasing or irritatingly self-satisfied, depending on mood and how many times a particular example has interrupted my evening’s viewing.
Then along came this little number…
Which forcefully reminded me of something that first occured to me a while ago – that one of the more worrying things all ads share is what I think of an underlying desire to colonise paradise.
As Jim Reeves sings, ‘Welcome to my world, built with you in mind’.
How much more explicit could you get?
The obvious implication being that the vendor in this case has the wherewithal to create a bespoke world just for you, the customer.
In other words they will build paradise, indvidually tailored to your specific requirements.
The underlying claim of snake-oil salesmen since the beginning of time – the only thing notable about this particular example being, perhaps, it’s astonishing degree of truthfulness (almost certainly un-intentional) disguised as a bit of sophisticated word/image play. Which of course we all understand, without even having to think too hard about it.
Of course …
So maybe I’m just being stupidly literal, unsophisticated, reading too much into it.
Think about it for a minute.
Strip away all the clever language and dazzling imagery and surely the underyling logic of most (if not all) advertising runs something like this :
‘The world is sadly imperfect, and your place in it less than you deserve/desire’ – esablishing a lack or need
‘We have created product (or service) x especially for you, to solve your problem and meet your needs’ – filling the need
‘To achieve true happiness all you need to do is buy x’ – the benefit, closing the circle.
(If you’re not convinced by this analysis, check out the text from Victorian/Edwardian newspaper and magazine ads, many of which replicate this structure almost exactly)
The modes of delivery have diversified hugely, the means employed become extraordinarily sophisticated but the basic message remains the same.
There is such a thing/place as Paradise, and you can attain it…
Not by the excercise of any moral or spiritual discipline or effort, but simply by the application of money.
But never mind, because nobody actually believes any of this – we know it’s a con, and are (at some level) willing participants. We even enjoy it, if it’s well done.
Surely we’re all clever/sophisticated enough to shrug off any tarnishing effects (on the soul, or any other bits we might we to keep unsullied) brought on by long-term hosing beneath the myriad commercial torrents constantly aimed at us.
So you probably won’t be interested in this little excercise/game I invented for myself a while back.
It’s very simple. Any time you encounter advertising that makes a clearly identifiable claim to something or other you just assert the reverse. Boldly, clearly and with complete confidence. For e.g.
“Gillete, the best a man can get”
to which you respond in a loud, clear voice (you have to do it out loud) anything from,
“No it isn’t”
to
“Is it f**k you lying bastard”
according to personal taste and sobriety.
Try it. Probably best in the privacy of your own home, but if you’re feeling adventurous…
It’s fun, and I gaurantee you’ll feel better about yourself.
Actually, on second thoughts, I don’t offer any gaurantees of any kind, but it works for me.
The chances of any of us achieveing any sort of paradise are, I feel, pretty slim, but it never hurts to take sensible precautions.
Just think how pissed-off you’d be if your own personal, cherished version of Nirvana not only turns out to be just like everyone else’s, but full of strip-malls and smug gits and improbably slim women in over-priced cars.
Another sunny – stripped back, soon to be spring – Sunday, another walk in the woods. How English, how middle class can you get? I don’t care, sometimes the effort of stepping outside the stereotype just isn’t worth it. Especially not on a glorious day like this, cold, crisp and clear. I’m conscious of a definate sense of anticipation as I lace up my walking (and slithering, sliding, jumping in puddles and squelching deliciously through mud) boots. Days like this, you just have to get out.
Having noticed a certain wintry open-ness to the landscape on the way over – no leaves, so you can see further, dead-looking laid hedges still sporting severe pre-spring trims, hardly any roadside scrub growth – I’m somewhat surprised by how much the wood retains that sense of density, of enclosure. Not as emphatic as it will be in summer, when everything’s in full growth, but it’s still striking. Something to do with the large amount of Hazel scrub colonizing the ground space, and patches of evergreen, no doubt.
At the moment it’s like being able to examine the skeletal structure of some vast, complicated beast. Seeing how the slanting sunlight catches the upward slanting tracery of fine hazel twigs laced between the more mature trunks it strikes me once again how web-like they are. How credible scarey folktales about giant spiders become. Even on a sunny afternoon.
Sternly reminding myself that many cultures regard spiders as benign, I press on through the twiggy, springy hazel web. As nearly always happens, I’m rewarded by seing something I’ve never seen before.
Today I suddenly notice the wild swerve taken by a pine trunk in its upward progress – from the ginger bark and somewhat ill-kempt, raffish dark green canopy a Scots pine, I think. There’s a small stand of them, all not quite straight (like the lads at the bar, any saturday night) but none as curved as the one that first caught my eye.
I haven’t the faintest idea why that one tree took such a different route, but am obscurely delighted that it did, and that I happened to notice. There’s something ineffably satisfying about the sudden deviation from the norm. Thinking about it as I write, it occurs to me that part of the attraction is the apparent randomness. (I say apparent because I suspect such a striking deviation to be susceptable of causal explanation) This really is a case where it might be possible to literally ‘explain something away’, where a rational approach may be inimical to a purely sensual appreciation of beauty.
Happy in my ignorance, easily distracted by new delights, I’m soon absorbed in trying to get a satisfactory photo of the way the slanting sun edges the Hazel catkins with an almost fierce glow. A slightly haphazard procedure as the sun is so strong that I can’t actually see the screen on the back of the camera. Never mind, I have faith, and take a few extra, just to be on the safe side. I’ve more or less shoved myself right into the middle of a particularly wild & twiggy Hazel, and am happily nattering away to myself when a youngish couple saunter down the path past me with their dog…and without the slightest sign of surprise at finding a bush full of muttering idiot. They nod gravely in greeting (more or less in synch) and the woman utters a cheery ‘Hi there’, as they continue on their way.
I can’t be the only person that takes a deep delight in such instinctive (and distinctively English) sang-froid, can I ?
In the normal (in so far as I can be said to posses such) run of things I tend to be primarily sensitive to visual things. Today I’ve been vaguely thinking about an interveiw for a multi-sensory school project I have tomorrow, so my ears are working as well. An added bonus, I think, noticing what at first I take to be the sound of a woodpecker drilling wood.
Advancing cautiously into clump of pines, and finding a handy stump to sit down on, I perch slightly breathlessly and wait for it to come back…whatever it is, and hope that I can spot the bird as well. Whatever it is, there’s more than one of them, as I can hear short bursts rhythmic tapping coming from several directions, although never at once.
Having strained ears and eyes for a while, I finally conclude that it’s not woodpeckers. The sound seems too short, and too quiet to be made by beaks being vigorously applied to tree-trunks. Just as I’m thinking this, I see a flash of darkish blue on a podgy little bird moving down a tree trunk head first. It’s a Nuthatch – as far as I know the only bird that habitually does this head-long descent – and I realise that the sound must be the birds trying to get into nuts. Living up to their name, in fact. There’s something so deeply satisfying about this, actually hearing something I dimly remember reading about years and years ago.
Bouyed up by this, I sit and listen a while longer. Silencing all those muttering, gibbering internal voices (do this, remember that, where did I read that?) one by one, until I can actually hear what there is to be heard. Road noise, inevitably, but easy enough to tune out. A surprising variety of flying things – small plane, jet airliner, another small plane and then a helicopter – improbably all in the space of not much more than ten minutes. All sorts of bird song, hardly any of which I can reliably identify…apart from the asthmatic coughing of some distant rooks. A few shots from a shotgun – someone afetr rabbits, perhaps? A slightly hysterical dog (happily receding, this) and yapping owner.
And, finally, once I’ve noticed everything else, so quiet I almost miss it, a gentle creaking sound. There’s hardly any breeze, but even so the thin trunks around me are swaying gently…creaking now and then. It sounds to me like the forest breathing, and it’s one of the most peaceful things I’ve heard for ages.
