There is much that can be problematic about national schemes and their use in building ‘national’ identities, but I’m struck that during hard times—the depression and then WWII, respectively—both the US and the UK employed artists to record and illustrate the landscape. And how it led to employment for many women artists, particularly: “I love the war,” the artist and writer Olive Cook later remarked… “It became very important to grow food. Agriculture flourished and people weren't moving about. I can't tell you how beautiful it was in the war. I love the war. It was idyllic.” Hard to imagine how war can have moments of idyl, despite ongoing threat and tragedy. Reminds me a bit of how the pandemic lockdown removed the access to travel and many were forced to stay home more, to know more of our own places. How it was terrible and a trauma to know how many were suffering, and yet to also notice that the air did clear up in the early pandemic because of the lack of tourism. That it’s not an either/or, or some type of silver lining bullshit—just a both/and—that while the worst happens, what also happens to the land and air when the privileged are forced to stop moving.
Also marvelling that that the earth is apparently spinning faster, while slowing in the long term, and how it opens so many questions—and shows again how malleable and strange time is.
And sharing another image of the forest of Amanita mushrooms that rather magically appeared out of what seems thin air and one heavy rain this last week. Love how they become their own ephemeral world.
And finally, while wilderness is a term I’m not fond of, I can always forgive Hopkins—somehow I shared this poem so many times when my son was young that he could recite it back to me when we stopped at a creek on a familiar walk when he was three. I’m sure he has no memory of either the full poem or that he did that, but it’s one of the things that I loved about witnessing his childhood as his mom:
Inversnaid
This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
A windpuff-bonnet of fáawn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew,
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
The Ariadne Archive is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Commonplacing
Commonplacing
Commonplacing
There is much that can be problematic about national schemes and their use in building ‘national’ identities, but I’m struck that during hard times—the depression and then WWII, respectively—both the US and the UK employed artists to record and illustrate the landscape. And how it led to employment for many women artists, particularly: “I love the war,” the artist and writer Olive Cook later remarked… “It became very important to grow food. Agriculture flourished and people weren't moving about. I can't tell you how beautiful it was in the war. I love the war. It was idyllic.” Hard to imagine how war can have moments of idyl, despite ongoing threat and tragedy. Reminds me a bit of how the pandemic lockdown removed the access to travel and many were forced to stay home more, to know more of our own places. How it was terrible and a trauma to know how many were suffering, and yet to also notice that the air did clear up in the early pandemic because of the lack of tourism. That it’s not an either/or, or some type of silver lining bullshit—just a both/and—that while the worst happens, what also happens to the land and air when the privileged are forced to stop moving.
Also marvelling that that the earth is apparently spinning faster, while slowing in the long term, and how it opens so many questions—and shows again how malleable and strange time is.
And sharing another image of the forest of Amanita mushrooms that rather magically appeared out of what seems thin air and one heavy rain this last week. Love how they become their own ephemeral world.
And finally, while wilderness is a term I’m not fond of, I can always forgive Hopkins—somehow I shared this poem so many times when my son was young that he could recite it back to me when we stopped at a creek on a familiar walk when he was three. I’m sure he has no memory of either the full poem or that he did that, but it’s one of the things that I loved about witnessing his childhood as his mom:
Inversnaid This darksome burn, horseback brown, His rollrock highroad roaring down, In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam Flutes and low to the lake falls home. A windpuff-bonnet of fáawn-fróth Turns and twindles over the broth Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning, It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning. Degged with dew, dappled with dew, Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through, Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern, And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn. What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
The Ariadne Archive is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.