Art, and the nature of art
A nice Equinox post that veered off into a strange tangent where I decide my art is some conduit of cosmic force despite just drawing nice pictures of trees really.

I’ve watching instagram improvement videos. I’m so sorry. They ask me profound and dangerous questions, like ‘what’s your niche’ and I’ve swinging from existential crisis to existential crisis like Tarzan swinging through the jungle..
Who am I? What am I doing? What am I offering my followers? It’s a koan.** There isn’t an answer. The mind holds it and bothers it and pushes constantly, like a wobbly tooth you can’t leave alone. You can’t get a solution with the intellect. There has to be a shift in perspective.
Does the tree falling in the wood make a sound if there’s no one to hear it? Yes, you say confidently, before you consider what a sound is. Is it the twisting of broken branches? The crash of wood on earth, Yes? You’ve heard a tree fall. You know the sound. Wait- what is sound? Is it the sound waves? Or the eardrum vibrating? The brain receiving electrical stimulus? It seemed simple, but it’s a complex interaction of things. You were so sure and now it’s slipping away**.

I never wanted to be a teacher. If you come into my studio and ask me which roller I like the best and why, you will get a lecture about the merits of each; I don’t mind questions, but I’m not here to tell you how to draw or print, so, I talk about my inspirations. The causes of art for me are nature, or rather, my being a part of nature, but I don’t want to be a nature writer, and I want to show I’m a part of nature, not use it to suit my narrative, using animals to add symbolic meaning. The animals are their own beings, going about thier own life. They don’t need me.

What this has newsletter has become is not a nature journal, certainly not an art journal. It’s a gossip column.I don’t write about foxes, I write about my foxes, my rabbits, my kestrel. They are not mine. They are the animals I know though, and I write about them because that’s where the art comes from, the knowing. There’s a mystic interaction that words are too clumsy for; I’m a part of this, and it is magic.
I write the things I do, I draw the things I do, because I have to. I point to the vastness I feel, and hope that you find yourself there. My work is a koan, my mind is broken, and I peer through the gaps. I’m a war correspondent. I’m just reporting back.

I don’t know how to segue from the egomaniacal claims of being some kind of esoteric divine prophet to what I actually meant to talk about, which is apple trees. To be fair I do have a mystic relationship with apples, although when I try and express that, it comes out as ‘I really love apple trees’ and the cosmic grandeur is lost. Licky my job is drawing, really.

We picked the apples at the end of the heatwave, in the cool of the evening, shafts of late summer sun dappling through the leaves. My husband passes them down from the step ladder with commentary. ‘Big one’ he says ‘size of a baby’s head’. We work carefully; drop it and it bruises, and a bruised apple won’t keep. A bruised apple will go rotten and take its neighbours with it; a bad apple spoils the bunch.
The apples are stored in the kitchen, so the house smells of them, the intensity of the esters hitting me when I come down in the morning. I used to put them in the garage, but mice became a problem. I would walk in and Gary (all the mice were called Gary, for simplicity) would be sitting on the bench eating stolen bird seed and I would ask
‘Could you at least pretend to be scared of me?’
‘Fine’ says Gary, and saunters off under some plant pots.
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The swallows gather into a large flock and circle round the house, up high, squabbling loudly as they pass. I’ve not seen them do this before. I always assumed they travelled up to the college where the house martins live and they all travel to Africa together. I don’t know why I believe this, other than some swallows do move up to the college late in the summer, in search of food I suppose. They raise three broods in a good year and it can get quite crowded. I can’t find any detailed information on their travelling habits on the internet, and if they are friends with house martins, though I try.
I’m probably completely wrong, but at least I don’t believe they overwinter at the bottom of ponds, which people used to. I’m glad the swallows said goodbye this year; there is no raucous gossiping on the telephone wires outside my window in the morning. They’ve definitely left.
Thankyou for getting to the end of this. I appreciate your support. My Substack is free for all, so please feel free to share it. See you next week (I hope. Don’t unsubscribe)
*Feel free to skip to the apples
**I’m not going to explain what a koan is, I’m more buddhish than Buddhist. It’s a type of unanswerable riddle devised to push you into spiritual realisation
***I’m not sure that’s the correct interpretation of this koan, but it does reflect I have a degree in physics. I could go on but it gets less coherent because .. well I guess you’re mean to go beyond thinking in words and writing kind of depends on words. Don’t google ‘what is sound’ though, that is definitely not what you are supposed to do.