Onions 1
This morning I am going to the beach. It is the hottest February day ever, the planet is going to hell and I am going to the beach. What else should I do? It is so beautiful. Like a mushroom cloud. Like the plague. See:
As I walk, I notice how things stand against one another. The signpost stands against the sky. Gorse stands yellow against blues. Even - or especially - a gap or slight opening can stand against this blue. All this blue. Winter plague blue. See:
But a slight opening standing against blue is very different from this slight opening. Badgers’ sett may be grand opening or a primrose path to the underworld. The OH that gapes and invites.
Actually I have come to the beach because the sea.sky seems like backdrop. It is always a backdrop. Some years it’s been wallpaper. But it can never be foreground, because I can’t get beyond it. When I try to do a figure-ground reversal (like switching between seeing the vase and seeing the faces in the famous optical illusion) that involves the sea.sky... I can’t. Nothing gets behind the sea.sky.
And my balls and oranges seemed to set themselves against the sea.sky. And against that horizon. I want to see the horizon from down there. From up close. With nothing in-between.
Also I have written a short play. Actually I have just listed the Dramatis personae. They are:
The one whose desire is to balance things on top of one another
The one whose desire is to be able to make something intrinsically and unarguably beautiful
The one whose desire is to create
The one whose desire is to represent
The one whose desire is to bring forth laughter
The one whose desire is to impress
The one whose desire is to withdraw
That’s seven characters I can call my own, all in search of a landscape, or an author. No, I am the author, unless I delegate the play-making to volunteers from the Project Group. Then I can just watch. But, for today, these rather whimsical characters are mine and I take them to the beach to see what feat of artistic engineering man can achieve today. On the beach, we find...
And my balls and oranges seemed to set themselves against the sea.sky. And against that horizon. I want to see the horizon from down there. From up close. With nothing in-between.
Also I have written a short play. Actually I have just listed the Dramatis personae. They are:
The one whose desire is to balance things on top of one another
The one whose desire is to be able to make something intrinsically and unarguably beautiful
The one whose desire is to create
The one whose desire is to represent
The one whose desire is to bring forth laughter
The one whose desire is to impress
The one whose desire is to withdraw
That’s seven characters I can call my own, all in search of a landscape, or an author. No, I am the author, unless I delegate the play-making to volunteers from the Project Group. Then I can just watch. But, for today, these rather whimsical characters are mine and I take them to the beach to see what feat of artistic engineering man can achieve today. On the beach, we find...
Onions 2
...a ship’s fender. I thought it was a pipe from a distance, but it’s a fender. Marvellously it’s just light enough for me to lift it and reposition it without killing myself and just heavy enough not to blow over in the breeze. This is an affordance if ever there was one. Now I feel some responsibility to do well with this affordance, to live up to its possibilities. Perhaps I should add The one whose desire is to do what is called for.
As I consider it, I am suddenly overtaken by the idea of my father. I have to do something with it 'for him’. I have to please him with what I choose to do. Blimey. I thought I had got past that one. And he didn't know one end of an artform from another. To please him, it will have to be useful and funny. I would need a saw. And a drill.
I cannot appease my dad. Instead, let the eight of us go in search of other affordances, for there is little to be done with a solitary fender. Except stand it up. Alright, we’ll stand it up and set it against the sea.sky.
As I consider it, I am suddenly overtaken by the idea of my father. I have to do something with it 'for him’. I have to please him with what I choose to do. Blimey. I thought I had got past that one. And he didn't know one end of an artform from another. To please him, it will have to be useful and funny. I would need a saw. And a drill.
I cannot appease my dad. Instead, let the eight of us go in search of other affordances, for there is little to be done with a solitary fender. Except stand it up. Alright, we’ll stand it up and set it against the sea.sky.
Onions 3
Actually, standing it against the sea.sky is an artifice. It’s artificial. From where me and the Desire Boys are standing, there’s more foreground. You should see it. It's scalloped today and sculpted. The sea.sculptor has scooped up hundreds of tons of shingle and dumped it in wavy forms, so that the beach looks like a series of valleys instead of a flat beach. This picture doesn’t really do it justice.
But I feel a falling away as soon as I name the sea as sea.sculptor. It’s like digging a land drain with a spade and realising there’s a bloke with a JCB just over there. Suddenly everything seems a bit silly. Why am I presuming to decorate the beach when an ELEMENT has been at work here?
Still, the fender has a strong sense of body. Of torso. It is the body of a creature and I shall see what might be added to it. Legs seem obvious. A snapping mouth. Perhaps a separate tail or genitalia? It could have a seaweed bush. Maybe I will find chalk to draw a face on it. Let's see what else the beach might afford...
Still, the fender has a strong sense of body. Of torso. It is the body of a creature and I shall see what might be added to it. Legs seem obvious. A snapping mouth. Perhaps a separate tail or genitalia? It could have a seaweed bush. Maybe I will find chalk to draw a face on it. Let's see what else the beach might afford...
Onions 4
...onions and a boot.
Yup. There are a lot of onions on the beach. I did not put them here. Can someone have brought onions and then lost interest in them? Or simply put them down and forgotten about them? If they were washed up, how have they stayed together in a clump, here? They are not in a net.
Some of them have lost their skins and we are in Mary Booker’s territory of fear. Here on the beach is where she invited us to work with fear. And now there are onions, some without skins. Surely an onion without a skin is a metaphor for some kind of vulnerability. The one whose desire is to represent is cheering up.
I carry them gingerly to the fender. I also take the boot. I feel no requirement to be ginger with the boot. Oh, and an orange bucket thing.
As I carry them I am reminded that, whenever I see landscape art (or whatever it’s called when people fiddle with nature and stick things on trees or do earthwork) I invariably think “why didn’t I think of that?”. So here I am thinking (although there’s almost no wood involved) “what would Andy Goldsworthy do?”. And I realise that we should add The one whose desire is to be like Andy Goldsworthy. That makes nine of us. (Except that Andy may identify with the one who wants to impress, for example.)
Yup. There are a lot of onions on the beach. I did not put them here. Can someone have brought onions and then lost interest in them? Or simply put them down and forgotten about them? If they were washed up, how have they stayed together in a clump, here? They are not in a net.
Some of them have lost their skins and we are in Mary Booker’s territory of fear. Here on the beach is where she invited us to work with fear. And now there are onions, some without skins. Surely an onion without a skin is a metaphor for some kind of vulnerability. The one whose desire is to represent is cheering up.
I carry them gingerly to the fender. I also take the boot. I feel no requirement to be ginger with the boot. Oh, and an orange bucket thing.
As I carry them I am reminded that, whenever I see landscape art (or whatever it’s called when people fiddle with nature and stick things on trees or do earthwork) I invariably think “why didn’t I think of that?”. So here I am thinking (although there’s almost no wood involved) “what would Andy Goldsworthy do?”. And I realise that we should add The one whose desire is to be like Andy Goldsworthy. That makes nine of us. (Except that Andy may identify with the one who wants to impress, for example.)
Onions 5
The beach is full of affordances today. There are these moist clay eggs. Flat eggs. They are simply damp, malleable versions of the pebbles that they lie amongst. Here is one lying next to similarly shaped neighbour. The neighbour is about 150 million years old. I can tell because there is the edge of an ammonite peeking out of it. A judicious chisel would reveal it. But the moist one. I can't tell if it's an old one that has somehow got softened up by lying in running water or if it is a new one, just born.
The same is probably true of souls.
The same is probably true of souls.
I collect up armfuls of the soft clay eggs and take them to the fender and onions. Almost a menu item in a working men’s [sic] pub.
I also find a huge flat tray.stone. It doesn’t look huge here but I can hardly lift it. It is exquisitely flat. It is asking to be balanced on something. It is also gagging for onions, in my opinion.
I also find a huge flat tray.stone. It doesn’t look huge here but I can hardly lift it. It is exquisitely flat. It is asking to be balanced on something. It is also gagging for onions, in my opinion.
Onions 6
Now I proceed in lurches, noticing how I am distracted. I am even distracted by the idea of distraction.
I would tend to describe my attention as falling away, from sky to beach to fender to onions to pebbles to tray.stone, and so on. But distraction tells me that my attention is drawn away. Pulled. Pulled by one thing after another - like a jackdaw’s attention pulled by one glistening object after another. In the process, the desire to create is trounced by the desire to collect; the desire to build jostles with the desire to forage.
But still. How is it that an onion or a boot can draw my attention. That seems to give the onion agency. But I cannot deny it. There is my wandering attention and its susceptibilities. But there is also the onion... in its context. The beach onion, the thing itself, has power to pull me, draw me in... just as a human face can. Or a bird’s sudden song.
So here are the first onions. On the tray.stone. Neatly sliced by the horizon, which is blessedly horizontal again after that business with the oranges where the horizon went into a sharp tilt. And, of course, they are leaning together. And there is a slight opening. A pair of horizon-sliced, together-leaning, slightly gappy beach.onions.
The one whose desire is to create and The one whose desire is to represent are both temporarily happy.
I would tend to describe my attention as falling away, from sky to beach to fender to onions to pebbles to tray.stone, and so on. But distraction tells me that my attention is drawn away. Pulled. Pulled by one thing after another - like a jackdaw’s attention pulled by one glistening object after another. In the process, the desire to create is trounced by the desire to collect; the desire to build jostles with the desire to forage.
But still. How is it that an onion or a boot can draw my attention. That seems to give the onion agency. But I cannot deny it. There is my wandering attention and its susceptibilities. But there is also the onion... in its context. The beach onion, the thing itself, has power to pull me, draw me in... just as a human face can. Or a bird’s sudden song.
So here are the first onions. On the tray.stone. Neatly sliced by the horizon, which is blessedly horizontal again after that business with the oranges where the horizon went into a sharp tilt. And, of course, they are leaning together. And there is a slight opening. A pair of horizon-sliced, together-leaning, slightly gappy beach.onions.
The one whose desire is to create and The one whose desire is to represent are both temporarily happy.
Onions 7
Sensing their temporary satisfaction, The one whose desire is to balance things on top of one another swoops in and does what he knows well. Moist, flat egg balancing. [I typed Maoist, but there is no politics here. As far as I can tell.]
Twenty-five moist, flat eggs. Now The one whose desire is to balance things on top of one another is temporarily happy. But his happiness seems not to assuage desire but to feed it and he looks around for more balancing. I say it like this because that’s how it seems to be. It is not exactly me looking around because I am observing myself looking around. So let’s call it ‘him’. Or ‘her’, of course.
Here is more balancing:
Here is more balancing:
Onions 8
Onions 9
But now we have two towering things, there appears a new member of the cast. How could I have forgotten her? The one whose desire is to join things is an old friend. She has appeared in many roles, making connection between ideas, conjuring similes, joining the dots, wishing for sex. Here she tries first to link the two towers with an unfeasibly long branch, relents, moves the towers closer together...
...and then joins them with the orange, bucket thing.
There is nothing to be said about her, except that she will fade away when union has taken place. She is satisfied with union. It’s a spark thing. Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. It only needs a moment.
There is nothing to be said about her, except that she will fade away when union has taken place. She is satisfied with union. It’s a spark thing. Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. It only needs a moment.
Onions 10
But The one whose desire is to be like Andy Goldsworthy steps in, because Multiple Personality Disorder abhors a vacuum and sees a shapely bit of driftwood. A horned being. Look...
Isn’t it splendid?
Isn’t it splendid?
Onions 11
Now there is a coming together of the cast, some jostling, as antlers are attached to fender and body-balancing takes place. But it all feels a little predictable.
It’s not the fault of the cameraman. The creature ought to spring alive with these affordances. But it remains steadfastly beachbound. An old fender with some driftwood and onions plonked on. This is where my art runs out and The one whose desire is to be able to make something intrinsically and unarguably beautiful loses his erection.
Onions 12
I am suddenly unsettled. Has my morning been wasted? I could have stayed in bed. How has this helped in any way at all with runaway climate change and species extinction? I ask the cast. The one whose desire is to withdraw has already gone. The others are in hot pursuit, along with several flagging erections.
As ever, I have one last try. This seems to be me, the observer, tidying up after the children have gone to bed, or collecting up the sandy towels after the return from a summer beach day.
Perhaps this is something to stand against the sea.sky? To stand against the blue? A dying wooden cormorant, victim of some new human toxicity, its beak wide acroak, its body twisted in some last gasp.
As ever, I have one last try. This seems to be me, the observer, tidying up after the children have gone to bed, or collecting up the sandy towels after the return from a summer beach day.
Perhaps this is something to stand against the sea.sky? To stand against the blue? A dying wooden cormorant, victim of some new human toxicity, its beak wide acroak, its body twisted in some last gasp.
Onions 12
Oh I know, I’ll stuff it with onions...
...and leave it for a February passer-by to marvel at. Perhaps they'll wonder where the onions came from. Or perhaps the image, like the image of that napalmed child in Vietnam, will turn humanity in the nick of time, where Attenborough and Prince William failed.