Bryan Islip's Blog, page 26

Another letter for Darren

Dear Darren



Whoever you are, thank you for your response. Good to know some of our youngsters can assimilate more than 140 characters of the written word at any one time! That A grade in English of yours must mean something after all.



You tell me you're still undecided about applying for 'Uni'. Why, you ask, do I not suggest one of the options I listed in that first letter? And which option, you further ask, did I actually select for myself?



Well, that original Socrates never dished out advice to the young, he dispensed only his wisdom. I told you I would not be discussing myself, but would hope to take the same line as my mentor in ancient Greece. Besides, the road down which I have travelled for near on four score years may not - cannot - be the one for you. You will find your road or it will find you and you will travel it to its end, as will I to mine.You may pr may not agree that this is where our roads will meet.




Here's something that may help you to make up your own mind ... You see, I have long since developed a conviction that we
are all born into this world pre-wired with four lights with which we see our way
through life. The first of these is a sense of a power
beyond understanding. The original Socrates agreed at his trial that yes, he was the wisest of men, but only because he was the only one to understand that he knew little or nothing. 'A power beyond understanding'. Call it religion if you must, though in my view this is not a good word, religion having been responsible for some of humanity's nastiest atrocities. Some choose these days to ignore it or to
switch it off, preferring the feely touchy God of secularism / materialism. But Darren, take a look at the faces and who do you reckon are the more content, more 'fulfilled', people who believe themselves to be in the presence of their God or folk beavering around in a Tesco?






The second light is that of one’s nation and/or one’s
race, much dimmed these days, of course, by officialdom - the dreaded
political correctness. There's nothing wrong with conformity (too many non-conformists would equal a most uncomfortable anarchy!) but as the mind control echelon has not yet achieved all of its aims you are allowed privately to detest our present day PC. Because however intensely you should respect all
people, your own nation and your own race should always to be a source of pride; a
light that shines pure and clean, clear and bright. It gets so much darker when you switch it off.





According to my belief our third is the light of
love for family. Your siblings, parents and grandparents are your rock, your island in the turbulent stream, your shelter from the storm, all that stuff. You don't have to be like them, but I do suggest that you love them. The light of that love will help you avoid many a dark and dangerous pothole in the way ahead. 





But then there is this all-powerful fourth light which is that
of our very selves. It is as private, as unique and as exclusive as our
fingerprints or our DNA. It’s the bundle of talents, proclivities, characteristics
and behaviour that lightens each our own way. But that fourth light of mine is not only for me
or yours for you but it can illuminate the way for others also, whether they be friends, aquaintances, workfellows or the unknowable strangers and descendants
who may come to hear of that which you or I do / have done. It helps them as the fourth light of others helps us. (As Socrates's, for instance, helps me two and a half thousand years after he dosed himself with poison.) After
we leave this place its fading away takes time. It glows soft or bright for a matter of weeks or months or for years. And sometimes,
if very rarely, this fourth light shines with such a truth and such a strength
that it cannot be extinguished for so long as the foot of Man walks upon the
face of mother Earth. It is, indeed, immortal. 




How bright will be your own fourth light, young man? Does it matter? I do hope so. The question of you going to Uni not going to Uni is of slight importance by comparison - but is still a decision for you and you alone. Not your teachers, not your parents, not your peers and certainly not for me. 



With the love of an ancient stranger



Socrates 

The first time ...

The first time ever I saw Glencoe ... I was astounded by its (to me in1973) other world beauty.



At the same time I found myself much disturbed by silent echoes of the infamous massacre when, early in the morning of 13 February 1692, thirty-eight MacDonalds, many of them fleeing from hot poursuit all over the Glen were killed by the Clan Campbell - those same Campbells who had accepted the MacDonald's previous evening feast and their overnight hospitality. Another forty MacDonald women and children later died of exposure after their homes were burned. All this on the grounds that the MacDonalds had not been prompt after the Jocobite uprising in pledging allegiance
to the new monarchs, William and Mary.



A more perfect illustration of the truth in the expression 'Man's inhumanity to Man' could hardly have been imagined although, God knows, thousands of similar incidents, many involving thousands, tens of thousands, even millions have taken place in history - and so it continues today. There must be some streak of genetic self-destruction in us. Scientists - bloody well find and eradicate it, should you have time!



Any way this is my oil on canvas tribute to the fallen. 75 x 46 cm

Westering Home

'Westering Home': oil on canvas one metre wide x 70 cm

This is my latest oil painting to become touch-dry. Incidentally the largest painting I have created thus far.




It will feature as (probably) November in the 2014 calendar that Eoghain Maclean and I are working on right now: again Eoghain's wildlife photographs paired up with my own Highlands landscapes in oils, each of them with my narratives. I haven't yet written the narrative for this one as yet, nor the accompanying few lines of verse. That's my next job having finished this blog.




People will ask 'Where is that then"? but on this occasion I'm not going to attribute a locality because the painting is all about Wester-Ross in general and the single bird on the wing in its centre. However I can tell you that the sunset, the island and the loch are from the window of Kirkhill's front porch that I use as a studio. The trees on the little spit of land, left foreground, are from a photograph taken much further south. The bird is a compromise. I originally planned for the whole painting to be a frame for another abstraction or 'murmur' of a thousand starlings but herself said no, leave it alone. So in went just my single my raven, westering home to roost for the night. Then I left it alone. 







Hope you like it. I shall try to get the original into a gallery, preferably Cherry Ambrose's Beauly Gallery. For sale unframed at a price to be determined. Unframed because that's becoming increasingly popular for contemporary display - plus, a frame suitable for an oil painting of this size would cost me anything upwards of a hundred pounds. Here;s how the edges look ...

A first letter to Darren

I don't know Darren and he doesn't know me. Nevertheless I'm writing him this letter and perhaps future letters in the hope it may help him or her to better understand  the world and the way of life he or she has inherited ('him or her' because Darren could be of either gender.)



Dear Darren



I'm not going to tell you anything about me, but you can call me Socrates if you like. After the philosopher, not the Brazillian
midfielder.



Socrates,  philosopher: one of the founders of Western thinking; lived around 400 BC. Disdained
money. Lived and died in his 80's, poor. Concluded that, while people thought they
knew a great deal and therefore considered themselves wise, in fact
they knew very little and were not wise at all.
He himself knew he
was not wise at all, which, paradoxically, made him the wiser one since
he was the only person aware of his own ignorance. Socrates' paradoxical
wisdom incurred the wrath of the State and brought him to trial on
charges of corrupting (the thinking) of youth. At the end: at his
trial, when Socrates was asked to propose his own punishment, he
suggested a wage paid by the government and free dinners for the rest of
his life. He was nevertheless found guilty and sentenced to death by poison: a fate he could have escaped but seemed to have warmly embraced.



Darren, you are sixteen going on seventeen. You think you might have achieved two B grades and one A grade - in English. Good luck with that.

You have an enquiring mind though not necessarily a creative one. Physically strong enough, sport is attractive but you don't often participate.

You consider yourself to be competitive. Although thus far a follower, you feel the need to be a leader.

You are curious about the world and secretly frightened of it or by it. Unsure of where you fit in or if you fit in. Instinctively you distrust the path ahead, the one laid out for you by your parents and 'society' at large, but you don't see any options to that awful old getting a job (with or without having gone to university), then fast forward into the dark chambers of marriage, children, property ladder, career scrambling, retirement and - oh no oh yes - the great big D.

There's safety in numbers so you always want to be part of the in-crowd yet for sexual gratification reasons you want to be seen as yourself alone by someone of the opposite sex - perhaps more than one, perhaps the more the merrier. I am assuming of course that you are heterosexual. And yes, you want to have fun, whatever she may be.

Darren, the first and most important matter in your mind right now is about trying for University entrance. Nearly all of your school friends want to go on to one but ...  you? Why? Let's indulge ourselves in some exploratory rationalisation ...


To get a better job and make more money, therefore have a more comfortable life? Perhaps, perhaps not. I'm guessing that three or four out of the five self-made multimillionaires sitting in front of the applicants in Dragon's Den never saw the inside of any University. And we've all known graduates nobody seems to want to employ.
To delay for as long as possible the plunge into adult life? Perfectly understandable. And no risk of that humiliating rejection / dole queue, at least for the three or more years.
Purely for the sake of  academia : knowledge and understanding? Almost all of the great scientists of history learned, then developed their theories within those marbled halls. Notable
exception the daddy of them all, Albert Einstein, who clashed with
authorities over teaching method and later wrote that the spirit of
creative
thought was lost in learning by rote. And if it's of any comfort to you at this juncture, both Darwin and Newton had a job getting themselves accepted into University. By contrast, the national poets / playrights / songsters of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland did not find it difficult to forego - or had no opportunity to secure the kind of further education of which you are thinking.
To have better fun? Oh, yes.

What are your options, were you not to go to 'Uni' as these days it is called?


You can stay at home and draw State benefit if your family is unable or unwilling fully to support you. This seems easiest but is in fact the toughest option.A couple of years of  useless subsistence living with mummy and daddy can lead to alienation or murder most foul.
You can leave home, try to find a life of some kind. Hey ho for adventure but high risk of serious discomfort.
You can find yourself a job, any job. Walk down any road in your local commercial / industrial area, knock on every door, tell them who you are and what you think you can offer them and ask for work. Any work. Someone - maybe the first or maybe the hundredth - will hire you. Hurrah! At last you have a value on the face of mother earth, however lowly. You'll learn how to work with strangers, to get on with them and even to like them. The money will be important but that latter is more so and is the key to both the door marked contentment and the one marked prosperity. It is also the key to the door labelled 'unremarkable'. 
You can try to enlist in one of the uniformed services.  This is simply exchanging the umberella called home for the one called army/navy/airforce. A great life if you have no problem obeying without question and killing people in the name of the State, (few have any problem so why should you). Very secure until your services are no longer required by the service and once again you have to confront the world solo. 
You can make something people might want to buy and then sell it. Preferably something unique but if not unique then making a better mousetrap or selling it better than the others. Or instead of making a product you can offer a service. Clean your car?

Of course with any of these options you need not and should never cease to learn. One of the few great shining stars of recent times is the thing with which your generation has grown up. The thing through which you read this. Just imagine the wisdom of that old man Socrates, had he been able to access the Internet!



So, the ball's still in your court, Darren. Let me know what you think?



Sincerely



An old man called Socrates

A painting for 2014

'Loch Maree and Slioch - Frosty Morning' Oil on canvas c 65x40cm



Actually I have re-sized this reproduction so as to fit my greetings cards and particularly our 2014 calendar. (accompanying narrative below). It will feature there in January. Actual size 65 wide x 40 cm high: this depiction c 55 x 40. (It extends another 10cm to the left.)



This painting was finished yesterday and will be left to touch-dry for the next 7-10 days. In fact it takes oil paintings  many months to dry right through completely.



It's been on and off my easel since mid-December, alternating with three other paintings in progress. Anyway here's the narrative for January 2014 ...








Sweet Marie and lordly Slioch

paired since glaciers, groaning,

cracking ancient rock, slow
scoured

their way across the wilderness,

leaving its bouldered residue,

to be softened by rains, by frosts

then torrents rushing down

of purest crystal, peaty brown,

reflectedf in its follow crown.




Loch Maree and Slioch - frosty morning - the painting




I think of Loch Maree
and Slioch as a pair and have painted them many times as such. But I couldn’t
resist adding to my collection with this particular aspect, seen whilst on my
way to Inverness . As the title suggests, it
was one of those still, frosty mornings that show the Scottish Highlands in her
finest Wintertime regalia.

This
year I’ve switched from pastels to oil on canvas but my approach remains the
same. I decide on a subject then work out my projected composition. This almost
always involves changing some features, perhaps adding one or two and taking others away. I
hope that the result helps you to experience the mood and the beauty of the place at that time of
day and of year and in those weather conditions.

A man's a man for a' that

As I may have mentioned before, I've been greatly honoured to deliver 'The Immortal Memory' address at our Wester-Ross Burns Supper on January 25th. The Immortal Memory is (I quote the official Burns web-site)  "serious enough to remind the guests that this is not the office party ... about 25 minutes!"! So I've been doing a bit of research. During it, I turned up For All That, one of my own short, short stories. About 800 words or five minutes if you have time and the interest to read on ...




 For All That






The Globe Inn proved to be a most popular venue
this market day. My travelling companion told me what he would like to drink. I
eased myself through the crowd and up to the bar amidst raised Scots voices and
shouts of laughter overlapping and over-riding each other. In competition a part-shaven,
apparently early day victim of the demon drink up at the corner of the bar was singing
about his luve being like a red red rose. Seemingly he very much missed this lassie
of his. My companion and I looked him over; a fair looking man in well-worn clothing and a good enough
voice on him - but singing verse at mid-day?




‘Wha’s for thee?’




‘Two of your best drams, innkeeper,’ I replied, revelling
in my own use of the vernacular; ‘If it should please you.’ The drunken singer
had hauled himself upright, gesticulating extravagantly. He sang on: ‘And fare
thee weel, my only luve / and fare thee weel a while! / And I will come again
my Luve / Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.’ He stopped at that and, as some applause
broke out, looked all around, nodding, smiling a trifle crookedly. He bowed low
in acknowledgment. In spite of the drink and the well worn state of his
clothing the fellow was most surely possessed of a certain dignity. ‘Innkeeper,’
I added, ‘And give that man whatever he may be drinking. It was a fine song.’




‘Aye, we know it and we know him weel enough
here,’ was the response.




The singer must have overheard the exchange. ‘Fee,
fie, foe, fum,’ he proferred, looking along the bar top directly at me, ‘For I
smell the bluid of an Englishman. A rich Englishman.’




‘Come come, my good man,’ I said. ‘But one who
wishes you no ill’.




‘Aye?’
He accepted the glass of whisky seemingly with good grace, still on his feet,
staggering a little. ‘As no more do I, you, my lord,’ he says although as you
know I am no lord, simply an ordinary citizen of the realm with my friend on
tour around these northern parts. He raised his glass; ‘But in compensation I
have some words for thee, my lord,’ says he, striking a heroic pose, supported
in part now by a passing serving girl, a comely lass. The babble had stopped.
In a new and clearly expectant silence the man drew himself to his full height,
threw wide his arms, recited … (and I shall try the dialect here, for better or
worse) …




Ye see yon
birkie, ca'd a lord,

Wha
struts, an' stares, an' a' that;

Tho' hundreds worship at his word,

He's but a coof
for a' that:

For a' that, an' a' that,

His ribband, star, an' a' that:

The man o' independent mind


He looks an' laughs at a' that.





He
drained his drink in one, shrugged off the girl, took to the centre of the
floor, went on …



A prince can mak
a belted knight,

A marquis, duke, an' a' that;

But
an
honest man's abon his might,

Gude
faith, he maunna
fa'
that!

For a' that, an' a' that,

Their dignities an' a' that;

The pith o' sense, an' pride o'
worth,

Are higher rank than a' that.




I
felt I should protest; aver that events overseas had no place in these
bejewelled and peace-filled islands of ours, but I had become as if entranced
by both the man and the words, revolutionary or no … He continued, looking now
more to my companion than to myself …



Then let us pray that come it may,

(As come it will for a' that,)

That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,

Shall bear
the gree, an' a' that.

For a' that, an'
a' that,

It's coming yet for a' that,

That Man to Man, the world o'er,

Shall brothers be for a'
that.




With
a final flourish he weaved his way in an extended silence back to his seat at
the corner of the bar. Then all the clapping and the cheering, and I have to
say endorsed by myself and most emphatically by my companion, whether the verse
be politically dangerous or no. As if deaf to all was the reciter and how soon
was he already re-engaged with his serving girl!




When
I could finally make myself heard I caught the innkeeper’s attention. ‘A fine
poem,’ says I, ‘And one we have not heard before. ‘It is by the speaker?’




‘No,’
says the man. ‘That man is Rabbie Carsin. But he is the son of the poet in all
but name, or so it is said, and he doesn’a mind being known as such. Rabbie
Burns is the poet, or was. And well known here in the Globe. They called Rabbie the
ploughman poet. He died here in Dumphries twenty and four years since. You
have no word of Burns in England?





I
shook my head. ‘I have not, sir.’ I addressed my companion; ‘You have heard
tell of this Rabbie Burns?’




‘Robert Burns? Oh yes. My countryman. I
have and we will all come to hear much more,’ said Lord Byron. ‘Shall we not,
Shelley?’




The end

Taking Christmas down

Taking Christmas down




We put it up with no
problem at all

Bright greeen spiny
leaves fixed to old oak beams,

And the wreath that we
gladly hung in the hall

Out of wind, out of rain
that outside teems,

And warmed by the fire
we had our own ball




We drank to the
health of every known one -

And to peace on earth,
goodwill to all men

But, oh, when the
feast and drinking is done,

Now we feel the press
of the world again,

This taking it down
is not so much fun.




They stared: “What a
beautiful tree” they said,

And we looked with
pride on our tinselled tower

A star-burst of
baubles and lights - overhead

A fine fairie queene dispensing
her power

Soon all to be boxed,
the tree dumped and dead.




What pleasure it was
when each post arrived

Each envelope opened,
pictures admired

Reading from whom with the card spread out wide

Then hanging our trophies,
strings multi-tiered

Now they’re all in
the bin, something has died.




Some echo of good
from the distant past?

Some simple utopian
wish we feel?

Beneath the tumultuous
hard sales blast:

We hear that voice, it’s
so clear and so real

And that’s why we want
to make Christmas last.




Perhaps next year

We’ll just leave it here.







Bryan Islip

12th night: 1991

A book to change my thinking

Quote: "Carson's book has changed the world" The Times: re Dr Rachel Carson's 1962 non-fiction, Silent Spring.  Oh yes it has, but not enough; not nearly enough.




I first read this wonderful masterwork in the early 60's but was last month given a modern edition of it as a Christmas gift. As you will gather from the author's preface to my 'Going with Gabriel', as reproduced below, I was then and still am very much affected by this literary diatribe against the massive proliferation in the use by agriculture of chlorinated hydrocarbons, principally DDT at the time. 




The good news is that, in spite of the chemical industry's orchestrated, high volume howl of ridicule, DDT* has long been de-legalised. However, sad to say many, many others have taken its place. And now we are even modifying the very stuff of the life that feeds us. Blind stupidity, and for what? Money, folks, good old, don't argue against it money. Cancers produced for money kill more people and induce more human agony than all the wars in all the history of Mankind added up together.




The links between man-made chemicals and the various cancers were well theorised in Dr Carson's book and to this day have not been denied, but still we carry on with them on the grounds that they help us to feed our ever growing numbers.






 Author’s note












You might wonder what or who could have inspired a man,
an old man you might say, to forego
the attractions of retirement in favour of enduring the long agonies and
occasional ecstasies of writing and getting into print and selling his novels.
Well, there are these  …












Professor Logan Pearsall-Smith





author in 1933 of On Reading Shakespeare





who showed me why the choice and
arrangement of words





can be worth more than the story;
more, in fact, than anything.












Doctor Rachel Carson





author in 1962 of Silent Spring





who taught me that the story is
often of greater importance





than the words for the wellbeing
of this wonderful new species called Mankind.












Mister Ernest Hemingway,





author in 1940 of For Whom The Bell Tolls,





whose words and whose story
combined to demonstrate,





to me anyway, that fiction,
perhaps more than anything else





can fly straight and true enough
to reach the human soul,





wherever she may live.












These works and these writers amongst many others have
been and are my personal inspiration. That is, of course, along with the
heartfelt wish that you, yourself, will find some real interest, some
satisfaction and even some joy in this well-beloved child of my imagination. One thing seems self-evident: should
it happen for enough of us we can indeed find that different way to go, that
better way to be.












Bryan Islip





2009




Going with Gabriel is fiction and is, I hope you would agree, an exciting read in its own right. But its  theme of population growth is, as I said, the raison d'etre for the proliferated used of noxious, unnatural chemicals. Put simply, there are now too many of us on planet earth to sustain ourselves without them. So, chicken and egg, right? And in this case egg comes first.




* In 1939 the discoverer of DDT, Dr Paul Muller of Switzerland, received the Nobel Prize for his work! 



Footnote: Dr Carson died of Cancer, aged 58.

Higher and higher

'They can and probably will cobble up some kind of a so-called 'deal'
later today in the USA. Although the politicians will claim to have
saved the world that new deal will make no difference.'  (From my last but one blog)



TOLD YOU SO.Yes, probably up there amongst the  most useless phrases in the English language. Sorry.



All the senators and congressmen in the good old USofA rolled up together and turned into 22 carat gold could not - cannot - re-write the past. 'The moving finger writes and having writ moves on, And all thy sighs and all thy tears can change no word of it.'  Many apologies to The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam for the awfulo mis-quote, but you know what I mean. Umpteen years of borrowing and lending (aka usury) must be paid for in blood sweat and tears and very soon. The fiscal cliff gets higher every single minute of every hour of every day ... etc. We built it and we go on building it, with or without Congress or the US President's permission.



And the more of us there are on this planet, and the more each of thinks he / she needs and has to have from 'our' poor old globe, preferably of course without earning or deserving it, the more certain it is that we're going to fall over the edge or run out of oxygen.



King Canute probably thought up a damn good reason for getting his royal feet wet, too. But at least he had the good sense and good grace to get his courtiers to move his chair back off the goddam beach before he got himself drowned in the uncaring, incoming tide.

Logie Falls

Here's my latest oil painting on canvas, size 65 x 46 cm. "The Walk down to Logie Falls". It will feature in 0ur 2014 calendar - probably for October as this is the month it was started. As you can see, it features the last of the multicoloured autumnal foliage.



Logie Falls are about a mile off the road going north from Inverness then the village of Contin. Silver birch, conifers, hard rock lichen covered, wild waters, rough paths, lots of ups and downs: Highlands of Scotland.