DEBUGGING THE GARDEN

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mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eWx493Xyf2..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eWx493Xyf2..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Everything that Rises: a book of convergences</i></span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">, Lawrence Weschler p</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">osits the idea that there are meaningful connections to be found in images from incredibly diverse sources that somehow resemble each other - </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“uncanny moments of convergence, bizarre associations, eerie rhymes, whispered recollections—sometimes in the weirdest places.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Some days this sounds interesting to me, other days it just sounds bleedin’ obvious.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, for instance, </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Freddy Alborta’s famous </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">photograph </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“Che Guevara’s Death,” from 1967:</span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3ZoJWZ156Z..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="474" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3ZoJWZ156Z..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>looks like</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> Rembrandt’s “The Anatomy Lesson” from 1632:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8TtAIy9qwQ..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="492" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8TtAIy9qwQ..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s no denying that the two images do resemble each other, but isn’t it perfectly likely that Alborta had seen “The Anatomy Lesson” and its composition came to mind, consciously or subconsciously, as he took the picture?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But even if it didn’t, what exactly does this resemblance mean?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>And in what sense is it a “convergence”?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>What exactly is coming together?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">   </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Other pictures were certainly taken of that scene with Che, some of them rather less Rembrandt-ish:</span></span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9_L0m17keb..." imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="374" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9_L0m17keb..." width="640" /></a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That may be a discussion for another time and place, but I did just notice (having been familiar with the images for some time) a resemblance, hardly random, and hardly all that surprising, between these two images of Jerry Cornelius (as played by Jon Finch in <i>The Final Programme) </i>and JG Ballard (in Harley Cokliss's 1971 short <i>Crash) </i>walking alongside wrecked cars.  </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IdIL5WFWwE..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="310" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IdIL5WFWwE..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CWcvY_YDaQ..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="394" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CWcvY_YDaQ..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Both images then reminded me of scenes from Jean Luc Godard’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sympathy for the Devil</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7gxoo_0TSX..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="448" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7gxoo_0TSX..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And then I was reminded of a shot from Derek Jarman’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jubilee</i>:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z_vyZb5C_i..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="386" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z_vyZb5C_i..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Which in turn reminded me of Wim Wenders’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The American Friend</i> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z_FvEbntrl..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="398" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z_FvEbntrl..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I think you could argue that things here are diverging rather than converging, but that’s OK: free association seems as valid, and as meaningful, as any imagined convergence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But hold on there.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m not sure that Weschler is, or that JG Ballard was, much of a walker, but I do know that </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Weschler is the author of another book titled, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Robert Irwin Getty Garden </i>about the gardens at the Getty Center in Los Angeles which contains transcripts of conversations Weschler and Irwin (the garden’s designer), had on a series of walks through the garden, discussing the philosophical and practical decisions that went into the design.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is a fabulous garden by any standard – and very wild and fanciful in some ways, very formal in others.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MCemJRMnNm..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MCemJRMnNm..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I don’t think it’s a garden where people do much serious walking, but there is a pretty great (if obviously unwalkable) cactus garden:</span></div><div style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_GDCd68k1K..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="406" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_GDCd68k1K..." width="640" /></a></div><div style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I don’t know if JG Ballard would have enjoyed the </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; line-height: 200%;">Getty</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> Garden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Some evidence suggests he wouldn’t. There’s an interview by Graeme Revell that appears in “Re/Search 8/9: J. G. Ballard,” from 1984, in which he discusses the symmetry of the French garden - JGB: - Which I always find nightmarish for some reason, those formal French gardens. One would think all that intense formality would be the absolute opposite of madness. The gardens were obviously designed to enshrine the most formal, rational and sane society to ever exist during the Age of Reason. Why they should immed<span class="textexposedshow">iately fill me with notions of psychosis, I don't know.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“Have you ever been to Madingley Hall near Cambridge? It's a big Elizabethan mansion, and a couple of years ago some friends took me out there. Behind this large house, which is used for conferences and academic meetings and the like, were notices everywhere requesting silence. We walked into this large, very formal French garden with beautifully crisp hedges, like great green sculptures, everywhere; very severe, rectangular, rectilinear passways - like diagrams - on the ground. Profoundly enclosed, very silent. I nearly went mad....”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eU1GQHmUF8..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="478" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eU1GQHmUF8..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As fate would have it, some of us have seen, or at least seen photographs of, JG Ballard’s front garden, images like this one:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MTLn93sDXo..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MTLn93sDXo..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Not much formality there and not much wildness either. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suppose if you live in suburbia you do have to worry just a little about what the neighbours think, however much of a wildman you are in your writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>You couldn’t have much of a walk in it, obviously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I wonder if Ballard would have been happier walking here, at the VW Slug Bug Ranch in Conway, Texas.  I think I would.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VbXcHpFNfc..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VbXcHpFNfc..." width="640" /></a></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheHol..." height="1" width="1" alt=""/>