Tag: weaving

” Try again. Fail again and fail better” (Samuel Beckett)

“Blanche” on the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railway

I had the great misfortune to waste a lot of time at art school having to battle against one of the great 20th century myths about creativity. This was the idea that creativity could somehow shape the material world and could manifest itself without the mediation of any discernible skills at all. Creativity was thought to be an epiphenomenon of being, and being was definitely the thing. If you could get enough being on board you were set up as an artist. Later on I encountered much the same mindset in some of the more gimlet eyed evangelicals who had an unshakeable belief in the inerrancy of their obscure beliefs. Nowadays it’s conspiracy theorists, climate deniers, brexiters and anti vaxxers but it’s all rooted in the same problem; the refusal to examine, to question, to test and to modify your own practices and beliefs in the light of the evidence. Put simply; how can you possibly get better at what you’re trying to do – whether it’s running a country, making a pot or identifying a flower if you start with the assumption that anything you do is beyond critical reach because it just is!

I’ve heard apparently sensible writers say that they won’t read other peoples’ writing in case it influences them. They’re often the ones who make Vogon sonnets look like literature. I’ve spent most of this rainy week in North Wales grappling with computer programmes associated with the identification mainly of plants and it’s been a revelation to discover some of the benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). You might think it would have been a better use of my time crawling around in the pouring rain with water running down my neck, looking for Wilson’s Filmy Fern – (I know where it’s supposed to be but it’s up a mountain wreathed in rain and mist) – but there’s nothing virtuous about unnecessary suffering and a bit of study pays better in the end.

Yesterday we went to see an exhibition at the Oriel, Glyn y Weddw in Llanbedrog involving the gathering, dying, spinning and weaving of wool – this is Wales after all. Here there was an abundance of art, technique and skill on show. Of course, all works of art begin with an idea – often very vague – but the real creative work is preserving and developing the initial vision through the processes that render it visible and never sacrificing the initial idea to showy skills. Great creative art is self-effacing about its means whilst being utterly dependent upon them. It’s not just musicians who have to spend so much time doing their scales. I couldn’t stop myself from getting down to nose-to-nose contact with one blanket just to see how the warp and weft was so skilfully woven that bright colours of the wools blended into the colours of autumn on the hills and mountains.

Upstairs in the same gallery is a permanent exhibition of porcelain, some of which was made at Nantgarw. My first degree was in Ceramics and I became fascinated by porcelain, and got to know and love the work of Thomas Pardoe – a decorator (I’d rather call him artist) of genius and William Billingsley a potter and decorator himself who ran huge legal risks by leaving Royal Worcester having signed the equivalent of a non-disclosure agreement by successfully arguing that the agreement didn’t cover the activity of making and decorating porcelain himself because he wasn’t disclosing any secrets. The technical expertise these and other working class potters displayed is awe inspiring. The process of manufacturing what was known as soft paste porcelain was wasteful, expensive and heartbreaking and neither man was a stranger to hardship and bankruptcy. The different styles of the two artists, though different, were so lovely I instinctively connected with them, and if they were alive today they would stand equal with the best natural history painters around. Pardoe produced some amazing botanical series, and Billingsley was so good at roses that Royal Worcester begged him to stay for fear of any competitor getting hold of him.

John Llewellyn, foreman – by William Jones Chapman, painter – in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff

The 1800’s was an era when Wales was being stripped of the mineral wealth which was mined, forged and cast by men and women of real moral stature and turned into grand estates by their employers who often had none; or otherwise offshored the loot in English banks.

At art school, once again, we had a technician called Jack Pearce; a retired plasterer who could make plaster sing – he could speed the set or retard it and could feel the state of things in the bucket with his bare hands. Later on we moved to Stoke on Trent for a few months and saw the skills which were being discarded as the work was moved increasingly to China. Our mould maker Stuart, when he wasn’t recovering from a wild weekend, could cast anything – no matter how complex – and he helped to unload the last functioning bottle kiln in Stoke for the very last time as the industry died. As a child our next door neighbour Jim French was a glaze dipper at Pountney’s the Bristol Pottery where Pardoe worked for a while, and below our house was a marvellous allotment kept by Mr King – a fully Edwardian coal miner whose daily work involved walking to Parkfield Colliery in Pucklechurch and then walking back home hundreds of feet underground; only to repeat the walk in reverse at the end of his shift. I’d like to think that the Bristol Pottery kilns, pots glazed by Jim French, were fired with coal dug by Mr King’s forebears. My Dad was a GWR railwayman; I’m proud of my working class background

But what I’m doing here is not to promote hard work as a freestanding virtue, but to link it to the astounding creative achievements of these people; often poorly educated but who worked tirelessly to develop the skills which released and realized their creative abilities. At art school I was heavily penalized for spending too much time investigating glazes, clays and working techniques; but he who laughs last etc. If you want to be creative – I mean really creative – you’ll only ever be as good as your technique allows.

A bit of re-mythologizing

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From Christmas with the demythologisers – Rev. E. L. Mascall, – to the tune of Good King Wenceslas

“Sir, my thoughts begin to stray

And my faith grows bleaker.

Since I threw my myths away

My kerygma’s weaker.”

“Think on Heidegger, my lad,

That pellucid Teuton;

Then you won’t feel half so bad

When they talk of Newton.”

Sorry, that’s a terrible theological in-joke, but writing earlier about the way the (my) mind works, prompts me to share this pretty awful character with you.  I invented him during a period of intense reflection about nine or ten years ago to try to think or write about the power of words to uncover/expose the inner workings of ideas. I’ve never had a problem with myths – understood properly they’re just about the best way to tell the truth about the most profound mysteries. Furbelow is, of course, one of many alter-egos such as we all adopt from time to time. They’re custom built and rooted in the confusing reality of our individual lives. Taking Furbelow and mythologising him deliberately gave me the chance to regard a fragment of my own inner life, as it were, from the outside. I’m hesitant to release him into a harsh world, but he hates being caged up in my head so here goes –

Captain Furbelow

At the edge of the River Severn in the month of December you might stand in the freezing cold one night, with the moon sitting low in the sky and the wind rattling down over your shoulder from the Northeast and driving the clouds across like fat schooners. And if you stood until your fingers turned white and brittle and waited and waited as the tide flowed and foxes went about their business you might wonder at the sheer size of the sky above your head. And you might, as you scanned the sky and thought to yourself – “this is the point in the film where the geese fly over, honking, and my blood freezes” – you might also begin to see the millions of stars above your head and among them you might notice the constellation of Orion with his sword and his belt. And you might think to yourself also that this dark sky reminds you a bit of your Dad’s huge black railway overcoat then you wouldn’t be far out. And imagine if you could search in his deep black pockets for sweets, and breathe in the familiar sharp smell of his armpits, and the smell of the bus, and the smell of the rain and the pub and you would feel very strange indeed perhaps and you would know that asking whether such a being as Captain Furbelow actually exists is a silly question, rather like asking whether the Potwell Inn exists. And when you have seen the stars that line his greatcoat stretched over your head in the dead of night, then you just know it, and the teachers, pharisees, inquisitors and pedants as usual, know nothing.

As to the facts, there’s not a lot to be said. He’s a weaver of meanings, creating a unique form of greatcoat cloth.  Some people have argued that there may be a whole hierarchy of Furbelows and such a thing may be as true as any other thing. What we know for a fact is that he lives on a hill near a seaside town – hence the name and rank – and he drives a yellow Morris 1000 van with stars and a crescent moon hand painted on the side, and he has a more or less scandalous and very intermittent liaison with “Oestral” who is an “International Clairvoyante” and whose visions regularly transcend the parish boundary.

The cloth which he weaves descends on the town at night which is why you can’t see it. It’s said he spends the day time at a huge loom in a wooden shack, and where he weaves the cloth from fragments he has harvested during his journeys. Anything from a ship’s manifest to a small advertisement could be woven. A tiny piece of conversation blown in the wind is not too small to escape his attention. He might be arrested by the arching of an eyebrow or the faint flush of the skin in a chance meeting between two people who do not yet know that they are lovers. A dog’s bark, a small joke or even a road sign might inflame him. A particular favorite of his are lists and catalogues which can easily be unravelled and used again. Memories, sounds and smells are the warp and weft of the cloth and if he can lay his hands on the glint of the sea he can weave it in judiciously so as to bring the whole fabric to perfection. The promiscuity of his means is a source of continual irritation to the town, and especially to the deacons of the local Baptist church who, being both strict and particular as well as Baptist, have only the one story which, is completely threadbare.

This may be the origin of the assertion that “Captain Furbelow is a creature of the night” – which phrase has a peculiar resonance for parish councillors and deacons. However it may be that the simple fact that he is, in reality, out and about more obviously during the night, is enough to remove the inverted commas and turn the criticism into an observation. Some qualification may therefore assist us. Captain Furbelow is especially a creature of the warm summer night. On such a night, when the sea-town is held in the air by the force of dreams. Faded seawashed driftwood spars, frames, orange-peel. Delabole slate, terracotta tiles, paynes grey, windworn rocks, seaworn pebbles, scrubbed sand, lichens, quoits and dracaenas like silks in a cabinet or an artists’ colour chart gather on the shore.   Then, on such a night, as the sun sets and the fast food shops are cleaned down, the soft warmth of evening insinuates its seductive aromas around the harbour. When the scent of hot tarmac, wallflowers, fish and chips, cigarette smoke and stale beer hang in the salt air like pheromones to the girls gathered like moths beneath coloured lights . When pasties, suntan oil and peeling shutters, (shriven by the summer heat), gift their perfumes to the sky as it turns from pale blue to indigo. When the people refuse the cadence of night and day.   When they try to stretch the day as if they could hold the tide at the rim of the horizon by sheer effort of will. Then Captain Furbelow will leave home and drive down the winding road through the town.

He is also a creature of the winter night, of the harvest night, of the wassail, of the night of mourning. He is both Captain of the Feast and solitary figure at the graveside. “Amen to that!” he cries, and the deacons and the parish councillors murmur damp threats and plan revenge so horrible that you would dream bad dreams for a month.

Truth to tell, I think Captain Furbelow is a bit frightening. The smell of his armpits and the acrid greatcoat speak of other adventures and happenings that aren’t so good. In fact they’re everything the deacons say. Sometimes he puts his hands deep down into his greatcoat pockets and you can hear things scurrying around in there. Terrible things. Some say that the Captain is exceedingly old, even as old as Adam himself and others maintain that he drifted into town in the nineteen sixties and never left.

Nothing goes with a greatcoat like a beard, and a cigarette. But this beard is different. So dense you could not hack your way through it with the sharpest billhook. A beard to occlude the sky and the clouds. A beard full of thorns and small nesting birds and fugitives hiding from justice. A beard full of things you tried to say and couldn’t. A grey beard with a golden stain that might come from poems spoken out loud or from constant furtive roll-ups.

Go well, Captain Furbelow out there in the world with your beard and your greatcoat. I’ll see you again at the Wassail in January.