On Art as Natural Law
A mirror of infinite reflections
At a recent trip to the National Gallery in London (which is not, I finally realised after years of thinking otherwise, the National Portrait Gallery), I was struck once again by the way all art is in endless conversation with itself, a mirror of infinite reflections. Paintings about myths, bible stories, other paintings - no one piece exists without all that which came before.
The purpose of art is manifold, of course, though I use the word ‘purpose’ with caution (‘useful’ is a capitalistic value), but might this hall of mirrors be in some way art’s ultimate point? To remind us of our fundamental interconnectedness?
In the same way a single mushroom is fruit of a subterranean network, infinitely complex mycelium mapping the soil for information and food, so, too, it seems to me, do works of art spring forth from a similar source. An endlessly complex, unknowable network fueling each singular ‘fruit’ with the ’food’ of inspiration ― creative energy. ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower,’ as Dylan Thomas put it.
Naturally, all artists start as fans and learn by imitation (the single most common advice to budding writers is, for example, to read and read and read): that art begets art is hardly news. But might there be a deeper truth at play?
In the culture of profits over people and the planet in which we all exist, which thrives on the cult of individual freedom at the cost of collective wellbeing, whilst relying on collective effort to survive, might art be a reminder of the laws that nature lives by, to which we have forgotten we are subject, ie that we are all dependent on/ reflections of each other, the sum of a multitude of parts?
A years-long conversation
In March ‘21, Aver, a friend and music producer based in Berlin, and a brain behind the band Move78, asked if I would contribute to a sound collage he was producing for his regular radio show on Refuge Worldwide.
Exploring a quote from David Graeber - ‘The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.’ - Aver invited some 60 people to voice note him with their response to this idea, ie how they would/ could make a different future.
My mind went, as it often does, straight to Toni Morrison, and a passage from one of her later novels, A Mercy. From deep in the bowels of lockdown, most of which I spent alone in North Devon, I went for a walk and recorded my hopes for the future, inspired by just 20 of Morrison’s words: ‘Cut loose from the earth's soul, they insisted on purchase of its soil, and like all orphans they were insatiable.’ Suturing that severance, reuniting with the soul of the earth, seemed (and seems) to me the best hope that we have. Aver took my and several other responses and created this gorgeous aural collage (starts around 1 hour and 33 minutes).
Three years on from that, when writing development agency, Commonword, asked me to write a lyric essay on the theme How Green is Our City?, creative responses to the climate emergency from a global majority perspective, my mind went back to that Morrison line, and a trip to the Gower peninsula, where, because there’s so little light pollution, the Milky Way was gloriously clear, which made me wonder what our shrouded city skies have done to our capacity for awe.
When I shared the essay, Motherless Children, with Aver, he asked if I’d record parts of it for Move78’s fourth album, Game Four, itself a profound exploration of… what shall we call it… prolific mycelium? The web, the net, the fabric that knits all art and artists together, from which each (fruiting) body of work emerges (Game Four is a layered nexus of creation and destruction ― within its jazz-based soundscapes you can hear a kind of wrangling where the chaos of potential meets the reasoned edge of form, which strikes me as analogous to nature, drawing from innumerable resources to generate existence, quite often from decay).
The breadth of influence
Within this one exchange between two, there are so many artists at play. The ones I’ve cited, the many that I haven’t and, beyond them, an inscrutable expanse. Like the faces of the people in our own ancestral line, largely obscured by distant time, it is hard to truly grapple with the breadth of influence. Behind each artist/ work of art sits endless other artists/ works of art. On and on the conversation goes, boundless as a galaxy or fractal.
Artists or not, we are each of us nonetheless of this perennial complexity, in equal measure singular yet one. In these increasingly fractured times when division and suspicion reign supreme, perhaps art can help us shun the dangerous delusion we exist outside dependence on each other. Failing that, a walk amongst the trees might act as something of a balm ― nature is unerringly cooperative and artful.
Game Four is out on 16 May. Follow Aver and/ or Move78 for updates.
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Featured image by Frank Tunder.
