Skye: Suffused with Wonder II

"...reason has tended to collar intellect in our time... For reason knows that we all want to have reason on our side. But once we have seen reason plain, we can use it as the wonderful tool that it is, and then get on with the real business of being alive along the way whose milestones are momentary or timeless experiences of being whole - mind, body, and hand - in the delight that is memorable and breathe an immemorial air...

...And then you become aware of your self there, aware of rare self, the rare self that interpenetrates all, sees and knows with a final certainty. I know some such self has been splelt with a capital S, just as the word certainly has been called Truth or Reality. But I Don't want in this practical exercise to use capitals, or words like Mysticism, Transcendence, and so on. There is no need; only a little application, persistence, failure and more persistence. The way is open. But one must go along it far enough for thought to get blocked and the void of no-thought to open out, for only then can enlightenment come."

- Neil M Gunn (1891-1973)

Atom of Delight

Postscript: astute readers of my blog will have noticed that I have recently (since my return from Skye, Scotland in July) quoted heavily from Neil Gunn. For those of you who have not heard the name (I had not heard of him prior to my first trip to Scotland in 2009, where I "discovered" his writings while browsing through one of Scotland's many fine second-hand bookstores), Neil Miller Gunn was born in 1891 in Dunbeath, a small fishing and crofting community in Caithness, in North East Scotland. Arguably among the most important Scottish novelists of the first half of the 20th century (he wrote 20 novels between 1926 and 1954), Gunn's unique gift was the seemingly effortless manner in which he captured in prose the - physical and spiritual - essence of Highland life. His final book, published in 1956 was The Atom of Delight (from which the passage above is quoted, along with a few others in earlier blog entries). It is a profoundly moving, deeply spiritual autobiography that traces his interest in Zen Buddhism (his interest in which was ignited when he read Herrigel's Zen and the Art of Archery, the same book that, coincidentally, also jump-started Henri Cartier-Bresson's pursuit of the "decisive moment'). I find his writings a perfect complement to (and/or, prose-based analogue of) the feeling that Scotland, in general, and Skye in particular, instills in me.

Skye: Suffused with Wonder

"But it's the next and final step that the difficult one - and really quite impossible to describe because of its unique nature... In the end thought itself gets choked and the mind becomes a void. It's at this point that the miracle happens, and the void, the void itself, gets lit up: the light spreads, burgeons; it is suffused with wonder, delight, a miraculous sense of freedom."

- Neil M Gunn (1891-1973)

As I've mentioned repeatedly on these pages since my return from last month's trip to the wondrous Isle-of-Skye in Scotland, Skye is a paradoxical mix of majestic landscapes, seascapes, and clouds - that are almost too overwhelming in their cosmic scale and intensity to appreciate fully - and a sublime timeless stillness that permeates and infuses even the smallest elements with an transcendent ethereal glow, elevating the merely physical into a spiritual dimension.

There are some who believe that "reality" is but a thin - mostly illusory - veil separating one invisible realm, that defines the "seer," from another, that defines what the seer "sees" (without diving into deeper ouroborian realities!)  Nowhere else does that veil seem quite as thin as when it is rendered momentarily visible on Skye. 

Skye's Evanescent Moods

"The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all. I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water."

- Eugene Ionesco

(1909 - 1994)

Sometimes the most revealing shots of all - that record otherwise invisible rhythms of light and mood - are the simplest, requiring the least effort. As I've already written about in previous blog entries, Skye's one constant is its evanescence. One minute, one is enveloped in a cool mist, or is pummeled hard by cold rain; a minute passes, and rays of bright sun light up a valley that was all but invisible an instant ago; another minute passes, and the clouds magically transform into a symphony of light and shadow and - inexplicably - wondrous color that seems to simultaneously come from nowhere and infuse everything (the act that so transfixed and inspired the abstract artist Jon Schueler); then, suddenly, a mysterious, imperceptibly soft, wind, stirs away the magic, and renders Skye's secrets invisible once more, leaving only the soft "moooos" and "baaaahs" of the omnipresent cows and sheep in place to remind one that Skye's evanescence is fundamentally defined by an endless - irreducibly complex - play between the real and the surreal; with neither giving up its secrets easily.

The image at the top of this blog entry contains a short sequence of the same photograph, captured from the same spot (my position at our breakfast table, with me looking at our cottage's south facing window) and at the same time, but on different days during our stay. While not a fine-art masterpiece - it is nothing more than a quick "pick up the camera, steady the view, click, and go back to munching on the bagel" shot - the sequence provides an unadorned glimpse of Skye's alluring shifting moods and light. The specific images do not matter, as does not matter the order, nor the fact that the images were all taken on different days. I could have conveyed essentially the same meaning by capturing arbitrary images throughout any relatively short interval of time on any given day. Skye's "reality" cannot be captured by focusing on the details of how its moods and light change, but only by appreciating the constancy of change. On the other hand, Skye's "surreality" cannot be captured by a camera at all, and is best simply experienced. 

And that, perhaps, is Skye's second deepest lesson and mystery (the first mystery was mentioned in an earlier post: how - despite the incessant drama of Skye's landscapes, and unending froth of light and shadow - Skye nonetheless manages to impart a spiritually infused fantastical sense of quiet): while photography can be a powerful tool for self-discovery, its utility for this process can - paradoxically - sometimes be at odds with a photographer's ability to "discover" external truths. The ability to do the former precludes, to a degree, the ability to simultaneously to do the latter (echoes of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle?) For me, this certainly appears to be the case on Skye, where I can either: (A) capture certain aspects of Skye's shifting "lights and moods" with my camera (in a "fine art" / documentary manner, that focuses attention on the specifics of Skye's shifting "lights and moods" but ignores - because my camera's digital sensor cannot capture - deeper spiritual dimensions), or, (B) explore and become increasingly aware of richer levels of aesthetic and spiritual understanding by directly experiencing Skye's shifting "lights and moods (sans camera). But I cannot do - Skye does not permit one to do - both simultaneously.

On the other hand, I may be over-complicating matters, as is my penchant to do, for as Lao Tzu reminds us, "The Way to do is to be." Ultimately, whatever distinctions may or may not exist between "doing A" and "doing B" are mine, and mine alone. I can experience Skye, I can capture (aspects of) Skye with my camera, I can be on Skye, but these seemingly disparate acts are all just "me being me" on Skye. Skye itself remains blissfully evanescent and eternally ineffable. And that is why I can't wait to go back to "me being me" on Skye.

Skye: Full of Wonder

"Have you ever, as a small boy, wandered farther from home than you meant to or were aware of - say, up a strath or valley - until you found yourself in a place where you had never been before? All at once you realize that you are in this strange place. Stock still, not breathing so that you can listen, you stare at grey rocks with whorls of lichen on them like faces, tree-roots like snakes, the trees themselves heavy with leaves and silent. Your heart comes into your throat. Quietly, very quietly, you get back onto the path, then take to your toes for all you are worth. This may have been the first experience of panic fear - the first meeting with the old Greek god. But you also met someone else there, much nearer to you than Pan: you met yourself..."

"...Normally at this point one gets back into the old familiar places as quickly as possible. But if the surprise, the shock, of finding oneself in such new and surprising scenery is great enough, there may be induced the involuntary reflection: That I should be here! I - here - amid the strange and bewildering! At such a moment, if the shock has really been astonishing enough, the 'I' has a new feel, a new taste. It is in a way as if one had never really met this 'I' before..."

"...For the real point of the experience is that one comes upon oneself, the 'I', as one may never have done before, almost as though it were outside oneself, in a detachment evoked by the strangeness of the scene and the moment. In this sense it is objective not subjective. One apprehends one's presence there as one might the presence of a stranger. And the experience is incredibly refreshing, cool as birch-scented air, and full of wonder."

- Neil Gunn (1891 - 1973)

Passages quoted from John Burns, A Celebration of the Light

"Drive-by shooting" in Skye

"Who forces time is pushed back by time;

who yields to time finds time on his side."

-  The Talmud

What is a "fine art" photographer (meaning: a photographer whose bills are paid by activity not directly related to photography) to do when, faced with extraordinary visual/compositional opportunities, but only relatively short bursts of photography are allowed? Or, to ask the question more directly, how does one balance a family vacation (with two teenaged boys in tow) with fine-art photography?

The truth is that the "constraint" I have just alluded to (of having only short bursts of photography) is mostly illusory. Certainly, in my case - and I've been taking photographs for well over 40 years at this point - the truth is that I take photographs whenever and wherever I can for as long (or short) a time as I can get. A few minutes here, a few hours there; and on rare occasions, day-long dedicated safaris (such as when I took a full day off work to have Luray Caverns all to myself). This has been my method for as long as I can remember. Whether I'm on my own, prowling around with my camera at a nearby park on a lazy Sunday, hiking around with my younger son (who is an SX-70 photographer), or on vacation with the entire family at some remote part of the planet, my process of doing photography is essentially the same. It is opportunistic and quick (well, "quick" in photographer's parlance, meaning - objectively - anywhere from a few moments to a few hours, as recorded by non-photographer-observers), and is seldom, if ever, shaped by specific "goals." I capture what captures me, so to speak. 

The overarching meta problem on Skye was that I was captured by everything! Skye's breathtaking beauty made it virtually impossible to look away, and not take pictures; impossible to just slow down and wait for the picture to reveal itself (my preferred method). Our stay in Skye can be best described as a continual struggle to maintain a balance between capturing Skye's Wagnerian-scale landscapes that the eye is inevitably first drawn to - particularly in a place seldom frequented and that has such dramatic mountainous forms and displays of light and shadow to offer - and yielding attention to the quieter, more intimate - often only subtly visible - elements of those same landscapes. Time was hardly ever sufficient to do real justice to the second - and as far as fine-art photography is concerned - most important class of images (if something beyond simple "postcard" impressions of a place is being sought). As my dad taught me throughout his life as an artist, one cannot hope to find (and reveal, whether by traditional means using  a canvas, in his case, or via photography, in mine) anything of lasting value in nature if one is not on the most intimate terms with her. Whenever my dad would encounter a meadow or forest or one of his beloved "болото" (Russian for "swamp"), he would spend hours, often entire days, just wandering around, hands clasped behind his back, and easel, paintbrushes and canvas quietly tucked away in the trunk of his car. This was his "getting to know a place" meditation time; his dialectic with an - as yet - unknown/uninternalized environment. Only when my dad gained a sense of unity with - of a belonging to - a place, a Goethian-holistic "feel" of the dynamics in play around him (and an implied - soulful - invitation for him to engage with the dynamics of a landscape), did he finally set up his easel and start to paint.

Of course, the ability to engage in these dialectic meditations is not always possible. On Skye, "drive-by shooting" was the norm: while cruising along some one-lane road (there is a detailed etiquette on dealing with approaching traffic on one-lane roads in Scotland), just "enjoying the sights," I'd suddenly exclaim something like, "Whoa, the light! We've got to stop!" My ever patient wife (who did all of the driving) would just as suddenly screech to a halt at the first available side of gravel, and - jumping out of the car with camera and tripod already in hand (an instinct honed and nurtured over years of practice) - I'd proceed to look, look again, run towards some spot my visual cortex deemed "best" (as I automatically extend the legs of my tripod), set up my camera, rifle off a few shots, and run back to the car with a thanks to my wife (and an apology to the kids, who would invariably still be rolling their eyes in the backseat at the temerity of "yet another stop for dad"). Run the clock another 20 or so minutes and repeat.

Though this "process of doing photography" may appear either silly or unrewarding (or both), in truth, with only minor variations (the major ones being that, when not traveling, I'm usually the one both driving and stopping and the kids are back home playing their video games), it is how most of my photographs are captured. To be sure, there are times when I do have the luxury of time to "get to know a place" before training my lens on it. But more often than not - for what I consider my "best" images - I "get to know a place" not by wandering around for a few days without a camera, as my dad once did without his brushes; rather, by repeated visits, accumulated over a long time, months, years even, enabled simply by virtue of living close enough to a place of interest to be able to do so. And it is the wisdom (if I can call it that) that these repeated visitations to local places has instilled in me that - when traveling abroad, with far less precious "getting to know a place" time available - I rely on to instinctively guide my eye to parts of an otherwise unknown environment most prone to harboring "quiet secrets." I am not always right, and I certainly prefer to discover these secrets in a more deliberate, circumspect way. But 40+ years of keeping my eyes and soul receptive to nature's gifts goes a long way; or so I keep telling myself as I rocket out of the car with my tripod and camera, and run toward what I'm sure is another "special, quiet place."

Scotland, Skye, and Schueler

"I wasn't sure if it was a place or a mood or what it was, but there was something I was looking for .... As I approached the sea near Mallaig and the Sound of Sleat I could see these massive forms like the Isle of Eigg and the southern tip of Skye and Rhum, and I could see these things sort of glowering in this kind of wild light that took place that day and the Geiger counter just went berserk. I'll never forget the excitement."

- Jon Schueler (1916 - 1992)

The Sound of Sleat: A Painter's Life

Those were words written down by abstract artist Jon Schueler after arriving in the remote fishing village of Mallaig in western Scotland in 1957, overlooking the Sound of Sleat and toward the isle of Skye. Except for the time and specific place (in my case, in 2009 during my wife's and my first trip to Kyleakin, Skye, and, more recently, last month, as our whole family arrived in tow to Trumpan, Skye - the northern part of Skye's "second finger" - including our two teenage boys), I could use Schueler's words to describe my own reaction to the preternatural splendor of Skye's landscapes and skies. It is a wondrous place that somehow exists both inside and outside of time; where shapes, textures, and colors appear, and disappear, fleetingly and constantly, that one swears have never before appeared anywhere else on earth; where so much Wagnerian-scale drama unfolds in its undulating land, sea, and cloudscapes during even that ephemeral instant between involuntary blinks of an eye, that one's aesthetic senses are delighted and overwhelmed. Oh, but what a magnificent symphony!

Over the next few weeks, I will be posting images as I "develop" them, and that I somehow (inexplicably) managed to capture in between slack-jawed exclamations of "Ooh!" and "Ahhh" and the occasional, "Just extraordinary!"; as Skye sporadically allowed hints of its ineffable mystery and beauty to enter my camera's lens and viewfinder.

Again, I cannot improve upon Shueler's own words:

"When I speak of nature, I speak of the sky, because the sky has become all of nature to me. And when I think of the sky, I think of the Scottish sky over Mallaig. It isn't that I think of it that nationally, really, but that I studied the Mallaig sky so intently, and I found its convulsive movement and change and drama such a concentration of activity that it became all skies and even the idea of all nature to me. It's as if one could see from day to day the drama of all skies and of all nature in all times speeded up and compressed. I knew that the whole thing was there. Time was there and motion was there - lands forming, seas disappearing, worlds fragmenting, colors emerging or giving birth to burning shapes, mountain snows showing emerald green; or paused solid still when gales stopped suddenly and the skies were clear again after long days of howling sound and rain or snow beating horizontal from the sky."

Perhaps Skye's deepest mystery, is how - despite the incessant drama of all of its basic forms, and unending froth of light and shadow - there is a deep, deep, spiritually infused fantastical quiet that envelops the senses (when the moment is right and Skye has chosen to briefly reveal that side of herself).

One's Real Self

"As the self is borne away, as the central ego or clot thins, so is the self more profoundly and centrally enriched. This is a common experience. It happens. The wording, the analogy, may be matter for debate. There is no doubt about the happening, about the feeling, the apprehension, that in those minutes one was with one's real self, and also with that which was beyond the real self but yet of which the real self was part...

...In that extraordinary moment when one becomes aware of oneself, self-aware, it is exactly as if there was an over-self seeing the ordinary self, and this creates a sort of amplitude of being in which there is light, and delight, and understanding. The 'first self' and the 'second self' (or, above, the ordinary and the overself) are now one, and second containing the first within its circle, which can - and generally does - expand outwards with a wonderful sense of freedom, or may narrow upon the first self with an understanding that has its own clear affection, a seeing that comprehends the whole, the unity and accepts within a - or the - region of ultimate reality."

- Neil M Gunn (1891-1973)

Postscript 1: The image above was captured in 2009 during a trip my wife and I took to Scotland, which is where we will again be for the next three weeks or so (mostly on the Isle of Skye). So, for those of you kind enough to frequent these pages every now and then, please rest assured that the apparent dearth of images over the interim means only that this humble blog's author is out capturing new images to post in the weeks to come.

Postscript 2: As a parting gift (at least to those of you with iPhones;-) here are links to a selection of my Synesthetic Landscape series resized as "screen backgrounds" for 4.7 inch (resolution = 1334 by 750) and 5.5 inch (resolution = 1920 by 1080) iPhones.