Wednesday 17 June 2020

Write...Edit...Publish... + IWSG June 2020 : Urban Nightmare


It's time to get back to Write...Edit...Publish..., I do hope all WEPers are coping and doing well.   Keeping in mind the ongoing pandemic situation and the personal challenges we are all facing, WEP is going Lite this month. I'm sticking to my comfort zone of photo-essays, aka non-fiction ramblings. I have done better this month on the wordcount control, finally! -  


Pigeon. Panic. Pandemic. 



There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon.
~ Matsuo Basho

Right in the middle of the urban nightmare to beat all nightmares, the pigeon desperately wants to fly home. But it can’t. Borders are closed. The mind can go wherever it wants, it can think only flowers, it can think beyond the moon, it can morph into whatever it desires, but the body? The body is governed by the natural laws, physics and biology and biochemistry and abstruse electrochemistry. It is subject to boundaries both physical and geographical. There is no shaking off its shackles. There is no escape from this city. And so it burrows back into the mind, where it can devise its own escape and try on the grasshopper wings again.


Credit: View from Studio (1886)


The rise of the city is inexorably linked to settled agriculture. And art as we know it today is linked to it as well. If there were no public buildings – the monuments, the necropolis, the places of worship, the town square, the library, the parks, as also the private grounds and the sitting room, there would be no need to hang art on walls or install statues or design frescoes and fountains and what have you. The beginnings of Homo sapiens’ art, as with most other beginnings, lie in Africa, in Tan-Tan and Blombos. Some of the prehistoric art we have remnants of, were either made to decorate living humans with – beads and a mix of pigments to hang around and ornament various limbs; or were independent free standing, portable figurines. A purely nomadic hunter gatherer life does not lend itself to monumental art for obvious reasons. Rock art which dates from around 35,000-40,000 years ago or even 200,000 ya is clearly an attempt to beautify or glorify a cave/surface which humans were at for long enough to create those artworks. Therefore, we can safely assume that though art happened pre-agriculture, wall art required a surface that humans stayed put at for some time or they knew they would come back to. If there are no walls, they can’t be decorated, right?


The ancient cities rose on the back of the Neolithic Revolution – or settled agriculture, in the region commonly known as the Fertile Crescent. The oldest cities such as Jericho (9000 BCE) and Ur (6500 BCE) coalesced along its curve. The first writing and recordkeeping happened in Ur in fact, slicing off the ‘pre-‘ from prehistory in one fell swoop. Cities were predicated on an agricultural surplus and humans changed profoundly, from foragers into a society based on specialisation of labour. Not everyone needed to be growing food, so some turned their minds and skills to other things. A non-farming class of residents - that of the artists/artisans – grew as a corollary to settled agriculture.


The earliest civilisations rose out of these communities in the river valleys of Mesopotamia, India, Egypt and China. Settled agriculture meant an exponential growth in the population, as the same piece of land could now support many times the original inhabitants. As the civilisations grew, their cities became political capitals, centres of education, trade and commerce hubs, forums for artistic and creative exchange. But there was also a price to pay for this luscious, spanking new lifestyle. An organised society meant more rigid class divisions and inequalities leading to high crime rates. Living in close proximity meant higher pollution, and last but not the least, diseases on an epidemic scale. The urban nightmare started early - from ancient times.


***


Normality is a paved road: it’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it. 
~ Vincent van Gogh.

Vincent’s nightmares were both urban and various. The most famous of them is the ear incident in Arles. That happened after a heated debate with Paul Gauguin. But there are others as well. Let the grasshopper stop whirring about for a minute and recap his time in Paris.

In 1886, Vincent moved to Paris where his brother Theo was already working at an art dealers. Paris had acquired the reputation of being the art capital of Europe in prior centuries. By the time van Gogh moved there, it was in its artistic prime – it had some of the finest painters and the art schools associated with them. Paris was the centre where several art movements – Romanticism, Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, Art Deco etc evolved. Van Gogh arrived in Paris splat in the middle of the Impressionist movement - Monet and Pissarro were already established. Vincent admired the old masters he saw in the Paris museums, at first he didn’t like the Impressionists much. But that changed a year on – he started experimenting with the loose brushstrokes and lighter, brighter colour palettes of the Impressionists. His art evolved at an exponential, breath-taking pace. He worked in the studio of Fernand Cormon and found inspiration from his circle of artist friends such as Emile Bernard and Paul Gauguin.

However, living in Paris drained him, even as it elevated his art and grew him as an artist. He smoked and drank too much, ate poorly, the pace of the big city wore him down.

It seems to me almost impossible to be able to work in Paris, unless you have a refuge in which to recover and regain your peace of mind and self-composure. Without that, you’d be bound to get utterly numbed. 
~ Letter to Theo van Gogh, Arles, 21st Feb 1888

I could never get used to climbing the stairs in Paris, and was always dizzy in a dreadful nightmare that has left me here, but recurred regularly there. 
~ Letter to Willemien van Gogh, Arles, June 1888

The self-portrait he painted in Paris reflected this, he looks exhausted and depressed. And he described it as such to his sister Wil ‘with…wrinkles in forehead and around the mouth, stiffly wooden, a very red beard, quite unkempt and sad.

Credit: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam


Paris ultimately gave Vincent the artistic lift-off he had sought, but he had had to pay a heavy price. 


Always a heavy price. Whether as a heedless species traversing the broad arc of history; or a single, keenly aware individual, a misunderstood genius ahead of his time, trying to make a little space for his art.



WC - 1054
FCA


Read the other entries below :

58 comments:

  1. Thank you. As always.
    I read your work, and I marvel. Again and again.

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    1. I am so very glad that your piece came back to Vincent. The beauty, the despair, the creativity and the overwhelm are an incredible metaphor for the times we find ourselves drowning in now.

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    2. Vincent is on my mind these days and not climbing down anytime soon :) Thanks for your support as always EC!

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  2. I like be the Basho quote.

    Reading about Vincent Can Goth going to Paris, the thought that my grandmother Pearl was born in Kentucky that year would not leave my mind..

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    1. Basho, like van Gogh is one of me favourite characters...glad you liked it. Your comment about Pearl just made me realise that I don't know the years of my great grandparents' births.

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  3. Hi,
    I am always amazed at how you build your stories historically on the past. You have brought the Urban Nightmare in with the life of Van Gogh and it fits perfectly.
    Excellent job.
    Shalom aleichem,
    Pat G

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    1. Hi Pat, glad you enjoyed the post. Vincent's life has a lot of lessons apart from his fabulous artworks.

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  4. I've never heard the Basho quote before - I like it!
    Great examples of urban nightmares - beautifully done :)

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    1. Thank you, Basho is one of my go to Asian poets, he's beyond brilliant.

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  5. You have, as usual, masterfully connected the past to our current urban nightmares. Fromt the Fertile Crescent to the "Normality is a paved road..," by Vincent van Gogh, your words bring cohesion to a time of chaos.

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    1. Chaos exponential indeed. Writing about the origin of pandemics made me see things in perspective. Thanks.

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  6. "Normality is a paved road: it’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it." Says it all doesn't it!
    Cities can do that. The appreciation for their gifts truly only comes when one can distance themself from it!

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    1. I am not fond of the 'paved roads' :) except for the libraries, cities don't really have anything that I can't do without.

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  7. Nilanjana everytime I read you I am amazed at your knowledge and the way you present it. You hold the reader in with your story telling. This reading of urban nightmare with the historical perspective is +1

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    1. Story telling and retelling is one of my favourite things to do...

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  8. If you're different, you always pay the price. You post just proved it.

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    1. Yes, Olga, you've hit the nail on the head as usual. Society doesn't tolerate deviations very well.

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  9. Nila, you took me by the throat from the very beginning. Loved the history lesson and how eventually you incorporated our Vincent.
    As you say -- 'An organised society meant more rigid class divisions and inequalities leading to high crime rates. Living in close proximity meant higher pollution, and last but not the least, diseases on an epidemic scale. The urban nightmare started early - from ancient times.' History never repeats, does it? And we never learn from history. We just have to bumble along and make our own mistakes again and again. Sadly.

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    1. Yup, keep reinventing wheels, and manage not to get the axle quite properly balanced each time :)

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  10. I can never get enough of Vincent Van Gogh. As someone who lives with both physical and psychological ailments and who is well misunderstood by others, I resonate with him. Thank you for this piece.

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  11. I learned a bit of history today - well done.

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  12. Interesting--sounds to me like Vincent was an introvert, gradually worn down and exhausted by the constant stimulation of the city. I can definitely relate!

    Thanks for an interesting meditation on art--I can't manage the horror stories right now, so this was a real bonus for me.

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    1. Paris was quite conservative in terms of what art it exhibited and accepted, so it must have been a drain for him to try to make space in that rigid set. Handled a lot of rejections, just like authors have to..

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  13. What a well written essay Nila. I couldn't agree more with Van Gogh's statement, "It seems to me almost impossible to be able to work in Paris, unless you have a refuge in which to recover and regain your peace of mind and self-composure. Without that, you’d be bound to get utterly numbed."

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    1. I think all big cities are like that, and they have always been that way - you need a break from them pretty frequently otherwise the pace and the density get to you.

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  14. I had to re-read this a few times - so deep. I like the idea that we have to burrow into our mind, but that causes so many ripples. Tough to have "peace of mind" right now.

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    1. Better the internal ripples right now than the external ones, ouf! Thanks, Joanne. Wishing you peace.

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  15. A beautiful blending of history and art against the story of one man's struggle for personal growth. Thanks for the great essay!

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    1. All essays are underpinned by history of some kind. And so is fiction - even that based in the future. What we have been and done in the past continues to shape our current realities and the scope of our imaginations. Thanks for reading.

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  16. You are so right calling our reality 'the urban nightmare to beat all nightmares' - so, I'm glad you are back safe and inspiring us. Your photo-essays always encourage my thoughts - and ideas. Art and the rise of the city is an interesting theme, although I'm now distracted - wondering about self-decoration. Anyway, as an armchair archaeologist and historian, this was a thought-provoking essay. Yes, cities began a nightmare. I've even been to one of the first cities - Çatalhöyük, which was mind-expanding. Plus, all the info on my favourite artist - many thanks.

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    1. So cool to have visited one of the first cities! An argument Hariri makes in Sapiens that settled agriculture (and therefore cities) was a huge, evolutionary success for humankind, but a flop as far as individual happiness quotient is concerned. Looking at the pandemic situation I'm inclined to agree with that! :)

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  17. This is brilliant as always! I loved reading about the history of urbanization. Urban nightmare can mean so much, and I enjoyed how you brought Van Gough into the piece. He did indeed pay a high price for the elevation of his art. Not all are able to take the hustle and bustle of city life. I've always lived in either the country or small towns, and I think I would prefer to keep it that way. Cities are great places to visit, but I don't think I could live there full time.

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    1. Agree with that - a city is always a place one needs to getaway from on a pretty regular basis! Glad you enjoyed the entry.

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  18. I love how you brought history into connection with today. I wonder if van Gogh would have thrived in the country?

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    1. Great question! Brought to mind a poem called 'The City' by a Greek poet from Alexandria - C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933), contemporary of van Gogh:

      You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
      find another city better than this one.
      Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
      and my heart lies buried like something dead.
      How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
      Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
      I see the black ruins of my life, here,
      where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

      You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
      This city will always pursue you.
      You’ll walk the same streets, grow old
      in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
      You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
      there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.
      Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
      you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.

      Vincent lived in London, the Hague and in Paris but his stints in big cities were brief. Most of his working life he spent in smaller towns and communities. Didn't really help. The treatment for mental health problems just wasn't there, he went without a proper diagnosis his entire life.

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  19. So much I resonate with in your masterly told tale. Mostly though the sadness of cities. Somehow they are seen as something necessary, convenient, throbbing with life... but they take the essence out of life... colour! Probably this is why Vincent painted such colorful pictures of natural scenes... he dreamed of the countryside whilst living in a city which he obviously disliked! Fabulous insights. Thank you!
    Carole S.

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    1. Vincent's most famous and most colourful works were achieved away from Paris, certainly. But Paris also gave him the gift of a brighter palette through exposure to the Impressionists. Glad you enjoyed the post, thanks.

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  20. Your writing always holds my interest, what could be dull and boring comes alive under your penmanship.

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  21. An insightful tale, that captures the duality of the creative mind when it comes to inspiration. People can stimulate the creative juices, and can also stifle them. Well done.

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    1. That is so true - it is a matter of having the right people around, isn't it?

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  22. Well written.
    Native Americans could be classified as those who used farming, and thus built structures, and those who relied on hunting and gathering, and thus used movable homes such as tepees. Most people don't bother with such distinctions, honestly believing that totem poles were hauled all over the country or that people couldn't figure out how to create homes that weren't tents for several millenniums. I have no idea how people draw such conclusions, but there you go.
    And the art from the many tribes and nations is vastly different. The mediums, the colors, the depictions...
    Your post is so inspiring! It's causing my comment to seem off-base, but really, it's that you gave me a reason to think about these wonderful historical truths. Thank you.

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    1. Doesn't feel off base to me at all J Lenni! Thank you for your considered views. As I say in these current series of posts - the mind is a grasshopper, it hops off from one thought to another and it is hard to establish how they are connected, but the connection is always there.

      It is beyond unfortunate how limited our view of history is, how biased the prisms we look through and what a narrow selection we choose to divulge to our next generations. I hope this current movement will alter that and take us towards a broader, more equal, more compassionate understanding of history. We can't change the past, but we can and should STOP passing on falsehoods and partial truths as history/facts to our children.

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  23. If you ever play Sid Meyer's Civilization games, there is a lot that reminds me of your post. You get agriculture and then could get culture, or weapons, or something else. That's what this made me think about!

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    1. I am clueless about video games! But a massive fan of Christopher Tin's music for Civilisation :) that's as far as my knowledge of those games go...

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  24. Hi Nila - you certainly weave a lot more history, story telling and education into your essay posts - I love them ... they give me another look at writing. Your knowledge is broad and deep - while you understand so much ... for instance ... art - after your comment on Goya over on my post.

    Thanks for reminding me about Sapiens - I must get it out to read ... while I've never come across Christopher Tin - but see he is an extraordinarily talented man - thank you for mentioning him ...

    Each era of life has so many ups and downs ... it's just our lives are so short ... perhaps that's a good thing ... though I don't want a short one... congratulations on your urban nightmare that we're living with at the moment. Take care - and I'll be by your other posts soon ... Hilary

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    1. Thanks Hilary, Christopher Tin's music I've featured on some of my A-Z posts, his compositions are expansive and phenomenal, frankly. And I have to confess that I know very little about art - I just like looking at paintings of all kinds. Photographs too. And then each thing one looks at turns out to be a massive rabbit hole!! :)
      You take care too, stay safe and keep well. Wish you a long life and good health always.

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  25. Liked the vignettes. Some of the paragraphs might be more readable if broken into multiple paragraphs. Good job

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  26. Creating cities brought lots of things that still cause problems...structure of governance/lack of representation equality, feeding people/quality food although hunter gathering was no picnic it did give wider food choices. Thanks

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    1. Agriculture, and then colonialism, both wiped out a whole range of food choices for many humans. Thanks for visiting.

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  27. Beautifully written Nilanjana. I enjoyed both essays immensely. You weave a wonderful atmosphere of oppressive cities. Good thing we have art. Learnt a few things too, great quotes. I agree with you .. and Vincent Van Gogh, that creativity best arises in an environment close to the natural world , far from human technology and enclosed urban spaces. That Art ends up adorning them is a blessing for city dwellers. Wishing you an inspiring environment for your summer writing.

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  28. So much to think about here, Nila. History that connects to modern life, with the lessons we (humans) are too complacent to learn in any enduring sense. Art/culture that adorned life from ancient civilizations on--the need people have to express themselves and create beauty for its own sake. How it all intertwines.

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    1. It's all tangled up in the present. As Faulkner said - 'the past is not even past.'

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  29. Very enriching article on history of Urbanness and psychoscape of nightmares.

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