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I love meeting people; I love rubbing shoulders with people from different backgrounds and with people who bring different things to life. It may sound counter-intuitive, but it is also why I love blogging. I have been in the virtual company of, and read about many different and interesting people.
After my discovery that I not only grew up alongside a fabulous artist but that I actually like his art - imagine growing up alongside Max Beckman! - my blog was visited by another artist, Katherine, who, had I not blogged, would have remained far away from my consciousness, on the far side of the world.
Mrs C and I are off to a far away place for a week: Scotland, Drummore to be precise. In the meantime, you can do worse than visit Katherine's blog in New Zealand where you can not only see her lovely interpretations of her native landscape but also learn some of the fascinating process of their creation.
See you all in a week or so.
Do you remember my post a while ago about famous and talented people with whom I have a tenuous connection? I had another one of those moments yesterday when, prompted by my mother, I Googled Jonathan Callan. The Callan family lived next door to us for twenty five years or so and Jonathan went off to London to 'do something in art'.
Frustrated by my parents' lack of knowledge about his progress, other than to say he seemed to be doing nicely - this is after having spoken to his mum and dad only last week, you understand - I Googled him.
I don't claim to be an art buff but the thing about art is that it rather relies on its ability for it to resonate with you for it to be succesful, hence some people don't get Tracy Emin's bed or don't dig Damien Hurst; but when I saw Jonathan's fanatstic work with old books I was blown away.
But whether or not I liked it or not, in art terms he is cool, that is to say he is red hot, not to put too fine a point on it, he is very famous.
He won't even remember me, but I am proud to add him to my list of people who I hope have rubbed a bit of their creativity or talent off on me as we have brushed past each other along life's way.
I'm beginning to wonder at the power of my blog; the post before last I mentioned the fabulous singer songwriter Loudon Wainwright III and next minute he pops up as a guest on the Radio 2 Acoustic and Traditional Music Show (I hesitate to call it folk music because of the stereotypical images of beardy wholefood Fair isle types). But that is the power of our art: in Amsterdam I was already musing on war and its effects thanks to the weaving of Spanish Civil War themes into the Case of the Missing Family by the excellent Thomas Hamburger, so it was only a short trip in my mental landscape to the Second World War and walk across the real landscape of Amsterdam to the house of Ann Frank, the daughter of the Jewish family forced into hiding when Holland was occupied by the German Army.
The tale of their hiding is told in the Diary of Anne Frank but is set in context in the preserved house in which the family hid; the fact that you know the end of the story makes the journey to the inevitable end even more poignant. The house is a big tourist draw and was full of people of all ages who started the morning chatting and pointing out things of interest to each other; by the end of the trip the crowded rooms were eerily silent as people mulled over the implications of what they had witnessed.
That's war then, but what about art and philosophy, I hear you cry. The Van Gough Museum was a disappointment to me, too full of people to fully appreciate the magnificent collection of his and his contemparies' paintings; however the exhibition of Max Beckman's war time paintings in the gallery annex was not full of people - if you've seen his paintings you will know why, you wouldn't want them on your bedroom wall unless you were ready for some pretty disturbed dreams. His war years in Amsterdam as a German were very different to that of the Frank family, but it was worth the mental and emotional effort to compare them.
Philosphy? Our hotel, De Hotel De Filosoof, is the home of the society of practical philosophers. This group attempt to apply philosophy to modern day ills in a similar way to a therapist might do - I guess it's a bit like cognitive therapy: learning to think about problems in a different way. And this philosophising brings me full circle back to Radio 2 and the (oh go on then, call a spade a spade) folk music show. It is hosted by Mike Harding a Lancashire comedy singer, made famous for his rendition on Top of the Pops of the single Rochdale Cowboy, sat upon a stuffed Alsation dog. But I bet you didn't know he was a philosopher too. I once heard him sharing an account of how he awoke in the middle of the night, threw back the curtains and stared up at the vast starry expanse above him asking the eternal question of himself:
"What is it all about?"
His responded in blunt Northern tones:
"It's got bugger all to do with me."
And went back to bed.
My recent post Ten Years Younger featured my 'inner idiot'. Searching for an image for that post I came across a painting by the French impressionist artist, Chaim Soutine. The painting is titled L'idiot and depicts a young boy sat on a dining chair dressed in, what looks like, a sailor suit. The child has much bigger hands than might be expected and his head and ears don't look in proportion to the rest of his body. My guess is that this poor child had a learning disability. I found the brutally titled picture haunting and disturbing, as I wondered about the circumstances of the child's sitting for the portrait; he looks well dressed and, perhaps, was cared for by well off parents, though Sebastian Faulks' depiction of one of the central character's mental illness in his novel Human Traces, set in late 19th century France makes me wonder.
