Shining threads

Shining threads

Sunday 12 June 2011

Low and high (a response to an exhibition by Emily Paige Short in Folkestone

A poet's task is to take the vocabulary of language, the words of literature and consecrate them.

Tease apart their everyday usage and exalt the words into a more subtle realm.

Do not think that poets are merely creative.

We destroy language.

Stretch words to the edge of their possibilities - like bubbles blown from a soapy mix - then give them an extra push in the listener's mind, so they explode into a sodden infinity.

In times long past, when the earth was imagined flat, the heavens were deemed high and the soil beneath our feet low. The stars were fixed in their aloof countenance and so was the order on earth, each to his own caste and role in life. The King was high - the peasant low.

Now, after a series of attempts to bury the breakthrough, we live in a post-Copernican world. The heavens are all around and in motion. Notion such as up, down, left and right make little sense in the paradigm we inhabit. We still have our partly dethroned Kings & Queens, in this strange brew we call democracy, but the next in line is an organic farmer.

Even further back, we constructed religions dedicated to the sky, projecting our hopes and fears into ethereal realms. Somewhere we forgot our bones and teeth, feet and bellies. This mortal coil is not a trap to be unleashed from but an anchor to be appreciated. A welcome limitation, grounding us in a multidimensional space to explore - caves, mountains, rivers, volcanoes, stars and sky.

We must honour all dimensions - seeing an integrated vision of life.

Whether you go low or high, however you define those terms, remember they are just possibilities and trajectories in an infinite contextual field.

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