Imagine with me an Absolute Book of Unnatural Nature, fully immersive, polysensory, eloquent, in which everything is reactive, self-replicating; a mutable, complex, and functioning system with which the reader — who is now far more than reader — may interact as she does with the real. Will such an artifice allow us to be more fully alive? More fully human? Will we be less fearful of the palpable dissimulations of our own imaginations than we are of the real itself? When we dissolve into and interact with fully embodied avatars, will we cease to fear our own bodies and bodies other than our own? When the things of the world are all of our own invention, will we finally allow ourselves to cherish them? Will our worlds be sparked with the Breath of Eros, or will Eros vanish? When our tigers are striped to fit our fancy, and the ruined ocean is replaced by an apparition in which phantom orcas call out to one another in Klingon — will the world finally take on real significance?
In the ancient Buddhist caves of Ajanta in India, men, women, children, and animals are painted gazing at one another in adoration. And I cannot help but wonder: as we navigate the realms of our own manufacture, will we remember how to cherish one another, or will these realms turn out to be far too self-referential, a kind of beautifully furnished tomb, a mind loop, a mirror reflecting a mirror — offering a vista that can only induce dizziness, longing, and loneliness?
And if our virtual Edens do provide a wealth of profound experience, what of those other virtualities we still need to contend with? The Books of Rage, of Tyranny and War, those persistent Books of Endings?
BREATH — V
There is a small mollusk the size of a baby’s fingernail. Over time, its foot has transformed to wings with which it navigates the oceans. A pteropod, it is fondly called a sea butterfly. Essential to the food chain, it feeds the fish that penguins and polar bears depend upon.
The sea butterfly is protected by its shell. But because of the precipitous acidification of the oceans, this shell is compromised. Within forty years, the sea butterfly will have vanished.
A perfect thing, always identical to itself, primordial, and, until now, imperishable, I think the sea butterfly is like the sacred vowels of Islamic mysticism alluded to at the beginning of this essay: the i, the a, and the u—said to spell the world. Their essential virtues are encapsulated by a consonant that protects the vowel from the eyes of the profane just as it signals its presence to the initiated. In this way the i becomes Mîm, the a: Wâw, and the u: Nûn. These extensions secure the vowels’ power.
Unlike any other science, Islam’s Science of Letters is a metascience, said to precede words and ideas, even the names of things. It is the science of the sacred breath made manifest, the breath that animates a world and assures its survival.
Imagine a Book of Nature that acknowledges, assures, and embraces the entire ecology of the planet as it respires. A world-book that, like the songlines of the whales and the Australian Aborigines, both reveals and precipitates meanings in the singing. A Book of Nature that — as do the songs of the Efe Pygmies of the Ituri Rainforest — fuses the voices of insects, animals, and birds, even the sounds of thunder, lightning, and rain — making for an acoustic ecology. Imagine the book — as Borges describes it — that you and I are writing, embracing a world in which everything is given voice — the creatures and the plants, the waters within their cells, the alphabets coiled tightly within those waters, ready to unspool and quicken — a book in which everything is sparking, everything breathes.
Because our appreciation of plenitude, of the extraordinary, the unanticipated, the unknown, the ineffable — is essential to our natures. It is embodied. It makes us wise. Because Eros is sparked by Sympathies — not just between ideas, objective hazards, and leaps of mind, but encounters with mystery — the mystery of otherness and also — and evolution assures this — of likenesses. I am thinking of those instances over which we have no control, that surpass our wildest imaginings: here aesthetic intuition lies in ambush — fertile and dynamic, invigorated by delight.
Like the sea, the moment — and it is forever — is upon us; the moment spills open. And we are here to receive it and bear witness.
Her Bright Materials: The Art of Margie McDonald
steel wood boat
plug bronze fire hose
nozzle aluminum
drain fitting truck
horn copper
nectarine pits sea
urchin spines
& capacitators
There is a persistent (if hazy) idea that art must be serviceable — provide moorage for a mummy, accommodate the Holy Water, match the sofa, teach us something uplifting, serve to move merchandise. Art, like play (and art is a form of play) smacks of frivolity and not so long ago was faulted for depending on materials; in this way, painting and sculpture were debased — unlike music, which lives in the ether as the angels do. (Although in certain quarters, music gets a bad rap too, for stimulating the senses.) Thankfully, art pays no attention and continues to subvert pieties and expectations, to rile fuddy-duddies and ride a brighter air.
plastic lathe turnings
street sweeper brush
boxcar locks
stainless steel wire
& capacitators
In the early fall of 2013, Margie McDonald was invited to install a wonder-room within the pristine and light-flooded upper gallery of the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. Featured at the museum’s opening, the installation was titled Sea’scape and provided not only a sea escape, but an adventure in seeing. In Margie’s words,
Last winter, with a hard hat on my head, exposed to the elements, I spent time alone in the bare bones of the future gallery — still under construction. I had visions of suspended sea creatures the moment I saw the raw space and the soon-to-be Beacon windows. . I am fascinated by unusual organic life forms. Often I pick up a dictionary of northwest marine life for artistic vocabulary — visual cues and possible titles for my work. I flip through thorny plants, wet and spiny creatures, and strange insects; they are all of great interest to me. . I have been working as a full-time artist since 2006. Recycling is the basis of my work — I started with wire from the recycle bin of the rigging shop and soon realized there was a wealth of material available in those bins, scattered throughout the boatyard.
copper, aluminum
license plate corners
porcelain insulators
capacitators
Approaching the installation, one could not help but be spellbound, and many laughed out loud. Margie had made a space for dreaming on one’s feet. All kinds of things were going on, and one entered into a jovial, whimsical (and whimsically erotic) swarm of forms that evoked enchantment. Her deviant ocean zoo — bristling with fishhooks and alphabet beads, insulators and aluminum leg bands for chickens — had triumphantly colonized the gallery, and the result was downright symphonic. John Cage would have loved this adventure in seeing, as would have Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. (If limericks could be embodied by wire and suspended from the ceiling, they would look something like this.)
Things with material bodies are restless: they are playful, they attract one another, and they evolve. The marvelous resides in things because they do not stand still. And I recalled the early animations of Karl Sims, in which computer-generated creatures made of geometric solids and programmed to learn from their mistakes, are presented with obstacles they knock down, climb over, or push aside. Both artists remind us the imagination is all about subverting limits.