Spot of Time
An Autumn day in London. The skies started as one indistinguishable mass of grey cloud. But as the day has moved on, there has been a fresh breeze and the sun has started to come out. The trees outside my window are slowly losing their leaves. There is something nice about seeing the setting sunlight on sparse branches with golden leaves. Hearing the faint sound of children playing somewhere in the distance…
I’ve started to piece together some texts. Re-reading the Art of Travel by Alain De Botton, an old favourite of mine. Reading this book again, I’m finding this particular book very startling, it’s hitting all the right notes. If a book could be written for me, narcissistic as that sounds, this could be it. It’s one of those books where every so often, in my head is a resounding, “Yes!! That’s it!”. He describes so succinctly things I can only elude to through painting.
Some notes from today:
On Wordsworth who travelled in 1790, who embarked on a walking tour of the Alps. In a letter to his sister, he wrote:
‘“At this moment when many of these landscapes are floating before my mind, I feel a high enjoyment in reflecting that perhaps scarce a day in my life will pass in which I shall not derive some happiness from these images.”
“Decades later, the Alps continued to live within him and strengthened him whenever he evoked them. Their survival in memory led him to argue that we may witness in nature certain scenes that stay with us throughout our lives and, every time they enter consciousness, can offer us a contrast to, and relief from, present difficulties. He termed such experiences in nature ‘spots of time’.
“There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue…
That penetrates, enables us to mount,
When high more high, and lifts us up when fallen.”
De Botton goes further to analyse Wordsworth specific way of subtitling his poems to include the location, exact date, month and year. He suggests “that a few moments in the countryside overlooking a valley could number among the most significant and useful of one’s life, and be as worthy of precise remembrance as a birthday or a wedding.” p. 154
As I continue reading, I can’t help but wonder if it’s merely conincidental, that a poem many years ago I copied down from the underground tube is also a poem that ends this chapter on landscape:
“For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
… And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.”
Although the poem seems sentimental; it is the memory of experiencing something beautiful, in this case - nature, that I find intriguing. To me, painting offers a form of respite, or some oasis in time. Perhaps just like music, it can bring or recall to the conscious mind something that was experienced but now forgotten. In painting, the body comes to a stand still. The eye is free to wander and experience beauty directly and at the same time recall similar experiences in the past. It becomes a moment of contemplation. I think it was in Okakura’s The Book of Tea, that he described that art can be thought of as vessels in which the viewer fills with his experiences, memories and imagination.
