power – Mick Canning

Words are abstractions. The word ‘leaf’ can conjure up a million different images, but fails to describe any single one of them. One needs a hundred – a thousand – or more words to just come close to a perfect description, but even then it falls short.

In the well-known phrase, a picture paints a thousand words, but you would need many more than that to accurately describe said picture. We still think largely in pictures – naturally, we would have evolved that way. In the days before we had language our thoughts would inevitably have been composed of images. We may put words to these images as we think them, but they are still there. When we think through a plan of action, or instructions, for example, we tend to accompany those words with visual imagery. Even if we are engaged in mathematical reasoning or language learning, I think we tend to visualise those figures or words as we work. And when we dream, our dreams are overwhelmingly visual.

My copy of the Georgia O’Keeffe Painting Yellow Hickory Leaves with Daisy

But sometimes, even as a writer and compulsive note taker, I can get so absorbed into a landscape that I have no wish to try to describe it, no matter how many words I might use. I just want to observe it, to be in it. Words feel redundant. And I’ve said this before, but this sort of compulsion to record things, or photograph them, feels like a way to try to own them.

And words are noise. More than noise. They get in the way and distract from what they are representing. They are like the finger pointing at the moon in the Buddhist parable, where ironically attention is drawn to the finger, rather than the moon which the finger is attempting to draw our attention to. The famous painting by Rene Magritte The Treachery of images pictures a pipe with the writing: ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ beneath. But it is this very caption which names it.

Conversely, though, a single word can suggest an entire world. Sometimes their power isn’t so much in their ability to define something, but their ability to conjure images and memories seemingly from nothing. Like an incantation. And each word contains maybe hundreds of meanings and nuances, different meanings to different people. I am reminded of two of Borges’ short stories: The Mirror and the Mask, and Undr. In the first story, a court poet reduces the literature of Ireland to a single line, and in the second a fictional Nordic people have a poetry that consists entirely of one seemingly mystical word, Undr (although, naturally, it’s not quite as simple as that…). And this makes me think of the importance of the spaces between the notes in music, and the rests – we need the spaces between the words to think. To listen properly.

Over the years I have been drawn to painting or photography, or to writing, depending on what I want to say. To draw attention to the way the dawn light strikes the tops of the trees, for example, undoubtedly the visual arts are best. But to describe the anguish experienced before taking an important decision then clearly words are required. But note that in each case, it would be possible to get results with the other forms. And poetry frequently straddles them all.

And then there is the myth that God has a name not known to anyone – His real name, from which all His power is derived, and which must remain secret. For once a name is known, it loses its power.

Words are illuminating, words are abstractions, words are dangerous, words are treacherous.

Words are overused, like this…

Ooh, I liked this book.

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My intention was to review it today, but as I was writing the review it gradually turned into a polemic against grouse moors and the people who own them. So I’m going to run with that and write the review (properly) next week instead.

So, why is this about grouse moors? Well, in The Compleat Trespasser, grouse moors are one of the habitats John mentions in relation to trespassing.

There’s so much to detest about grouse moors.

Firstly, the fact that they tend to be very large areas of land owned by one rich person who wants to keep everyone else off that land; land that is, to use the hackneyed but nonetheless accurate phrase, the birthright of everyone in this country. Land that has, like much other land, been stolen from us originally by force and then passed around from one rich and powerful person to another. Land that, at one time, people would have depended upon for their livelihoods in a multitude of forms, whether it was growing food, gathering wood for shelter or for fire, fodder for their livestock, or somewhere to live.

Secondly, that same owner does everything in their power to destroy all wildlife other than the grouse they protect, so those grouse can then be killed either by their rich chums, or by others who can afford to pay for the pleasure of killing other creatures. Foxes, rats, rabbits, badgers, crows, hawks…the list is pretty well endless. Trapped, poisoned, shot…the result being a landscape as devoid of life as any desert. And I hate that arrogance that says ‘all these wild animals are my property.’

Thirdly, the drab uniformity of the landscape. Nothing but heather growing, and that burned in ten year cycles to maintain that barren uniformity. And this in turn contributes to accelerated run off and flooding in periods of heavy rainfall, affecting land lower down – often villages or small towns.

And, I daresay, the lack of cover makes it easier for the gamekeepers to watch for intruders.

But, at last opinions are beginning to slowly, but surely, turn against these dreadful habitats and their dreadful owners. I’m sure it will take a while yet, but I’m hopeful that in my lifetime we will see a ban on commercial grouse moors and the beginning of their re-wilding.