But without a parable spake he not unto them.
(Mark 4.34)
Once before a time, a something suddenly emerged out of the prevailing nothingness. Some time later (opinions vary as to how long – two days say some, ten billion years say others) equally without warning, life appeared on the Earth. Scientists and creationists can probably agree this far anyway. But these two extraordinary incidents were only part of a process which continues through this moment. Creation is not a remote historical event, but something happening now in me, in Flo on my lap, in the winter weeds in the gravel outside. [Footnote: the orthography of Phlo/Flo is uncertain. I cannot remember whether I called her Flo as short for Flower, her name at the Cats Protection, or Phlo short for Phlomis, my first idea when I thought of naming her after a flower. She expresses no opinion; she knows that she is simply herself. We use names because we are constantly talking about what is not actually present, something Phlo would think inconceivably silly. In cat talk, ‘I’, ‘you’ and ‘it’ suffice.]
Long ago in the Dreamtime, so the traditional Aboriginal story goes, the Ancestors walked across the land singing it into being. They saw a rock and named it ‘Lizard’, they saw a hill and named it ‘Wallaby’, and the world blossomed into being in their footsteps. But this original Dreamtime creation is not secure. It needs to be re-sung, co-created and curated by the Aboriginals. For them to neglect their role in creation would be to destroy the world itself.
Meanwhile back in Eden, the Judaeo-Christian God ‘formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.’
In both traditions, we humans are made co-creators of the world. This is not primitive mumbo-jumbo. However wreathed in metaphor it may be, it is an inkling of the truth. Every one of us co-creates the universe. Nature makes stuff and we make it anew as our minds perceive it.
Perhaps our retinas, ear-drums and fingertip nerve-endings are mere passive receptors, but by the time our minds have registered the information we have turned it into an experience. Our very act of perception is a creative act. This is what Coleridge refers to as ‘the primary imagination’. It is worth noting that this is a purely involuntary act. Our conscious wills – the identity which we think of as ‘us’ and over which we claim some control – are not at first involved at all. We (not just humans, but all conscious creatures) naturally and inescapably co-create the world mentally, just as we naturally and inescapably co-create it physically by cell-growth and division.
The medieval natural philosopher Roger Bacon was, I think, the first to notice that we each see a rainbow differently: ‘there are as many rainbows as observers.’ In fact, we each see everything very slightly differently. ‘As the Eye, Such the Object,’ as Blake put it. By the time we can be said to ‘see’ a thing, our own individuality has unwittingly recreated a new and unique impression of the objective information in our minds. We make a rainbow (in our minds) just as surely as nature does.
God, so the story goes, invented rainbows after Noah’s Flood. ‘I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant … which is between me and you, and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.’ [Footnote: ‘every living creature of all flesh’ you notice, not just Noah and his family. If God negotiates directly with chickens, for example, can we so misprize them as to build battery farms?] So God commits himself to sign-making – to doing a thing ‘for a token of’ something else. And once begun, he can’t stop. He sends dreams about cows to pharaohs, and crazy dreams about cakes which flatten tents to Gideon. He does sheep metaphors for Ezekiel, and oak similes with Isaiah. He puts a star over the stable where the babe is born, and sends angels to tell people, ‘This shall be a sign unto you’. When the babe grows up, he (for, in the story, he is the babe) is still at it, comparing himself to bread, light, shepherds, sowers and a dozen other things, story-telling, endlessly making one thing stand for another. ‘And with many such parables spake he the word unto them, as they were able to hear it. But without a parable spake he not unto them.’ Making one thing stand for another is his entire communications strategy.
The Bible is full of these warnings not to take everything literally. (‘Which things are as allegory,’ says Paul to the Galatians, clarifying a story about Abraham. ‘Who is so silly,’ asked the early theologian Origen, ‘as to believe that God, like a farmer, planted a paradise?’) Its authors understood well enough the central role of analogy in communication, and believed that the highest power in the universe, perhaps the universe itself, was endowed – that is, endowed itself – with imagination. Their God is the irrepressible Artist, endlessly making one thing stand for another, and so revealing the deep interconnectedness of the whole creation.
Wherever we go we incarnate the intangible, making a painting stand for a goddess, a diamond-ring stand for our love, a birthday card stand for our affection. [Footnote: we may, by the by, think we are saving the planet by not sending a bought (or home-made) hand-written card, but card is recyclable and the planet will cope. The effort involved – buying, writing, finding a stamp, posting – proves the affection the card symbolizes. A Facebook birthday message, probably prompted by Facebook, demands almost no effort – it can be despatched in five seconds – and symbolizes almost nothing. Ultimately, sending a card may be less damaging to the planet than outsourcing friendship to a global corporation.]
In our imaginations we both make signs ourselves, and see that the signs others make have symbolic significance. Children very young realise that the coloured marks on the paper are signs, ‘gleaning the unsaid off the palpable,’ as Seamus Heaney phrases it. A drawing of a man and woman in front of a house may bear scant resemblance to the physical reality, but the child understands that the marks have a talismanic quality and, in so doing, flashes her passport to the imaginative world of Bach, Cézanne and Dante. Imagination is innate: ‘the more the artist in man determines the whole shape of his behaviour, so much the more is he Man.’ (David Jones)
And slepynge I seigh al this; and sithen cam Kynde
And nempned me by my name, and bad me nymen hede,
And thorugh the wondres of this world wit for to take.
Briddes I biheld that in buskes made nestes;
Hadde nevere wye wit to werche the leese.
I hadde wonder at whom and wher the pye
Lerned to legge the stikkes in which she leyeth and bredeth.
Ther nys wrighte, as I wene, sholde werche hir nest to paye;
If any mason made a molde therto, muche wonder it were.
And yet me merveilled moore: many othere briddes
Hidden and hileden hir egges ful derne
In mareys and moores for men sholde hem noght fynde,
And hidden hir egges whan thei therfro wente,
For fere of othere foweles and for wilde beestes.
And some troden hir makes and on trees bredden
And broughten forth hir briddes so al above the grounde.
And who taughte hem on trees to tymbre so heighe
That neither burn ne beest may hir briddes rechen.
And sithen I loked on the see and so forth on the sterres;
Manye selkouthes I seigh, ben noght to seye nouthe.
I seigh floures in the fryth and hir faire colours,
And how among the grene gras growed so manye hewes,
And some soure and some swete--selkouth me thoughte.
Of hir kynde and hir colour to carpe it were to longe.
Asleep I saw all this and then came Kind
And named me by name and bade me pay heed
And learn some wisdom from the wonders of the world
I beheld the birds that built nests in the bushes
No man ever had wit to make the least of them.
I marvelled at the magpie; from whom and where
Did she learn to lay her sticks on which she sat and laid her eggs?
I don’t think any wood-wright could work a nest so well;
If a mason made a model what a wonder that would be!
And yet I marvelled more; many other birds
Concealed and covered their eggs very secretly
In marshes, on moors where men might not find them
And for fear of other birds and of wild beasts
They hid their eggs when they had to leave them.
Some birds trod their mates and bred up in the trees
They brought forth their babies up high in the branches.
Who taught them to build so high up in the trees
That neither man nor any animal might threaten their brood?
Then I saw the sea and stared up at the stars,
Myriad marvels too many to mention.
I saw flowers in the forests hundreds of hues
The green green grass all speckled with colour
Some smelt sharp and some sweet it all seemed amazing!
There’s no time to tell all their kinds and their colours
William Langland, Piers Plowman
[Footnote: the translation is mine. I don’t pretend that it’s any good. Plainly it overemphasises the alliteration, but it gives some idea of the meaning if the original seems unclear, and it was fun to do!]
Nature creates and we are inextricably part of nature. Like every other living creature, we physically make ourselves (or, at least, are the workshop in which more ‘us’ is made) in the multiplication of cells; and, in our primary imaginations, our minds create meaning out of the images we see, both natural objects and symbols like writing and pictures. But we can also combine our primary imaginations with our conscious wills and physicalize the result – which is a ham-fisted way of saying ‘make art’ or ‘be creative’. Art is, in essence, applied imagination – the physical re-presentation or showing again of the universe.
Our ability to fancy what is ‘not there’, what is not apparent to our senses, even what is beyond our comprehension, is part of our haecceity and it is therefore, I would argue, our natural duty to explore and express it, like every other part of our being. It is not an indulgence, a piece of inessential decadence, as people who like to think of themselves as ‘practical-minded’ might claim. Art is an entirely normal and natural activity – the essence of life, not the ullage. It is worth reminding ourselves that no-one is naturally a politician, a window-cleaner, a solicitor, or taxi-driver, because these are acculturated occupations with no necessary relevance to the nature of which we are a part. But all of us are naturally artists.
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