We join two poets in a bar, so far the conversation has been pretentious, ego preening and tiresome. What else did you expect?
Man is the measure of all things.
True, but only because things couldn’t give a fuck for being measured, it’s a bit like saying "Snakes are the slitherers of all things."
But man is higher than the snake.
Men are accidents, snakes are accidents, this table is an accident.
This table is man made, man-made things aren’t accidents.
The man who cut this lump of wood into a table wasn’t alive when the tree it was cut from took seed. Before that man was born, the tree had been growing for hundreds of years, absorbing minerals from the ground that had once belonged to millions of living things. It had absorbed water molecules that had been part of oceans and lakes, passed through the bladders of many a beast, fish and bird. This grain I’m running my fingers over is the slow, careful work of the centuries and man had nothing to do with it.
Until a man came along with an axe and chopped the tree down!
Yes, yes, man came along and had his little moment kidding himself that he could rule the universe through making furniture. But even now, the molecules within this table are shuddering restlessly. Without the life force of the tree, pulsing the soft message of its genetic codes through the fibres, this current form will eventually break down into minerals and energies that will assume many other forms and hosts. In the scheme of the aeons, this table is no more permanent that a raindrop on a car windscreen.
Okay, okay, in that sense the table is an accident, but what does that make man?
~
To Tu Tu from Shantung
You ask how I spend my time—
I nestle against a tree trunk
And listen to the autumn winds
In the pines all night and day.
Shantung wine can’t get me drunk.
The local poets bore me.
My thoughts remain with you
Like the Wen River, endlessly flowing.
-Li Po
I don’t know much about Li Po, other than he was a wine guzzling Chinese poet from many years ago, who used write his poems on silk and send them down the river. Perhaps this is because he felt finished with the poem; he was a restless wanderer and he didn’t need to weigh himself down with stacks of previous platitudes. Maybe it was the other way around, the poems didn’t need him, didn’t belong to him, they were ideas that flowed through him like a leaf from a river to the sea.
Every Tuesday I host an open mike poetry reading in central London. On a typical night I get through 25-30 readers. People often tell me I must have a sage’s patience to do it every week. I’d like to think of that as true, but I’ve lost count of the times I’ve offended readers with my comments after they’ve been on. However there is a mindset you can occupy that makes the night more bearable. There are actually a good amount of talented poets at Poetry Unplugged, and a less talented poet always stands the chance of writing a brilliant poem, in the same way a journeyman musician can write a massive hit. One hit wonder? You only need one.
A lot of the time though some poets will return every week with a new poem, but ultimately it’s the same poem. The subject matter may seem to change, but really the poet is saying the same thing as before. The happy poet is still happy and the angry poet is still angry. A man is angry about injustice one moment, the next he’s angry about being cut up by a motorcyclist. When you take away the cause, is the anger really any different?
Actually, one of the biggest myths in all art forms is the myth of subject matter. People honestly think that the more powerful the subject, the more powerful the poem. Wrong. It’s always a question of style. Don’t believe me? Well, there are many painters who created scenes of battle and carnage, huge rolling landscapes and tempestuous seas. Their paintings are now destroyed of forgotten.
Van Gogh only had to paint a chair.
Oh yes, it’s all about furniture.
~
Whenever I get the feeling that I’m going to pull a concrete bollard out of the ground and brain some fucker, I visit the nearest gallery.
Wow, there’s a sentence that sums up the pros and cons of living in London.
When I’m near the Tate Modern I sit in the Rothko room and vibe out, when I’m at the National it’s Van Gogh’s chair. I walk in, stand in front of it for ten-twenty minutes and walk out again.
Many people talk of Van Gogh in the same manner as the Impressionists, the world viewed as light and energy, a simple enough response to the scientific discoveries of the time. But I always thought Van Gogh’s paintings were also about the emotional investment one makes in what we see. I think of most of his work as self-portraiture, even the landscapes. The perspective is always skewed to the effect that the world has been flattened out and slammed right into your face. The world was always closing in on the poor bastard.
The chair was painted when he was expecting Paul Gaugin to stay with him for a while. The chair dominates the centre of the canvas, rock solid, yet tipped towards the viewer as if the thing was about to fall onto you. It says so much about the artist’s loneliness and what he expected from human contact. We all know what happened next. Gaugin stayed for a while until Van Gogh attacked him with a razor, the same razor he used to cut off his own ear as a gift to a prostitute. If only she’d put the thing into a pickle jar her grandchildren would’ve been living in palaces.
Of course, nowadays Van Gogh’s chair is everywhere, posters, tee shirts, beer mats. This doesn’t bother me, after all look how much architecture and design is based on that other enduring image, the crucifixion. Van Gogh’s chair seems to sum up the psychological and spiritual void of our time. Our loneliness, the empty throne where God once sat. The chair could represent ourselves, the part of ourselves we seek someone else to fill. The reason people are willing to make fools of themselves in front of Simon Cowell. The reason people stand up at open mike events and read poems about what they’re angry about this week. The reason people like me send our lamentations out into the darkest depths of cyberspace.
