October 2024
This essay is inspired by, and much borrowed from, ‘Enough, Fragment from the notebook of a dead artist’, by Ivan Turgenev, written in 1864.
Enough, Fragment from the notebook of a relinquished global citizen, 2024
‘Enough’, I said to myself as I moved with lagging steps towards the gate, down the steep walkway towards the quiet little corner of the terminal I knew so well. ‘Enough’, I said again, as I drank in the yeasty fragrance of the beer and stale washcloths from the bar, strong and pungent in the decay of another falling evening. ‘Enough,’ I said once more, as I sat on the stained woven chair, beside the window above the loading bay, and gazed at the darkening clouds over the taxiing aircraft, as they reflected the final rays of daylight.
No more struggle, no more strain, time to draw back, time to keep a firm hold of the head and to ask the heart to be silent. No more to brood over the sourness of vague, seductive hope, no more to sigh quietly at each easy-fix solution, no more to hang onto half-way thinking, no more to silently witness those smug advocates deluding themselves that the way ahead is simple and self-evident.
All has been felt, by some, all has been gone through, by all. I am weary. What to me, amid the soft peace of this distant corner and the glow of the evening, that three metres below, hidden by the bags waiting to be loaded, a diesel generator suddenly thrusts vast grey plumes upwards, groaning in unearthly shouts, as though no such engine had been on earth before, and were the first to sing its foul tune of accumulating despair. All this has been, and continues to be, endlessly repeated, with the hope that it will last forever, as though decreed and ordained, to lead humanity forward. But into what? It stirs my wrath. Yes…wrath!
Such thoughts would never have come to me once, in that time when I too was aflame like the sunset and my heart sang an entirely different tune, like a songbird. There is no doubt now, all can see that everything has faded, all life has paled. The light that gives life colour, depth and meaning, the light that comes from all our hearts, is dying within me and many others. Not dead yet, it feebly smoulders on, giving no light, no warmth.
The sullen falling darkness is hungry to crush under its dead weight the last feeble rays of our impotent light. It is the way of the light, and of the darkness.
For the last time I drag myself from the grave of the cacophony around the boarding area, down the narrow steel chute towards the plane, desperately seeking a silence to lie within. I turn a brief gaze again to the past, without any hope or prospect of its return, but also without any sense of bitterness or regret. What is now was always to be. This future is clearer than the intense blue heaven of a summer morning, purer than the first snows on the mountain tops, as they once were. Spirited memories rise inside me like departed Gods, fading in slow procession from gleaming marble to ruinous-dust.
I am walking near a Scottish loch in winter, and the earth and sky are one unvarying milky hue, yet there is no haar and there is no light. Not even the great hills that surround me stand out in the general whiteness. Distance is impossible to judge, everything looks both close and indistinct. I walk swiftly over the ice that covers the mosses (ice still formed in those days) and except for my own heavy breathing cannot hear a sound. I remember the first thrill of early spring, when the rain comes softly, and the hard ground begins to ease. I remember the glad tremor of my heart, that feeling which unexpectedly springs up and then grows, uncomprehended by me, but vividly remembered now. It drew me forwards then, as if there was a strong flood of gladness within me, without explaining the reason it brought such pleasure, for why should it? It was like a swiftly opening flower, a sweetly bubbling burn, a pleasant shock, like the love of some Natural wonder sparkling unexpectedly in the spirit, bewilderingly radiant.
I think of you, and many pictures float before me. They are of us, everywhere, in cities, in restaurants, on aircraft, curled up in bed. At every turn of my life, I knew you.
I see too the remaining foundations of a beautiful ancient Kirk, long given to neglectful mouldering, somewhere in the soft lowlands of Lothian. It is without any roof. It is just collapsed columns, a place worn nearly flat from the decay built on centuries of hopeful but unrewarded prayers. Where rows of packed people once kneeled, thistles offer this grave and melancholy remnant their proud and spiky taint.
We are alone here, alone in the whole world. Other than us, nothing is living. Outside, where these friendly dark walls of inspiration once stood, stands only looming emptiness. Chaos wails and moans, his sightless eyes are weeping. Within, sitting beside you, there is still peace and light, warm and welcoming.
We nestle closer and lean our heads together. I feel the pulse of your blood, and your breath. Your smile is on my face before it’s on yours, just as you say the answer before I offer a question. Your thoughts are my thoughts. We are like the two wings of a bird, essential for flight, and freedom. Our hopes might have evaporated without ceremony, but they deepened our love. We have no need for words or looks to pass between us. Breath is all we need, for now, and to be together, barely conscious we are one.
The voluptuous melancholy, the tender thoughts, the smiles and looks that pierce our souls are above words. We sit in silence, heads bowed against the weight of feeling. I cannot forget it.
I am not able to give myself up from those memories, to bid them farewell, like the wick of a candle flickering before it dies. We know that most remain unaware of the harsh hand humanity has dealt itself and yet we still imagine faintly that the deception has been lifted, and that the shame and lies have been revealed in all their gallus deceit. The truth that permeates everything is not a valid truth, not the full truth. But whenever we try to reveal it we are not allowed to speak. Even that little we are able to say locks their lips, and ties our hands. Nothing diverts them from zero (that’s net, by the way).
The only way left for someone to keep their feet, not to fall to pieces, not to sink into the mire of the rapacious stupidity that characterises this Age of Endarkenment is through contempt, calmly to turn away from it all, to say ‘enough’. We can only fold our impotent arms on our impotent breasts, to save the last honour we can attain. It pretends at the dignity which Pascal hints at when calling each of us a thinking reed, that believes it stands tall, but is unable to comprehend that the weight of the universe is pressing against it. It is a sorry consolation.
“Our yesterdays have lighted fools, the way to dusty death, this walking shadow of life, that signifies nothing.”
Is it not terrible that nothing is truly terrible, that the very sense of life is petty, uninteresting and degradingly inane?
Still, eternity beacons. I have become too soaked in knowledge, have feasted too freely from the tree of the knowledge of life, and have digested it all too poorly. I have tasted so much bitterness that honey is no longer sweet, and yet the bliss of love, of perfect nearness, of devotion, still gives good solace. The passion that glows, that murmurs eternal bliss, may yet devour the worm that consumes the last relic of each withered tongue. Love blossoms gratefully, if against the odds, nonetheless.
On that day when the grass is parched, when the dust and sunlight are endless, when summer is the only season, when all is bleached and grey, and the forests have gone, perhaps that love will remain.
We all know, do we not, somewhere deep inside, that there will be no great words of consolation from any intelligence that was artificial, or otherwise, when freedom is shown to be the apparition it was.
If Shakespeare could be born again, he would have no need to retract his Hamlet, his Lear. His searching glance would discover nothing new. Still the same motley crew, rolled out with the same terrifying sameness. The same credulity, the same cruelty, the same lust for blood, for gold, for filth, the same vulgar pleasures, the same senseless suffering, the same coarse snares in which the multitude are caught so easily, the same workings of power, the same traditions of slavishness, the same innateness of falsehood – the same busy squirrel turning in the same old unchanged wheel. The tyrants of today, sitting smugly in their Californian lairs, ready to shout their own virtue, who sleep well at nights while their half-crushed victims try to find some comfort, will still enjoy the same destiny as those they have persecuted, haunted by the beauty they have ruined.
Why should I continue to prove that gnats are still gnats?
What of art? Will that not remain? A clever Banksy sprayed overnight on a Park n’Shop wall is more real, and more powerful, than the Napoleonic Code or the symphonies of Beethoven, and yet each is the art of their era.
But art offers no truth. It is not the relativity of art that matters, but its transitoriness, its brevity. Its transition to dust and ashes is what robs me of faith here, and courage. In their moment, and with their audience, art and beauty might seem to have more power than Nature, and appear more eternal. Nature does not write poetry.
Yet only dull-witted pedants can claim their art is the imitation of Nature. In the end, Nature is inexorable; she has no need to hurry, and sooner or later she takes her own (rather sooner than most of us would like, I fear). Unconsciously and inflexibly obedient to her own laws, she knows no art, she knows no freedom, and she knows not good. From all ages, she suffers nothing that considers itself immortal, nothing that is unchanging. Humanity is her child, but she is the Universal Mother, and she has no preferences. All that exists in her lap today, all that pollution, those evaporated ice-caps and that cough-inducing air, will have arisen only at the cost of something else, something we can imagine but seem unable to understand. Our civilised creation, and our art, must in time yield its place to something else. It is Nature that creates destruction, and yet we have chosen to imitate her. Unlike us, she cares not whether she creates or destroys.
Humanity has perhaps been too jealous of her works of slaughter. It sometimes appears that way. But, as humanity will learn, it has not summoned the same elemental forces that she can. We are unable to match her deaf, dumb, and blind force while triumphing our empty conquests. She has the capacity to devour all things. How can humanity stand against the mighty waves that will endlessly and unceasingly move upwards, against the withering heat and endless rain? We can’t park our hope in the value and dignity of those fleeting images we have sprayed on walls, in those sonnets. We are in the dark, on the edge of the abyss, and have shaped barely nothing from dust.
While all this is true, vanishing forms will not be averse to beauty. Beauty also exists where humanity is not, where freedom is not. Nature spoiled will appear again in a thousand years, or a million. She impersonally completes her circle. But humanity will not be repeated as now, and the work of our hands, our proud art and proud technology, our spontaneous creation, once destroyed, will be lost. We were creators for just one hour.
What does one say to the ordinary people, the second-rate and third-rate toilers, whoever they may be, the politicians, scientists, and artists? How can they be made to shake off their indolence, their weary stupor, how to draw them back from the edge, when an idea has been stolen into their minds which denies the nullity of humankind? What would make them believe in higher ideals than short-term gain, in more than the destructive Mammon they have built for themselves? By what bitcoins can they be lured when their medals and wars are so valueless? What can entice them to stop kneeling at the feet and grovelling before their new and lately discovered idols? Do they not prefer to live in that market where the buyers and sellers cheat themselves, where there is noise and clamour, and all is paltry and worthless? Do they not prefer to tussle in the mire for handfuls of empty nutshells, or gape in open-mouthed adoration before sorry tinsel-decked images of progress? Why should they be stopped from creating a world where each egoistic self, alive with its own shouting, hurries feverishly to an already plainly visible, but still poorly understood, future?
Why should they be denied?
Enough.
Images:
Rafay Ansari, Eberhard Grossgasteiger, Author