Queen's day

Today, the 30th of April, is Queen's Day. The queen will visit one or two towns somewhere in the country to be the special guest of the events and entertainment activities, taking her nearest family members with her. Traditionally, today everywhere markets are organised where everybody gets the opportunity to sell their redundant things such as toys, furniture, bric-a-brac, etc., all surrounded by music, entertainment and snacks.

So we did today, but we also paid a visit to two sailing boats in our hunt for the best sailing boat for the cheapest possible price. It's a training in self-discipline because when you are eager to sail it's difficult to radiate casuality and desinterest, like the seller must have an image of "I already got ten phonecalls today" and "this is the best you can buy for this money", and not to agree with a too low offer just because he wants to get rid of the burden a boat can be.

Anyway, the first boat was out of the question because you would be busy with delayed maintenance during all summer, and not be sure that there were no irrepairabilities. Best advice to him: give it away for bringing it to the junk heap would cost you more money. The second boat was attractive. Many things were lacking: motor, electricity, a third or fourth sail etc. but that made it cheap, the state of maintenance was quite well, and you don't run a chance that devices present would appear broken or malfunction afterwards.

I was enthousiastic but Janine was "interested". She withholds me from stupid things but this time I am sure it was a good bargain.

So we went there again so Janine could convince herself, and... we bought it, yes!!

Next time something more intellectual and less "bourgeois".

A nice Saturday

Today Menno's girlfriend stayed with us. Menno had to take part in a judo tournament in a Frisian village some 15 miles from here, but we didn't expect much from it because he didn't practice too much, and what we expected turned out to be the terrible truth: he lost all three games and got only the third price in his weight category. Of course he was dsappointed but he had so much on his mind these days: his first communion, horseriding, a theatre play of his school class, his homework, etc. So nobody found it a big deal, except he himself because you take part for winning, don't you after all?

In the evening he already had forgotten all disappointment which makes him a good sportsman, because we had a nice barbecue in the backyard.

Next time a longer text on among other things our proceedings in looking for a sailingboat we want to buy, second hand of course. Sometimes I feel like a millionair, but the cheapest kind. I don't know if a millionair with his yacht in Monaco has more pleasure of it than a modest teachers' family has with a 7-8 meter boat. Nobody who never sailed on the Waddenzee (the piece of sea between the islands North of the Netherlands and the Dutch mainland) with such a boat can tell about the feeling it causes. Number one: constant alertness on tide, wind, current, waves. Number two: a vast emptiness around you only filled with water and sky. Sometimes you sail along a sand bank with seals and gulls. Then you want to flee for low tide and sail into a harbour on the nearest island. Bad luck: the red flag indicates that the harbor is full, you have to stay outside. If your boat is a flat-bottom (no keel, but "side swords" like most ancient Dutch boats have) then it's no big deal, you simply fall dry in the low tide behind your anchor. If you have a keel, the you have a problem, if you don't have enough wood on board to sustain the boat so that it doesn't fall on its side.

bad news

This morning I read in the newspaper that in South Africa 80% of all children gets victim of rape. This figure is based on research and reliable estimations, because many rapes are not officially reported. How can this be consistent with my credo published in the right upper corner of this blog? As a matter of fact, the reapers are just as much to be pitied as their young victims are. Often they are young themselves and “simply” imitate what has occurred to them, that’s what the reporters of the bad news tell us. So the evil is passed through the generations. I also read that a company saw profit in it and sells a women-condom with sharp little hooks in it which can only be removed from the male organ by a doctor. But that doesn’t seem a solution, it can be dangerous because the raper can take revenge immediately.

The only thing we can do is put pressure on our politicians and support the international organization “rape crisis”. Their South African Department can be found on: http://www.rapecrisis.org.za

In the meantime we can only “reason by subtraction”: keep being positive, because if you don’t, the problem will be worse and nobody will be helped. It’s a challenge. Improve the world, start with yourself, is what I say to myself.

My aunt's birthday

Last Sunday I went to my aunt’s 80th birthday. She is a sister of my mother and I very much appreciate my contacts with her because she reminds me of my mother, and is also a very good woman. She is one of those people who seem to bother only about other people and never about herself. In her life she was en is a member of voluntary organizations such as the National Rural Women Organisation (originally an associations of farmer’s wives but nowadays a far wider organization of women caring about spiritual and general education and charity), the church board, helping individuals who need it, and always with a big smile and a joke. She followed a regular, recognized course in her forties just to better be able to help people in social need. Her husband died many years ago after a long lasting, incurable illness during which she intensively took care of him. She never criticizes people but always stresses their good characteristics. If I had to be a woman, then please let me be somebody like she is. And now she has become 80 years of age with a fine dinner for which I also had been invited, from 1.00 – 6.00 PM. Between the courses (which were very modest so we didn’t feel over-eaten) a powerpoint-presentation was shown and one of the family-members had been busy for many hours to amateur together a professional-looking film documentary about her life. During dinner everybody was talking, chatting and discussing so it was very vivid. My other aunt was sitting next to me (she is aged 82) and noticed with black humor that this kind of events enhanced the contacts so that we wouldn’t see each other only at funerals. You have to know, she had one sister and two brothers older than she is, and one sister younger than she is: her younger sister was celebrating her birthday that day, and her older brothers and sister passed away exactly according the sequence in their age rank order. If this would be the rule, then she would be the next one, which she reminded and she invited us for her funeral. One of the other guests answered that this wasn’t something to be discussed right now, let’s not think about it now, she said. But I find (I didn’t tell for I didn’t want to spoil the joy) that people approaching the end of their lives are free to utter anything about death, and teaches us that this time will come for us as well if we are not suddenly raped away from here by an accident or worse.
As a gift for her birthday my aunt asked to give something in a collection box for children in need. But I couldn’t help to give her something personal. One of my hobbies I used to practice (nowadays I’m too busy with photomania) is calligraphy and I had calligraphed a poem about what “time” means for an older growing human. They know that time proceeds, the see backwards a vast area of experiences and episodes, and in the future they also see something but also know it’s a fraction of what lies behind them. I found this Dutch poem (which I translated as well I could) expressing this feeling very well:
Also the photograph of seedfull dandelions is symbolic of aging: the hair color, the seed of many given examples and wisdom, the strong flower during youth, etc., and last but not least the late-afternoon sunlight scattered through their “heads” making them appear as little lamps.
A rich and satisfying experience indeed.

The poem is by the Dutch poet Rutger Kopland, I translated it as follows:

Time

Time – it is strange, strangely beautiful, too
Never to know what it is
And yet, how much of what lives within us is older
Than we are, how much will survive us

Like a newborn child looks as if he were looking
At something in himself, sees something there
Which he’s got with him

Like Rembrandt looks in his last portraits
Of himself as if he were watching where he goes
A far-away beyond our eyes

It is strange, but strange too, to realise
That one day nobody will know anymore
That we have lived

To realise how we now live, how here
But also how nothing our life would be without
The echoes of the unknown depths in our heads

It’s not time that passes, but you, and I
Outside our thoughts no time exists

This summer we were standing on the edge of a valley
Around us only the wind

Rutger Kopland
Translation: Erik Tjallinks

Three of my most loved pictures

In the moderate climate area of the world late spring is maybe the best season for taking wonderful pictures of nature because of the subtle play of the tender-green between the twigs, leaving room for light shining through them. In summer everything is a tight pack of ripe green. I took the first one standing on one side of the bridge, with the sun about 60 degrees from behind. Then I crossed the bridge and turned back to call my dog who was busy with a branch he got out of the water, and I saw the beautiful deep tree shadows against the light, which called for another picture. The same bridge you can see on the third picture, from the North side looking at the South. I love this romantic atmosphere, suiting so well to Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and other composers from the romantic period. And yet, it's a very simple village park, a few streets far from home, just like the small lake with its marvellous sunsets.. ahhh...

Conceptual art

One of these days I read that a 4 meter shark has been put in preserving liquid in an enormous glass container. See here. Some multi-millionaire bought it for six million pounds and noticed that the shark was decaying because of bad preservation work . See also http://www.felixsalmon.com/000344.html. He didn’t get angry but simply asked for a new one, better preserved this time.
The artist is Damien Hirst, the seller Charles Saatchi who bought it for “only” 50,000 British pounds, and now multiplied that amount in his selling.

You understand this is conceptual art, a kind of revival of Dadaism. The shark in its container is not the piece of art, but the idea and its realization are. That’s why it was no big deal to replace the original rotting shark by a new one, which would be impossible with a rotting Rembrandt.
This raises several questions: first, isn’t it ridiculous, not to say a shame, that these amounts are spent to something only because a group of people agree that it is art? Second, what exactly is art? Third, should everybody agree on what is art and what isn’t, and if not, how many should agree, then?

I will try to answer these questions. In Western culture we have art since the ancient Greek (Thanks Conrad for having corrected me on this point). Art had to be the product of skilfull people and had to be admired by all who watched the piece. Producing something that wasn’t admired by most people was nonsense: it simply wasn’t produced, because there was no reason for it. At least, not until the 19th century when questions were raised by groups of artists about the criteria of what makes art art. These criteria were established by the artists themselves, not by art enjoyers or clients. The artist became a kind of prophet, teacher, or priest, and, really, we learned a lot from them as an audience: beauty of expression of emotions, events, situations, life itself, in unusual colours, composition, shapes. The dissatisfaction with their clients’ taste among the artists already began with artists experimenting and studying on their own subjects in their spare hours when they didn’t have to work on assigned, paid-for projects. This artists’ emancipation evolved further and further, until now, in the 19th century, groups of artists started to produce art in a supply-market instead of the pre-19th century demand-market: like it or leave it. It became a desirable goal for an artist to turn down assignments he didn’t like to perform, or to be rejected by the museum-visiting audience. He gradually formed his own elite-audience of rich people and musea, and a certain “clothes of the Emperor” - effect seemed to creep in. Is it a shame that somebody pays six million pounds for pieces of art that seem intended to be innovative, because all other means of expression are exhausted? Much of such art is around the theme of excrements (produced by a machine, canned, in glass cases, etc.) and decay (rotting cow head, with flies around it). Other pieces are more focused on senselessness (dada, an electricity pylon stuffed with loaves, etc.) or are nice moving constructions that are now called “art” because in the old days nobody would think about making them, but now you are called an artist so you make them.
No, I don’t think it’s a shame that artists or art-owners get millions of pounds for their shark preservation work, nor is it a shame when a multi-millionaire pays these amounts for these kinds of products: it is art, because the newspapers and the self-appointed groups who determine what is art and what isn’t, call it art, period. Our free society leave them doing their things. Jealous? Do as they do, but first become accepted by the self-appointed groups and join them.
What I don't find a shame, but a pity, is that “great art” seems to be dead. Maybe that’s what the dead shark is symbolizing. We watch dead corpses of humans who voluntarily made their bodies available for artistic processing, we watch a dead shark, excrements, decay, and call it art. We? Or is it groups of people who produce, buy and sell these things against astronomical prices? I think “we” continue visiting exhibitions of more traditional artists and enjoy their masterpieces. The other two questions now have been answered as well: art has no definition agreed on by all people, but has different meanings to different groups and cultures. That’s I think what most people agree on, and I also have the fullest right, like everybody else has the right to define a heap of shit as art, to get disgusted by death and decay-showing “art”, at the same time tolerating it. The taxes will get their share.

First Holy Communion

In May 2006 I decided to go back to the Roman Catholic Church, after my visit to the Benedictine Abbey in Vaals (see my report of it on this blog here). It will take too long to elaborate on my feelings and emotions to do so, and I don't want to evangelize, so I will leave it with this sheer announcement. I discussed it with my wife, who is not R.C. but religious nevertheless in e very spiritual way and she agreed on having our son baptized and having his first Holy Communion. This happened yesterday, it was a very heart-warming event. Two of our friends agreed to be godparents, and they appeared not to have agreed just for doing a favour to us. What an experience, what people can mean for each other in this world where it seems they only can compete and fight! Menno's girlfriend (his "foster-sister" he says) who had never been in a church before, also attended the service. The only thing she suffered from during it was sitting still (she is eight years young).

I also notice that since my photomania after the purchase of my digital camera and since the warm weather has started, I feel less urge to hold long philosophical deliberations on this blog, but as soon as I get more time (holidays) these will return, I promise. At the moment I'm still thinking about evolution and all that concerns it, and reading the essays of Stephen Jay Gould (he is imbatable as an essayist) and asking myself if everything is just a cause-and-effect product or can intentions be identified in the development and processes of nature? Of course, there is one Great Intention (otherwise I wouldn't be there, I refuse to see myself as a cause-and-effect product), but can intentions be discovered in an observable way? Gould wrote an essay about "male nipples" and showed that these have no intentions given to them by nature, but that they simply are by-products ignored by nature because they don't harm any reproduction or surviving facility. He convincingly shows how people and cultures are so deeply immersed in this intention-idea: everything must have a function in God's creation. When I was a teenager a broke my head about the "function" of mosquitos, what good did they bring to their living environment? A creationist would say: they fertilize the flowers, but now I doubt: if there were no mosquitos the flowers would have "invented" other ways to reproduce such as the wind, other animals, etc. No, mosquitos have the right to be a great nuisance, I realize now, as part of creation and we have to accept them (within limits, of course). I think (until better insights) the same holds for other aberrations of "functional" nature such as homosexuality, and I know that the official Roman Catholic doctrine doesn't agree, but I'm sure that's not what it's about in religion.

Joke

Many jokes deal with inhabitants of a neighboring country. So the English make jokes about Irish, and vice versa, the Germans laugh about the Polish, and vice versa. We Dutch ridicule the Belgians, and most of the jokes are about their lack of intelligence (in Dutch eyes, because a recently survey revealed that the Belgians have an average IQ higher than the Dutch have). Anyway this story is not a joke but an event that really took place in 1998:

A Belgian travels by air from Brussels to Los Angeles. There is a ticket check above the Atlantic Ocean and the Belgian travels business class, however he has an economy class ticket. The ticket checking crew member tells him this, but the Belgian says he has paid for the flight and the plane will fly no matter what class he is in, those special expensive fares are useless and only etc. etc. So the crew member doesn’t succeed in getting the Belgian out of his chair, let alone moving to where he belongs according to his ticket. Then the steward interferes and asks if there are problems. But despite his muscular appearance he cannot get him from the chair, neither do two stewardesses with a charm-attack. Then, at last, the captain is asked for help. He leaves the steering to his assistant and goes to the Belgian. The other crew members see him exchange a few words with the stubborn guy and they are astonished to see that he takes his luggage and moves to Economy Class. After he left, they ask the captain how the heck he managed this. Oh, very simple said the captain, I knew he was Belgian and told him that the front part of the plane would remain in New York and the rest would go on to Los Angeles.

Mr. H.

In our country a court trial is going on “to get a super criminal behind bars”. At least, it looks like that. All media are giving full attention to this trial and Mr. H. is put in special, extra-secured custody. Now he is suffering heavily from a heart disease and the trial is postponed until he will be recovered, if he will get recovered. He is suspected of blackmail and self-enrichment at the cost of several millionaires in the real estate and building sectors (who didn’t seem all too clean themselves, neither, but again no proof), and of being involved in murders.

We should be ashamed to spread his portrait all over the country, mentioning his full name. We seem to forget that we live in a Western democracy in which nobody is condemned before being found guilty and crimes should be proven, not in a contest between the Prosecutor and the Lawyers, but in a process of finding the truth. But as long as we have a free press with one or two newspapers focusing more on sensation and gossip than on "being a gentleman" we have to live with this I'm afraid. If one newspaper publishes something then the other dozens must follow, as it seems.

A good weekend

We had a good, relaxing and religious weekend. The great happenings were: Good Friday, the riding test of Menno and his baptism during the Easter night Mass. About the riding test: he got a good grading although he was a little disappointed that he didn’t get between the five best (out of around forty children), but we told him that he only had two months riding lessons, and the other children at least a year. The funny thing is that the riding hall is called "Menno Maneezje". In the meantime I took some photos of a girl who was training her Frisian horse outside, and of course I also took pictures inside the riding hall. I find school riding or schooling one of the most beautiful things to watch, the horse responding to the subtle signs of the rider, both in harmony, the rithm, the beauty of the horse body. This girl did a good job and I sent her the pictures, wishing her to succeed Ankie van Grunsven, a famous school rider all over Europe (I don’t know about the world, but in Europe she belongs to the top three).
I have been horse riding myself for two periods in my life, as a student, and later when I lived in Leeuwarden. I stopped because I couldn’t overcome the sense of fear, especially in the box when caring for the animal or saddling him. Horses feel this, and it made me unfit to be a good rider. Nevertheless I love horses and find them beautiful, as long as I don’t have to ride them.
The Good Friday and the Easter Mass were really touching experiences, the atmosphere, the feelings, the sense of being adopted into the (w)holiness, the singing, it was like a bath. I can’t say more about it because of my knowledge that religious experiences are the same for any religious person so they will know what I mean, although they experience it in different forms. I hope understanding and Spirit will once be part of all people.

Two rare birds (Avis Manifactura)

Evie is an expert in photographing birds. Recently she put a new one on her blog. Before I saw this one, I also tried to capture a bird myself but I forgot to take the salt with me to put it on its tail. They say here in Holland that before you can catch a bird you have to put salt on its tail. Then I tried but it turned out not to work, maybe the wrong kind of salt. Anyway, imagine my happiness when I came home and saw that Janine had bought two fake birds.

I have the greatest admiration for people who have the patience to picture wildlife, especially birds. It yields phantastic photos, because the watcher, like the photographer, expects the animal to run or fly away any moment. This occurs 9 of 10 times to the photographer, who benefits the watcher who can be sure the picture will not run away although he has the feeling it will. I can remember a teacher from high school whose hobby it was to photograph birds (in B&W because colours were not for the amateur those days). He attached a camera on a tree branch near to a birds' nest, and connected it to a long thread leading to him, hidden behind a shrub, and waited for the right moment. He couldn't see the moment through his camera, bid only could make an estimation from what he saw from behind his hiding place, so he had to make several pictures to be sure that at least one would be worthwhile.

Those were the days! (Thank you Archie Bunker, now you have become one of "those days" yourself).

Have a good Easter everybody.

Rope Jumping

I think they call this "rope jumping" but I'm not sure, my dictionary couldn't help me. But we are very proud that Menno made such progress in this exercise done by so many top achievers in sports. I tried myself also, and believe it or not, I wasn't a bad achiever after all. But it is tiring I can assure you!

Photography as a form of art

art?

Now that I have experimented a couple of weeks with my new digital camera (simple model) I see results about which I’m satisfied, I worked on half-satisfying results to make something out of it (often in vain), and last but not least I shared pictures on the Internet and felt amazed by the awareness that people from all over the world respond on what you show, within the same day. No days or weeks of waiting, no stamp sticking or address writing, just one press on a button and your photo is posted, for everybody to see. I felt happy with a response from Iran, telling me that inter-religious and inter-state conflicts are for a great deal a matter of political leaders and their factions, and are not a hindrance to share expressions of what you have in common, when Internet is used.

I started thinking again about art in general, and photography as a form of it. I remembered the title of a textbook on Dutch literature we used in high school (translated): “literary art”, and how this title prompted a discussion about “what exactly is art”. We learned that some things cannot be defined exactly, and among them was “art”. There are cultures and eras in which fabulous art was created which wasn’t called “art” because people didn’t recognize objects or readings as “art”, it was simply craftsmanship, however highly appreciated though, and very expensive, too. The concept of “l’art pour l’art” (art for its own sake) was a Western invention, developed in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. I think it differs from other aesthetic, religious, magical or poetic expressions by the acknowledgment of experimentation outside the traditionally prescribed rules of the craft. It appeared to be successful because many people got excited about certain results of experimentation in such a way, that these results also became tradition. At his time Mozart was acknowledged as a great composer, but he made two kinds of compositions: great compositions for a large audience, and great compositions in which he expressed his own inspirations, full of aberrations from the traditional paths of “how good music should sound”. Now these aberrations are not recognized as such anymore, on the contrary, they are considered as “typically baroque”.

Photography is a form of art, belonging to the traditional class of “visual arts” next to literature and music. Until only recently, a number of experts found that photography didn’t deserve that title because it “only” captured real things, as a reproduction or representation of what one “really” could see. The not-outspoken reason however was I think that photography was a “modern” invention, made possible by complex technology. We now often see the same controversy between dark room photography and digital photography. I am convinced that digital photography will allocate its dark room equivalent definitively to the museum of daguerrotypes, silver-plate photography and other techniques that still have their adherents who practise them but are by far not mainstream anymore. I have experience with both now and I cannot deny that the computer allows you to do the same work as you did in the dark room in your living room with a set of buttons, without all the paraphernalia and doings, administration, cleaning up, putting ready, bath temperatures, counting, drying, etc.

Now what makes something a “piece of art”, distinguishing it from other expressions with the same means? Take a glass and put it on a table under certain light conditions. It can be photographed as “a piece of art” and as a “simple picture of a glass on a table”. Now the essential thing is that it has to be recognized as a piece of art. The beholder must not say to himself “this is art because it meets the art criteria”, but has to feel “wow”, or get impressed emotionally. If there are no beholders who “see”, in other words, “get touched” then it’s no piece of art. That’s why I like so much the proverb which I learnt from Freemasonry: “The word is only given to him who already possesses it”. You have to have it already, and get surprised, almost in an “Aha-Erlebnis” (Ah-experience) how it can manifest itself in the picture, the sculpture, the etching, the aria, poem, novel, etc.

The diversification of many “mainstreams” in art also explains why there are different “arts” for different groups, cultures and individuals. When I visit somebody at home and my host shows me a painting on his wall, telling me what a beautiful painting it is, and it evokes nothing in me but aversion, should I condemn his taste, then? I must honestly say that visiting the several photoblogs yielded many aversions in me, but what stroke me was the many compliments these pictures got. As a rule, I learned, it’s not done to criticize someone else’s products as “bad quality”. Some pictures made me re-consider my first feelings and I got gradually a sense of appreciation of what at first didn’t interest me. So if you don’t have “the word” already inside you, you can learn to get it, or, better, to fit the word inside you to better receive it.

Art is a mysterious thing, only possessed by people. Shakespeare and Hans Holbein didn’t work as artists, but as craftsmen. But, what’s in a name? It’s the feeling something evokes, the emotion, the sense of recognition of what you already have inside you. And what is it then, that thing you possess inside you? Dreams, ideals, strivings, hopes etc., all concepts separating themselves from each other but are reflections, manifestations of something that cannot be separated, but also cannot be named. Some people call it soul, or universal truth. I cannot help thinking of book-burning and destroying pictures. When Alexandria was conquered by the Arab Muslims, its library, the biggest and richest of the time, was deliberately set in fire. When Holland fought his was against the Spaniards, all Roman Catholic paintings and statues in churches were destroyed by mobs. When the Taliban got hold of giant centuries-old Buddha statues hewn out in the rocks somewhere in Afghanistan, they blew them up. One does the same when rejecting someone else’s attempts to tell you something worthwhile. Maybe it’s not your art, maybe it’s his or hers. In one of my first postings I expressed my negative feelings about a modern sculpture in front of our school entrance, but I see how other people are enthousiastic about it. And still, how much I try, I don’t get the feeling. Also, I can’t appreciate the experimental architecture of a modern bridge between traditional buildings (painted in light purple, of all colours!) in the city centre of Leeuwarden. For me, those are not pieces of art and I still think that city architects should not try to spread their feelings of over the thousands of people that see their expressions daily. Then they work the other way around: I know, they must think, that these colours and forms are not appreciated by the majority of people who see them, but that’s their fault. No, then I would prefer an “ugly” and cheap apartment building or the traditional “standard green”.