Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
We had a TV breakfast this morning having waited until 0845 so we could watch the sunrise streaming from Newgrange. Of course we knew there’d be no dramatic solstice dagger of light because it was raining through the thick cloud that envelops us from time to time. And the weather radar indicated that was true across the 80 km that separates our 10,000 year old ice-sculpted hills as we watched, sitting less than a metre above the 400 million year old granite bedrock that supports our home.
It’s funny to think that a lick of paint could change music forever. You might not think that’s possible and if I am exaggerating, it’s only by a speck. In the world of European medieval music, so much was centred on religious rites that you could argue it was a change in church design that popularised polyphony.
We went to an art exhibition today. While it was the first ever exhibition of Piet Mondrian’s work to be held in Ireland, it was also a jewel of an exhibition, a worthy treat after ten months of isolation from what are today considered unnecessary activities.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Mondrian because it was through his art that I came to appreciate the path of deconstruction from realism to abstraction, something my father pointed out to me. This show featured early landscapes and a progression to his abstracted geometric paintings. I suspect that it’s because of Mondrian that my favourite items to photograph are reflections and other distortions of reality.
We visited Peter Layton’s London Glassblowing emporium this day last year. Having been there many times before, we specifically returned to watch Olga Alianova demonstrate how she makes some of her jewellery. Her work is exquisite and isn’t just jewellery. Her mounted wasp factories are reminiscent of the paper wasp nests under the eaves of our home in Houston many years ago.
This is the third ‘shot’ in three days and it comes from a London street. There’s a magnificent Ginko Biloba on Greencoat Place in Westminster that I watched for weeks until the leaves were right. Then the sun had to be right and I waited a day or two more. And so, at 11:05:42 this day last year I was standing beneath a yellow bough that is just higher than the single decked buses that pass three or four times an hour.
I come from an island where bigotry was entrenched. I grew up with bigotry occupying the thoughts of many who surrounded me. So many forms of bigotry that today we break them out into prejudices that can be defined and proscribed in law. I don’t think that one or two generations is enough to purge any society of bigots. Time may work but I doubt prejudice can disappear. To be human is to want to belong to families, tribes, corporations, gangs, nations, isms and factions.
