Simpler Times?

I found an old copy of Thomas Kinkade's Simpler Times on my daughter's bookshelf, which I promptly re-claimed for collages. She didn't mind: neither of us had ever really read it. The book had been sent to me more than a decade ago when I took a writing job for Media Arts Group, the company that sells Kinkade's pictures. In fact, I poked around on thomaskinkade.com a bit and found the plein-air paintings that I had written about years ago. My words are still there, signed by the Painter of Light himself. You could read my old masterpieces of copywriting if you knew where to look. ... I'm not talking.

The book, Simpler Times, and the art that fills it, is all about a return to some kind of good-old-days: stone cottages, warm firelight, cozy villages, and gas-lit streets. This is all elaborated in the book as the opposite of noisy, media-filled, task-list-crazed individualism. Had Kinkade and his co-author written the book today, I assume blog-writing and -reading, and other webby activities wouldn't qualify as simple-time either. Who would buy a Thomas Kinkade painting of an apartment window glowing with the unearthly fluorescent blue of computer screens? The Painter of Light, 2.0!

Who doesn't love the idea of old stone buildings lit by fire? Kinkade is popular because his paintings strike some pretty big chords - simplicity is highly attractive to anyone who lives and works in this crazy-complex modern world. Longing is probably not too strong a word to describe the attraction. Also attractive are the various elements that populate these works: stone, water, and fire; cottages, gardens, and gazebos. Here at (low) tech writer, I share this attraction. But all of these elements are brought together in a world as unreal as a model-railroad diorama. What is it exactly? A little too much color in that garden scene? Not quite enough color in that crowd scene? Is it all just a little too much of the wrong idea of perfect? As I flipped through the book (before cutting it up for art), I began to discern one significant way that these pictures go wrong. It's the water. When I look at the water in a Kinkade painting, I long for a little less simplicity.

Here's what I see: in Thomas Kinkade's world, water is harmless.




Take a look at the painting titled Almost Heaven (you can zoom in on it by clicking the picture to visit the Web site). The waterfalls in this picture sit on top of the earth like they don't belong there -- like they are just passing through: not like they have been carving the surface of the earth for hundreds of thousands of years. One of these uninvited rivers spills over the high-point on a rock jutting out from a cliff, managing a double-miracle: resisting the tendency of water to flow downhill, and also the habit of water to wear stuff down. Other waterfalls in the scene rage with snowmelt, but seem unable to have any effect on the landscape at all. In other works, rivers float through villages on top of the soft earth in perpetual flood, yet also fail to have any erosive effect on the perfect, grassy banks. It seems to me that Kinkade makes a mistake similar to that made by some of the romantic painters of the 19th century: while 'recording' what they witnessed in the new territory of the American West, they often mixed up their geology by painting what they imagined, instead of what was. Albert Bierstadt painted the scenery of the Sierra Nevada in California from a mix of memory and imagination. He seems to have occasionally confused and combined u-shaped glaciated valleys with the v-shaped terrain created by liquid water.

At least Bierstadt was never confused about the violence that water can do, in liquid or solid form. Looking at Kinkade's paintings, we're left to imagine that God formed the mountains and valleys according to whimsy and then sent the impotent water over it for his own amusement. And, I guess, for painters to have something to paint. Will there be no erosion in heaven?

But if God made the mountains and the valleys, then the shaping of them was done with water. If you've ever tried to swim across a river, or escape a rip-tide, or walked under a waterfall, you know that water has power. And power is precisely what is missing from Kinkade's portrayal of nature.

I can accept the unabashed hopefulness--hope needs nurturing. I can accept the occasional too-sweet sentiment--who doesn't like sugar in their lemonade? I can almost accept that there is never any strife in Kinkade's art: after all, he is painting his vision of heaven on earth, and some of us--even before we take in his luminous, idealized landscapes--are invested in the idea that one day our tears will be wiped away and there will be joy. But, while I believe that this kind of heaven is breaking through into the world, I don't think that it will create the homogeneous and impotent landscape that the Painter of Light portrays. In fact, I'd say Kinkade's powerless waters (for starters) give his vision itself a dangerous power ... power to lure the viewer away from the challenges of reality in the way that psychotropic drugs dilute your desire to find real peace. Take enough Valium and you may just give up thinking about what's wrong with your life.

One take-away from this kind of art is the idea that the creation is ideally impotent. That in this picture of heaven not only will the lion lay down with the lamb, but the water will never again shape the rock, or otherwise change the landscape. But what Kincade fails to document in his vision is that this shaping and changing is a part of the design. It is part of God's design that water and earth are locked in constant conflict, and one result of this clash is that the earth is made more beautiful.

Here's what's true about water. Water is not impotent. In nature, water moves according to huge and hairy rhythms and gives swimmers and sailors something to worry about. Water tears at the landscape, breaks it down, carries it off, and leaves the earth scarred and changed. Here's how awesome water is: if Water was invited to make a guest appearance in a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors ... it would trump them all, but none would fall more memorably than Rock, which succumbs slowly but utterly to water's power.



A pretty good example of what can result from all this clash and conflict between water and stone is a little vacation spot in the California mountains called Yosemite Valley. You may have heard of it. There are peaceful places in the Valley, but I'm not sure a feeling of peace is the appropriate response when looking at a waterfall moving 2,500 gallons of water per second and cutting through a two-thousand-foot granite cliff. Water has terrible power and who would want it any other way? But Kinkade's paintings suggest that something God made powerful will one day ideally lose it's power, and that is a message with the power to make people mistrust true power, wherever it should be found.

One place where power is seldom trusted, where conflict gets a bad rap, is among the human characters that move here and there on the surface of the planet. While nobody loves the wars that plague humanity, even the proverb says that people shape and change each other, that we are somehow improved by conflict:

"Iron sharpens iron,

so one person sharpens the wits of another."

(Proverbs 27.17)

Conflict is not evil. It's only evil when we try to silence or destroy those who challenge or threaten us. That's what makes war. Allow me to suggest a (low) tech writer people-principle: peace does not come from avoiding conflict or clashes, it comes from accepting these things as part of God's design for beautiful people.

Or to quote Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., "I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity".

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The photo of Yosemite Falls, 2005, is by Kevin Ingolfsland and is on WikiMedia Commons.

Homemade Flute

I have often wished that I could play a musical instrument, but the learning curve seemed to be too steep. And while I have once or twice tested the waters (Learn Harmonica in 30 Minutes a Week!), I didn't have the energy to pursue it. My parents gave me a chance back when I was in elementary school. I missed catechism at St Bartholomew's that year because I was taking trumpet lessons at West Elementary in Hillsborough. It just so happens that I learned how to play the trumpet from the man that taught Ansel Adams how to play the piano. I take some comfort in the fact that Ansel Adams didn't become famous as a pianist, just like how I didn't become famous as a trumpeter. I can't wait to become famous for the other thing, just like Ansel Adams got famous for his other thing.


But I still wished I could play something and if I could have picked an instrument to play it would have been the flute. A couple months ago, I found designs on the Web for a make-your-own PVC flute. For less than a dollar, I got a scrap of PVC plumbing and followed the directions, and you're looking at the results. I am now the proud owner of my very own flute.

I've been able to pick out some songs on it, even though I can't read music. The trick seems to be that if I have a tune in my head, then I can play it with some practice. As it turns out, the tunes I have in my head are hymns, so I can play Amazing Grace, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus, and another one the name of which I can't remember, but if you were here I could play it for you.

What I love about the whole thing, is that I'm playing music right now without anyone telling me how to do it: no learn-to-play-in-thirty-minutes-a-week techniques, just me. I suppose I could take lessons some day, and maybe spend a few hundred on a real flute, but for now I'm loving that I'm enjoying a nice low-tech, low-cost musical renaissance. I'm still not famous, but I am enjoying myself.

Cartier-Bresson Has My Back

When I wrote below about flash-lit photography being overwhelming and even aggressive, I felt a little out on a limb. I have no desire to take any of it back, but I wondered if, in quoting Henri Cartier-Bresson, I had been a bit aggressive with his ideas. Whatever my philosophy of flash light on cameras, it appears that I have no problem with overwhelming prose.

But then I read the following words, taken from the same book: "If, in making a portrait, you hope to grasp the interior silence of a willing victim, it's very difficult, but you must somehow position the camera between his shirt and skin." (Emphasis mine.)

Apart from the humorous and wonderful picture of the intimacy required to capture the "interior silence" of a person, I am struck by his reference to the "willing victim". There is something to think about! So many moderns continue to regard the camera as something that can capture their soul (you can tell because they shrink and shy and scurry away when you point it at them ... maybe such people are unsure of the state of their souls? What will the photograph reveal?), and some photographers still believe it too, fearing to take something that has not been offered willingly (maybe they are right to fear).

A photographer has to come to a peaceful agreement with their subjects. "They" have to become a willing victim, and you in turn have to promise not to abuse them (by shooting when their mouths are full, or whatever). But the camera still captures something and then "it" ceases to be free. My idea that a kind of violence may happen when a picture is taken is sustained, and I still believe that the flash on most cameras is the guilty of the biggest crimes.

Henri Cartier-Bresson on Natural Light

On respecting the natural state of things, by legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson: "It is essential, therefore, to approach the subject on tiptoe - even if the subject is a still-life. A velvet hand, a hawk's eye - these we should all have. ... And no photographs taken with the aid of flash-light either, if only out of respect of the natural light - even when there isn't any of it. Unless a photographer observes such conditions as these, he may become an intolerably aggressive character."*

To deny myself the convenience of flash lighting in a photograph, even when there is no light! Cartier-Bresson would rather that I lose the picture than use a technique that is so disrespectful to natural light. Using a flash in darkness, I may get the picture, but I've taken it by force, impatiently. And, perhaps I have violated a natural law, in the same way that artificial light has virtually eliminated the natural human rhythm of sleep-when-the-sun-goes-down and rise-when-the-sun-comes-up.

For the creative photographer who chooses with a purpose, flash-light now has the effect of invoking a photojournalistic quality (in which the flash is required to catch a fleeting, news-worthy moment). But it is not a natural quality; is not at all the way we see people. Natural light is three-dimensional and alive. It comes from multiple sources: the sunlight that shines on the left side of our subject also reflects off of other surfaces in the space, creating a complex interplay of light - a world of light. Flash-light principally shoots directly from the camera into the face of our subject like we are the source of illumination and they are the victim of a kind of egocentric, photographic super-nova. The flash forces the camera itself to become the source of light--an unnatural arrangement. Subjects become two-dimensional and evenly, eerily lit, without shadows to give depth ... only a sharp black line along one edge to indicate the offset of the flash from the lens.

It reminds me of one of the ways that fighter pilots gain the advantage in a dogfight, by getting between the sun and their adversary. The sunlight blinds the other pilot, who will not be able to see the aggressor in the glare. Flashes on cameras have a similar effect, that of disorienting a subject and putting them on the defensive - after the POP of the flash, the subject blinks and staggers, waiting to adjust to the dark again. If the photographer were a spy, taking a portrait of their enemy, now would be the moment to strike.

Where a photograph taken in natural light can be like a gift given by the subject with the help of the sun or lamp, and received by the camera on behalf of the photographer. Flash-light is something more like the artistic version of an act of overwhelming force.


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*p. 28, The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers. See picture books and others by and about Cartier-Bresson at Amazon.

I found my copy of The Mind's Eye in the photography section at one of my local used bookstores, Book Buyers, a clean, well-stocked shop in Mountain View, California. It's a good bookstore and would only be improved by a few places to sit. And maybe less fluorescent light.

Andy Goldsworthy on Tech

Sculptor Andy Goldsworthy writes on his process: "The work itself determines the nature of its making. I enjoy the freedom of just using my hands and 'found' tools - a sharp stone, the quill of a feather, thorns. I am not playing the primitive. I use my hands because this is the best way to do most of my work. If I need tools, then I will use them. Technology, travel and tools are part of my life and if needed should be part of my work also. A camera is used to document, an excavator to move earth, snowballs are carried cross country by articulated truck."*

I am very comfortable with this pragmatic approach to technology. The problem (here begins my opinion) is not technology, in itself, it's in the adoption of technology, or technique, as "the way" (or even "the best way") to fulfill a desire. When a community (artists, for example) discovers a piece of technology that makes a part of their job easier, or a technique is developed that introduces efficiencies into a process, this is not a bad thing, per se. But if technique precedes meditation, exploration, and inspiration, then creativity withers.

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*From the introduction, Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature.Take a look at Andy Goldsworthy's other books at Amazon.The DVD, Rivers and Tides is a very good documentary, rich and satisfying. Remember, if you can find these books at a local independent bookstore, get on your bike and go. Photo of The Neuberger Cairn (2001) at SUNY, is from Wikimedia Commons, and is in the public domain.