I
wake up to a video on Youtube of an old pal talking about climbing
the crux of one of my routes in North Wales. It amazes me that anyone
can talk their way up a route, move by move in retrospect, logged in
fact for almost forty years. I try to mime-climb to the spoken moves
like an ineloquent Marcel Marceau, comically out of tune to the
speaker. Rewind, play. Rewind, play. But I am lost. I am lost in this
time because this is not fundamentally the route of my experience.
This is not because my memory has ‘passed away’, although his
might have, but because it failed to see the significance in the
first place, at source. I would always find it hard to remember where
a route went even just after the event of climbing it. It gets me
thinking as to why that was? That my conscious mind never logged such
information presents an interesting morning ponder.
I
have just had my leisurely breakfast at Lous Manes and picked 17 figs
after the early morning raid by the male blackcap. The morning dew
has bathed each darkening morsel and the white sticky sap from the
stem tacks up my fingers like dabs of wood glue that sticks to the
coffee mug.
I
like the blackcap; he cannot contain his excitement among the tasty,
juicy figs and he ‘clicks’ constantly, thereby giving away his
game and his whereabouts. I allow a modicum of dainty pecks from this
fairly tame bird but keep the greedy jays out of their feeding
frenzy… as much as I can, because, as crows, they have ‘the
knowledge’ that I am not a morning person. The early bird may get
the ‘fig’ but I defend my late starts by knowing the early ‘fig’
gets eaten. Anyway, my blackcapped friend’s clicks inform me of a
ripening taking place in the morning sun, and is rejoicing. Time to
get up.
I
cannot know what the blackcap sees or hears upon my morning approach
of “get off me figs you bastard”, but I presume it has little to
do with how I perceive myself to be. I cannot say that just because
the bird is among the figs that I eat, I am contingent in what I see.
Where am I?
And
as my old friend’s memory chalks the holds like a ghost in the
ether, I am nestled in something that I feel innately as ‘other’
and prior to what I hear. There is remembering here in a way that I
cannot associate with. Where was I?
Fundamentally
I know that the landscape of the blackcap and my friend’s narrative
amount to a morning encounter, a connection, and I say ‘prior
to what I hear’
because I feel there is a deeper, greater, older resonance to seeing
and feeling. As I pause and look around the vast woodland that
surrounds me I am often consumed by a blind potential…an infinite
relationship to the animal…kinship…a simulacrum of a darker,
dirtier arena and meaning. But this fullness is a momentary flash and
then vanishes, and I fall back to an empty rationale, an invasion
almost, increasingly more like a show than real life.
I
think this a tangible premise and part clue to a previous life
juggling moves on rock and memory loss. Another fully-loaded coffee
offers no comfort. It is obvious that I cannot remember the moves
because it was the moment that was moving me. This is a language
greater than me, and as I have said many times there is greater
significance to the experience than just a route. Climbing is nothing
but a format for another encounter that collides dramatically with
the force-fed, force-dripped, craft-manual ‘approach’,
ecclesiastical in doctrine, colour-coded, institutionalized and
authority-ridden; a pack-led approach that has become omnipresent in
the world of sport climbing. But I am being far too polite.
Climbing
walls are packed with believers singing hymns to a materially-sunk
Demiurge whose teachings wrack the body with obediently followed
codes of practice. A breeding ground for future robots and a training
camp for the death of spirit as I know it, the world surely suffers
in response.
John Redhead on his 'Demons of Bosch'
When tumbling joyfully through this loud, physical
playground, there can be no ‘otherness’, the fulfilling essence
for us to experience. That playground destroys, anulls thousands of
years of potential… so who gives a flying fuck when we are
strangers in a strange land? Nature is the urgent piss you have to
stop climbing for. When we try to remember who we are and protect
that which grows around us, climbing walls are a disease of the mind,
denoting suffering and death. Adults should know better than to
encourage children in a pursuit worth little more than colouring in
with primary felt-tip pens, or chasing sweets.
‘When
I take my kids to the wall, we take a few lego men and I put them on
holds about ten feet off the deck. They have to climb up and save
them. This way they are climbing, and learning how to move, without
realising it. Quite a good method for getting kids climbing for fun
and not just for the sake of climbing, which may seem quite pointless
to some.’
“That’s
my little Mimi up there. She’s only eight. She’s on a 6a. That’s
the red one with the awkward sidies. So much faster than her friends.
She refused to warm up and that’s my girl. I’m so proud.”
‘But
enthusiasm is often fostered when there are games and prizes
involved. Kids can pretend there are dinosaur fossils at the top of
the wall or parents can hide treats in some of the holds. One of the
reasons George was so excited about his project was simply because
the holds looked—with the power of his imagination—like Mickey
Mouse.’
Coaching
kids by Ary Shreider.
‘Competition
doping in ‘gym climbing’ comes with Olympic glory, money and
prestige’. Well,
Fancy that! But
of course, these arguments go a lot further than the nonsense of
simply climbing for your country. They are manifest in every aspect
of society.
‘when
the rock climber understands the nature of ascent he will have no
need to climb rock…’
…and one for the crow.
Red Croc Rebel
I
hope I have passionately articulated my response to not remembering
moves on a climb? That the climb has a physical nature does not mean
that the moves cannot take you to that blind potential, to another
more ethereal connection. There is no manual for this apart from the
words pause in
nature by getting out into it.
I
guess what I am saying is to never base your identity on this
pursuit, because if you do, you do little more that ‘hire’
yourself out of yourself…pimped to the highest bidder.
I
can have a laugh and play and work out in the gym but my challenge to
others is how seriously they take it. That the psyche can fill up
with this shit is worrying. Make no mistake there is a voracious,
malevolent background, bankrolled, sitting in high-rise offices
planning another wave to suck you into and dumb you down in.
Authentic
Desire, Margins of the Mind, Shaft of the Dead Man, were stalked
through as if behind enemy lines. One was prepared to die. I cannot
remember the moves but there are paintings to prove I returned to my
studio. Almost ‘indigenous’ in its primary impulse, nothing but
ones own volition energized an ascent. Nobody could take an
advantage, or seek to control, or make money from such nature
inspired endeavors. The body and soul and psyche are so repleat and
nourished there can be no opportunity for ‘foreign’ takeover,
they have native immunity. This I call divine and I feel lucky to
have experienced and survived it. This approach, almost like an
erotic sacrament, sustained a life, is not in the least romantic, it
is more pagan in its sensibility. But make no mistake, I am not in
the ‘adventure’ game either. This stalking was not adventure. The
adventure waits in the studio terrain.
On
my third fully-loaded coffee I am well enmeshed. The clicking is
persistent like a ticking clock. Again I call, “get off me fucking
figs.” I pick another five as they seem to be ripening in front of
my eyes. I think of Father Time. I am reminded of my Grandad who
instilled a very spiritual respect for all that we share the planet
with. But I always criticized him for trying to get me to learn the
piano. ‘I don’t care’ I would retort. And to take up his
passion for golf; ‘I don’t care’. And walking long distances;
‘I don’t care’. Growing tomatoes; ‘I don’t care’. Card
games and crosswords; ‘I don’t care’. Everything and etc etc;
‘I don’t care’. I am my grandfather’s age when I rebelliously
and petulantly refused to acknowledge his offers of advice and
caring. He is here now smiling, looking at the woodland and
appreciating the vegetables growing on the reclaimed terraces. Of
course I care. I always did. And now I have become my ‘own’
grandfather, and still as angry as I was at six, concerning the way
the world moves. Fighting on the side of ‘otherness’ came early.
It
is very hard in this verdant, green wilderness that blesses me each
morning, listening to the living earth, to imagine the extreme decay
and negligence that humankind have allowed their psyche and the
planet to be infected by. That the ‘dark ages’ are still upon us
is obvious, that we have fallen and are failing as a species is
undeniable. The Kali Yuga, in Hindu mythology may be near its end
with a new consciousness, but it wrestles with what I see as the
genocide of humanity with…
‘a
hundred generations of dominant pathological affliction and
perpetrator religion in global society’.
John Lamb Lash.
We
climb out of ourselves and home.
We
run out of our selves and home.
We
work out of ourselves and home.
We
escape out of ourselves and home.
The
anchor was severed long ago by serpents unknown.
Do
not believe, but know, you are the craftsman of yourself…
Talywaenydd,
N Wales. October 2019
All Images JR.
