Butterfly Mind
Jim Whitty - Cadogan Contemporary LondonThis weekend I finally started unpacking the last of the boxes. We should only have been here six months, so I think not completely unpacking (for the seventh move in six years) was a rebellious stand on my part. I wasn't going to settle in only to move again, I was going to hold out until we had our own home again. However, we've been in the cottage two years now - and I've missed my touchstones. It's been like seeing old friends, unearthing books, photographs, paintings I haven't seen for years.
One I was particularly pleased to find again was 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly'. It was published in France in the mid 90s by Jean Dominique Bauby - he had been editor of French Elle, a textbook Gallic intellectual and charming playboy surrounded by beautiful women. In his early 40s he suffered a stroke, and awoke from a coma to 'locked in syndrome'. He was mentally perfectly lucid, but trapped in a paralysed body. Through a system of blinking as his nurses recited the letters of the alphabet, he dictated the book. It's an incredible read - uplifting, life affirming. Bauby reflects on the small pleasures - a great meal, the company of friends, playing with his children. It's almost as if being released from material pleasure and wealth allowed him to appreciate the richness of his inner life - his butterfly mind allowed him to escape the 'diving bell' of his body. Bauby died ten days after the book was published. I read it while recovering after the birth of our first child - and it echoed my own thoughts about how grateful I was simply to be alive. Again, it is meant to be one of those books they could never make into a film, but I watched Julian Schnabel's adaptation this summer and it was brilliantly done.
I've always felt a 'butterfly mind' to be a great advantage for a writer. I have tried meditation, yoga, with limited success - I don't know about you but I quite enjoy having a restless inquiring mind that flies off at tangents, and I don't want it to go. Somehow 'butterfly mind' appeals more than 'monkey mind' (are they the same - I don't know? Perhaps some of you have had more success than me with meditation?) Butterflies seem to be everywhere this weekend - the gorgeous painting illustrating the post came in a catalogue for the new Jim Whitty show at Cadogan in London. It reminded me of a walk through the woods in Devon twenty years ago when I saw a cloud of butterflies rising from the forest floor in a shaft of sunlight. Until I saw the painting, I had forgotten how beautiful this was.
The other butterflies in the news are of course Damien Hirst's 'straight to auction' collection going under the hammer at Sotheby's in London. However you feel about his work and showmanship, it will be interesting to see how the sale goes - it has the potential to turn the art market upside down, cutting out the dealerships. The sale seems like a 'Greatest Hits' collection - all the old favourites (spots, spin, formaldehyde ...) without the shock and impact of the new. At college every year, they would hang a collection of contemporary work in the east wing of Somerset House - I remember tutorials sitting beneath one of his early 'Spot' paintings. Then they seemed fresh - for Hirst to still be producing versions of the same surely has more to do with commerce than artistic expression (or should I say to employ several studios full of people still producing the work)? Maybe I'm just being naive. Isn't he the wealthiest contemporary artist in the world?
TODAY'S PROMPT: Do you have a butterfly mind or are you better at focusing and staying still? If you were reflecting on your life as Bauby did, what would you remember? What precious moments have brought inner wealth to you? Why not take some time out from daily life today with your notebook and see what moments of beauty and joy you have forgotten.
