Seeing not saying

"Hurtle too knew better than everybody, than all these anyway, Sid Cupples included; not that he could have explained what he knew: because he saw rather than thought. He often wished he could think like people think in books, but he could only see or feel his way. He itched to get his fingers in their wool, for the feel of it."

Hurtle Duffield is the developing artist in Patrick White's novel, 'The Vivesector,' who as a child, is visiting his adopted parents' property - a sheep ranch - from which their wealth flows (as it did for White).

I had marked the passage, when I read it first, an age ago, which was/is a very rare occurrence. It was the first page I read on getting home on seeing the Edward Burra exhibition yesterday. One of those coincidences that we are to pretend do not mean anything.

It so resonated with the fragmentary interview with Edward Burra, as he politely refused to answer any of the interviewer's questions about what he could say about his art.

At one point, he asks why the interviewer is so interested in this 'personality stuff' for it has nothing to do with personality; and, you can sense all the time, he wants to say, "Just look at the fucking paintings. It is all there in so far as I can ever capture, evoke it!

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The Buddha meets Christ in embrace

Reading Lama Anagarika Govinda is proving nostalgic on a number of fronts. I recall my first reading of it in my first year at university, bought at Watkins, the famous 'esoteric' bookshop in Cecil Court in London. I sat in my hall of residence room transfixed by a world made familiar; and, it was deepening of a commitment to contemplation (which has been observed fitfully)! I remember returning, at the time, to my school to give a talk to the combined fifth form on Buddhism and using Govinda as the backbone of my delivery (both this book, and his equally wonderful, the Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism). I was voted (I immodestly remember) their best invited speaker of the year. I had even bought a recording of Tibetan music as opener and closer! He reminded me of how important Buddhism was (and is) to my own thinking and comprehension of my experience. The Buddha's First Sermon in the Deer Park was the first religious text I read (of my own volition) at the tender age...

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Richard Hauser and the evils of Marx

Richard was a distinguished Austrian sociologist who had contributed to the Wolfenden report that led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England, Wales and Scotland in the late 1960's. I was remembering him on the plane today because I saw a reference to his wife, Hephzibah Menuhin, pianist sister of the violinist Yehudi and human rights activist. I met him after responding to an advertisement in the New Society. He lived in a house in Pimlico, a widower, with a clutch of young people, running an ill-defined (for me) social research/action institute, that I visited several times and to which Richard wanted to recruit me. I was never clear as to what my responsibilities might be and resisted co-option. He was, however, extraordinarily charismatic and as a Jew had fled Austria in 1938 not without receiving permanent damage to his hearing, courtesy of Gestapo interrogation. I vividly remember one story he told me that gives you an idea of his character. He was invit...

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