Or Of The Topography of Tesseracts and the Ineffable Benefits of Entasis
I spend a fair bit of time pondering the imponderables (that’s why it takes time) of fantasy imagery.
Fantasy imagery has been happening for a long time. In fact no culture, ever, has created ONLY realistic, down-to-earth, day-to-day and otherwise familiar imagery. Everything we set our eyes upon is deified, vilifeid, praised or ridiculed, or, with surprising regularity, sublimated by our desires and aspirations. Hence our dawning century of fantasy art, with little fantasy artists scattered the world over, who peer into looking glasses darkly Alice-fashion, hoping for a glimpse of the invisible, a hint of the ineffable, in the hopes of transcribing the sparkle of that particular glamour on paper/canvas/screen.
Sometimes it seems a shame we don’t build any more temples to Poseidon or Odin or commission artists to decorate the entrances to sacred groves or sculpt pillars for Irminsul. Of course, we can’t any more, at least not with a straight face, not with the scientific age disputing monotheisms for our attention and belief. Serious business, that, and not to be tampered with. So fantasy has packed its gypsy tricks in its tatterdemalion cloak and gone a different road, into make-believe.
Perhaps that’s where the saving grace of all this lies. It’s not entirely serious. Because from our extraordinary viewing platform we can see stars for real, poke around inside atoms and count all the numbers everywhere. Quite an accomplishment.
We can believe, often in the face of all evidence, often with grace and happiness, often simply with motions gone through, in whatever ultimate felicity or fate we inherit or choose. Quite a program.
Rather like a buffet – you know those salad bars, where you always try to cram too much on your plate? Sometimes opinions and beliefs to me feel just like that. Something we diligently or dutifully apply to our world rather than something we allow the world to offer because understanding is neither counting atoms nor having an exclusive on the truth.
Now, of course one makes do with what one has, and one’s tools are often modest things and one’s ambitions nearer a hobbit garden than a world order. Which is what fantasy illustration is all about. Making sense of things which don’t require answers, and opening one’s mind to all the astonishing worlds the world has offered over millenia. A cloudgate on Mount Olympus? Makes sense to me. A Worldtree holding up the skybowl of Ymir’s skull? Sounds good.
Understand me here, I’m not subscribing to any of this, you won’t find me dressed like a dumbed-down druid hugging trees, I claim no esoteria, hermetica or occult for my own, no “connectedness”, no “secrets”. Just a sense of wonder, because while things can be explained to us collectively, (I’ll take your word on atoms, though I’ve not seen any; I’ll accept your faith, though I may have little myself) individually, we actually grasp surprisingly little. (Wasn’t Athanasius Kircher the last man who knew everything? Can true polymaths exist any more or do we just know too much?) We can have cable TV and cell phones, we can fill up at the gas station and the supermarket collectively, but personally, a chance apple from an orchard gone wild or a perfect sunset is still a marvellous thing.
In resacralising unorthodox spirituality out of context (the late 20th century was exceedingly adept at attributing meaning out of all frame of reference) we have also managed to consecrate the hierophantic to such a degree that it is far removed from the original preoccupations of myth. There are hierograms everywhere: every tree, every rock, every stream is an epigram for epiphany. Fantasy art is, or should be, an approach of that nature to the nature of things. Not to render it commonplace, but the heighten readiness for those rare opportunities when placed in a context of the sublime. To remove the “re” from “recognition” and replace it anew at every face-to-face, because otherwise we are like two-dimensional creatures trying to understand the net of a terreract – from every side it’s just a cross. Clouds are just water vapour. Trees nothing but wood. No equating of the “what-happened-once” and the “what-happens-everalways”, the interlace of the particular and the universal that is the essence of myth. No fundamental mystery. (Mystery, by the way, comes from via Latin from Greek mustikos, itself from mustēs ‘initiated person,’ from muein ‘close the eyes or lips’.) All about looking in, of course, while looking out. All about not necessarily putting words on things. Too many words or never enough.
Fantasy art is an approach to that extra dimension superimposed on the ones we know. Not meant to be taken literally (those scholars who stubbornly seek the birthplace of Merlin or doggedly dig for burial place of Arthur and indulge in like ventures are tiresome in the extreme), but there to add an extra depth. To attempt make it fit our reality is an error, whether through reduction or dogmatization. Mythology is a form of spiritual entasis. Not a structural necessity, but more pleasing to the mind’s eye.
For someone whose sole intent was to add a few words to an otherwise wordy enough pdf file, I fear I may have gotten it all wrong. Again. Both too much and not enough. As ever…
Issue #6, Death Ray magazine in the UK.
The FANTASY ART WORKSHOP will be published in the US on October 16th.
It can be found here on Amazon, or directly from the editor.
In the meantime, here are a few interior pages.
And, just in case you’re in the mind to read yet another interview, there is a very recent one here. When my editor wrote a while back to ask if I’d to a web site interview for Sequential Tart, I of course replied “Naturally, I’d love to do an interview… errr… “Sequential TART”??” Happily, the site’s header carries the dictionary defintion. Sequential Tart. (si-kwen’shel tart) n. – 1. a Web zine about the comics industry, published by an eclectic band of women; 2. a publication dedicated to providing exclusive interviews, in-depth articles and news, while working towards raising he awareness of women’s influence in the comics industry and other realms.
FRIDJ, IOD AND OTHER TALES FROM URDA’S WELL
Nørn is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages. Together with Faroese, Icelandic and Norwegian it belongs to the West Scandinavian group, separating it from the East Scandinavian group consisting of Swedish and Danish. More recent analyses divide the North Germanic languages into an Insular Scandinavian and Mainland Scandinavian languages, grouping Norwegian with Danish and Swedish based on mutual intelligibility and the fact that Norwegian has been heavily influenced in particular by Danish during the last millennium and has diverged from Faroese and Icelandic. Norn is generally considered to have been fairly similar to Faroese, sharing many phonological and grammatical traits with this language, and might even have been mutually intelligible with it. (Wikipedia)
For almost 1,000 years, the language of the people of Orkney was a variant of Old Norse known as Norrœna, or Nørn.Originally carried to the Northern Isles by Norwegian settlers in the 8th and 9th centuries AD, their language, Old Norse, gradually developed into the distinctive language we now refer to as Norn. The sheer scale of the Norse settlement of Orkney saw their language obliterate whatever indigenous language was spoken in Orkney. A few centuries later Norn was the dominant form of speech. But unfortunately, because Norn was the language of the common people, it was never written down. Although official documents do exist from this period, they were generally written in Norwegian. Norn remained the language of Orkney until the early 15th century, but, contrary to popular belief, its decline began well before the islands were annexed to Scotland in 1468. (http://www.orkneyjar.com)
The Nørn (Old Norse: nørn, plural: nornir) are a kind of dísir, numerous female beings who rule the fates of the various races of Norse mythology (The Fates). An English tradition talks of the Weird Sisters, (sometimes Wyrd Sisters or Three Weird Sisters), where Wyrd is the English form of Urðr, one of the named nørns, whose name means itself “fate”. (Wikipedia)
The three Nørns, Urda, Verdandi, and Skulda, sat beside the well that was in the hollow of the great root of Ygdrassil. Urda was ancient and with white hair, and Verdandi was beautiful, while Skulda could hardly be seen, for she sat far back, and her hair fell over her face and eyes. Urda, Verdandi, and Skulda; they knew the whole of the Past, the whole of the Present, and the whole of the Future. Odin, looking on them, saw into the eyes of Skulda even. Long, long he stood looking on the Nørns with the eyes of a God, while the others listened to the murmur of the swans and the falling of the leaves of Ygdrassil into Urda’s Well.
Looking into their eyes, Odin saw the shadows and forebodings that Hugin and Munin told him of take shape and substance…. (The Children of Odin by Padraic Colum)
Now, all of this may well be true, but I happen to know that Nørn is alive and well and living in Switzerland. Nørn is a most extraordinary vocal trio who, not content with the 6800-odd terrestrial languages at their disposal, have invented one of their own. (If you don’t know them yet, it is mandatory to visit their site and make amends.) And, they have not been idle since performing at the Saint-Ursanne event this summer. Their new CD is just out.
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Visuals © Marc Da Cunha Lopes/Norn
