Have you ever seen two lakes kissing?
No?
Perhaps you can imagine it: two enormous blue-green bodies tumbling into a swirling and wet embrace. When you peel off your pants to wade across the tender strait between them, you may notice how the longing tug of their currents have washed the sand from the bottom; the protruding rocks almost make you stumble headlong into the rippling waters. But if you keep your balance, you’ll find the glittering beach on the other side, sheltered from the northern winds by proud pines and a shoulder of smooth rock. The sun, hung high above the mountains, has already warmed the sand between your toes.
I can describe it to you, because there really is such a place. It’s where I spent many long and happy hours as a child. It was a time of elaborate sandcastles, shrieking forays into freezing water, crackling bonfires. I even recall performing a wedding ceremony in which one of us (I don’t now recall exactly which one of us was the lucky girl) was wed to a very tall stick planted firmly in the sand.
The conversation you’re about to hear feels particularly special, because it takes place in my home-village of Rauland, Norway, on a high hill overlooking the kissing lakes.
I first met Jan van Boeckel in conjunction with a workshop on Iceland. I remember scribbling several pages of references in my notebook; always when Jan speaks, he shares generously his literary sources and philosophical threads, and I find they are valuable crumb-trails to be used for later explorations in the Forest of Thought.
Beginning his career in anthropology, Jan now works at the intersections of art, environment and education, exploring how art can help us face the great challenges of our time. In our conversation, Jan talks about psychologist James Hillman’s assertion that our crisis is an aesthetic crisis– we have somehow become numbed to the world, and this is at the root of our problems. At the same time, a common reaction to the destruction we see around us is to feel like we can’t justify prioritising art and beauty. We may even feel that we can’t bear to un-numb ourselves. How do we deal with these paradoxes?
In the conversation, we grapple with these questions with the help of a host of diverse thinkers including writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, eco-psychologist Renée Lertzman, philosophers David Abram and Bayo Akomolafe, anthropologist Gregory Bateson and Native American leader Bill Wahpepah (see links below).
So how did we end up on the high, green hill?
Alongside his role as educator, Jan has continued to cultivate his artistic practice (and I love his paintings). One of the things Jan offers is “wild painting” courses, aiming to open up our senses to the world. Thanks to a connection made by my sister Anja, he has offered this course in my home-village of Rauland two years in a row. But the connections run even deeper; much to my surprise, Jan revealed that he visited our tiny village on his very first trip to Norway, when he was a young wide-eyed boy driving up with his family from the Netherlands.
So it felt like the confluence of many paths through several layers of time that brought us together to talk on this summer’s day, with the lakes below and the sky above. I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Best,
Ingrid
LINKS TO THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT
Jan’s Wild painting courses
Active Facebook group on arts-based environmental education
“Call of the mountain” – a film on Arne Næss and deep ecology
Gregory Bateson writes about “the pattern that connects” in Mind and Nature
David Abram (who talks about Eros)
F. Scott Fitzgerald : Superior intelligence is the ability to embrace two completely contrary ideas, and still retain the ability to function
Bill Wahpepah of the American Indian Movement
