[on 25/5/05 6:26 AM, Clayton A. Couch at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Dear sidereality fans & readers:
>
> I hope that everyone is having a great spring
Ah, it's autumn down here, but a great one...]
Snapping at Landscape
A little landscape goes a long way -
a lot of landscape goes far too far.
What else do they have in New Zealand?
I kept thinking of Wallace Stevens: he
placed a jar in Tennessee which did something
or other to the slovenly wilderness.
None of this was slovenly! - unless, touring
wide-eyed I saw without his discrimination,
but after all this wasnıt Tennessee.
The postcards Iıd always sneered at for their
excessive colour and mirroring effects:
contrasts of lake forest snow-dazzle-peaks sky -
turn the cards upside down, theyıre just as true -
well, there glowing in the framing windscreen
were the originals demanding I retract my sneers.
Elsewhere they have wine lakes and butter mountains,
this place has lake lakes and mountain mountains.
Everywhere we went, north and south, sated
and besotted by their glut of landscape,
Iıd drift into a bookshop, consult maps
and picture guides to Lord of the Rings locations.
Sure enough, round the corner, in the next
valley, over that hill, there waited
for aficionados of the movie trilogy,
manifold battlefields, hiding places,
Hobbit-sites, ice-spiky horizons, forest glades.
None of all that I cared for in the least,
never having read the books or seen the shows.
Peter Jacksonıs been and gone, digitally inserted,
digitally removed. The landscapes remain.
From convoys of coaches, ten thousand tourists
swarm, shooting it all, posing in the foreground
their relatives and travelling companions.
Good luck to the industry! The Kiwis need you.
Good luck to photography! Pity
the bored film-developers in Photo Express.
Iıve just been and paid for our several reels.
Everyoneıs now smiling, saying:
just like in Lord of the Rings. I want to go.ı
Oh there are a few towns in New Zealand,
and these days self-respect requires there be
a gallery and/or museum in each.
Iıd park near each one, shaking off the burden
of the morningıs drive through glorious scenery,
thinking: well, if New Zealanders live
enfolded in all this, what need do they have
of the visual arts? Iıd step curiously in
and what did I see but?
Yes, and also, beyond the photographic,
the merely scenic, the would-be sublime,
paintings of trouble, the human stain, even
the slovenly, strangeness to be grateful for.
Max Richards
North Balwyn, Melbourne
Wednesday May 25, 2005
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