Posted on by qscrisp

The Equivalent of a Tree

When I go for walks, I spend a lot of time just looking at trees. I think if I were a painter, I would like nothing more than to paint trees.

We're used to telling trees apart (when we do) by their leaves and their blossoms. However, the patterns of their branches are also wonderfully distinctive, especially when viewed from below. It occurred to me, the other day, when I took these photographs, that I would like to write a novel that is the equivalent of a tree. Surely the perfection to which art aspires con have no better visual representation than this. How can their be such a sense of symmetry and pattern within such a sense of organic chaos? What are these zig-zags and endless lightning ramifications attempting to express? They have expressed unconsciously and in a way that transcends expression.

14 Replies to “The Equivalent of a Tree”

  4. I’m always slightly suspicious of plant life, perhaps as a result of watching things like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Day of the Triffids, and so on. I do find that, like insects and sea creatures, but to a lesser extent, there is something alien and unpleasant about them.

  5. “In my view, James A. Michener wrote the way you describe.”I must admit I haven’t read any Michener, though I understand he writes epic, generation-spanning stories. I’m not actually sure what I meant by wanting to write something like a tree. It was just a feeling I had that I thought was worth jotting down.”I do find that, like insects and sea creatures, but to a lesser extent, there is something alien and unpleasant about them.”Well, in the words of Lovecraft, “Life is a hideous thing”. However, for myself, it has to be said that nature – in the form of trees, foliage, running water and so on – has always had a calming effect on me, and the urban landscape has always stirred up in me a great murky cloud of anxiety.

  9. I was sent this comment by e-mail by Jon, and am posting it here:Re. your tree entry – Trees are beautiful, but I’m afraid that if one attempted to write a novel based on the patterns of branches, well, the novel would most likely be utterly unreadable. That being said, if we were to stick to the definition of ‘art’ as being that of no motive or purpose, no distraction or ideology – something completely spontaneous – then it could indeed be labelled as a worthy venture. Except that it couldn’t be written by a human. And if a machine were to generate random splurges of words for 1,000 pages, well that would bring me back to my first point. Even then it would be spoiled from conception, as the process began in a man’s head. But trees are indeed beautiful. Here is a particularly fine one from Oxford http://www.flickr.com/photos/rebirth/40441235/in/set-843354/

  10. There must be so many tales to tell within and without the tree. The tree invokes so many thoughts.What the tree has “experienced” within it´s lifetime, must be so amazing. If trees could talk… :p

  11. Robin Davies writes:This thread has prompted me to re-read The Man Whom The Trees Loved by Algernon Blackwood. I think Blackwood is my favourite of the old-time fantasists and I agree with H. P. Lovecraft’s assertion that he was “the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphere”. Nobody else could describe nature (especially forests) like he could, especially in this wonderful story and other classics like The Wendigo, The Willows, Running Wolf and Ancient Lights.

  12. “There must be so many tales to tell within and without the tree. The tree invokes so many thoughts.”There’s a great chapter on trees in Peter Ackroyd’s Albion, The Origins of the English Imagination. It was excerpted extensively on the Internet when it first came out, but I can’t find it now. He quotes, at one point, an English poet – I forget which – who writes that whenever he sees a tree being cut down, he almost wishes to leave this life so that he no longer has to witness the inscapes of the world being destroyed in this way. I have a similar feeling. There was a cull of trees in a park near where I live recently. I can never understand how these thugs who wield the chainsaws can be so utterly barbaric. Even as a child, before I’d ever heard people talking about the environment or any such thing, I remember a day when the sound of chainsaws came to a wood where I used to play. Of course, there was nothing I could do to stop the massacre. It was utterly horrific. But yes, as the title of Peter Ackroyd’s book, and the quote I was searching for suggests, the trees, in some way, are the very heart of the imagination, the shelter of the soul… The excerpts said it much better than I ever could.”This thread has prompted me to re-read The Man Whom The Trees Loved by Algernon Blackwood.”I’ve read comparitively little Blackwood. I still have a volume on my shelves here waiting its turn. Other great tales of floral eeriness include ‘Les Fleurs’ by Ligotti and… I’m sure there was another one I was thinking of recently. Maybe it’ll come back to me. I really want to read ‘The Wendigo’. I love the title, and I think I’ve seen a rather magnificent illustration for it somewhere.

  14. I’m sure I’ve seen pictures of trees that illustrate that particularly well, where you can’t tell which way is up, but a casual Google hasn’t found them for me.I have found this, though, the Wendigo illustration I mentioned:

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