Cup board Landscape
Story and Painting by Lehan Ramsay
Following a dream seems to be something you can only do if you have expendable resources. Every day I find my ideas for change giving way to small compromises. I can taste failure again. Still, I must be getting somewhere. You can’t have failure without change having already occurred can you? There must have been some tiny shift already.
At some point in the last five years I began to recognize the taste of failure. Something I did gave me a response that clearly indicated that I should stop. I recognized that I should stop. I thought that I should stop. I stopped. And then suddenly a rush of something else. SO WHAT? And I stepped over the line. Since then it’s been one failure after another, years of them.
People said things. Mostly it was People who had said don’t give up, just don’t give up. But now they were saying something else. You shouldn’t have, and you should have, and of course. They were right. Of course. I listened, they were my tongue pushing on an inflamed tooth, I let them push and I pushed with them. Of course. But I had already crossed over. It was just a tooth, and I was still alive. The thing about failure. We think there is nothing on the other side of it. Once we have it we are annihilated by it. But no, not annihilated. Just reduced. Reduced in form, substance, and power.
People had good reason to be annoyed. This was, after all, the point at which they could be expected to step in. Their support of me had failed because I had failed. Now for anything to succeed they would need to take up the cause, gather together, push. What me? They said. It’s got nothing to do with me.
I’m tiny! an ant, waving my antenna and legs wildly around, nobody can see me any more I’m so small. Down here the big things are so far away and unapproachable. But an ant also has the advantage of being too small to press down on the aching tooth and send out waves of you have a nerve pain. The People have departed, there’s no fun to be had. It’s just me and all the small things that an ant can see. Down here there are still things to challenge. You don’t get whacked like you do with the big things. People don’t think the small things are important, not worthy of such fierce protection. So I can practice. Perhaps down here I’ll find something to bump up against, and instead of just getting whacked, something will answer my question. So What?
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
I like the majority of your work Lehan; it has a 2 1/2D look, tinctured with a ‘lostness’ . You may not mean that to be there (or not there, because it looks as if it could have). A couple look like wobbly jellies–and then some seem naive. But I guess you know that.
I’m envious anyway. I admire anyone who can draw or paint. I’d love to be able to, but I can’t.
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Hi Jayell, it’s nice to meet you.
Thanks for your comment on my painting. I studied photography, and was always afraid to paint or draw, only starting a few years ago. I don’t feel that I am very good at it, but I think it’s “ugly yet alluring”.
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“There’s no success like failure;
And failure’s no success at all!”
(Bob Dylan)
Hi Lehan!
🙂
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BM, you, blind too,
not just Mr HOO?
So now we have two,
is that really true?
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Make that three H. I’m red/green colour blind – as well as a spectacle ….. wearer
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I have anomolous trichromacy and myopia. Don’t know how that happened???
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Not enough of that gorgeous red? 🙂
NOT that I’m suggesting it for this painting.
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This one is before my red phase (maybe a year ago)… but red to come…
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Yes Lehan, that’s a fair summary of how it works.
A. You want people to tell you that what you are doing is right.
B. People like to be liked, and so they’ll tell you what you want to hear.
C. They have nothing to lose. If it works, they know someone successful they can talk about at parties and who might throw them a bone. If it doesn’t, all care and no responsibility.
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So What? is a multi-edged debating weapon. Easy to cut yourself. Applied to failure, it depends largely on the consequences of that failure. And a bit on the consequences of success. Let’s take as an example Fred Hollows. He had a dream to save the sight of people who were losing it to cataracts, largely due to living in poverty and lack of availability of medical care, when their sight could be saved for peanuts if his dream was successful. The consequences of failure wouldn’t have been that bad. Those people wouldn’t be any worse off. He would still be a medical specialist with a high income earning capacity. Losing a year or two of income to have a go would neither be here nor there on the scale of things. The consequences of his success were immense. Eventually it soaked up most of his income-earning time, but had many other rewards and his wife and twin babies were looked after.
We could look at the failure to predict the recent flash flood in Queensland. The consequences were dire. You could still say, So What?
On aircraft, when the oxygen masks are lowered, they tell you to put the mask on yourself first, not the next door neighbour, or your elderly mother, or baby. Because, if you do not look after yourself, you will not be able to look after others. Your first responsibility is to yourself.
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Yes you’re right. But there is a catch with taking a risk. You can’t half take a risk – well you can, but if you fail you’ll never know if it was because it couldn’t work or if it was because you stopped before success began. It’s often necessary to go way past what you would have been prepared to go. Also it’s a slow move, and and you don’t make decisions all at once. So you find yourself further along than you would ever have wanted to be. I got offered a lot of incentives to give up. Things like: a paid year off, a gold-plated recommendation for another job, money to resign rather than be sacked….it seems stupid to me now! But at the time I believed that in order to succeed I would need to go on AS IF I WERE WINNING. And to have succeeded so little! But Gerard is right, one can’t scrutinize failure. I simply failed spectacularly, in a very clear and unambiguous way.
I do believe though that “the people” around me had a strong and simple power. That was, the power to make me appear more powerful than I was. Had they “interfered”, I think things might have been different. I think that they misunderestimated themselves. But that was also my fault, I think. I was not The Fool of tarot, an innocent. I was truly foolish, because I did not have a strong enough relationship with people that they would believe and support me.
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Amplification. Politicians know how to do it, and political parties. Companies with products to sell, celebrities…they know how to do it, that’s how they work. Amplification and reverberation, making something appear to be larger and more substantial than it is.
The university just wouldn’t have messed with someone who was well-connected, in the way that they messed with me. Had professors from the university I was studying at got a bit noisy….had the people and organizations I was connected to done the same….had people inside the institution done the same. I had connections, but they didn’t “start up”.
I was working hard on that, and having reasonable success. Couldn’t get it off the ground though. Why not? This is not about dwelling on failure. It is about searching for the element of success that I was not carrying. Was I personally not equipped for success? Did people not get the story that was happening? Were there not enough channels of communication? Was it a dream that nobody was interested in? Did it just seem too hard? Were people afraid that they would be harassed too? Was it too easy to put it down to some personal thing? Why not?
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I had a small experience when I was quite young, maybe 13. I wanted to change my name. I declared that I was going to shorten the name I had, to Lee. My two sisters had both shortened theirs. When I told them, they looked at me, and said “No you’re not.”
That was all. It took me another eight years to change my name. That’s the kind of action I’m talking about here. Somebody who would have simply said “No you’re not”. A lot of the things that happened could have been prevented, had someone said that. Not to me, but to each other. Ostracism happens when an individual crosses a line. Harassment happens when a group crosses a line.
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I think the painting should be left alone. It is serene and works well.
Keep well away from dwelling on failures. That never works.
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Thank god, Gerard, I really itch when I look at this painting! I will consider it finished.
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Lehan, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this painting, I’d go almost as far as to say that it is the most beautiful in your Pigs’ collection, the colours, the form relationships work for me….
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It’s surprising, how difficult it is to paint a “still life”. A number of objects without one focal point. Thanks for the nice comment Helvi.
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I’ve done a dozen repaints of this painting, but could never really feel that it worked. Anyone have any idea of what’s wrong with it?
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Speaking on behalf of the blind, it’s fine. Colour perhaps?
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I’m with Mr HOO.
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