Dear Learners,
WE HAVE ENTERED THE THIRD MILLENNIUM THROUGH A GATE OF FIRE.
[Kofi Annan, Nobel Peace Laureate 2001]
Kofi Annan begins the lecture - "Today, in Afghanistan, a girl will be
born. Her mother will hold her and feed her, comfort her and care for her
- just as any mother would anywhere in the world..."
Yesterday I learned that May in the Gambia has, finally, gone into actual
production, though you know;-) she's long been productive. Her paper mill
is up and running, the first batch has been sent out into the world. So, a
tiny community in a place most of us couldn't point to on the map of the
world without first peeking to make sure it was that particular part of
west Africa has changed. Now they can create blank sheets. Blank sheets of
paper are powerhouses in human affairs. May knows that because she is an
ARTIST.
Dear At has treated us this last month to some lessons of leadership, with
special reference to the subject called 'complexity'. Many of you may be
unaware of this subject. But IMHO and as an economist;-) I have heard it
said that the recent printing of pan European images, especially
bridges;-) onto a new and collective Euro currency is more about politics
than economics. That would make it, whatever the ratio between economics
and politics it represents a suitable subject for study through the
multiple lenses of complexity. My dear friend Winfried Deijmann is fond of
a saying, "Eveything changes when the facts change." To me that says
something both personal and universal. I think that facts don't change but
people's perceptions do. Nothing changes human perception like a blank
sheet of paper. I find I can read "- the whole is greater than the sum of
the parts" into the statement" Everything changes when the facts change."
So far as I know it was the British economist Meynard Keynes who first
penned those lines.
Here is another partial citation, - " Scientists tell us that the world of
nature is so small and interdependent that a butterfly flapping its wings
in the Amazon rain forest can generate a violent storm on the other side
of the earth. This principle is known as the "Butterfly Effect." Today we
realize perhaps more than ever, that the world also has it's own
"Butterfly Effect" - for better or for worse. "
When I first approached May in the Gambia she sent me a suite of images.
About twenty or so. They are about some facts of light and dark. She is an
ARTIST. One of which I offered to send a Very (self) Important Person by
way of a 'hand of friendship' earlier in 2001. It was ignored, perhaps it
involved too much of a 'bending over' action for a someone bent upon a BIG
reputation in his own LITTLE and (then) comfortable world. There we are,
here I am and there you are. The image I offered to send was of a
butterfly that was flying into the head of a great sun-like flower; for
all the world an 'angelic scene' and for me prophetic. WE are ARTISTS
after all. I made a painting not long after this, in fact I made many
paintings. You SEE the FACTS had just changed for me too. Maybe that
butterfly had flown straight through my eye and into my mind and
imagination. I gave the image a title of 'Passion's Golden Purpled Grace'
with a sub title 'Entropic Garden No.1' You NEED to KNOW that the painting
yet unseen by other than a very few contains KNOW colour Purple ;-) but
that the intensity of the 'gold' is such that it forces out the sporadic
AFTER IMAGES of its 'complementary opposite' colour. Goethe was well aware
of this FACT in the MIND; that things call forth their opposite in the
reflectivity of the embodied human mind. Well, you can imagine these
things and that is a powerful thing to do. To write or draw or paint on a
blank sheet of paper is a powerful thing to do. Sometimes there is not
enough time to write, draw or paint. Then we may be instantaneously freed
to act most spontaneously, perhaps from some sense of heart and mind
centre. We become more than the sum of our parts. When this happens within
me at the changing facts I find figures, and I find that set onto or even
into paper they rise up and fly, as if winged, as if angels...as if...more
than the sum of their parts..and a new vision arose from that this
Christmas, a great hand gossamer-like, like a butterfly's wing to lift a
personality up in a journey renewed elsewhere, elsewise, elseloved.
Love,
Andrew Campbell
Oxford
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