Category Archives: Why

The Valley of a Thousand Hills

Ideas, Why,

The Valley of a Thousand Hills is a tourist destination. Thousands of people come here to look at the view. It’s also where I happen to live. The Valley of a Thousand Hills is almost ridiculously beautiful this morning. I tried to take a picture but I couldn’t capture it. Couldn’t capture the splendour, the expanse, the hill-on-hill stretching to blue. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, the day is warm and the breeze is cool.

The sunshine makes the morning seem brighter – grass is greener, bunnies are cuter. There are bunnies at my office. No-one seems to know where they came from but there they are, happily hopping around. Birds flutter from tree to tree with flashes of red wings. It is peaceful and pretty and all against the background of the Valley. I turn a corner and the view from the end of the road or the window of the boardroom takes my breath away.

The pretty morning makes me think of other times. I find myself thinking so often these day about Korea s – this time two years ago. This time two years ago, I was struggling through the deepest, coldest, most miserable part of a Korean winter. The run-up to Christmas and New Years had been beguiled by the novelty of a few days off, several operas and anticipation of the epic ski-trip. January was hard. In my mind, the winter’s back should have been broken and the seasons should have been starting to change. Months later, I finally understood what it is like to live through 8  months of winter every year.

January is always a restless season. That January in Korea was one of trying to adjust back to mundane low-grade misery after the first real trip out of Daegu. Return can be hard . This year, it’s about finding perspective. I am restless, unsettled. In the midst of it, though, I know one thing: this beauty, this sunshine, this morning, is the context in which I want to find the perspective I need. Some people can live anywhere; they want to travel the world and see everything and live other cultures. I want to know my own continent. All of it. Or at least the bit south of the Sahara. I want my Januaries – my seasons of restlessness – to have sunshine and pretty mornings and views as beautiful as the Valley of a Thousand Hills.

Arkansas Art Centre

Adventures, Arts, Little Rock, USA, Why, ,

I am torn. I am torn because I’m not sure what to do with the idea that here there is enough money here to build and maintain and pay for a spacious, elegant, modern art centre design specifically to display a great collection so that people can come, for free, and look at art. I’m torn because it seems to be normal here. Part of me wants to feel that it is frivolous and that there are better ways to spend the money. And then I spend a hour there and I feel the emotional response – the tug, the richness, the soul-nourishing rejuvenation – and I can’t want it to stop. All the intellectual self-righteousness is still valid. It shouldn’t be possible. Part of me feels guilty for enjoying it so much. But is such a pleasure.

The Arkansas Art Centre is just a few blocks away from my hotel. It is all of those things – large and spacious and elegant and modern and the collection is wonderfully varied. Some abstract, some modern, some realism. I didn’t have much time, but I took a break between proposal-writing that afternoon to go and see it. I needed a break and this was likely to be the only chance I would get.

It’s difficult to describe an art exhibition in words. The experience is emotional, rather than cerebral, at least for someone as untrained as I am. I  love walking around art galleries, though. As a colleague put it, spending time with the art. This art centre provides plenty of space and time to do that. There were other people in the galleries, on and off, but most of the time I was alone. It was peaceful and quiet. The ideal environment.

The collection is not small. So many distinctly different pieces. So many faces, too; some obvious, some hidden, some without emotion, some with so much emotion. Even many pieces that at first seemed to be of something else, after a while resolved into faces. I couldn’t live with all those faces, but they’re fascinating to visit.  I was particularly drawn to a piece not related to faces in any way – a pencil drawing called Male Back by an American artist. Another piece, called Quit, also caught my eye me. Several of the pieces held my attention for ages. The colours, the lights, the distance, the dimensions, the feelings.

As I walked back to the hotel, I tried to get my head around it all. I’ve not visited many galleries in South Africa. Those that are not selling art tend to charge high prices and are sometimes difficult to find. What does it mean? How is it different to live in a place where art is some sort of public good, just there for the looking at?

The other side of the story

Ideas, Namibia, Why,

Sometimes travel teaches you more about yourself than about the places you visit. A Belgian backpacker I met mentioned that he had never really studied Belgian colonial history at school but since coming to Africa, he’d discovered that everyone else seemed to be aware of Belgium’s role in the Congo and Rwanda. I’d been thinking something similar for the previous few days. At no point in all my years studying history at school and university did anyone ever say that we (South Africa) illegally occupied then-South West Africa for nearly 50 years.
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