About elites, the Edge and a crack in the universe. And Art.

Jane Cobbald
Sep 9, 2018 · 5 min read

My partner and I don’t get out much. Instead, most evenings we treat ourselves to a bottle of wine with dinner. Nothing fancy — usually a reliable red from a local supermarket.

Recently, a friend brought a bottle of Bordeaux from a premier-division vineyard. For my partner and me it was another league indeed — although it took a while for the effects to kick in. Where our supermarket red was opaque, this was transparent.We could taste the separate layers of flavour. Our conversation changed, too. To my ears, we all began to sound like French philosophers. It was fascinating.

After drinking that Bordeaux, we knew our dinnertime red would taste as flat as fruit juice. How to explain the difference? Is it simply a matter of the land, climate and the grape variety? I think there is more to it than that. It took some individuals to see the possibility in that combination of terroir and plants, to work with them, look after them and process them.

Can brilliance be bottled? It would seem so. It simply needs a human to see it and act on it.

Brilliance can be bottled in other fields too — and doing so requires similar levels of skill. Take literature, for example. The novelist Alan Garner has talked of how he sees violence all around him. He sees it in the cosmos, in nature and in human behaviour. Seeing so much of it causes feelings of homicidal violence in him at times. It is as though there is a crack in the universe that lets violence through, and Alan Garner is tuned to its frequency.

It could send him mad, and probably has done so more than once. But most of the time he can process it and transmute it into writing. He pre-masticates the violence he sees, so that I am able to digest it in ‘Bonelands’ or another of his novels. He bottles it for consumption by others.

In the meantime, he stays on the Edge: the edge with insanity on one side and numbness on the other. That edge is the only place from which one can hope to make sense of what comes through the crack in the universe.

You can see it clearly in the visual arts. Vincent Van Gogh saw something yellow and blue and swirling when he looked through the crack in the universe that he was tuned to.

Vincent Van Gogh, self portrait 1889. Courtesy Wikipedia

It must have been like a tune or a thought that you can’t get out of your head — but all the time. He couldn’t switch off the pictures. They kept coming. As long as he kept painting, he knew they wouldn’t overwhelm him. He just had to keep facing towards that crack in the universe.

Sometimes it goes wrong. Sometimes the person doesn’t put the experience far enough outside of themselves. There is not sufficient separation between the artist and the frequency they feel. They don’t externalise it enough. Rather than processing and bottling it for the rest of us to consume, they give it to us neat. Then it gets very dangerous for them and intoxicating for us. From our point of view, we can’t get enough of them. Watching the performance we all become vampires. We eat that person alive. That’s what we did to Janis Joplin, to Amy Winehouse, to Jimi Hendrix, to Ian Curtis of Joy Division and many others. To so many stars who gave expression to what came through a crack in the universe.

But most of the time we are safe consumers of the bottle of Bordeaux, the book, the beautiful painting or piece of music. We see the brilliance secondhand. My partner tells a story of a conversation he overheard in the Tate Gallery gift shop, when he was a student. A well-dressed woman was looking for a picture for her kitchen wall. She explained to her friend that it had to be dangerous — but not too dangerous. She chose a print of Monet’s field of poppies. Monet was on his own edge, in my view, so she chose well. My partner, in his teenage arrogance, was more critical. But I’m sure Monet would not have minded. A person on the edge looks forward, not behind them.

Claude Monet, Poppy Field, 1873. Courtesy Wikpedia

The word ‘elite’ comes from ‘elect’, as in ‘one of the elect’: chosen by a god, gods or God. Who are the elect? Those who are electrified by their connections, maybe — and who stay plugged in to their source. When they can translate it safely they shine, and it is breathtaking to watch. They are the sort of people who can’t do anything else. They live and breathe what they perceive.

For me, those people who are brave and skilled enough to stay on their edge are the elect, the elite. The brilliance they bring enhances all of our lives. Vincent van Gogh, Alan Garner, Janis Joplin. Not that I want to imitate them; for me the important thing is the example they set. By demonstrating how they stay on their edge, they give me clues to find mine, to respond to the frequencies I can resonate with. Because that brilliance can shine in almost any field of human endeavour: a footballer who makes it look so easy, a neighbour who is a pleasure to be with. Anyone who faces towards a crack in the universe.

So from this perspective, the few thousand Jehovah’s Witnesses (or any other elitist religious group for that matter), who tell us they have pre-booked a place in heaven, are not the elect. They might be if they stay on their own edge, but not by adhering to a formula. Nor are those people described in the media as the elite: the rich and powerful. The people who earn more in a day than most of us do in a year: what kind of elite are they? To be elected by money, the god Mammon, does not attract me. There is so much more that is available. But each to their own.

I prefer to keep looking for what comes through the crack in the universe that I am tuned to. We are each tuned to one, after all.

Jane Cobbald

Written by

Author of Viktor Schauberger: a life of learning from nature, partner at www.implementations.co.uk

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade