Spring Cleaning
On art, alchemy, and the good old days.
I have a closet in my brain where I keep curiosities I’ve seen or read and the thoughts they have sparked. This closet, I keep shut most of the time, leaving the thoughts lurking in the dark, unthought, moulding, growing moths out of thin air. But it’s March, and I thought I might as well do some spring cleaning—air the rooms, take inventory, and most importantly, allow myself to think the thoughts through. Discard the curiosities or keep them, as I see fit. Much like Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters also deserved to dance, my moths might not be butterflies, but they still deserve a chance to fly.
I open the door, and there they are: ideas, staring back at me. Four seem to be family, so alike they look when placed side by side.
Art is more important than math.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
We don’t have craftmanship anymore.
We should all be practicing alchemy.
I picked up these ideas while reading one contemporary writer or another, eyeing the musings of some thought leader on the internet, or listening to an enlightened, self-appointed master of societal change. These ideas are so profound they seem to have a brain of their own. Whole civilizations have been built on them. They speak to me of a time when we walked the Earth with no real understanding of how anything worked—the universe, the natural world, evolution, biology, disease—yet somehow, things still functioned. And we created beauty for all to enjoy: buildings, stained glass windows, sculptures, jewelry, clothes. Since science was not yet a thing, we could all be artists: poets, musicians, authors, and philosophers.
These ideas speak to me of a longing for the good old days, when craftsmanship thrived, Amazon was a woman warrior, and consumption meant dying of tuberculosis.
In the good old days, alchemists searched for the philosopher’s stone, sought eternal youth, and struggled with the transmutation of matter. Longing for eternal youth back then must have been a far more noble pursuit than it is today1 where we hate on women who use Botox and hate on women who look their age2.
Ah! The good old days, when no one was obsessed with money. The alchemists’ fixation on turning lead into gold wasn’t about greed, of course. It was merely a refined appreciation for shiny objects.
Ah! The good old days, when people from all walks of life sat around the fire to read a book3 and weekends and summer holidays were sacred4.
Ah! The good old days, when public health wasn’t a concept, let alone a science, and no one burdened us with pesky laws about sanitation. Such an unpoetic word, sanitation. Poets don’t need sanitation—they float in the air, doing lofty things. No time for vowel movements or sewage.
I ponder the age-old truth that “Art is more important than Science” while riding the new electric buses our township insists on funding with our taxes. “Clean air for all,” they call it. A horse and buggy—now there’s a mode of transportation I would happily pay for. Nothing like the good old carts to ferry people around, and surely, the horses appreciate being useful.
I reflect on this as the sound of an ambulance siren pierces the air. As advertised, three seconds later, the emergency vehicle whizzes by at an ungodly speed. A horse and buggy would be much pleasanter for transporting the sick. Besides, what’s with this urgency to rush them to hospital? To save their lives? People are far too attached to existence these days.
Let’s say that person in the ambulance is having a heart attack; I’d wager they’re probably fighting the paramedics who are desperately keeping them alive. “Let me go! What is life but a valley of tears? I want none of this! God is calling me to better things!” I imagine them thinking, unable to express it because the oxygen mask is inconveniently in the way.
Funny how scientists figured out how to trap oxygen in tanks just to offer air to the breathless. In the good old days, they would have been burned at the stake and good riddance! “No one wants your science, we have art!” the crowds would have shouted as the flames roared, fuelled, of course, by oxygen.
Ah, yes! “Art is more important than Science!” I think. These musings play like background music as I tell a patient that, yes, she has breast cancer but we aim to cure her. And we can, because science has searched incessantly for treatments that work. Also, taxpayer money, to which she contributes yearly, will cover the treatment, so when she’s done with it, she won’t find herself both cured and bankrupt.
This, of course, makes me long for the good old days, when poor people depended on charity, which was good, really. They died faster. Only the rich could afford the highly effective bleedings from doctors, both physical and financial, and their families could only hope they died quickly too.
My patient’s husband, sitting beside her, holding her hand, lets out a loud sigh of… relief? Man, this guy is a fantastic actor. As he discreetly wipes away his tears, no one would ever guess what I know he’s truly thinking. Deep down, he’s wishing himself back in the 1800s, when his wife could not be cured, and he could spend his remaining years as a tragic widower, mourning her, calling her his lost muse. He could even acquire a nice little bout of tuberculosis in the meantime. Nothing says “art” like wasting away from TB while penning poetry about your dead wife.
And what better place to do it than in one of those lovely hospices with the beautifully convoluted architecture?5 One could really die in style in the good old days. Even better if the hospice were tucked away in some fine Swiss mountain, since, back then, that was precisely what doctors recommended: “a nice little vacation in Switzerland to see if we get lucky with that tuberculosis treatment.” Money could be an issue, of course, but one cannot trouble themselves with mundane details whilst lost in poetic reverie about them good old days.
Yes, let’s make tuberculosis a thing again! Oh, wait! I hear people in low- and middle-income countries still die of it because they can’t afford the drugs. Ah, beautiful! I should send them some ink and quills so they can write letters while dying of consumption.
I have to confess I’m a sucker for the good old days. Ask my mum; she can attest to my longing for a time when everything seemed simple and lovely. A time that only exists in books.
I used to daydream aloud, telling her how I wished to be Elizabeth Bennet or Anne of Green Gables. And every so often, she would feel it her obligation to wake me up from my dream and remind me that there were no vaccines or tampons back in the good old days, that I could more or less forget about studying medicine, and that, frankly, the world had far more Mr Collinses to offer than Mr Darcys.
Still, the good old days sound so charming, when art and science intertwined so tightly one did not know where one ended and the other started. A time when artists learned anatomy to draw the human body to perfection, and mastered physics and math to construct buildings that felt aerial— churches with spires that insisted on bringing us closer to the Almighty. A time when scientists felt their way through the darkness, searching for understanding, and built novel instruments to look at the stars and stare at microbes6.
When I hear “Art is more important than Science,” I wonder at the person who makes such a categorical statement and looks so pleased with themselves, as if they’ve actually said something smart—or worse, deep. I think, “Is there a hierarchy here I was not aware of?” And I will grant that these types of completely absurd assertions possibly stem from frustration at the arts being constantly neglected by the educational system and to the fact that technology has invaded everything, making us yearn for a quieter and more peaceful past. I get it, but it doesn’t make the statement more true or less stupid.
On the other hand, the statement “Imagination is more important than Knowledge” makes my blood curdle because it is such a big lie. Knowledge precedes imagination. Children’s imagination is rooted in what they already know; that is why reading informs the mind, providing the tools to imagine other worlds, other people. No one imagines unicorns without knowing horses and goats (or cows, take your pick) first. No one imagines three-legged monsters without seeing legs first. No one imagines symphonies without knowing notes and rhythms.
In any case, we do not have craftmanship like we used to in the “good old days.”
pointed this out in one of our discussions at the Soaring Twenties Social Club. To quote him:“I have to admit I am having a really hard time not going postal on all the “we don’t have craftmanship like this anymore” posts that feature some aristocratic museum piece of high Baroque cabinetry or whathaveyou.
“WE” didn’t have that craftmanship back then, wealthy people did. “WE” had simple homemade cabinets and drawers and YOU are welcome to make your own if you chose. “WE” still have that craftmanship. Are YOU going to pay $4000 for an artisan to handcarve a walnut armoire7?”
Oh boy, have I laughed and laughed at this obvious truth that people out there just seem so oblivious to. You see, craftsmanship isn’t on sale on Amazon, which is where most people seem to be buying everything these days. But the good news is that you can buy it, if you want to pay for it.
But to finish with this set of ideas, and since I have decided to ditch science to start the nobel art of Alchemy, I thought I would read up on it, so that you don’t have to. I found this paragraph from the Britannica Encyclopaedia very enlightening:
Goals of Alchemy: “Transmutation” is the key word characterizing alchemy, and it may be understood in several ways: in the changes that are called chemical, in physiological changes such as passing from sickness to health, in a hoped-for transformation from old age to youth, or even in passing from an earthly to a supernatural existence. Alchemical changes seem always to have been positive, never involving degradation except as an intermediate stage in a process having a “happy ending.” Alchemy aimed at the great human “goods”: wealth, longevity, and immortality.
I suppose one could be an alchemist today by becoming a nuclear physicist, a doctor, or a Botox provider who meditates and frequents certain Thai massage parlours.
In my search for the good old days and the modern alchemist, luck would have it that I know someone who knew one.
grandfather was a doctor who left behind a formula for a ‘Viagra-type medication’ that he apparently tried to market. According to Jeanne, it was a mix of vitamins and methamphetamine sulphate. I wonder why it didn’t take off. At least I now know where Jeanne gets her talents.I, too, like to escape to an alternative reality when the one I’m in gets to be too much. That is why I read books and why people invented art, right? And I’ll admit, this particular reality we’re living in right now is as dreadful as they come. But attempting to retreat into the past just because we’ve lost our footing in the present is about as wise as bringing back chastity belts and getting rid of sewage systems.
To finish, and since we should all be practicing alchemy, if wealth, longevity, and immortality are the ultimate human goods, if that’s the best we can strive for, then we’ve truly lost the plot.
This post is a part of the Soaring Twenties Social Club symposium with the theme “Spring Cleaning”. I did not have anything “old” to get rid of since I tend to write in a need-to-publish basis. But thank you for attending the purging of some thoughts instead.
One cannot blame them, really. In 1900, the average life expectancy of a newborn was 32 years. I can get behind the obsession with longevity if you know there is a high chance you won’t live to see your 40th birthday.
The literacy rate in England in the 1640s was around 30 percent for males, rising to 60 percent in the mid-18th century. In France, the rate of literacy in 1686-90 was around 29 percent for men and 14 percent for women, before it increased to 48 percent for men and 27 percent for women. Source. One can just picture the hordes of people reading books in the good old days. We were all gentlefolk back then, apparently.
Paid vacation was introduced in Europe around the 1930s. Not so “good old days”.
I agree civil architecture has been horrid since the 1960s. We should do better and train architects to not forget the artistic side of their job.
For the record, scientists nowadays still invent new methods to look at the stars and study microbes.
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Maybe like with beauty, both art and science are in the eye of the beholder and can be found in almost anything, depending on how you look.
Loved the ugly stepsister moths who deserve to dance and the “vowel movements”!
I think people who say that "art is more important than science" don't know enough about either. Otherwise, they would have known that a huge part of art is science, and a huge part of science is art. They are not antagonists, they are conjoined twins. The same about imagination and knowledge: the more you know, the richer your imagination is.