Leviathan - (Final Version with Waterline)

I have a new book of my work available. www.blurb.co.uk/b/5381298-inside-the-whale There is a myth that the universe sits on the back of a turtle, and what is under the turtle? well it is turtles all the way down. Heathcote Williams in his epic poem 'Whale Nation', contends that our industrial society was built on the back of the whale. “Hell is truth seen too late.” ...Thomas Hobbes 'Leviathan'. I think there is an interesting development of this series of whale images in that the initial idea was an image called 'The Same Boat' which was an attempt to show the similarity between the plight of the whale, ie extinction, and the plight of man hence 'The Same Boat'. That image was done some time ago and recently revisiting that whale, in a conceptual sense, hung in the Monterey Aquarium, singularly already extinct, the three images of 'Mammal Tank' Leviathan' and 'Inside the Whale' came about. 'The Mammal' Tank repeats the idea that we are all animals which humans forget continually except when the term is used myopically and pejoratively. The second image in the series (Leviathan) has become much more 'organic' for want of a better word, and I had in mind Heathcote Williams epic poem 'Whale Nation' in which he contends, and it is difficult to argue against, that the industrial revolution was made possible by the wholesale slaughter of the whale. The third image 'Inside the Whale' takes its title from George Orwell's essay on Henry Miller's book 'Tropic of Cancer'. Orwell deals with the avoidance of moral responsibility at a time when he was about to go off to fight in the Spanish Civil War, something Miller was said to consider idiotic. I have not yet read the essay but I have read Orwell and 'Tropic of Cancer'. The two outer images would be more accessible but by far the best image of the three is 'Leviathan' which makes 'Mammal Tank' look like a sketch and 'Inside the Whale' a pictorial representation, which is ok, but it has moved away from the ideas involved in 'Leviathan'. Into this image has come the shiny huge machine which holds the whale in place and dissects it, the machine is the horror, 'machines' don't have moral responsibility, this is what may give this image what the other two lack....guts. Extract from Orwell's 'Inside the Whale'..................In MAX AND THE WHITE PHAGOCYTES there is one of those revealing passages in which a writer tells you a great deal about himself while talking about somebody else. The book includes a long essay on the diaries of Anais Nin, which I have never read, except for a few fragments, and which I believe have not been published. Miller claims that they are the only true feminine writing that has ever appeared, whatever that may mean. But the interesting passage is one in which he compares Anais Nin–evidently a completely subjective, introverted writer–to Jonah in the whale's belly. In passing he refers to an essay that Aldous Huxley wrote some years ago about El Greco's picture, The Dream of Philip the Second. Huxley remarks that the people in El Greco's pictures always look as though they were in the bellies of whales, and professes to find something peculiarly horrible in the idea of being in a 'visceral prison'. Miller retorts that, on the contrary, there are many worse things than being swallowed by whales, and the passage makes it dear that he himself finds the idea rather attractive. Here he is touching upon what is probably a very widespread fantasy. It is perhaps worth noticing that everyone, at least every English-speaking person, invariably speaks of Jonah and the WHALE. Of course the creature that swallowed Jonah was a fish, and was so described in the Bible (Jonah i. 17), but children naturally confuse it with a whale, and this fragment of baby-talk is habitually carried into later life–a sign, perhaps, of the hold that the Jonah myth has upon our imaginations. For the fact is that being inside a whale is a very comfortable, cosy, homelike thought. The historical Jonah, if he can be so called, was glad enough to escape, but in imagination, in day-dream, countless people have envied him. It is, of course, quite obvious why. The whale's belly is simply a womb big enough for an adult. There you are, in the dark, cushioned space that exactly fits you, with yards of blubber between yourself and reality, able to keep up an attitude of the completest indifference, no matter what HAPPENS. A storm that would sink all the battleships in the world would hardly reach you as an echo. Even the whale's own movements would probably be imperceptible to you. He might be wallowing among the surface waves or shooting down into the blackness of the middle seas (a mile deep, according to Herman Melville), but you would never notice the difference. Short of being dead, it is the final, unsurpassable stage of irresponsibility. And however it may be with Anais Nin, there is no question that Miller himself is inside the whale. All his best and most characteristic passages are written from the angle of Jonah, a willing Jonah. Not that he is especially introverted–quite the contrary. In his case the whale happens to be transparent. Only he feels no impulse to alter or control the process that he is undergoing. He has performed the essential Jonah act of allowing himself to be swallowed, remaining passive, ACCEPTING. Moby Dick - Melville. Ishmael 'In fact, the artist's design seemed this: a final theory of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.'

Done