The Cliffs of Insanity

'Gotta Sea Theory (gonna bore my friends)

When Andy Partridge bestowed (and e-bowed) his benediction on this tune (from the 2007 album 'Cormorant') he was moved to enquire what, then, might my 'Sea Theory' be? In a government-spokesman-being-grilled-on-Newsnight move I said that, like the Bible, the sea can prove anything you want. Andy snorted his dissatisfaction with this shameless prevarication but went on to play some nicely understated guitar.

I was being deliberately obtuse (because the full answer would have eaten into the session and probably left Andy glazed and remorseful): the sea is, of course, a helluva metaphor for us: the Cruel Sea, The Old Grey Widowmaker, our Ocean Mother. Just look at the poems, the paintings, the movies: whole genres all devoted to Her. No doubt: we are obsessed, and have been for a while..

One of Many Theories of the Sea...

I write this from a BnB in the Dorset coastal town of Swanage. In February. Now there's an aspect of Sea Theory right there: 'wandering an out-of-season English seaside town'. A double nostalgic whammy of -usually- crumbling Victoriana (our long gone English Imperial heyday: starched collars and parasols in an endless sepia summer) and, more proximately, last year: the punters gone back to their real, working lives, abandoning the fripperies and money-traps of their holidays. The bright colours of the fairground and amusements looking sorrowful under the leaden sky -their invitation to summery fun poignantly unconvincing as the grey sea continues it's indifferent motion.

'Sea Theory (haven't tested it)'

Last night I had a wander down on the seafront and was quite suprised to see at least three other people -not scoping hotdogs or hot action (best of luck in Swanage in February)-but clearly using the sea as I was: as a Contemplation Aid. So, I decided, it's obviously not just the Lone Nutter Theory -there must be fair few of us.We look at the ceaseless waves and what happens? Well, in the case of two Victorian artists, you lose your religion: there's Pegwell Bay the painting by William Dyce:

-and, perhaps better known, Matthew Arnold's 'Dover Beach' (quoted in full below)

In 'Dover Beach, on his honeymoon -or so they say- Matthew Has a Moment -possibly not conducive to a romantic night, though you never know -could have gone either way- where he sees the waves on the beach and sees religious faith receding like a tide that never comes back. And humanity is stranded 'on a darkling plain..where ignorant armies clash by night'. Therefore, he says: 'Ah love, let us be true to one another'. Romantic love, he reckons, is the only refuge against the existential despair the sea has evoked.. (In his parody 'Dover Bitch' Anthony Hecht has the new Mrs Arnold giving hubby some grief for treating her as 'a cosmic last ditch.' She has a point, I think.)

Pegwell Bay is even more a frozen moment of time than paintings usually are because we know the comet ('Donatis Comet') barely glimpsed in the top right of the canvas, happened on October 5th 1858.

The period clothes emphasise for us that all these people on their holidays ('local mussels; down the pub; back to the guest house;' probably: same old Brit seaside jollies) are all now long dead, even the children, yet the cliffs and the sea are probably much the same. And, to add a further layer of alienation, what are they collecting from the beach, these doomed holidaymakers? Why, only the clincher in that great controversy of the 19th century; the one that leaves us out in the salty dark for ever. Fossils! The Death of God, encoded in the rocks.

Sea Theory -gonna make your teeth ache..

­­­­­­­I find it interesting that these two art moments documenting a terrible existential awakening both happen at the seaside and that it was the Victorians who invented the old school English seaside holiday (with all it's hearty stoicism insisting on fun in the face of the elements ('brrr -nice out of the wind though'). This, alongside grim philosophical introspection. How does that work?What I unfailingly get from my own marine meditations is a sense of perspective ('too much fucking perspective' as the Spinal Tap boys say).

The primal, merciless sea right up against humanity at it's most lovable, ridiculous and vulnerable (those goosepimpled bodies in summer; off-season, the garish lights and fragile, tinny music from the pier timorously jutting out into the sombre ocean). Who are we kidding that we're important or serious?

And the journey to the sea. The fact that it's an effort -not part of everyday life- means that holidays can be used as milestones in one's life ('how many times more will I see Pegwell Bay/ Rhossili/ Dancing Ledge before it's the last time? And with whom, and in what frame of mind and physical condition?'). As yet another yardstick, in fact, by which we see how we're doing as regards to death.

('Sea Theory' can be heard on Spotify)

DOVER BEACH (Matthew Arnold)

The sea is calm to-night.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits;on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Aegaean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breathOf the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.