Newgrange
As an Artist, living below Newgrange, I always
seem to seek a common link with the Artist/ Crafts workers of the Boyne
Valley 5,000 years ago. But with my humble tools of Swiss carving chisels,
made from the hardest steel, and turned mallet that sits perfectly into
the curves of my clenched hand, I am even on an ego trip to try and
compare with or relate to the Artists endeavours to speak his mind using
stone hammers to carve stone. And to try to compare my bounty of proud
carvings adequately, to feather my short tourist season to the ornamented
stone circles of Newgrange or Brú na Bóinne around the
mounds, puts me at the end of the queue, where questions are answered
but if time was taken away from being important in the creation of Brú
na Bóinne (Newgrange) this is how I perceive the Boyne Valley
5,000 years ago.
Building Newgrange would have happened over a thousand years or so,
with no beginning and no end, and no interest in either. With life expectancy
short, the visual impression could only have grown in imagination over
time, with the main task successful, being the assurance of the sun
crossing the sky an time and keeping the seasons in line. (This may
have originated from simply two sticks in the ground!)
The rest was exploratory and a physical bond which you had with your
bloodline for such a short time, before you too moved on. The carving
of stones with stone hammers presented a great sense of security and
eternity.
I like to think that different families or communities were the keepers
of different stones, their contact with their beginnings and reassurance
of no end.
As old men in their 40's took the back seat through injuries and pain,
they could still feel adequate to do their families or communities a
valued job by earning the right to stick their hand in the communal
cooking pot instead of, maybe, their heads. And when that close to nature,
life maybe seemed fast and consequential, but for the family stone,
carved by all at times of celebration in the circle of seasons, which
held a rightful place. When seasons began to be measured with their
arrival to this sunny place, and shone on their stone, to acknowledge
their presence and feel at one with the sun and each other once more!
I imagine, that to have reached that age in the first place, you must
have been secure in the social circle around you, seeing birth and death
as equals in the balance of your journey, and living each in equal measures
successfully; child rearing / secure living / prolonged death. Such
was life, the artist, I suspect, did well to reflect on the first two
stages, as he is in the third part of the natural order.
If I were an Artist 5,00 years ago, this valley landscape would have
been my smogas board, along with all you could grow on the fertile sun
soaked north bank of the Boyne.
Signed : Just a local artist's impression, here
today, gone tomorrow!
