original skills. Fenrir
Work is not the usual place to have an interesting conversation. It’s usually booze, balls and bitches, but every once in a while there’s a diamond in the rough. One that sticks in my mind is a lively discussion about friction fire lighting versus spark based lighting techniques, interrupted by a quip from the ubiquitous eavesdropper, “What’s the point? I’d just use a lighter”. Not an entirely daft suggestion and in the original skills world, one I would make. But - and here’s a thought - after 5,000 years of so-called progress we still light fire by striking a spark off a chunk of steel with a bit of stone. Notice I didn’t say primitive? Good. Because there is nothing primitive about our ancestors. There is a lot of technology and chemistry bound up in the myth and song that makes a culture. Take the simple stick. Humanity’s first machine. It can be used to dig a deeper hole, apply leverage, carry something or someone and even just be leant on. In nature, never underestimate the power of a good lean. Just look at Yorkshire Arrows, ironically called Chinese Arrows in these parts - a stick with a sharp bit of stone, flung by a piece of string, with the power to go clean through a deer. You have taken a fibre from a house plant,
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worked out its breaking strain, shown a working knowledge of conical stress fracturing, understood ballistics and studied the anatomy and behaviour of your quarry. Who’s primitive now? I use ‘original’ or ‘living’ skills to describe what I do, because that’s what they are the first skills we learned in order to live well on this blue green paradise we call Earth. Through these skills I have learnt to see the world the way it is meant to be seen - shifting patterns of light and shade, the flow of energy through symbiotic patterns of life and death to life again. To learn true respect, that in order to live, a life must me taken. To be grateful and respectful of that sacrifice, and never to waste that most precious of gifts. No greater love doth a man have for his brother, than to lay down his life for him. The skills of those that passed this way once are still there, deep with in our souls, whispering in our psyches on those warm summer days, telling us to once again feel the earth beneath our feet and run across the meadow, play amongst the woods. They send a shiver down our spine on those cold winter days when the frost nips the air and the wind howls at the windows. The same song sung over and over.
Art: ‘Tall Boy’ by Robert Sample - 122 x147cm (48”x 58”) Private Collection
Remember, remember who you are. Remember, remember you are Human. In a world where switching off usually means turning something else on, the skills of our forebears reconnect us to our humble yet beautiful home, reconnect us to ourselves and ultimately connect us to each other. I leave you with a quote from an old comic that has stuck with me over the years: Man is an animal, Driven by animal passions. Civilisation is a charade, Predicated on a tissue thin veil of lies. End