Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Not Waving, But Drowning

First published on Opera, Sat 17th Apr, 2004.

I watched a fascinating documentary this evening, on BBC2, about Hokusai's famous painting, The Great Wave off Kanagawa.




I missed the first half of it, but from where I turned on, the commentator was explaining how the Great Wave is an early example of a fractal. This fact apparently showed Hokusai's great understanding of the natural world. A physics professor gave his view of the painting as expressing something akin to chaos theory, the unstable interconnectedness of all things, in the midst of which we live precariously, as on a wave.


Towards the end there were others - an artist who had painted a version of the Great Wave as a mural in Camberwell, for instance - who expressed the view that the painting now signified something of the anxiety of our times, that a wave might come out of nowhere, some terrible catastrophe, and wipe us all from existence forever. Followers of this journal - if such a being exists - will well understand why this programme fascinated me. The wave is coming alright. It's going to be a big one.


After watching the documentary I switched channel. There was nothing much on. I eventually settled on one of the music channels, which for me is what I have heard called 'irritainment', that is, something that irritates you and that you still watch for the sake of entertainment. I find the hegemony of heterosexuality in the music videos utterly tedious and nauseating. If the Great Wave will only wash away the self-congratulation and self-love of yawn-worthy egomaniacs like Beyonce and Justin Timberlake, then bring it on!