Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

The Equivalent of a Tree

When I go for walks, I spend a lot of time just looking at trees. I think if I were a painter, I would like nothing more than to paint trees.

We're used to telling trees apart (when we do) by their leaves and their blossoms. However, the patterns of their branches are also wonderfully distinctive, especially when viewed from below. It occurred to me, the other day, when I took these photographs, that I would like to write a novel that is the equivalent of a tree. Surely the perfection to which art aspires con have no better visual representation than this. How can their be such a sense of symmetry and pattern withing such a sense of organic chaos? What are these zig-zags and endless lightning ramifications attempting to express? They have expressed unconsciously and in a way that transcends expression.