What we Contemplate, we Become (or Fools and Angels)

Watching Cecil Collins discuss his work -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTsocgoLriI

I am fascinated by people who believe in God because it is the greatest evidence that storytelling forms the basis of human thinking. That we are willing to destroy ourselves in the name of the creator is an odd thing and whilst I do not believe in God I do believe in humans and I believe in Nature, which seems to beautifully explain the fallacy. The language of anology is the domain of the artist and the poet, and as described in my Research Paper Art and Religion share at their core an imaginative leap and for me an eschatological link that binds them.

I seem to like people associated with the Christian Church although I find the ideas difficult and there is an incredulity for me that such kind, thoughtful and intelligent people believe what seem to me to be children’s bedtime stories and the alternative is so much more palatable. We are born, we die and we just disappear back into the Earth. All the Hell fire is just so awful.

Collins talks about a period of nothingness as an artist followed by a ‘flowering’

He says he feels uncomfortable about having his work hanging in an art gallery but would rather there than not at all. He feels we are a civilisation who no longer believes in angels and I share his disappointment on this front. As a mother of girls who believe in everything and well past an age for this to be common, it seems I believe in angels or at least I am in love with a world that has the belief of angels in it. Splitting hairs here but it’s an important distinction.