Seeing beauty On the Road for the first time

The white whale is dead. Or is he? Well, he is for me at least in that I finally finished Moby Dick the other day. Thoroughly enjoyed it despite the fact one needs to read the first 530 pages before you actually meet the whale and then a mere 25 more before the book is over and all but one is dead. Ain’t that always the way? They suck you in, tease and taunt you endlessly, and then reveal all as the credits begin to roll. Not that I was disappointed with it. In fact, it was another subtle reminder that the really good stuff can only come with a little sacrifice.

I’m now re-visiting another classic I batted around at university but never really got my paws into – Jack Kerouac’s iconic road trippin’ classic – On the Road. I figured I needed something a little more modern and a little less “heavy” and in that regard this is answering the call. And yet, in many ways, what was so good about Melville, is not so good about Kerouac. While Ahab, Starbuck, and Ishmael had experience, adventure, and courage (along with Melville’s remarkable diction and wondrous description) with which to compel and teach the reader – Sal and Dean have travel, booze, and a less than admirable lifestyle from which we are supposedly meant to see the light and learn. I’m not compelled or convinced of anything yet except that perhaps there was something close to real freedom in the early post war era in America. There are moments where the stream of consciousness writing begins to take off and I feel like he is about to be profound or inspired, only to finish abruptly and fall flat with another reference to booze or “getting some girls”. I am actually thinking that I am, God forbid, too old for the book or perhaps (only slightly worse) of the wrong generation. And this has got me thinking.

It’s hugely clichéd but invariably true how age is the one constant ingredient found in wisdom. There is no substitute. We simply see life better with each passing day. A slightly random example of this occurred the other night when Linton and I were giggling our way through National Lampoon’s Vacation for the 48th time and she commented that she was noticing the great scenery in the movie for the first time. We laughed. In the past we would be focused on Clark Griswold and his ridiculous family and yet now it was the scenery that was really drawing our attention. Sad? Perhaps. Wiser? Maybe not. But most definitely a new and different perspective derived from our age and stage.

I want to use an idea from my classroom to make the connection. In my grade 12 English class I teach the concepts of Figure and Ground to my students as a way of discussing narrative structure and to get them to think about how effective plots and characters are built and wound through stories. Painters use this theory all the time. The figure is that thing (character or storyline) in the foreground, immediate and important, that draws our attention. The ground is made up of everything else in the story - or those things in the distance we are not immediately concerned with. The two are constantly changing as a new element emerges from the ground to become the figure and vice versa. In this way stories tell their tales naturally, seamlessly connecting lives in an effective ebb and flow of detail.

Applied to my life today in Melbourne, Kerouac’s On the Road has become my figure and Melville’s Moby Dick slips into the distance becoming the ground. Both inform each other and are connected. My experience with one has an undeniable effect on my connection to the next. The way I reconcile or consider these differences can teach me more about the two works but also about myself – hence, an accumulation of wisdom. Quite comically, and yet in a similar sense, the humour of the movie briefly became the ground as the scenery became the figure. Obviously a more minor example and yet still another recent and noted shift in perspective that built an ounce wisdom.

The additional complication that comes with the theory of figure and ground is that each viewer sees something different based upon their own background, age, or experience. In the case of the novels or the movie, it was age which allowed us see to beyond things as they once were and to accept them for what they now appeared to be. Magically, it seems, you awake one day and you are suddenly old enough and thus able to see the beauty of a scene in a movie for the first time even though it had been there all along.

In this same way, Melbourne has become our figure and Toronto our ground. We are now clearly, but in our own individual ways, focused on the character of Melbourne - always with the experience and storyline of Toronto in our back pocket influencing what we see and what wisdom we may gain. It is an experience that seems to be coming at all of us at a good time - armed with enough age and wisdom to enjoy, see, and appreciate all of the wisdom that it offers us now and on into our futures. And best of all, as is the case with truly transformational moments of wisdom or change, we knew none of this before it actually occurred to us – just now, just then, and hopefully twice tomorrow!