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Writing is something that has always appealed to me. As the authentic articulation of human consciousness, it has to rate pretty highly. But as a young man I was so overwhelmed by the general intellectual and spiritual confusion that I encountered all about me, that I was reluctant to add to the mess, from my own extensive store of it. I did however make some fairly radical resolutions; that I would keep the writer in me free of the marketplace, for instance, and not buy into the ideas trade in any of its many guises; that I would do my best to think for myself, not writing anything that I did not experience an inner compulsion to write; and that I would not specialize, but do my best to experience the totality and the wonder of life. I committed myself to the stance of Miguel de Unamuno, that good writing is the fruit of successful living, and set about trying to figure out just what that might entail. I was accused of being both naively romantic and arrogant. But I remain unrepentant. It remains very hard for a person to find the space to think for him or herself. Forgive me this little bit of pride!

Even the universities trade in little blocks of information, and have lost sight of the original concept of a place where universality, the big picture, could be considered, in all its aspects, indeed, but as part of a whole. Publishing houses tend to trade in preconceptions that they perceive they have a market niche for. It is hardly surprising that governments, fragmented and forever bogged down in minutiae, seem to be congenitally incapable of responding constructively to the big challenges.

It isn’t actually that the awareness is absent. Our children and young people can often see the truth, while we do not. How many of us can remember clearly perceiving the cock-ups and failings of our fathers, and resolving to do better? But with adulthood comes the compulsion to buy into a marketable bit of knowledge. Then a kind of paralysis sets in, when it comes to thinking and acting in a broadly integrated fashion. At the back of our minds, we may retain some mythical account of ‘where things went wrong’. A clear determination to do better gives way to dreams of how things might be done better, as we gradually succumb, for the most part, to a fatalistic acceptance of the way things go, happy if we can make some minor improvements in our own little sphere of action.

So, in Wavedancing, I have started with an account of loss, and of how things might have been, maybe could be, better. In various ways, this account gets ripped to shreds in the rest of the book, but, well, one must have some terms of reference, even if one proceeds to rip them up. Actually I do not think it is so very much more wide of the mark than much that passes for history, and it’s truer for me. So you’ll have to forgive me for going on to spell out, in the actual terms of that archetypal activity that I myself pursued, namely fishing, the bind we have got into; we saw away at the very branches upon which we sit, entranced with the efficiency with which we do so. With pseudo optimism, we hubristically profess that anything doable should be done.

When I first went to Donegal in the early seventies, the fishing community was thriving and optimistic. A fleet of largely locally built boats caught a lot of fish and landed on local markets, to local factories. It seemed to me that by fairly simple, common-sense measures, such as limiting the size of boats fairly drastically, this set-up could have been maintained. But no, one musn’t stand in the way of Progress, must one? So now there’s very little fish, few fishermen, no local boat-building industry, few factories, and a few multi-millionaire outfits with fantastic technology, foreign-built ships that land and fish all over the place, probably doing to fishing communities in Africa what they have already done at home.

At Mass in the Cape Verde islands a few weeks ago, I picked up the phrase capitalismo imperialistico in an otherwise poorly understood sermon. I knew what that meant alright, but I didn’t get the context properly. Well, the famous so-called Celtic tiger, that has taken up the slack from the collapse of our own indigenous culture, is at work out there too. I wish I had managed to find out what that priest thought about the wonderful, and in no small measure Irish sponsored, mushrooming of grill and swill apartments. I do appreciate that both capital and jobs are very urgently needed there, but we must ask, exactly where is such development getting us and them?

Is what we have seen in the fishing industry a good paradigm for what is likely to happen to the Celtic tiger? In Wavedancing, I suggest one possible scenario. It will probably fall victim to a combination of factors; besides its own lack of inner coherence, there is the degradation of the physical resources upon which all depends, but the rage that it evokes in some people outside its magic circle should be taken very seriously, and I have taken a look at that. Perhaps if we start listening to them, along with the desperation in our own hearts and minds, and take time out to ponder well and to speak the facts of our condition, we may discover that these are not really so far beyond our grasp as we are led to suppose.

In my story, I have tried to express, in a gentle and accessible way, the profound miasms in which our civilisation is floundering, and to relate them to some of the possible consequences. I have suggested ways in which we might address them. I wish to point up a physical and cultural context, the great spiral of the North Atlantic, which relates us to Iberia, North Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as Northern America and Europe, and which might prove more creative than what I see as an over-emphasis on the latter. I write in the hope that we shall yet find our way to a new era of ‘successful living’. I do happen to think we could learn a thing or two from dolphins and whales. I hope you enjoy Wavedancing and find it helpful....

Joe Aston, Sherkin Island, 19 April 2006. joe(at)gannetsway.com 028 20598

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