Jeffrey T. Baker

My wife and I asked Portland comic artist Jason Rainey to create a bit of Dr. Who fan art as a gift for a family member this Christmas. The only stipulation was that it represent the Weeping Angels and, if possible, contain River Song as well as the good Doctor. Needless to say, we were so thrilled with the result that it was hard to part with it.

This experience got me thinking though. . . thinking back to the days when I devoured comic books as a kid, and to one series in particular that Marvel put out called What If? which essentially explored the possibility of alternate scenarios for different characters and plot lines in their most popular titles. I was thinking about this series because a sort of What If? scenario had tickled my consciousness. Try this one on for size. . .

What if everyone in 2012 decided to commission just one piece of original artwork from an artist to give as a gift next holiday season? Perhaps it wouldn't even need to be related only to commissions. . . what if everyone in 2012 simply decided to purchase one piece or original artwork to give as a gift next holiday season? What sort of neo-Renaissance might occur the world over if everyone simply opted for art rather than designer socks or tiny vials of scented liquid?

Now I realize that the likelihood of such a sea change in the demand for original art is every bit as far fetched as the wildest of What If? stories, but I can say from recent personal experience that the most talked about Christmas present in our family this past season was not a disposable mass-produced product. In fact, the one gift I'm confident will still be around, remembered, and talked about twenty years from now is one that had no middlemen, wasn't shipped or on sale, couldn't be found anywhere else in the world, and cannot be Googled. 

I rarely read fiction. In fact, up until recently I rarely read anything not related to my work, and so have amassed quite a back-log of items on the bookshelf. This holiday season I decided to read Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, which had been repeatedly recommended to me over the years, and in so doing discovered a novel that sought to explore some complex questions about humanity within the framework of a fictitious world.

Here is the gist: In the future a collective of humanoid worlds has formed a cultural alliance knows as the Ekumen* that seeks out and invites other humanoid cultures into the alliance. The invitees are thoroughly studied before the Ekumen sends a lone cultural emissary to make the invitation. On the icy planet of Winter, where every human is simultaneously both genders while being neither, warfare is non-existent despite the fact that there are individual countries and complex hierarchies of respect. In the midst of a tense political climate the lone emissary seeks to understand Winter's culture(s), taboos, and intrigues while working towards convincing the entire planet to accept a role in the vast alliance that exists outside of their world.

Even as I type this I realize just how fantastical this all sounds and it doesn't at all do justice to the philosophical questions that underpin the narrative. What would happen if every woman could also be a man? How would equalizing the role of pregnancy effect the potential for aggression in a society? If no one was ever sexually frustrated how would that effect cultural progress? Is religion a universal need? Is truth?

One of the questions that you sit with for the entire book is the rational behind a huge, highly sophisticated alliance, choosing to send only one emissary to a planet in order to impart the knowledge that the inhabitants of that planet are not alone in the universe. There is a lovely quote near the end of the book that unpacks this idea a bit, which is shared by the emissary with his friend: 

"I thought it was for your sake that I came alone, so obviously alone, so vulnerable, that I could in myself post no threat, change no balance: not an invasion, but a mere messenger-boy. But there's more to it than that. Alone, I cannot change your world. But I can be changed by it. Alone, I must listen, as well as speak. Alone, the relationship I finally make, if I make one, is not impersonal and not only political: it is individual, it is personal, it is both more and less than political. Not We and They; not I and It; but I and Thou. Not political, not pragmatic, but mystical."

A similar unfolding of the mystical also occurs in Le Guin's marvelous A Wizard of Earthsea, where the true name of things holds incredible power, and the author also uses the complexity of religious belief on our world as inspiration for the dreams and demons of the fictions she constructs.

In my mind, a good work of sci-fi is more about reality than fiction. It is a thought experiment not at all dissimilar from those the ancient Greek teachers used to open the minds of their pupils during the Golden Age of western philosophy. In the formulation of a question you are left to consider how that one question is really just a invitation to so many more.


*a word obviously derived from ecumenical, which I've always associated with the body of Christian churches, but more precisely can be defines as belonging to the whole, universal- a word that in itself comes from the Greek word for belonging to the inhabited Earth

In coordination with many a talented maker (see list below) at the historic Troy Laundry Artist's Studio Co-Op, I will be throwing wide the studio doors on the 2nd and 3rd of December to share works-in-progress and (hopefully) sell some past work. Please tell your friends, join me for a bit of refreshment, and take some time to enjoy the creative efforts of fifteen artists on two levels of this fantastic old Portland laundry building.

Last weekend included a foray to the Oregon Coast; a place that never fails to incite the imagination with its majestic combination of meteorological atmospherics and geologic drama. Like every other visitor to Cannon Beach I succumbed to the dynamic magnetism of Haystack Rock, but I did not allow it to blind my camera to nature's other realities. 

Here then is an utterly unencumbered picture of death the likes of which only a nature outside of human sentiment can conjure.

Nod your head. Tap your foot. There's nothing in the world like harmony.

In 2009 contemporary Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds created a composition a day over the course of a week collectively called 'Found Songs.' This suite of compositions has accompanied me more in the studio than perhaps any other, and I can safely attest that these songs have become intrinsically linked with a sort of pensive luminosity that has taken hold in much of my recent imagery. 

To my great excitement, this past week Ólafur released a collection of new songs for free download called 'The Living Room Songs.' They also contain moments of aching beauty and are available (for now) at:

http://livingroomsongs.olafurarnalds.com/