At the Edge of Ireland (33 page)

“Did Sufism lead to any changes in your art?” Ever since John had mentioned his sudden conversion, I'd sensed he'd wanted to tell me more.

“Oh boy, yes—although it's hard to be specific. In fact, it's difficult, actually, to recall what I was like before I became Sufi. But I'm very much involved in their world—their explanation of our mutual integration in a web, a vast web of connections. If I suffer from anything now, it's me as a Muslim in a non-Muslim world. I'm particularly skeptical, as you may have gathered, of paternal institutions like the World Bank, the IMF, and the mindless damage they do and the corruption and horror stories they generate. I'm also very skeptical of ‘New Age Business' in general. It can be so insular and greedy. It needs to be ‘cleansed.' [Ironically his words were highly predictive of the financial calamities that arose round the world a year or so later!] Proponents of it should celebrate the month of Ramadan instead—you lose some of that glib civilized veneer, and by your daily fasting, you learn—you're reminded—what it's like to be poor every day of the year. When you remove the prestige of food and drink, you become much more humble and vulnerable. You also begin to recognize that
you
don't really exist, and neither do I. It's a long explanation…but, well, on the Night of Power toward the end of Ramadan—for those who are open to it—your identity becomes like a wave of light, and you hardly exist at all. It's as though the heavens open and Allah sends down his messengers and his knowledge.”

It would be impossible to recollect all the meanderings and abrupt direction-shifts of our long and wide-ranging conversation. Fortunately, however, my loyal little tape recorder whirled and whirred away in my pocket, and I picked up a remarkable range of Kingerleeisms over the course of our first two-hour meeting. I include a random selection:

• “I'm seventy and I've been vagabonding most of my life, but on Beara I found myself in the footsteps of the Celtic revival artists and everything changed.”
  
• “I want fewer and fewer things and an ever-enlarging life.”
  “I'm really only interested in people who are trying to promote tolerance, empathy and understanding.”
  
• “The World Bank and the IMF and a lot of the ‘do-good' organizations are ironically great stiflers of compassion. They kill millions of people a year with their financial structures and terrible burdens of usury. I've lost a lot of friends arguing about all this.” [His argument reminded me of Ezra Pound's outrages at the scourges of bankers and “international finance.”]
  
• “The more ‘good' things you do, the more ‘bad' things you end up creating. You know, that old chestnut ‘No good deed ever goes unpunished'! Or that other one: ‘Every action creates an equal and opposite reaction.'”
  
• “Poor old USA. It's damned if it does and damned if it doesn't. The world always turns to the USA in any crisis—and then sits back and sneers and criticizes while the USA tries to respond—which it normally does pretty badly.”
  
• “Amateur ‘artists' wait for inspiration. The rest of us rise up every morning, splash our bodies, and get down to hard work.”
  
• “Picasso was a great rediscoverer. Sometimes I think I'd like to ‘reinvent myself every day,' like he suggested all artists should do. But I also like boundaries. Limitlessness can lead to insanity. But so can success! Picasso also said ‘Of all the things God sends you—poverty, injustice, hunger, lack of recognition—fame is the hardest to deal with'!”
  
• “The best joy of life is spontaneity—to be a slave to the second!”
  
• “Some of us can go back mentally—believe it or not—to their very first feast on the rich milk from their mother's breast…You get an amazing sense of where we all come from when that happens.”
  

As with Tim and Leanne, I left John Kingerlee much later than I intended. It had been a remarkable few hours. At times I felt we had skirted the edges of malicious minefields and the possibility of actual physical confrontation over economic and social issues. But then there were moments of great warmth, and the whole experience ended almost blissfully. It reminded me of a paraphrase quote of Kurt Vonnegut's—“There's only one rule I know of here on earth—Goddamn it, we've just got to be kind to one another.”

John was even gracious about one of my earlier books—
Seasons on Harris
. I brought a copy to show him what I hoped to produce on Beara. He studied the book and its illustrations very intently, and I was preparing myself for another of his verbal assaults. But instead he looked at me, smiled a truly genuine smile, and said, “David, I'm envious. I couldn't do what you've done here. The artwork is particularly beautiful.”