How do you discover something you don’t know exists? – the question asked during Rebecca’s workshop sparked a book of 9 luminous essays in search of an answer.
Rebecca Solnit proposes the answer to the question of discovering the unknown by getting lost. Mind you, not in the panicked way we can get lost in an unknown place without a phone signal, but rather losing our inhibitions, preconceptions, and opening our eyes and minds to the world outside. Only then can we explore. Wandering from one thought to another, she invites us to get lost in the wonderful play of concepts, memories, and allegories, the combination of which creates a perfectly made up collage, and yet her narrative feels spontaneous, in a way a conversation would be.
One recurring theme in the essays is The Blue of the Distance, which Rebecca describes as ‘the color of solitude and of desire, the colour of there seen from here, the colour of where you are not… of where you can never go.’
She plays with that word blue – first tells us that it was the name of a mixtape she made as a teenager with songs about sadness, then moves on to discuss blues as the music genre, and then on to Isak Dinesen’s story about an old English aristocrat and his daughter collecting blue china (such a beautiful story it is that I ordered Dinesen’s book of stories as soon as I finished reading). It left me in awe of how Rebecca could link ideas that were parallel rather than sequential, and arrive to a refined conclusion at the end of such curious chain.
Sometimes she brings you somewhere very private, but you don’t feel as if you’re imposing. Chapter named One-Story House sent shivers down my spine with the description of her family home:
‘Terrible things happened in that house.’
She lets that sink in, and goes on to what seems unrelated – tortoises, ecological problems, her father’s career – until you have unknowingly formed a sufficient background to understand just how terrible things in that house could be.
Many of Rebecca’s ideas sent my own thoughts off to wander into unknown paths. After all, isn’t this why we love books, music, art, conversation – because they can ignite our minds with the spark of someone’s idea? That is the reason why I am definitely going to read more essays of hers, and this particular dog-eared copy of the Field Guide I’ll come back to many times, to get lost in again and again.