October 19 - Out in the autumn woods all week, where the colours are heaped like drunken stormclouds of the forest, billowing oranges, reds, browns above and beyond each stand of stunning trees. This natural magnificence, so exuberant and elegant at the same time, reminds me that one of the great lost social arts is human magnificence on the grand scale. For most of recorded human history, the attention of the arts was galvanized by the idea that the kings and rulers were the embodiment of the richness of the society, and that people ought to be suitably awestruck by the grand spectacle. Because of education, television, and the gradual de-classing of society, the grand elegant human constructed spectacle is now virtually dead. Still, for better or worse, there is still a hunger for it: the ridiculous extravagances of Las Vegas, the stadium versions of Aida, and the pathetic attempts to recreate it on official occasions. But we have lost the style of it, and the belief in the whole superstructural bubble that made it work. And this is probably not a bad thing, when one thinks of the stupid excesses of kings, priests, and aristocracies. The British retain the capacity to handle spectacle on occasion, but even they only hang on to it by their fingertips : Diana's funeral was an interesting example of how moving a stripped down version of this magnificence could be (though it went downmarket around the edges); but it was nothing like the funeral of Queen Victoria, 100 years ago, where ceremonies were heaped up like a 15 course dinner. No: we have lost the feel for it.
Except out in the woods. Nature still piles it up, high in the sky at sunset, in deep canyons, and in this glorious autumn. She does things we would now laugh at if human beings tried them, and carries them off with her usual impeccable taste. (p.t.)