“I want to get one with rushing water,” I said to my wife. “Maybe even one with
me standing over it.”
I wasn’t talking about
the bathtub or bidet. I wanted to get a
souvenir photo with water, Loire River water, water flowing around l’île d’Or - the island at the upper rim of the town of Amboise.
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Amboise has a lot of photogenic material; the sprawling Royal Château with its ornate chambers, grim passageways, geometric gardens, and quirky chapel. Below its walls, medieval buildings and streets beg to have their pictures taken.
Even
better visuals lie a few kilometres away at Clos Lucé, the manor where Leonardo
da Vinci spent is final years thanks to the French King, François I, and the nobles and peasants he plundered and taxed to pay for it.
When Leonardo arrived here
in 1516, the packs on his mule carried the Mona Lisa and the other paintings that
eventually ended up in the Louvre. He
also brought his famed notebooks and drawings.
Today Clos Lucé (evoking the
Virgin of Light featured in its chapel) celebrates its ties to the great artist
and thinker with a museum, a park, and installation art - the latter having been inspired by those materials.
Thanks to the volunteer efforts of IBM
employees, the imagined inventions and designs described in Leonardo’s drawings and notes have been built as working models: some full scale, some in
miniature, some inside the home, and some operating outside in the park.
Again, more material and more spots for
travel souvenirs.
But I wanted a photo
with water.
Leonardo lived in
comfort and esteem in Amboise. But with
age creeping into his hands and his enthusiasm, he didn’t paint, draw, or
invent much. He planned parties, thought
about armaments, dabbled in architecture and thought a lot about water.
The few surviving pages in his
notebooks that clearly associate with his final days in Amboise concern the flow
of water and include intricate drawings of the Loire as it squeezed around l’île d’Or. For me, this meant that
a walk over to the island and a few shots of the water at its western tip would
bring me as close to Leonardo’s memory and mind as anything in Amboise or in
the museum.
Da Vinci was immensely
curious and committed to figuring things out for himself from recorded,
measured evidence.
You can feel this attitude rubbing off on your mind after reading a few dozen pages of his notes. Though I struggled with some of his writing, those sections on water intrigued me not only because of the link to Amboise, but also because I couldn’t figure out how da Vinci managed to see the ebbs and flows in the detail that he did.
You can feel this attitude rubbing off on your mind after reading a few dozen pages of his notes. Though I struggled with some of his writing, those sections on water intrigued me not only because of the link to Amboise, but also because I couldn’t figure out how da Vinci managed to see the ebbs and flows in the detail that he did.
To my mind and my eye, rushing water moves
too fast to recognize any patterns let alone record and understand.Standing over the river on the motorcycle-busy bridge, we not only photographed exemplary water but also easily video recorded it on the iPhone.
We took other shots of waterfalls at Clos Lucé.
They made souvenirs of the kind I wanted, and we prepared to leave for Chenonceau the next day.
That night, watching
the water in very slow, adjustable motion on the phone, I was satisfied, but
lacking illumination. I did not feel any
closer to seeing the things Leonardo recognized with his naked old-man eye and
the image-recording technology of five hundred years ago.
Today fluid dynamics
research draws on slick animations, and some scientists would regard Leonardo’s
observations and insights as trivial. But I am not one of them and remain in
awe of a brain that could generate its own simulations and images of complex
patterns from simple, but careful observation.
I thought about this a
lot in the following days as we walked down the streets, through the forests,
and across fields that have not changed that much since Leonardo’s time and his
slow trip from Italy to Amboise.
It struck
me that the trick may not be to slow down the water, but to slow down the water
watcher. Leonardo lived in an era and in
a way that put him in harmony with slower things, with thinking in a slower way,
and with the capacity to imagine in detail - all framed by a lifestyle conducive to careful
observation, contemplation, and reflection.
Though 21st
century technology opens up new opportunities to learn and create, it may
impede other, more fundamental human skills.
I am not sure how to
recapture this ability and this way of thinking.
