The Invisible Thread That Unites All Things

Harmony by Remedios Varo

When I first saw this painting by Remedios Varo, I immediately understood it as a depiction of creative work: the monastic cell, the magical incarnations and the ghostly helpers (or ancestors) who collaborate with the artist or writer to turn the ordinary things of reality into pictures or stories.

Reading about Varo and her eclectic knowledge and enthusiasms for alchemy, astronomy and the philosophy of Gurdjieff brought a deeper understanding.  The ‘harmony’ of the title points to music as the principle behind the universe, but the picture still refers, for me, to those unworldly moments of flow that occur in creative composition of all kinds.

I have adapted quotations from Varo’s letters to her brother in the explanations at the end of this imaginary encounter with the androgynous figure of Harmony.

Harmony by Remedios Varo, 1956

It’s cold in here.  A fresh breeze is flying around the stone walls and multicoloured floor.  There is a forest outside where the leaves are shuffling in the wind but inside the birds are chirruping as if in chorus with the low, strange music that fills this small room.

‘Come in,’ says the inhabitant, without turning to look at me. ‘Welcome, traveller.’

I trip on a tile that is lifting to allow a flower to reach up and stretch into life. Everything here is growing and changing and seeking light and air.

‘Is it the music?’ I ask. ‘Does the music make the flowers grow?’

‘Of course.’ The person turns and smiles at me.  Thin and gentle, I cannot tell if they are a man or a woman.  They seem a little sad. And lonely.

‘Do you live here on your own?’ This doesn’t get an answer, just another sad smile.

I am standing in the middle of the room and I become aware of a perfumed breath of air on the back of my neck.  Turning, I see a woman’s face pushing through the wall.  She reaches out to place a shell on a metal wire. 

On the other side of the doorway, a bird is returning to its nest in a chair and high up at the far end of the room is a curious bed on top of a bookcase, reached by a rope ladder.  There are hangings to pull down so that the bed is enclosed: a wise idea in this palace of winds.

Stepping past a red chest that is disgorging plants and jeweled objects, which then immediately disappear under the floor tiles, I edge closer to see what the person is doing.

‘Would you like to choose something?’ they ask. 

They indicate a small cabinet to the left of the table so I pull out the top drawer and survey the miscellany inside.  There are leaves, cubes, even a small book. 

‘This,’ I say, picking out a beautiful skein of scarlet embroidery silk.

‘A good choice.  But please wait a little while.’

I stand and watch.  Through the wavering grey wall, a figure in a lady’s gown comes through, softly breaking the surface with the merest puff of chalky dust. My host exchanges a thoughtful, trusting glance with her and gets to work.

This is a task of creation.  I see that it requires both concentration and intuition. The music swells as more objects are added, vibrating on the strings.

‘Oh!’ I cry out. ‘This is marvellous! How jealous I am of you.’

My host’s slight smile acknowledges my outburst.

The music that floods and warms this place is a kind of music I have never heard before.  It is as if the wind in the trees was itself turned into harmony.

 ‘You are a composer!’ I say.

‘As are you,’ is the answer.

Then they turn to face me at last and explain: ‘I am trying to find the invisible thread that unites all things by stringing together, on this musical staff of metal threads, all kinds of objects, from the simplest to a scrap of paper containing a mathematical formula, which is in itself a great jumble of things.’

‘And your helper,’ I ask.  ‘What does she do?’

‘My collaborator is objective chance. When I use the word “objective” I understand it to be something outside our world, or rather, beyond it, and which finds itself connected to the world of causes, and not of phenomenon, which is our own.’

‘What is your instrument?’ I point at the treble clef fashioned in brass with a mouthpiece attached. 

‘The instrument is everyone, everything.  The music of the spheres is louder here than in many places but is it being played all the time.  I am tiring now, after so many centuries of receiving it.

‘Let me help!’  I hold out my glossy red ribbon.

‘Yes.  Here.’

I take the place of the composer, glancing up at the silent, serene face of my ghostly assistant.

The wind lifts my hair and, as I place my piece of silk on the stave, I am filled with a swell of sound that is sweeter and fuller than anything I have ever heard.  I continue to fit the objects from the drawer onto the metal lines and my helper moves them into the right positions.  Sometimes they break and leave blood on my fingers but the flowers grow and fall and return to the earth and the birds sing and multiply.

It is hard work with long hours of concentration but I have taken on this task willingly as my own.  I sleep in my high monkish bed and wake every day to the prospect of richer and greater harmonies.