Acknowledgements
Thanks to all who gave survey replies, each one was received with joy and astonishment at the poetry therein. Thanks to all the mini interviewees who took me by the hand to their beaches and told me the view as they saw it.
Thanks to Felix Grant for flinging my survey over the Atlantic to give me the global beach and for being like a lighthouse standing in the fog of my intentions!
Thanks to Stella Maile my project supervisor, for freeing the sails and letting me go where I wished, and for trimming the sails to enable me to make to windward.
Thanks to the readers and markers who allowed themselves to get splashed and affected by the poetry in people, but who could see the method employed even though that tended to be buried in the sand!
Thanks to Annemarie Cummins for maintaining a depressive position throughout the silly season of my dissertation!
Thanks to Carolyne Brina for listening to my voice and keeping a look out for rogue waves.
Thanks to all my friends studying in UWE for the talks and laughs and for supplying wind for my sailboat!
Thanks to the UWE lecturers who took evasive action as I drifted around, engineless, under their bows, and who often waved courteously from the bridgedeck as they passed.
Abstract
Aims
Following a super summer holiday I decided to explore the experience of being at the seaside and writing about it. Pleasure, the aesthetic, and writing, the poetic, serve as "soft boundaries" (Detels, Claire, 1999). In a review of the book, "Soft Boundaries", Berleant (Berleant, A.) quotes from Detels with the following, "Soft boundaries may be used to construct concepts and communicate about them across disciplinary boundaries; but they are also permeable; continually open to redefinition and change as additional experience is received and examined" (IBID).
A definition of the word 'aesthetic' is called for. A dictionary of keywords states,"As an adjective apart from specialized uses in art and literary criticism, is in common use to refer to questions of visual appearance and effect" (Williams, Raymond, 1988). The simple meaning of the word aesthetics is the subjective opinions of what is impressive (often what is beautiful) to an individuals senses. It is a personal view rather than a common one. The word "aesthetic" is derived from the Greek, 'aisthesis' - meaning 'of the senses', hence 'anaesthetic' means 'without feeling'.
But why 'feelings' and why 'poetics', what is the strategy in this risky hinterland of academic enquiry, precariously close to the edge of what is justifiably 'sociology'. My decision to look at aesthetic dimensions came out of my search to find an authentic narrator, which could sustain a voice and presence throughout my dissertation - almost a muse. I was determined to avoid producing logical and rational "nonsense" in the Wittgensteinian sense. Instead I chose the benefits of locating myself in an interesting area of writing and enquiry.
It is my aim to find out why, "I do like to be beside the seaside" (Song written by John A. Glover-Kind, 1907) in aesthetic and poetic terms.
Methods
This dissertation mobilizes aesthetics and poetics as rhetorical devices, drawing upon them as resources of enquiry. Wittgenstein said, "The job to be done in philosophy (. . . .) is really more a job on oneself. On one's own viewpoint. On how one sees things and, what one demands from them" (Wittgenstein, L. Culture & Value).
Main Findings
Douglas Beck observes that Wittgenstein avoids the problems of the nature of philosophical truth by, "examining issues of aesthetics in the context of language" (IBID). After exploring accounts of the seaside given in response to a survey, language became the focus of a discussion around the Nietzschian, "drive toward the formation of metaphors" (Nietzsche, F. in Cazeaux, C. 2000 (PP. 59)). The figure of a solo sailor is illustrated as being dependent upon and linked to human networks. The discussion ends with the observation that solitude has a context, a living culture, that is language.
And so my excuses are made for rambling around the subject, a topography of texts, and dipping into the waters of philosophy, linguistics and sociology, like a sunbather cooling off in the sea.
Chapter 1: Introduction
I spent six weeks sailing around the Bristol Channel in a small yacht. During this voyage I wrote a daily log, or travelogue. A narrative style emerged which was mediated by the background thought I was giving to my dissertation plan. My writing became an exploration of ideas as well as a description of the voyage.
A sociological approach was needed as well as an interesting area upon which to apply it. Rather than escaping to a wilderness of coasts and the open sea, in an effort to find myself, I sought company in the holiday resorts and seaside towns, in cafe's, shopping malls and fish 'n' chip ridden harbours. In my 'field notes' I was inclined to emphasise my "sociological imagination" (Mills, C Wright, 1970) rather than the loneliness of singlehanded sailing. On the other hand I wanted to steer away from a classical sociological study such as one about the way in which behaviour tends to be modified by rules and codes particular to the seaside/holiday environment. I could also have chosen a study of the way individual barriers are lowered, such as the shedding of clothing on the beach. This was explained in an interview with KB, "Talking about the sea seems to make people light headed. That's because worries go away. People won't wear a bikini inland but they will on the beach. Your inhibitions go". This lowering of inhibitions was exploited by being distilled in a perfum on sale in a beach novelty shop. Named "Sex on the Beach" it smelled of suntan lotion, seaweed, hot sand and melting ice cream!
I wanted to pursue a creative and original line of enquiry, which could remain grounded in my personal experience. This aim led me towards poetics; searching as I was for the root and location of my own pleasure and how that remained undiminished within my field notes. However, the source of pleasure was within the production of texts as much as in actual geographical positions such as holiday towns.
I say field notes retrospectively in the context of this academic work, however, my field notes were written mainly as a personal travelogue. It became apparent during my travels that what I was writing had potential as the basis for a dissertation. It grew daily and consistently into a substantial record of the social worlds I participated in. This fact alone qualifies my use of the term 'participant observer' in the methods section.
Background literature
There are numerous books concerning the sociology of the seaside. They contain accounts of, for instance, how the seaside was created as a new spa town experience. Sea water was rich with life giving minerals and the weather was either bracing or restorative, both Victorian cures for the leisure classes. 'Sociology of the seaside' books describe how railways were built to exploit the idea of travel and the symbolic fascination of distance. But it is the way that people responded to the idea of my being at the seaside for an extended period that caught my attention. It became clear that the idea of the seaside could be seen as more than a marketing success story by the Great Western Railway. There was a consistant poetic quality to the replies from friends whom I emailed from the seaside telling them of my voyage.
One book which differs in approach to the historical sociological accounts is called The Experience of Landscape by Jay Appleton. He puts forward the idea of 'prospect' and 'refuge' as the prime considerations in human preference for particular places. Hazards can be detected from a position of prospect, such as looking out over a plain from the mouth of a cave. The cave also gives refuge from hazard, and in this example it is easy to imagine the comfort engendered by such a position. The author develops this approach to aboriginal environment choice into a post-aboriginal theory of environmental aesthetics. Symbols represent either prospect or refuge environs, and this is carried into art, archiecture, landscape design, environmental psychology and literature. In literature the various settings within a text can be said to have an impact on the reader by symbolising favourable or hazardous circumstances. It is interesting how architectural design is often formed by powerfully biological use of shapes and symbolism whereas literature and social sciences tend to emphasise the more philosophical underpinnings of our experiences and needs. This is not to attempt to support claims that this is a post-biological world (Jean Baudrillard could be seen as doing that). Instead, my aim is to anchor an aesthetic and poetic container where there is good holding ground and look at some of the flows in individual ideoscapes (Appadurai, A, 1997) around that position.
The ultimate objective of Jay Appleton's book is to construct a conceptual bridge between aesthetics and objective reality. In my experience aesthetic sensory impressions can feel just as real as the 'hard light of day' and to treat it otherwise is to falsely priviledge one construct over another. This point is not missed in the book being described, Jay Appleton works through the dimensions of the field, treading between geography and psychology. It is, for Jay Appleton, symbolism which provides the link between these two fields.
Chapter 2: Methods
I became interested in what people thought of the idea of the seaside and how they described it. Noticing a powerful and evocative quality emerging in talk about the seaside I decided to create and investigate individual accounts. This was achieved with a survey sent by email to friends and aquaintances using a snowball sampling method. At the foot of each email survey was the statement, "I would like to recieve other replies to this survey, if you like send a copy to people you know, I appreciate any and all responses. Thanks" (see copy of survey in appendices).
The result is a representation of accounting of life-worlds and symbolic material. The appearance of common images illuminates a form of collectivity, or a Durkheimian 'conscience collective', at least in descriptions themselves, that is at the level of language. The idea of a network of human experience is associated with the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. The idea of an 'individual' person, identity, or discrete subject, changed in my understanding to become a much more collective beast, one arising out of communicative action and thus language based.
Wittgenstein's "language games" serve to explain much of my approach here. "The limits of language games are defined not in any strict sense, but allowed to range over a group of objects or ideas related by a series of similarities, which Wittgenstein refers to as family resemblances" (Wittgenstein, L. Culture & Value).
The seaside can be a very social, crowded experience and also a place of solitude and space. Often both appeared in one persons' description, like two sides of a coin. GR encompasses both with, "The life and death cycle; serenity; chaos; power; and once in awhile a vacation."
JR gave a range of impressions centred on nature and myths, "I've got a picture of a beach in Hampshire of the foam the spume is it the spume? Being driven up the beach. I used to stand on the concrete groins that go out and I just let the wind go around me and the waves go around my wellies. On stormy days. The wilderness is what fascinates me, I love it. When she's wild I love her, I like rocky crags and headlands and I know lots of wild places along the coast. There are seal pups along the South Wales coast, in the Winter when the beaches are deserted you can sing to the sea. There is a headland in Wales called Chanters cliff, opposite the island where they slept for 21 years. St Brides Bay is named after the goddess Bride. I found a sun symbol carved on a cliff face there. On top of Brides Bay youve got a sanctuary built and dedicated to Saint Nun. There is the remains of the old chapel built there. There is a spring near there with a well. When she gave birth to St David. St David is the patron saint of Wales".
Solitude is a recurring theme, JP wrote, "I picture a long expanse of sand, endlessly changing from the waves action. There are sea birds that seem to float on the breezes without ever having to use their wings. There is a sound of the waves of course, but actually that's background, and allows the other sounds to fade, leaving a quiet solitude". Here the person is placed, within the description, against a background of white noise, of waves in the distance. The suject is alone and at the same time surrounded by the sensuality of the beach. Sensuality is a very human quality, particularly when it is expressed in language.
There is an enchantment about the descriptions. It seems that the seaside is powerfully evocative, SM described it as, "My head becoming clearer, Possibilities seem to open up, there's a sort of expansiveness about the seaside. I feel a creativity, an opening up". And again the pleasure in descriptions is tangible, AC enthused, "it always reduces me to giggling. Some big waves got me. When I went into the sea. It just makes me laugh, cos they like sneak up on you, and then suddenly (Makes noise of breaking wave) it's a really big one and it'll like knock you over. (Laughing) Well not frightening, it's just saying Nyha-haa ya bugger! Ha ha ha it had me fooled. I was like, splashing delicately around". The waves have a personality and some form of transference is occuring in which AC is caught, as if in a childs game of chase. Childhood memories came up again in the following. CM remembers, "We used to go down to Brighton, sea air and all that. It's distinct and refreshing. It has memories, its a sort of special occasion. My dad used to just book a ferry ticket and we'd drive around Europe. The dinghy was fantastic, my dad had a Renault 4, we used to drive down to the sea and play in it. My uncle had a sailing boat, they lived in Pool, I remember going on it. Just talking to you about it... I'm smiling my head off!" CM continues with a dramatic note, "A girl I went to school with, her dad died in a river, and she'd never go near the sea", so it is not purely that holidays are the only association.
Some respondents expressed a desire to live by the sea, the following has a melancholy wistful note and then ends with on an upturn of humour. JG wrote, "When I'm happy by the sea I think to myself just how good it would be to live next to it. To be able to walk a dog along a beach every morning, all year round, is a sort of long-term goal that's tucked away in my head. I don't have the dog yet either".
I personally remember a dog on a beach, which was a very funny little event. I remember watching a man walking his dog on a flat sandy beach in Blankenburg, Belgium. The man let the dog off the lead. The dog raced away in a wide arc and kept turning until it arrived back at the man, at which point, from about six feet away, the dog leapt into the arms of the man. This was a hilarious event, the excited dog licked the mans face as it wriggled and wagged it's tail, cradled in its owners arms. This can be seen as an expression of the dog's pleasure, or, of agoraphobia, or both at once.
It is a media representation of the seaside, in the following from FJ, "My seaside, in Washington, rarely sees the sun. This makes television portrayals of beaches rather unevocative". An account of the poor aesthetics of a specific seaside reveals the self consciousness of a media saturated society. Televisual broadcasts provide a surface upon which we build parts of our aesthetic lives. Environmental awareness comes into descriptive content too, JH wrote, "Zandvoort, sad manmade beach. Holland is manmade its poor nature here". Which is a qualitative commentary based in a particular world view. The opportunity that filling in a survey provides is partly to express political, economic and cultural messages.
The sea is used as a simile by JR, "Australia is like an inland sea of saltbush, When it rains you can see water everywhere, all the people live around the edge of the basin. The Australians are some of the most urban people in the world, living on the edge they are afraid of the interior." Lev Vygotsky sees being as a boundary experience, meaning that being is between one thing and another.
The subject can be depicted as a solitary figure on a beach, but this image depends upon the gaze of the observer, who then sees solitude embodied. The beach may also be a social scene if it is crowded with holidaymakers These two scenarios illustrate two states of humanity; solitude with contemplation by an existential Nietzschian subject; and the celebration and Durkheimian effervescence of social activity with pleasure. It appears the subject is both atomistic and collective. The seaside allows both these states to exist, consisting as it does of wide open spaces as well as intimate and crowded resorts.
In my field notes I wrote the following, "A yacht is making toward Ilfracombe from a mile off. In fifteen minutes it will enter the harbour and moor up at which point it will become a sort of caravan. For now though it is solitary, atomistic, vulnerable, like a migratory seabird." (cruise9.htm). This movement of elements from one state to another is set against a background and contextualised thus, "The grey sea ends in a straight line, at the horizon, where the grey sky ends too. These vessels come and go, from that and to that. Its beautiful." (IBID).
Ethnomethodology provided much of the initial impetus to exploration by functioning as a viable method. I selected ethnomethodological terms to conceptualise this dissertation because that field offered a certain openess and pragmatism in fieldwork. I was able to make significant progress in linking data (my field notes or travelogue) with theory (ethnomethodology seemed to be the area that would be sustainable as a modus operandi).
It was the requirement for data of a more empirico-analytical nature which resulted in a significant development for this dissertation. I started some mini-interviews with friends and aquaintances in which I asked for comments about the seaside. This was quite succesful, however, it gave me the idea of doing a survey by email. I wrote a small pilot survey consisting of sixteen questions. This was sent to all persons on my personal email address list. Forty one surveys were sent out. Email is a highly effective survey delivery method. Posting paper surveys would have involved the cost of stamps and more time to address and compile each one. An email can be sent to multi recipients.
Several replies to the email survey appeared within hours of sending it out. I realised that the quality of responses was remarkable for the intensity and richness of the descriptions; the poetics. There were twenty one survey responses within two weeks of sending them which I consider to be a highly satisfying result.
Each new survey reply that arrived gave me great pleasure.
Oscillating between post-modernism and ethnomethodology, I settled for poetics, of the Gaston Bachelard approach, as a treatment of language and form I could really feel comfortable with in terms of producing a piece of work with integrity.
Plato and Descartes argue that aesthetic experience, the sensorial region of perception, is not "amenable to conceptual analysis" (in Cazeaux, C. (Ed.), 2000, (PP.3)). Which is like saying that clouds lack validity as weather pattern indicators due to their variable and insubstantial nature. Cazeaux states, "Aesthetic experience has, for the greater part of the history of Western Philosophy, been regarded as subordinate to rational enquiry." (IBID). But meteorology IS a science, it is empirical and consists in a series of guesses. Meteorology works in the Aristotelian rhetorical technique. The "spirit of guessing" (Giovanni Vassalli, 2001) builds, through rhetoric, an archive of experience which informs subsequent guesses.
Poetics thus offered the way forward I sought. It is the sensory affects of descriptive writing which linger in deep levels of thought, Fond memories come back into language and play on the emotions.
In "The Poetics of Space" (Bachelard, G. 1958) Bachelard has used poetics as an area of enquiry. Somewhat playfully he links objects with meanings. He treats metaphors as telescopes looked down the wrong way. The affect of this is to give an inward looking perspective which is simultaneously intimate and spacious. It is as if the material world of objects and that of outer space acts as a metaphor for what is 'human'. But also the human body is a metaphor for the cosmos. Bachelard sees exaggeration as one function of poetics. Metaphor can make the 'big' signify the 'small' and vice-versa, what is intimate stands for what is cosmic.
I have a fascination with form and beauty in music, in wanting to understand the power of it to profoundly move me and periodically heal life's pains. The surfaces of musical instruments which resonate and ring with deep truths speak, for me, as clearly as a bell.
"Far away across the fields
The tolling of an iron bell
Brings the faithfull to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells"
(Waters, R, 1973)
The rhythmn and rhetoric of a Pink Floyd song moves me deeply, whereas I find the formal rational sciences convoluted and beguiling.
I perceive three streams to my dissertation, they are:
1. Fieldnotes
These have the function of grounding my work.
2. Survey by email
This was a phase of enlarging and exaggerating themes and notions connected with the seaside. This had the effect of producing a poetic resource with which to work.
3. Mini interviews
Talking about the seaside helped to form the dimensions of this dissertation. The aesthetic quality of such talk revealed elements of pleasure and danger.
Other explorations were made such as an S.M.S. (Short Message Service on mobile phone) text survey. This consisted of the following:
"Hi, to help me in my project I would like you to give 3 words that describe the seaside.
Also state your time?
Your place?
And your intention?
Thanks C"
Fourteen recipients were chosen on the basis of having a mobile phone with text capability. The recipients were all from my list of personal friends.
The reasons for doing this micro survey are:
1. - TEXT messages are short, they consist in 160 characters/letters in total.
- The medium of mobile phone TEXTing is very popular and therefore likely to gain a response.
- The tiny form of a TEXT message has particular effects as a mediator of communication. By asking for three words about the seaside I generated a quick response.
2.
- The nature of TEXT messages is playful and mobile. Both qualities are likely to gain interesting responses because there is a throw away attitude to the messages. Stereotypes and flippancies are desirable in this case. I would like to show that the idea of the seaside is stereotypical and indexical.
The last three 'questions' (Also state your time? Your place? And your intention?) are specifically intended to be ambiguous. The main reason for carrying out this mobile phone TEXT survey was to access information about which words are used to describe the seaside if the description is restricted. This effects the amount of thought which goes into the response as does the medium (SMS Text messages). It is awkward and slow writing text messages on a mobile phone.
There were just five replies from fourteen TEXT messages sent. They are reproduced below:
"COLD WET AND WINDY"
These three words came from a sailor and thus reflect a realistic and somewhat meteorological view. The last three enquiries (Time? Place? Intention?) were perhaps ignored as meaningless or unintelligable.
"SAND+SEA+SMELL SOON-THE MED-LOTS OF FUN/SEX"
An optimistic accounting of the seaside with the added intention of being in the Mediterranean soon, to have fun and sex. The function of the word 'smell' is ambiguous here, bur fits with a sensorial description.
The next reply is serious and prosaic but captures something essentially pleasant and natural.
"borderland
fresh
wild
1pm
in the middle of the harbour
to be helpful
is this what you wanted?"
The respondent's time, location and intention were given directly as she processed the text message. This respondent questions her interpretation of the proceedure at the end. The language game was played and then reassurance was sought.
The next Text message reply speaks of an original state of things:
"primal. happiness. pure"
Finally there is a winning reply in the Wittgensteinian language game:
"Sea, sun, sand!"
The essential elements in the traditional discourse of the seaside were given here. This reply came from someone who lives in Western-super-Mare, a seaside resort. The reply is stereotypical and generic, which may be a reflection of mild cynicism engendered by living in a seaside town.
One of the fruits of this dissertation has been a series of Web documents, published as a continuation of the web based travelogue. The reason for this was to save documents from the encroaching mould and damp which is part and parcel of living on a boat. Also, I use the Web as an external archive. My field notes were uploaded to the Web on a daily basis using a handheld computer and a mobile phone with a modem. If the boat sank my work would be preserved. I was a participant observer and took field notes discretely but not covertly. Using a hand held computer in the field has little effect upon the social environment because such a device appears to be too small to be acting as a word processor. The role I took up was of writing a diary while enjoying the seaside. I believe that being occupied in such a way enabled me to observe people without disruption. I was, however, participating and so altering the scenes I was in.
My notes were not solely in word form. A sound recording was made in Tenby harbour of my guitar playing. I found it interesting how I played with a Celtic feel, which is not my usual style. I would like to briefly explore this affect of location and environment.
The feelings I remember at the time were of having done hard physical tasks, such as working the boat singlehanded and carrying two heavy water containers along the quayside and down a twenty foot ladder. I was in a state of physical health and vigour. That fed into my guitar playing, this particular time I heard a Celtic style coming through my playing, as if by a spirit. It can be seen as a case of mediated action, I was amongst cliffs, seas, islands, beaches and waves, and aware of Ireland being just one days sail away. A 'day sail' is an easy distance to cover. It is usually between fifteen to fifty miles. It is based upon the distance a cruising yacht can cover in daylight hours. I therefore felt close to Ireland, or the idea of it, I have never been there.
The Celtic sound was produced by my imagination and my perceived environment. It was not something seeping from the rocks and cliffs but they were essential to the sound produced, Those factors were an aesthetic context. Amplification in music is like exaggeration in poetry, "The surest sign of wonder is exaggeration" (Bachelard, 1994, PP.107:III).
Chapter 3: Findings
The survey replies are unanimous in celebrating a common affect of the idea of the seaside. In writing about the seaside, descriptions in a poetic style tend to be readily produced.
Beauty exists in the descriptions, the aesthetics of which have a structural quality suggested by the use of common metaphors. Narratives can be said to emerge from a collective pool of images, symbols and myths.
There are unfamiliar wild creatures in the sea, capable of eating a person alive, which is a shift in the dominance of the human species and adds to the dramatic power of the sea. The aesthetics of distance and fluidity as well as the ending of the terrain which makes up our land based lives leaves a sense of wonder. WMcR wrote, "It means a place of 'taking off' from the known to someplace new and wondrous. from the stable and solid to the uncertainty". Different conceptions of the seaside came from non United Kingdom respondents. Associations of intimacy and homeliness exist in the British seaside, it is as much fond childhood memories as the worldliness of adulthood, AC wrote, "It has meant different things to me at different times. In England at Bournemouth where I visited my Granny it meant carsickness, boiled sweets, a big dip in the road and then blue revealed for miles, and food poisoning from fish, which stopped me eating fish until adult life" This contrasts with the mature reflexivity of the following reply from the United States, "As I think about it, the promontory I described is really in my head. It can as easily be beside the sea as on the edge of a precipice overlooking a great valley. Put another way, it's a jumping off place."
There is an openess engendered by the process of sensing the displacement of normality; all that blueness! Levinas said "Where common language abdicates, a poem or a painting speaks" (in Cazeaux, C. 2000). The language of survey replies contains highly poetic characteristics. There is even an example of filmic description where the metaphor of photography brings a grainy textured effect. FG wrote, "The picture is black and white, grainy, contrasty, black shadows and chalky highlights, shot on slightly overdeveloped film with a strong sense always of infinite potential for surprise which is never deflated by fulfilment" Here, desire is artistic and rendered pictorialy. Levinas puts forward a Lacanian concept of "art ( . . .) substituting for the object its image. Its image, and not its concept."
The beach may be an escape from reality, a salve for the open wounds of existence. JG wrote, "Relaxation, space, quietness, sand, reading. Absorption of negative emotions". Strong images associated with the seaside offer a form of escape, many people go on holiday to 'get away from it all'.
Survey replies came from diverse locations (United States, Cambridgeshire, Weston-Super-Mare, Bristol, Netherlands, Germany) The language style differed in geographically seperated accounts. The scale of the ocean contrasts with the intimacy of the seaside in U.S. and U.K. accounts respectively. However, for many people, it seems that the joy and freedom generated by thinking about the seaside and the ocean are the same. The need and wish to escape to particular aesthetic landscapes for a while, to have a change of scene, is widespread.
There are biases in surveys caused by my involvement. What respondents know about me as a person ie. sailing and being chronically romantic about the sea, probably modulates the tone of replies.
The title, 'Oh I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside', was included in the surveys and may have 'indexed' the frame as 'liking'. If the survey was for 'Surfers Against Sewage' a somewhat radical environmental campaign organisation there may have been strongly political messages swilling in the texts. There were some political messages within a couple of replies, allusions to pollution and environmental damage. RI declared, "Treat it with respect. Know its power. Keep it clean". AC implies concern about pollution in, "keep returning to the sea but have reservations as to who or what I am sharing it with"
Some images are redolent of fairy tales. 'Preferred eye colour' for ES was "crystal green" and for AC it was "mermaid", both make fascinating use of the question to express vivid responses. These answers exaggerate in an enchanting way.
There is a mystical feel to some descriptions as if they are pictures of astral travels or inner worlds, intimate and dreamlike qualities abound. The question, 'Please describe a picture in your minds eye of the seaside. This may be at a resort or the coast itself' was intended to produce strongly visual answers. I felt the term 'in your minds eye' was effective in engaging respondents at the level of imagination, rather than formal response. It can be, for some people, a pleasure to create word pictures. The surveys seemed to have offered the chance for respondents to talk quite freely about their own imaginary spaces and feelings. The following is a longish piece of highly descriptive writing. The poetics of the seaside are mobilised here to full effect by FG, "I'll give you Hastings: Pebbles, from the size of chicken's eggs up to small oranges ... granite breakwaters and groynes ... the suck and gurgle of the breakers shifting the stones ... fishing vessels, functioning or derelict, built of timber and streaked with green weed, smelling strongly of salt and fish and two-stroke fuel. Deckchairs, striped canvas, blowing flapping snapping in the breeze, often unoccupied. Empty-eyed boarding houses along the front behind me."
FG continues,
"Hastings is always seen in winter, in my mind's eye, although I must have often seen it in summer - but this is not a negative thing, I feel a fierce, exultant, joyous, lonely love for this deserted isolation."
I feel honoured to gain such passion in response to my email survey. Other replies which contain a similar depth of feeling follow. It is interesting to note here that despite the impersonal and technological character of email, the strength of feelings remains undiminished by the digital medium.
DG declares, "I just love the sea for whatever it is regardless of the type of beach". A suggestion of unconditional love is followed by what could be a portrait of a lover, "High cliffs, the sea crashing into them, the wind blowing very hard and it's possibly raining, long sea grass on the cliffs blowing"
The sea has a nurturing, healing role for this respondent, who wrote, "It really helps me to keep living".
Healing occurs on the chemical, as well as the emotional level, TS begins with a stream of expressionism, "green, blue a bit of yellow and purple, peace, open spaces, dreams, salt, seagulls, neptune. Dunes, sandy beach, wind blowing like a blizzard, bits of tar and old wood, seagulls" And then continues in the style of a government health advice note!
"GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH I. E. SODIUM POTASSIUM SILICEA IODIUM"
In survey replies there were small instances of humour, which reflect the more bawdy side of the seaside. MT derails the romantic discourse by adding a pun about flatulance, "Rolling waves, sandy beach, cliffs and wind. (Coming off the sea that is)". There is, of course, the greatest impunity in letting go trapped wind on a high windy cliff!
CG shared a surreal comment, "My friend says that whenever she goes to the seaside - she grows! The seaside must have that effect on some people!" The magical properties of far away places.
I gain immense pleasure from beaches, but, really like to arrive back at the car or at a cafe'. A friend stated his intention of visiting Hastings in January to walk along the shingle by the sea. The idea of this lonely, bitterly cold, desolate scene was highly evocative and made me want to do it too. It was as if the furthest reaches of my soul would be reinvigorated by such a walk. Over Christmas I hired a car to visit relatives and on Boxing Day I returned via the South Coast in order to experience the seaside in Winter. I arrived at Bournmouth in a warm car with the radio easing me through the hours of driving. Now for my walk, I thought, but the beach was dreadfully cold, I quickly lost all enthusiasm for pressing on into the distance and returned to the warmth of the car. The point here is that it was the idea of a beach in Winter I liked, not the reality.
Chapter 4 Discussion/conclusions
There is a common thread running through the survey replies. It is not so much a theme as a mood. There are in fact two general moods described in seaside narratives and, in an aesthetically dyadic form, they both relate to the sea itself; benign and threatening. These attributes can be seen as providing, for the texts, a context (that was generated partly by the survey). There exists in the framing theory of Fisher, ". . . different types of frames, discursive structural frames, which people employ to organise topics of discussion (. . . )" (Fisher, K. 1997). Fisher defines frames as, ". . . semi-structured elements of discourse which people use to make sense of information they encounter" (Ibid.). However, there is more than discourse to be considered here, even though framing theory goes some way in explaining why surveys were intepreted and answered. To explore poetic and aesthetic dimensions I feel it is necessary to loosen the academic canon at least where constraint is the result of convention. For this reason I have kept theoretical discussion very open. I have maintained "soft boundaries" (Detels, Claire, 1999) between explanatory frameworks.
The exact nature of my enquiry and treatment have been somewhat ambiguous, and therefore it is my responsibility to explain what has been learned in this dissertation.
It is poems and poetic language which the seaside survey replies have led me to. My thesis is that people value the opportunity to express beauty and drama because it is a deep seated human phenomenon. Robert Graves, the poet, writes, "the language of poetic myth anciently current in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe was a magical language bound up with religious ceremonies in honour of the Moon-goddess, or muse, some of them dating from the old stone age, and that this remains the language of true poetry - 'true' in the nostalgic modern sense of 'the unimprovable original, not a synthetic substitute'." (Graves, Robert, 1999). Graves goes on to suggest that the seperation which contemporary society has from the substance of myths is partly because, "the language was tampered with in late Minoan times when invaders from Central Asia began to substitute patrilinear for matrilinear institutions and remodel or falsify the myths to justify the social changes". Graves suggests there is a deep rooted poetical drive in his/our (meaning Western European) cultural mileux.
Poems, myths, stories and music are all social in nature, they exist between people. The existential Nietzschian subject wandering out into a godless wilderness remains pictorially evocative, but as an idea, or as a textual construction: a metaphor even a hero/ine, on a good day. However, the single handed sailor in all her independence and self reliance is enmeshed in social relations which deliver her into safe ports and perfect harbours. My summer cruise often took me out of sight of land where I felt a sharpening of my senses, mainly through fear, which moves me to outright exaggeration. I wrote to a friend, "The sound a sailing boat makes as she leaves a carpet of bubbles in her wake is the song of eternity, a bridge to the land of she". In that paragraph the metaphor was stretched to breaking, but, "The surest sign of wonder is exaggeration" (Bachelard, G. 1994, PP.107:III)
However self reliant I allowed myself to become I was not entirely individuated or independent in my solo endeavour, despite my heightened awareness. Even alone ten miles offshore, it is still the case that, "the cultivation of the five senses is the work of all previous history" (Marx, K. 1984, (PP. 353)).
Furthermore, my sixth sense, intuition, was tuned to strong flows of empathy. In my imagination a chorus of voices, those of family and friends, unanimously willed me to 'Take care!'
I wrote in my travelogue, "Half way across the Bristol Channel I phoned Jo, my sister, she was in Sainsbury's in Plymouth! I enthused about being in 10 foot swells and looking at the 1000 foot Devon cliffs. I asked if Jo could hear the swooshing noises of a cruiser in full sail, but she declared it to be too noisy in Sainsbury's to get that" (cruise3.htm). At that point I was making for Ilfracombe from Swansea, I had a mobile phone onboard and arranged to meet my sister the next day. There was a high level of incommensurability between us, except in the arrangements we made. Only my travelogue, a text, could mediate between the real sea and my social relations. That text was anticipated and read avidly by my friends and family.
While solo sailing is a mode of pure adventure, it also tends to, "exclude participation by embossing a model of the exemplary individual upon the social fabric from whence that individual came" (Slater, H. 2000, (PP. 4)).
It is through various texts, poetical and narrative, that the seaside is a living culture, where the sailor and the sunbather exchange glances. Both are "playing at seriousness" (Nietzsche, F. in Cazeaux, C. 2000 (PP. 61)). Going to sea for pleasure and in the same sense wearing a bikini are distinctly poetical in that they give pleasure without being rationally justifiable!
I would like to conclude where my summer holiday ended along with the narrative which was so bound up with the experience. On arriving back from my voyage I wrote, "Back in Bristol, now, it all seems like a dream. I miss the pull of the tide already. 'Juggler' sits, salty and bright with travel, in her marina berth. On entering the River Avon a bulk carrier passed close by, it was called 'Aslan', which added to a profound moment of arrival, return, and, realisation that I already missed the wide sea, terribly" (cruise10.htm). My voyage was already like a 'Narnia' (C. S. Lewis, 1978) from which I had emerged "glittering with metaphorical intuitions" (Nietzsche, F. in Cazeaux, C., 2000 (PP. 61)).
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Appendices
1.
Email survey
S08 survey (2, corrected)
Hi
I'm writing about the seaside for a project. I would like to have a few words from you to help me in that.
1) When you think of the seaside what does it mean to you?
2} Please describe a picture in your minds eye of the seaside. This may be at a resort or the coast itself.
3) a. At the seaside do you prefer sandy beaches, mud flats, saltings, shingle beaches or cliffs?
b. Why do you prefer that?
4) Have you ever sailed on the sea in a boat?
If so would you briefly describe where, what, when, why and with whom you did that?
5) When was the last time you visited the seaside?
6) Do you intend to go to the seaside in the future?
7) a. Where is the seaside, for you, please name a town or area?
b. What makes you say that?
8) Would you like to say anything else about the seaside?
9) I would just like to ask you a few questions about yourself, for statistical purposes.
a. Your preferred age:
b. Your preferred sex:
c. Your preferred shoe size:
d. Your preferred eye colour:
e. Your preferred latitude and longitude:
Please reply by email.
I would like to recieve other replies to this survey, if you like send a copy to people you know, I appreciate any and all responses.
Thanks
Clarissa Vincent
clarissa@ukonline.co.uk
2.
I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside
Found at: <http://www.melodylane.net/seaside.htm>
Written and Composed by John A. Glover-Kind (1907)
Everyone delights to spend their summer's holiday Down beside the side of the silvery sea
I'm no exception to the rule
In fact, if I'd my way
I'd reside by the side of the silvery sea.
But when you're just the common or garden Smith or Jones or Brown
At bus'ness up in town
You've got to settle down.
You save up all the money you can till summer comes around
Then away you go
To a spot you know
Where the cockle shells are found.
Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside
I do like to be beside the sea!
I do like to stroll upon the Prom, Prom, Prom! Where the brass bands play: "Tiddely-om-pom-pom!"
So just let me be beside the seaside
I'll be beside myself with glee
And there's lots of girls beside
I should like to be beside
Beside the seaside!
Beside the sea!
William Sykes the burglar
He'd been out to work one night
Filled his bag with jewels, cash, and plate. Constable Brown felt quite surprised when William hove in sight
Said he: "The hours you're keeping are far too late."
So he grabbed him by the collar and lodged him safe and sound in jail
Next morning looking pale
Bill told a tearful tale.
The judge said, "For a couple of months I'm sending you away!"
Said Bill: "How kind!
Well! If you don't mind
Where I spend my holiday!"
Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside
I do like to be beside the sea!
I do like to stroll upon the Prom, Prom, Prom! Where the brass bands play: "Tiddely-om-pom-pom!"
So just let me be beside the seaside
I'll be beside myself with glee
And there's lots of girls beside
I should like to be beside
Beside the seaside!
Beside the sea!
3.
Additional explanation of questionairre:
The final statistical questions in the email questionairre are not flippant. Several of the people to whom the survey was sent would find commonly gendered questions either impossible to answer or annoying. The former because they exist outside standard measures of sex. the latter because they would be psychologically excluded by the assertion of binary sex categories. The questions used do not cause either of the above aberations although people with narrow conceptions of humanity may feel displeasure as a result of being asked a question about their sexual preference. The purpose of that question is to avoid binary sex categories.
The statistical section is designed to disrupt the invasive nature of standard questionarries, while at the same time gathering personal information about the respondent. Shoe size tells the footprint which could be expected on a sandy or muddy shore. Preferred eye colour and Preferred age tells the respondent about the type of questions which are coming up, age is usual but "preferred" is unexpected, therefore a playful and expressive mode is prompted. The questions about the seaside will then be reconsidered in light of the emotional state engendered by the disruptive statistical questions. It is expected that the effect will be to encourage imaginative answers to questions.
The final question, "Your preferred latitude and longitude" has a specific purpose. In answering that question people are revealing knowledge about technical mapping systems and of nautical and navigational techniques. The final question also provides a location on the globe which can be used statistically to map seasides, possibly an aspect of future research.