⛵ Voyage #17 — Lighthouses & Pliny the Elder

Below is the blog version of my fortnightly newsletter on the ocean, photography, craftsmanship, books and living a curious and exploratory life. To receive this directly into your inbox, subscribe.

September marks twelve months of VOYAGE! This newsletter began an experiment in seeing whether I would enjoy writing publicly with some kind of regularity - I’ve enjoyed it, so I’ll keep going - if you enjoy it too, the nicest thing you can do is share it!

Thank you so much to those who bought me a coffee from my last edition, I really appreciate it!

The lighthouse is a beacon of dangerous approach, a symbol of rabid civilisation, hope, commerce, and a warning signal of likely peril. Each pulse is amplified through a lens of concentric glass rings, a signal of simplistic binary automata. Every modulation originates from a conquered highpoint; each signal reaches out into the wilderness, decaying and dispersing with every mile. Each signal exists, only if it is observed.

When the lighthouse went from being maintained by a solitary keeper - historically a monk or a man seeking both solitude and practical purpose - to an automated signal, the signal itself shifted from being a warning of security and safety (between keeper, community and mariner), to a signal which may better warn the mariner to keep away - more so for the sake of the spirit than the sake of the ship: For todays beacon signals a land obsessed with efficiency and overwhelming division, rather than a safe harbour.

And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose. -Joseph Conrad

With the advent of digital charts and precision navigation, the lighthouse is for the most part now a cautionary cultural artefact. Their quaint uprightness is an architectural ornament of redundancy, placed on the highest elevations of overrun seaside towns, wild capes and remote islands - their realestate of unquantifiable value.

Much like the Nazi-era water towers of east Berlin which would later become one bedroom apartments for bourgeois Bohemians, these lighthouses will likely become branded Airbnb's or the summer shacks of freshly minted Randian hero’s, made rich by gambling in decentralised finance: Spaces and objects of pure utility tend to become desirous to those who work in meaningless occupations - as if owning or occupying such things might cause their usefulness to rub off.

Roman savant, Pliny the Elder, wrote in Book XXXVI of ‌Naturalis Historia (book 36, of 37!):

It serves, in connection with the movements of ships at night, to show a beacon so as to give warning of shoals and indicate the entrance to the harbour. Similar beacons now burn brightly in several places, for instance at Ostia and Ravenna. The danger lies in the uninterrupted burning of the beacon, in case it should be mistaken for a star, the appearance of the fire from a distance being similar.

First with the Mayans and later the Greeks, these beacons (farol in Portuguese, phare in French, far in Romanian, faro in Spanish, pharos in Greek), burned like highland funeral pyres. The Mayan's built them to signal boats and the Celts used them to send messages, communicating the end of an abyss or the approach of an army. Out of the four Aristotelian elements, earth was considered friendly and the sea (water) was collectively considered dark and perilous - with good reason. For a moment, consider voyaging across a stretch of water without any reliable forecasting, long term food storage capability, charts, an accurate measure of location or even an understanding of broader geography beyond local waters... The thought evokes a deep empathy for seafarers past, renowned for their mythology, superstition and predilection for higher orders. For who in their right mind would set out to sea without believing in something.

Pliny's warning of a shoreside fire being mistaken for a star, is not entirely unwarranted. I once tracked a vessel for several miles on a very dark night, thinking their white mast light was a star, diligently following it into port. It was quite a surprise when the sail plan became apparent, soon veering to starboard in fright, rattled by my mistake. I dare say the transition of lighthouses from a fixed source of illumination to a binary pattern was a very welcome technological advancement - how many hands have been lost in history, captains confusing an elevated pyre for a friendly navigational star of reference?

Even today, with the ability to pinpoint ones ship to within a few feet on a digital chart, the technology hasn't entirely stopped the confusion of performing a night entrance: The shoreline is covered in streetlights, airplane markers, range markers and every other source of artificial light, carelessly blasted into the atmosphere as a means for us to feel less alone and maximise productivity - lest we forget the end goal of globalised postmodern economics (for which the sea is the artery): Collective productivity in isolation (carefully consider what working from home really means), stripped bare of community and unified strength.

The ships logbook is a ledger of observation, which results in a surprisingly intricate data-based narrative - a precursor and perhaps inspiration for the Spreadsheet. As the captain diligently logs weather conditions from the sea, the lighthouse keeper once made similar notes of the sea (from the comfort of a fixed vantage point). While the ledger lacks a certain kind of traditional story arc, the increase or decrease in certain figures - particularly millibars of barometric pressure (and) or a steady increase in windspeed or sea state - contain mnemonic hints of grander tales. Weather happens to the mariner and weather was observed by the keeper.

I am attracted to the sea for no reason other than for its essential, romantic and unknowable nature. While I wax lyrical about the pharos of the Greek past, the solitude of keepers in phallic white towers, or the vicissitudes of automation and efficiency - the macro conclusion & ultimate truth is that things were (much) worse in the past. 

Interpret this how you will - as a metaphor steeped in lighthouses or as a broader observation on an increasingly divisive world… A world so lost, it seems to have forgotten the very foundations and suffering upon which it was built. 

We could do with a new kind of lighthouse.

Recent inputs

My reading of late has mostly revolved around writing and writers. I recently finished Ernest Hemingway on Writing, a small book of excerpts, tirelessly extracted from a lifetime of books, interviews and letters. Hemingway never personally wrote a book on writing, nor did he enjoy talking about the subject except in private letters - he felt superstitious about discussing the topic. My overarching takeaway from the various excerpts, was Hemingway’s tireless commitment to simply being the best - through truth, discipline, clarity and minimalism. Some of my highlights from the book:

“Whatever success I have had has been through writing what I know about”

“Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

“Work everyday till your so pooped about all the exercise you can face is reading the papers.”

“Only two things you can do for an artist. Give him money and show his stuff. These are the only two impersonal needs.”