Gargoyles, art and history

Walking back to my hotel in from dinner, I stopped at the cathedral. For a couple of minutes, I was in a different world. A different era, maybe. Spatial and temporal distances blend into one if taken far enough.

Anyway, here I was, at the foot of the belfry, looking at the carved gargoyles, with their expressions of ancient evil. Why were they made to adorn a holy place? For the answer, you'd need to ask the same people in whose day the cathedral was a skyscraper, and the building of it a project not just of a lifetime, but that of several lifetimes, many generations.

Step back in tempora just a few minutes. Reluctantly rising from the warmth of a fireplace in the hotel pub, having realised the reason I want to travel. Apart from capturing exotic landscapes on film. What's this reason you ask? Even if you don't, I'll tell you. It is sitting by the fire and sipping ale, and have a total stranger strike up a conversation, and no ordinary stranger, but an elderly gent with long hair and flowing beard, a one-time sculptor and stone-mason, a man with the heart and soul of an artist, capable of discussing the morality of art, the history of Britain, and the recession.

I can't quote him verbatim, but here's some of the nuggets the evening's panning threw up. "If the recession affects me, it will". Followed by a long draught of bitter. "The mind is far more agile than the hand" (that was me - my companion's bushy eyebrows brushed his scalp).

What is it like to be a professional artist? "You become a bit of a whore". There are times when you pass by something you've created, and you have to turn away in shame. Because you compromised, followed the dictates of whoever offered to pay your bills and put food on your table. But also, rarely, meeting the ones that understood, let you have your way, and paid for you to create what was within you, not within them. Those were the creations you lived for. And also for the sheer joy of your craft, of feeling the grain of the stone under your fingers, or the click of the shutter.

I think what I wanted to ask him was "Was it worth it?", and I think he replied "Yes".