FANTAST IN FOCUS: GAVIN-PRETOR PINNEY

Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s Cloud Appreciation Society champions ephemerality and praises clouds as “nature’s poetry”. A sort of modern Henry David Thoreau, Pinney is the author of several bestsellers, including The Cloudspotter’s Guide, The Cloud Collector’s Handbook, and The Wavewatcher’s Companion.

The Custodian: The Cloud Appreciation society offers great guidance on escaping the humdrum of society—so in a way you guys are really diversifying and refreshing our imaginations in your observations of quite normal meteorological phenomena. I’m wondering why the society focuses on clouds and not other things like trees or ocean waves?

Gavin-Pinney Pretor: I’m interested in waves as well. I’ve written a book about them. The reason why clouds are a good subject for this kind of attention is because—certainly in the UK and in many Western counties—we have negative associations with clouds. There’s more of a value in reminding people about the positive. We talk about there being a cloud on the horizon—they’re [clouds] the things that get in the way of the sun. Clouds are actually one of the most evocative aspects of nature—one of the amazing stimulants of the imagination.

C: When I have the opportunity to go out to Hampsteath Heath, sit down, and look at the clouds I can work myself into a trance—

G: Up on Hampstead Heath is a great cloud-spotting location. John Constable spent two years there in the 1820s, painting cloud studies.

C: How did you first come up with the idea for The Cloud Appreciation Society?

G: It came about at a talk ten years ago. A friend of mine was running a literary festival down in Cornwall called the Port Eliot festival—she knew that I loved clouds and liked to go on about them so she said ‘why don’t you do a talk about them?’ I called the talk the Inaugural lecture of the Cloud Appreciation Society. It was just an idea, and I made the title to make it interesting. Lots of people came along and they were really enthusiastic about it. I didn’t have any plans or ambitions then—it all happened organically. It’s interesting to see how an idea can grow and blossom.

C: It’s like when clouds form from seemingly nothing and all of a sudden accumulate into a thunderstorm.

G: We’re a society of the internet age, and people are united around the world by spending time noticing what’s going on in the sky. You know Leonardo Da Vinci called clouds, ‘bodies without surface’ and thats a good description of the society really.

C: Does the society host any events or lectures on a monthly or biannual basis?

G: I give talks in a kind of random way. I just end up being reactionary about it—I feel like I should be more proactive. I have some vague plans for Spring of next year, so January of next year I may do something. The funny thing is I’ve always slightly resisted it—I know when I get people together the sky will be dull or completely blue. Clouds never do what you want them to do. Being a cloud-spotter is not about going somewhere—the best place is in your back garden, wherever you happen to be. It’s much more about the frame of mind, and the fact that you’re paying attention to something so omnipresent but also mundane; finding within the everyday phenomena stuff that’s surprising and exotic.

C: Sounds almost like Transcendentalism a bit. I’m thinking about Ralph Waldo Emerson who spoke about literally finding that natural divinity in normally mundane things.

G: Yes there are definitely broader lessons for life in it. I did a TED talk, in which I said that cloud-spotting is a good antidote to a lot of the problems of modern life. Digital culture is a hungry beast. With never-ending emails, Twitter, Facebook, etc., one has these feelings that one should constantly be doing something. Cloud-spotting is meteorological meditation really.

C: Cloud watching is also like time travel. Clouds are same way they were in Ancient Greece or Egypt and it takes you back to those times of the foregone natural philosophers.

G: Aristophanes the Greek playwright describes the clouds as the patrons goddesses of idle fellows. He was using them as a way of making fun of certain characters who were idle. That idea is one which resonates to this day. They’re just invitations to the imagination. There’s this universal, timeless quality to them. It’s beautiful to be reminded that everyone is and has always been under the same sky.

See below for more on Gavin Pretor-Pinney and the Cloud Appreciation Society:

http://cloudappreciationsociety.org

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