Blog Ja-Vu: We’ve been Robbed – by Coincidence, Chance……and Sod’s Law!

Hello, and welcome to my blog.

It’s been a while, so I thought I would take a long overdue trip down memory lane – to a previous blog I used to write, when my circumstances were different, and the circumference of my waist was less.

It’s a short piece, but I hope you like it.

(that’s what I said to her)

We’ve Been Robbed – By Coincidence, Chance, and Sod’s Law!

So, It’s 2:05pm and I’m sat on a fold up chair (no folded up) in my garden with my laptop on my lap, and a glass of rose by my side. It is another glorious day here in Sturminster Newton, and I suspect for much of Dorset and the UK as a whole. There is a wasp buzzing around my head, so I may in a moment throw my laptop to the floor and run into the house screaming like a small girl. If you never get to read this post, that is why.

But then, how would you know, if I never get to publish this post?

On that line of thought, how many masterpieces of literature, art, music or sculpture have never been completed or released to he world because their creator was interrupted somehow?

For all we know, Michelangelo’s “David” was just something he threw together whilst working on his real masterpiece – only to have his real best work destroyed when a moth flew into his workshop one night, causing him to reel back in panic, knocking five years worth of work to the floor, smashing it to smithereens?
Who can say that the world should have marvelled at Michelangelo’s “Rufus”, and only given “David” the briefest of attention that such lesser work requires?

Beethoven’s Unfinished Symphony might well have been destined to be completed and named “Exultation to the Glory of The World”, or some other more spectacular title, had it not been for the fire that broke out in his neighbour’s house, forcing Beethoven (who was also a part-time fireman – or the equivalent of his day) to leave his work, and spend the next four hours risking his life to save the life of his neighbour, his neighbour’s family, and even his neighbour’s dog, ironically named “Mozart”. And this act of friendship, social conscience, and heroism could well have erased from Beethoven’s mind the melody and tune required to complete his masterpiece. Instead, he returned to his work, scanned what he had created so far and simply thought to himself “I’ll come back to that later on.”

How do we not know that the day after painting “Sunflowers”, Vincent Van Gogh found himself by the river bank, in the perfect place at the perfect time to witness the struggle of life and death in nature, and be inspired to paint his greatest picture ever: “Dragonfly being caught by leaping fish as Kingfisher swoops” – only to inadvertently disturb a hornets nest hanging above him, and in the ensuing attack of the swarm, knock his painting into the river, losing it for ever? None of us can dismiss the theory with any certainty that from that day onwards, Van Gogh would privately refer to his much acclaimed “Sunflowers”, as a pile of crap in comparison to what might have been.

It could well have been possible that the greatest theologians, teachers, artists, mathematicians, and thinkers of their time all lived in the same street in Pompeii, all socialising together and meeting up for daily brain storming sessions. they could well have been on the verge of revolutionising the world as they knew it with ideas centuries before their time – only to be obliterated from the mind of history by that Volcanic eruption that engulfed their city in lava, preserving everything as it was at that moment. The world might well have been a different place is someone had said “that sounds like the volcano erupting”, instead of “is that your stomach grumbling? You’re always hungry you are”.

So, although we know there have been geniuses throughout the ages, we could quite conceivably have missed out on ever greater discoveries, or masterpieces, all because of unfortunate occurrences.

It makes you think, doesn’t it?

Well it made me think, I can’t speak for you lot.