My yellow sister

The puzzled expression on the craggy features of our Corsican wildlife expert tells me that 'I've lost my yellow sister', doesn't make any sense to him, and what's more - the exaggerated Gallic shrug and receding back pointedly add - I am confusing him with someone who gives a merde.

Which leaves me both embarrassed by my schoolboy French and still short one younger sister, who has either wandered off into the sweet-scented, shrubby undergrowth, through which our coastal path is meandering, or plunged off the cliffs into the blue Mediterranean, a hundred feet below.  

I'm betting the former but can't rule out the latter, which is why I'm willing to endure the contempt of rugged, manly Frenchmen. Sis has a habit of wandering off without saying where she’s going or why, although since it’s been a long walk already, the reason is fairly obvious, and confirmed five minutes later when she emerges from the bush behind us with the nonchalant stroll and pained expression of someone who's been searching for a good spot and failed to find it.

‘Tricky, was it?’ I ask her. 

‘Very,’ she says, tight-lipped. 

'My turn,' I say. 'Carry on and I'll catch up with you and the rest of the gang.'

'Be very careful,' she says. 'Some of the spikes on these plants are like crocodiles' teeth.'

 'Are you OK?' she asks me, a few minutes later, as I rejoin her at the brow of a hill, where we get our first sight of the golden sands and blue-green sea of Plage de la Terre Sacrée.

'Barely,' I say, forestalling the concern beginning to appear on her face with a quick shake of the head.

'Did you know,' she says, taking the hint, 'that this rough undergrowth you get all over Corsica is called the maquis?'

‘Why would spiky undergrowth be named after the World War II French resistance?' I ask.

‘Other way round,’ she says, having researched well for this holiday, on which she’s finally persuaded me to accompany her.

'You get this stuff in the south of France, as well as here in Corsica,' she continues. 'It's ideal for hiding resistance fighters. That's why they came to be called after the terrain that concealed them. 

'The name stuck because they - like the plants of the maquis - were tough, hardy and resourceful.'

‘And because nobody pissed on them?’ I suggest.

She tut-tuts, shakes her head and walks away. I’m getting a lot of scornful backs today. But I don’t care. 

Blue skies and warm sunshine are beginning to ease the pain in my heart. The new pain in the nether regions might take a little longer. 

Under the surface

A great way to divert my son’s attention, if only briefly, from the lure of fragrant blossoms and free seeds is to ask him hard questions about art. He doesn’t have all the answers. Nobody does. But he’ll likely have pondered the question.

‘I loved Future Library,’ my sister says, as we soak up the sun over late lunch outside Modern 1 in Edinburgh. ‘I can see that’s art. But what about the Sarah Lucas? That reminded me of pained intestines tied in knots.’

He scratches his bearded chin and nods. ‘Yeah, but I thought it had a sensual curviness from some angles. It is art.’

‘Why?’ I ask him. ‘How can ladies’ tights stuffed with fluff be art? And how can the Lucas and say the Mona Lisa both be art? What can they possibly have in common?’

‘Not much visually,’ he says. ‘But one of the great discoveries of the 20^th century, according to Arthur C. Danto, was that something could be art without being pleasing to the eye. The history of art until then was all about aesthetics. Artworks had to be beautiful.’

‘Who’s Arthur C. Danto?’

‘Philosopher and art critic. Done a lot of thinking about the question: What is art? So have I. But he’s written more books than me.’

‘Yeah, but you’re here and he’s not. Tell us what you think.’

A little dachshund, from the next picnic-table, sausages it’s way between his feet, chasing a sycamore leaf and making him smile.

‘A good artist is trying to do something specific,’ he says. ‘So an artwork goes through a process of being made with intention. There is meaning in the artist’s mind.

‘Some contemporary art is missing that, I think. So when you look at it you, the viewer, don’t get any meaning from it. When you see good art and think about it, on the other hand, you don’t necessarily get all of its … Platonic meaning, if you like. You do get a shadow of that though. And it’s enough.

‘But you only get that because the artist put it there.’

‘What you’re saying reminds me of Hemingway’s thoughts about writing,’ I say. ‘He claims that most of the meaning of a good story is under the surface. The quality of what the writer does not say is the test of a good story. He called it the Iceberg Theory.’

‘That’s good,’ he says. ‘And quite similar to what I’m talking about.’

‘So what meaning did you get from Future Library?’ my sister asks.

‘The idea is appealing and original, I think,’ he says. ‘It’s an optimistic piece. There’s faith there that despite wars, floods and climate change, people will still be around in 100 years and will want to read books, rather than simply survive from one day to the next, in a post-apocalyptic hell.’

Much as I’m enjoying the chat, I have to stand up now to give space to the small apocalypse that my iceberged Americano has set off in my tummy. ‘Should we go look at the flowers?’ I ask and turn to get their response.

But they’ve gone. Never seen either move so fast. Largo is their usual speed, but from a sitting start they’ve leapt straight to allegro, leaving me with the friendly dachshund sniffing at my toes.

Looking over to the herbaceous border, I can see Sis shoving something into her pocket, in a manner that would be furtive in someone less elegant, while my son has an appreciative nose buried in some pale, pink phlox.

The dachshund looks up at me hopefully, so I offer the last corner of my raspberry almond flapjack, which he gobbles gratefully. ‘What is the meaning of a carnivore eating a vegan biscuit?’ I ask him.

He studies me with big brown eyes and ambles amicably away, in silence.

Secret library

When we’re anywhere near a sunlit garden, chats with my son and sister become a losing battle for their attention. Rather than talking to me, they’d far rather be wandering among the plants, sniffing the blossoms or surreptitiously stuffing purloined seeds into their bulging pockets.

They’re both keen gardeners. And hardened seed bandits.

So as my son’s eyes stray towards the herbaceous borders surrounding the outdoor café tables at Edinburgh’s Modern 1, I struggle to pull his mind back to all the art we’ve been looking at, and the Katie Paterson piece that so impressed him, in particular.

'When you were doing your degree at Glasgow School of Art, you told me you'd made a breakthrough in your own understanding,' I remind him. 'You'd realised that art was about the process as much as the product.'

‘Maybe more so,’ he says. ‘I still believe that. It’s why I really liked the Paterson artwork. There’s a lot going on there.’

We had stumbled upon this seemingly innocuous piece on the wall of a small room on the second floor, and had been fortunate enough to have our puzzled pondering overheard by gallery attendant Jackie Lindsay, who asked if we would like to hear the full story.

We would.

‘This is a certificate made to look like tree rings,’ Jackie had explained. ‘In the centre it’s 2014 while the outer ring is 2114. That’s the year that a thousand Norway spruce trees will be harvested, which the artist has planted in a forest just north of Oslo.’

The wood from those trees will make the paper for a print-run of a newly published book. Each owner of one of the certificates will then be entitled to a copy of that book.

‘And what’s inside the book?’ my son asks.

‘Nobody knows,’ Jackie smiles. ‘Only the authors. Each year, beginning in 2014 with Margaret Atwood, an internationally celebrated writer is being invited to contribute a written piece.’

That story or poem is then locked away in the Silent Room of Oslo’s public library which, with its crafted layers of wood panelling and a glass drawer for each manuscript, etched with its author’s name, is in itself an artistic creation.

Other contributors so far to the slowly-growing book include David Mitchell, Elif Shafak, Han Kang and Tsitsi Dangarembga, Jackie tells us. ‘No one has read any of their stories, except the author. Not even Katie Paterson. And until 2114, no one will.

‘It’s a lovely idea isn’t it?’ She says, looking around our well-worn, fascinated faces, and smiling again.

‘But I don’t think any of us will get to read the stories.’

Future library