Thanks much, gents. It's a pleasure bouncing ideas around like this. I wish we were all in the same room instead (preferably a bar, off an 18th hole someplace, with no obligations awaiting us the next morning). But, some early/random thoughts:
Bob:
I too have my reservations about Behr, Haultain, Updike, and Murphy. You're right: they want us to follow along to discover with them another and higher realm/meaning in the experience, a metaphysics of golf -- and sometimes that's not where I want to go, or at least not go with them. For lack of a better word, their exercises often seem sacrilegious (even just plain silly) -- the product of a certain leisured class. And yet, since I don't want to conclude that I will never change, never experience any differently, any deeper, with any more clarity or insight (or even simply Imagination), I find myself pulled back to these writers (and, as I suggested, to their antecedents like James and Huxley) to wonder and ponder and perhaps to learn (about myself if about nothing else). On your other point: yes, it seems clear/a fact that the good golf architects see more and differently than I do. I don't see golf holes/routings in the land, nor statues in the marble or music stands in a piece of wood. As you say so well: things invisible to me are quite obvious to them. (Tom D raised a point on the original thread that I didn't know how to discuss in the essay but which is fascinating, i.e. how he often sees golf holes not on the ground but on the topo map -- as if that process of seeing can see nature not only as physical fact but also as mathematical equation.) That mystery/art of seeing is what I was trying to explore -- and I think I knew that there was no clear answer, that there was a mystery involved. That's why I landed on the word Grace -- because the word itself is a mystery. What are the properties of Grace? How does it operate? How do we (can we) prepare ourselves to experience it? I think the word comes from the Greek word charis -- which I think has the double meaning of something lovely and something to be grateful for (i.e. as we would be grateful for an unexpected gift). In short, I like the idea of 'explaining' the ability to see in this special way as a lovely gift, one that comes to us from an unexpected place. That might not be the explanation or even a good explanation -- but it has the advantage of embodying a sense of the mysterious, and hopefully therefore of not killing the subject with the letter but enlivening it with the spirit.
Ian:
Thank you for the suggestion of Berger's book. I have heard of it before (maybe from you, in fact) and will look it up. (Thank you as well, post facto, for your post on masters and prodigies. My wife read the essay after I posted it, and that was one of her favourite parts.)
First off, that's a wonderful example of how a reader (or a golfer) finds/experiences something in the writing/golf course that the writer/architect hadn't intended (or at least intended consciously): I would never have drawn -- from the CS Lewis line you quote -- what you did there, i.e. the fact that the golfer's experience will have as much to do as what sort of golfer he/she is as it does with where he/she is standing. Yes, it certainly presents a dilemma for the architect (and writer)!! But I think you have already understood/addressed that, i.e. the way through that (in gca and in writing too I think) is not to dictate, not to proscribed -- to recognize, in short, that our work is a dialogue, not a monologue; that it's meaning and purpose is fulfilled in the very interaction with 'the other'. On your other point, I do think we need to experience grace ourselves -- but as I wrote to Bob, that is a high and mysterious thing (at least to me it is). Your final point reminded me - almost word for word -- of what a priest (a good priest, a good and brilliant man) once said to me: he said that he decided to enter the priesthood not because he was sure of God or of loving God, but because he was sure he wanted to spend his life in pursuing a knowledge and love of God.
Rich: you raise some very good and fundamental questions. First off, on Coore at Sand Hills, I took some artistic licence there: I know the legend too, but I was focusing on the writing and on the cadence of the words and that didn't fit it as well (in my opinion) with the legend as it did with "searching for a golf course, and then finding one". To your larger point: what you suggest may very well be, i.e. that Coore could have found a dozen courses there, and Michelangelo a hundred statues in a slab of marble, and that every piece of wood contains a musical stand. To that to things come to mind: 1) even if it's true, it doesn't explain away the mystery, the mystery in this case being that -- to use Bob's word -- most plodders couldn't and don't see even the one, let alone the hundred, and 2) that while you may be spot on about each having/weighing different concepts of aesthetics and utility, I wonder if Michelangelo seeing "The Pieta" or Coore's seeing the finished Sand Hills has not more to do with a deep seated Intention than with anything else -- i.e. Michelangelo saw The Pieta there (instead of the other 99 possibilities) because he wanted to see The Pieta, or, more accurately, he was intending to look for The Pieta all along. I also like very much the distinction you make between "unearthing an essence" and "expressing a point of view". My thoughts are all over the place on that, but if you won;t hold it against me I'll type out what I'm thinking right at the moment: i.e. good art/work, useful and worthy and beautiful -- that can and sometimes does come from a fine artists expressing a point of view; the truly great and meaningful work emerges only when an essence is un-earthed.
Thanks much, gents.
Peter