In an extract from his recently published book ‘Throwing Feathers in the Wind’, Richard Gorodecky extols the transformative, transportive virtues of casting a line.
Illustration by Luey Graves
In 1952, the experimental composer John Cage composed 4’33” (pronounced ‘four minutes and thirty-three seconds’). It was performed for the first time on the 29th of August 1952 at the Maverick Concert Hall of Woodstock, New York, by pianist David Tudor. The audience watched as Tudor sat at the piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds without playing a single note. Not even a little one. The composition comprised of three movements, each marked by the opening and the closing of the piano lid. It didn’t go down particularly well with the audience. Even those that stayed until the end seemed to do so reluctantly. To this, Cage said, “They missed the point. There is no such thing as silence. What they thought of as silence, because they didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began pattering on the roof, and during the third, the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out.” Cage believed it was the most important piece he’d ever composed. It’s certainly the bravest in what would be described as a seriously avant-garde career. So what, you may ask, has that got to do with fishing?
It’s a popular misconception by those who don’t fish that fishing is boring. That time spent in and around water is somehow wasted. An act of waiting for things that, on the grand scale of things, are simply not worth waiting for. But I think, like Cage’s audience, they might be missing the point. So busy focusing on what fishing isn’t, they miss the opportunity to experience what fishing is. And where some find poetry, they find a blank page.
As I’ve dedicated an arguably absurd amount of time, energy and thought to fishing, I feel like I need to defend, if not fishing, then the life I’ve lived. After all, some of the biggest decisions of my life have been shaped by the ebb and flow of water and its inhabitants. The trouble is it’s hard to make sense of it. The only real answers to ‘Why fish?’ are found in the actual act of fishing. Not fishing once or twice, but fishing for years. Fishing past the desire to catch fish and the disappointment of not catching. Past the bragging rights, past the name-droppable rivers, past the tackle junkies’ cold turkey and out the other side. Past all of the distractions of all that it isn’t. The reason Cage could hear into the silence was from years spent on the edge of music and composition. The reason an angler understands why they fish is from years on the edge of a river, lake or sea.
Surprisingly and counterintuitively, fishing is not about catching fish. In fact, catching fish can be a major distraction in terms of understanding why you’re fishing at all. But it’s also not about not catching fish. A complete lack of success and obsessing about all you’re doing wrong doesn’t teach us much either. I think the sweet spot for achieving piscatorial enlightenment is to strive for average. Or the Middle Way, as it is known in Buddhism, which roughly translates to being content occasionally catching a fish and occasionally not catching a fish. I think Buddha’s teachings are a bit more comprehensive, but I’m sure you get the general gist. When you are no longer taxed with the illusionary definitions of success and failure, you transcend the petty to grapple with the more fundamental questions such as ‘Are my waders leaking?’ and ‘In which of the 30 pockets on my fly-fishing vest did I put the car keys?’
I made a short film a few years ago called The River Man about the Irish fishing guide Connie Corcoran. When we filmed it, the River Blackwater was in flood. The first morning of filming, Connie didn’t seem his usual self. For one of the most relaxed people I’ve ever met, I’d say he seemed a bit tense. I thought perhaps the camera was making him nervous, so we stopped filming and had a restorative cup of tea. In Ireland, tea and the occasional confession is viewed as a cure for all that may trouble you. If you cannot be unburdened by a cup of Barry’s or a couple of Hail Mary’s, you’re probably a lost cause. Connie explained his worries about catching a fish in these conditions. In this high, coloured water, it would be almost impossible. I told Connie that even if he caught a fish, I wouldn’t put it in the film. His eyebrows drew closer. I explained that the drama of catching the fish would become the centre of a film that I hoped would be about something much more. “Such as?” Connie asked. “Fishing,” I said. Connie paused and then smiled a huge smile. He, of course, understood more than most people ever could.
Fishing is often thought of as an escape. ‘Getting away from it all.’ But I think it’s the opposite. It’s an opportunity for ‘getting back to it all’. A dose of natural reality that gives all the concrete and steel and bottled water from Fiji a much-needed perspective. The way we live now, in the history of humanity, is a very recent reality. The separation from nature is unnatural. It is the very definition of ‘un natural’. And this disconnect might explain our inclination to, or at least ignorance of, its destruction. If you spend time in nature and create a relationship with it, you value it.
I’m not suggesting fishing turns you into Greta Thunberg, but you understand what is being lost and what is worth fighting for. Of course, this isn’t unique to fishing. Any activity that makes this connection will have the same effect and it’s what the walkers, climbers, canoeists, swimmers, spotters, photographers, surfers and the rest all have in common. It would do us all good to recognise this in each other and perhaps join forces to fight the good fights. Surprisingly, for something that is so often a solitary pastime, fishing is so much about connection. Not just a common ground on which strangers meet, but connecting with place, landscape, nature, season, the moment and yourself. Fishing transforms you from being a visitor of a place to a participant in a place. The role shifts you from being ‘in nature’ towards being ‘of nature’.
Fishing can restore our sense of adventure. The desire to find submerged treasure takes us through the woods, over the hills, deep into the valleys, looking for forgotten places. Pouring over maps and peering over bridges invokes a sense of wonder, and wonder is what keeps the inner child in shorts and scabby knees. If you set your compass towards wild fish, you’ll often find yourself in the extraordinary. Fish have excellent taste in real estate; intolerant of pollution and attention, they tend to set up homes in the most pristine, untouched and beautiful places. Even the muddiest little carp pool will have the sky sitting on its surface, waiting for an invitation to dance from a passing breeze.
Fishing is a powerful exercise in optimism. The next cast is always going to be the one that catches. The float will dip, the fly taken, the line tugged. The rain will pass. The feeling in your cold hands will return. There are fish in this seemingly barren lake. Just one more cast. Just one more ‘one more cast’. Yes, you could switch the word ‘optimistic’ for ‘delusional’ and it’d still be accurate, but either way, we’re believers. Optimism is the angler’s superpower and secret weapon. The more you fish, the stronger your optimism muscles become. The more optimistic you become, the less inclined you are to pessimism. I don’t want to be negative, but pessimism hasn’t got much going for it.
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Published by Medlar Press, ‘Throwing Feathers in the Wind’ is out now and available here (£20).