Appreciation

[rasdan]

Hi all,
Given this some quick thought and here it is. These are normal stuff, all I had done is put it in writing and I may not be able to defend this much. I had a lot of stuff going on in my mind and I just write up whatever goes through at the moment with no critical analysis. Sorry if i got it all wrong or if i go out of topic.

From what I see, 3 general factors that govern lives of most of us are God, Glory and Gold (first figure). I think there’s a clear relationship between gold and glory. The relationship between God and the other two is subjective to our perception and sensitive and I’m not going to touch that. If we agree that these are the main purpose of our life then, everything that we do would evolve around these three factors. (Not all of the purposes are my own purposes in life/collecting, i am just trying to generalise what is the common objectives and I am not suggesting these as your goals in life/collecting as well)

Now, we have an “extra” purpose in our lives which is keris collecting. The three normal purposes why people collect and/or study keris are investment, status symbol and historic values/cultural relationship. While collecting as a tool for our investment and status symbol is quite obvious, there’s also people who collect/keep keris for it’s historic values/cultural relationship. These kerises are kept by museums, inheritors and general keris enthusiasts.

The common governing factor in achieving the first two objectives for collecting (investment and status) is quality. While inheritors and museums commonly can’t be bothered by quality, general keris enthusiasts will most likely go for that as a human nature (be it tangible or not).
If we construct the three purposes for collecting in a set (as we did in the first figure), we can see that this “extra” purpose is not really an extra since there’s a strong relationship between the two initial purpose of life - gold and glory with investment and status. Indirectly, investment and status can also be indirectly linked to God/doing good which again won’t discuss here.

So, is there any link for people that collect keris for its history and cultural relationships with God/doing any good? I think it also got something to do with quality. Since most collectors would spend most of their time trying to understand this. – To get a better investment and portrayal of their status. Along the way we actually collect experience and knowledge. Not just about keris but about life in general.

Therefore, the key word here is understanding quality. We can’t collect keris with the single aim of, say status symbol alone. For example, when we collect keris as a status symbol it is like wearing “nice” clothes when going to the mall or to the office. Why can’t we be bothered to dress like that when going to bed? Coz no one’s looking. Who decides whether our clothes are cool or not? It’s the media. Quality can be secondary in this business. Women can wear stilettos and hurt their ankles and say that’s quality fashion wear. People can have their hair dyed purple and if the TV people say that it’s cool, they would probably think that they are on the right track. You can wear a plain sweater you got for Christmas to the office but if the media says it is out of date and you look like a geek you may end up throwing it away.

However on second thought, when we know quality and choose to keep a high quality keris it does not mean that we are after the status or investment. (Which makes Figure 2 inaccurate (?) any other suggestions?.. now i myself am confused ). Ok, nevermind the diagram. If we know to quantify quality, we can have a keris, keep it in a drawer and studies/wonders about its history and feel good about it without relying on weather other people say it’s good or not. In other words, we must know the real quality. Not just the stuff commonly understood by normal people. Again, to achieve that level we must undergo the quality identification/quantification process described above. It takes knowledge to quantify quality and if we really know quality we can’t be bothered what other people say about it.

So, what’s quality got to do with God/doing good? It lies in the knowledge gained in attaining the knowledge about it.

A big time keris collector and a long time dealer/collector in Malaysia died last year. For the big time collector, none of his children enjoys keris very much. They are very rich people and his children had chosen to leave the kerises in his private gallery. As for the other one dealer/collector, his collections were sold off by his son. No more glory, no more gold to enjoy. What is left is the good that they had done.

In conclusion, my current opinion is that although investment, status symbol and cultural/history purposes in keris collecting may lead to doing something good, quality understanding is the most important part in keris collecting since it would lead to the ultimate objective(?) in collecting which is probably to leave a trail of useful and critical knowledge that would be useful to one's nation or perhaps to mankind – true keris making skills, knowledge and quality publications that have good references and would stand to critical evaluation. Unfortunately, i think we will need more than 20 years of critical experience before we can even consider leaving our "trail of knowledge" or we may run the risk of spreading the wrong knowledge IMHO. This "trail of knowledge" would complete "Link x" in Figure 1. i.e I am suggesting that whatever purpose we have in life we must link it with God/doing good.

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes Rick, that's exactly where I'm going.

Trying to identify what goes on in our minds.

As I said, you suffer from the Conrad Syndrome. This quote is from Karain, isn't it?

I was born in 1941, in the middle of WWII, so in 1945 when it concluded, I would have been only four years old. My mother's cousin was an inmate of Changi prison camp during WWII, and at the conclusion of hostilities he chose not to return to Australia, but to go back into Malaya (as it was then) and live with a woman he had met before he became an inmate of Changi. Sometime after that, maybe one or two years, I really don't know how long, but I was still a little kid, he came back to Australia to visit his mother, before going back to Malaya again. I was present at the family meeting that celebrated his return, I heard the stories and they made a lasting impression.

During the time he was in Malaya he sent small gifts home to his mother. One of those gifts was a keris. This was the first keris that I handled, and I can still remember it, 60 odd years later.

A lot more experience and knowledge came after that, but my mother's cousin living in Malaya was the beginning, and the physical keris was originally the link to the imagined place from his stories, and the retold stories about him that I overheard from the adults around me.

[A. G. Maisey]

Rasdan, I doubt that I have ever read a better logical analysis of the motivation to collect.

If this is the result of your "quick thought " process, your "deep thought" process frightens me.

However, this is not really what interests me at the moment. I'm trying to go beyond the rational and logical to the emotional foundation.

Human beings can learn to be rational and logical, but the human nature is an emotional one that logic and rationality are grafted onto.

What I'm trying to do is identify that emotional level, the level which underlies the logical level.

What goes on in our minds to cause something else to happen?

I started this thread with reference to the work of Prof. Bloom, where he puts forward evidence to support the idea that we cannot appreciate art in a vacuum. The art is appreciated against a sub conscious background that has been constructed from our previous experience.

If this applies to art, and Prof. Bloom seems to have demonstrated that it does, then it probably applies to most other things within the human experience.

The appreciation of what we are concerned with here, that is, keris, is very close to, indeed overlaps, the appreciation of art.

What I am looking for are the emotional strands that underlie that appreciation.

[Rick]

I went for my first sail when I was 6 months .

Harrison Smith was my ancestor; we always had exotic pieces around the house .
http://www.pacsoa.org.au/places/Tahiti/tahitiB.html
He died before I was 1 .

I grew up on the Water .

I read The Pearl Lagoon .

Might as well blame NC Wyeth, Frank Schoonover. and others of the great Illustraters as well .

Stevenson; who can leave him out ?

Arthur Ransome was my first favorite author .
Peter Duck; now there's good kid's yarn .

Patrick O'Brian my last .
O'Brian was the frosting on the cake .

I believe all these experiences created the emotional strands for me .

I was set up !


Rick

[A. G. Maisey]

Thanks for the additions Rick.

That's exactly it. The formative influences that create a matrix in the sub conscious against which we measure things.When we get a hit, that triggers feelings, and these feelings motivate us.

How about 'The Coral Island', did that get a run? Kids stuff, yeah, but it made a mark in its day.

'Two Years Before the Mast'?

[Rick]

Ah Man, I was set up from birth, I'm afraid .
I think some of us lucky Westerners are .

For me the keris undoubtedly represents these feelings and emotions in a tangible form .

I just wish I had found the keris earlier in my life .

Those paragraphs from Conrad I quoted ?
They set me on fire .

Coral Island .
I'll look it up .

[drdavid]

I think I have a handle on what you are getting at now Alan.
As you know I am a keen collector of Japanese art and I have explored my emotional links to this but until you asked the question I had not really thought about my emotional links to the keris.
They seem to stem from my family which is not because of Javanese connections, I am fifth generation australian, with Irish and English on both sides. My family does not follow a pattern of occupations, we have tradesmen, professionals, farmers, public servants, priests, artists and a few eccentrics including my grandfather's brother and his son. Both sadly deceased, both fascinating gents.
Stan my great uncle owned a private museum at Kurnell south of Sydney. Kurnell is famous in Australia as the place where Captain Cook first set foot on mainland Australia. It was full of exotic things, jaws of great white sharks, old divers suits, steam cars, convict chains, settlers gear and also some old weaponary. And now that I think back I'm sure that was the first place I ever saw a keris. Stan told me some of his collection came from the East Indies, which was as exotic a place as a kid could think of in Australia in the early 1960's.
His son Roy was a dealer in second hand stuff, not antiques just second hand anything. His shop was in Sutherland which I know was not far from where you grew up. He accumulated personal collections of all sorts of things, I remember his shaving mug collection particularly. Roy gave me my first edged weapon, an old Martini Henry bayonet, and whenever something else turned up he would let me know. I collected knives and swords and bayonets for quite a long time but eventually they all got put away and forgotton about.........Until somewhere 40 years or more down the track keris turned up in my life again and it immediately became necessary to collect them. Those 2 relatives have a lot to answer for. I remember them fondly