Living Art

Got back from rehearsal early enough to treat myself to the first episode of Planet Earth, the first of the two sets of Attenborough DVDs the missus cunningly provided for me as my birthday present. I'm probably the only fan of nature documentaries in the world who's not seen the series already, so I'll spare readers a review. Except to say that if you wrote 'stunning', 'jaw-dropping' and 'stunningly jaw-dropping' in various combinations for a few paragraphs you'd probably get somewhere close to approximating the viewing experience.

But a sort of novel thought did come to me as I picked up my jaw from the floor and wiped a tear or two away. (The lost elephant, separated from the herd as a result of the dust storm in the Kalahari, tracing its mother's tracks in the wrong direction still haunts.) The thought was this: given the stunning jaw-dropping images, stunningly edited, with jaw-dropping music and commentary - well not really, just perfectly blended - then clearly what we are dealing with here is not Nature but Art. So why isn't it in the galleries and art festivals?

Do our categories regarding what is and isn't Art matter when faced with this kind of perfection? The temptation to just keep slinging it on and watching over and over again is almost overwhelming. But since there're a lot more episodes to go and delights in store I'll resist. For now.