NOWNESS

DEFINE BEAUTY: MY SCARS

Here's a film I made with the lovely Matthew Donaldson for Nowness (best viewed large/full screen):

2. Mad River Glen

I wrote the text to accompany this film by travel artists Jungles in Paris (see below and also on Nowness). 

The virtues of alpine solitude

Sitting is one of life’s great imperatives. But with the luxury of choice comes the question of where to sit – and how. The best seats aren’t always the most comfortable. Often they are simply the hardest-won. And of all the chairs we sit in, few have the purity of this ski lift. Cables incongruous among the snow and ice, it sends you scooting up, up into the clouds, over fir tree and piste, novice and telemarker. It offers the perfect punctuation to alpine adventure.    

Here, you won’t find the noxious raclette fumes or the incessant sweaty thud of music that seems to accompany the modern après ski, nor the chatter and clatter of the ski schools as they alternately snowplough and slalom down the slopes with detestable insouciance. Instead, you ride high above it all in an inescapable moment of quiet. A sudden change of pitch during which you are forced to stop moving and simply detach from the landscape, swaying gently in your seat as you quite literally watch the world go by.     

Human evil, says Pascal, comes from our inability to sit still. But here there’s nowhere to go except up. Surrounded by all this chilly beauty you don’t have to sit and think, racing to some conclusion about work or what to do or how to feel. Sometimes it’s enough to just sit, keep warm and enjoy the view.–Jack Dyson

Jack Dyson is a writer and creative director based in London.