ARCHIVES

The I.G.K. Fifth Symposium Hamburg 1999
Don McLean's Diary
Wallace in Wunderland: Part IV

---

Hamburg - Day 3 - Sunday, November 28th, 1999

It was already well into "day three" of the convention by the time I finished my daily journal and turned in for the night. Although I had a rough idea of what to expect on that last day of our gathering, my major concern remained with the kind of sleep (or lack thereof) I had been experiencing and the effects that might have on my overall stamina.

I was obviously over stimulated - and my dreams seemed to follow suit. There were vivid and not so vivid dreams, often filled with an unusual amount of intense conversation and voices. Among these, a cryptic message to look for "something" in the symbol of "The Joker" had me up and on my feet just seconds before my alarm clock began its annoying buzzer sound. The interruption was enough to derail my focus and banish the exact wording of this message into whatever margin is reserved for half-forgotten dreams. Still, I managed to hold onto the gist of what had struck me as being portentous at the time - the fleeting ghost of a fleeting premonition.

Despite having only four unsteady hours of rest, I felt remarkably good that morning - confident that I would make it through the remaining agenda and my upcoming presentation without sacrificing clarity or focus. I had already guessed what might come about following the last round of meetings - and sensed that I had just enough gumption to get me through before I would "hit the wall" and suffer some inevitable collapse.

After the ritual toying with the idea of wearing the suit and tie I had brought with me, once again I rejected them. Clad in the now customary sweater, jeans and white running shoes, I meandered down to the breakfast hall. It was Sunday and although I might have been a bit early, to my surprise no IGK members seemed to be present.

I chose my table and proceed to eat a solitary breakfast. In due course however, I was joined by the Dutch chess expert Herr F.R. van der Vliet of the Hague, who posed an interesting and unexpected survey of questions regarding my interest in music in general and the "music of chess" in particular. Whereas my classical background is quite limited - subordinate to a much richer appreciation for contemporary styles - this did not seem to matter in the slightest. Like many Europeans, Mr. van der Vliet remained quite enthusiastic about the Buddy Hollys and the Big Boppers of 50's era rock, which I found both amusing and disarming. I had not really expected these names to be spoken in the same breath as Mozart or J.S. Bach, even though I had always pictured these distinguished classical composers as being the superstars of their day. All the more intriguing were the vague and uncertain impressions of what I felt had to be the most fragile of connections between the chess world and the music world. I had never put them together very effectively even though, from the very beginning, I harboured the suspicion that Terpsy's interest was well justified. Now an expert was confronting me with the possibility that some clues did exist that would help tie the two together.

Even as I write this recap, I await whatever information Mr. van der Vliet will forward. I do hope he has not forgotten me. His sources and facts may prove quite helpful in opening up new avenues for Goddesschess aspirants and researchers. Certainly the Goddess "knows" music just as she "knows" chess. Whether secular or non-secular, the creative origins of either magnum opus seem born of similar processes. Whether we see chess as the a symphony of complex movements or the short ditty that most of my games usually turn out to be, at root of all seems to be an endless fountain of resources and inspiration - a well of permutation and recombination that truly never runs dry. Though chess history may sometimes be a very arid affair, as Dr. Calvo has suggested, the sixty-fifth square is a good place to look for the "water of life". We shall point our compass in that direction a little later on.

If there was anyone seated in the room who thought for a minute that the game of chess was less art than science, the subsequent lectures of the day did much to dispel such notions. In his passionate and at times fascinating lecture on the origins of the game, Herr Yuri Averbach spoke authoritatively on the creative impetus that helped carry the game from its earliest beginnings on through its more modern incarnations. His suggestion that the artistic processes that helped forge the current version of International Chess were not always operant and that stagnation in these efforts often created the illusion of the game as being trite and mechanical. Thus, in his speech it was easy to see that Mr. Averbach made a clear distinction between the vital re-creative aspects of the game's development and the less vital aspect of problem analysis, the latter of which seemingly ties in with a kind of "bureaucracy" of chess.

In effect, as I have discovered in my as yet unfinished reading of Ray Reid's Chessmayne web site, chess is not reductable to mere algorithms and mathematical tables. Heuristic analogies or creative thought process figure into the game as much if not more than the mathematical conventions - and so, despite the apparent formality, these conventions call upon fluid interpretive powers for their just appointment to the game of the day, the hour and the minute - the minutiae of difficult situations. Just as most gifted musicians maintain a certain amount of flexibility in their "interpretation" of the classics, so the chess board is an open invitation to explore and recreate whole new worlds of thought, emotion and experience. If at some time in the future, our current game fails to carry the day, we can be sure that it will eventually become the object of some creative scrutiny. The "Chess Variants" web page already bears ample evidence of this fact and shows that an astounding number of variations and modifications have already entered the lists, thereby magnifying the scope of creative processes which infuse the original game with added vigour and insight.

Nowhere were the "creative" and "remunerative" possibilities more in evidence than in Ken Whyld's address on the aspect of "Medieval Wager Compositions" which followed Mr. Averbach's presentation. A colourful speaker with a colourful topic, Mr. Whyld charmed the IGK with his demonstration of a series chess problems which would not have looked too out of place in a Las Vegas Casino. Throughout history, men have devoted disproportionately high amounts of time to the task of winning something at the expense of those less clever, less skilled, or less well-informed. In fact, the history of chess is strewn with examples of how individual freedoms, entire fortunes and noble reputations have been won or squandered over variously advised gambits. Mr. Whyld's demonstration repeatedly showed that the chess croupier or mountebank could stake out deceptive positions leading to the entrapment of innocent gamblers. Chess rakes and chess stakes were perhaps a peculiar phenomena - a spin-off which gave rise to social problems and ethical conundrums during the Middle Ages. While perverse turns of fate could lead to any number of bad ends for the feckless, it was perhaps with regard to such outcomes that Papal and Royal edicts banning chess from some states and estates pepper the general history of the game during that time.

Before I knew it, the time had come for me to deliver an edict of my own - an open challenge to those assembled. Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Although I had three pages of notes which I had appended into my Goddesschess info package, I knew from what Herr Meissenberg had informed me earlier that morning, that my address would have to be short and to the point. Naturally, the notes went "out the window" in what I presume must have been among the shortest addresses ever given at a Koenigstein summit.

Sometimes less is more... and in what must have been a delivery which spanned no more than five minutes, I did manage to convey my appreciation on behalf of Goddesschess for the invitation to speak, however briefly, on the topic of Chess History and the Internet. With a copy of the Goddesschess brochure in hand, I nervously extemporized on the merits of cooperative research, the opportunity that various Internet message boards and dedicated websites could provide to researchers and readers alike, as well as initiatives already underway at Goddesschess to help create a weave of cross indexed posts. Additionally, I also felt the need to outline some of the possible pitfalls of copyright which new forms of encryption might someday address, while hopefully making it clear to most that theft or plagiarism could occur just as easily off the printed page as the electronic one. Ultimately, my appeal was made on behalf of the sharing of an adventure and the development of a particular form of consciousness through synergistic efforts, not only of facts - but of feelings, ideas, values and attitudes - all the intangible but no less real substances for which Goddesses of many nations, culture and races are famous.

"Honit soit qui mal y pense."

While men of war may contend that what they perceive requires contending and while the material aspect of life, death, the universe and everything has its sway in the minds of many beholders, behind the veil of what we perceive to be the unvarnished "reality", there lurks a triune figure which, throughout the centuries, rag tag mobs of free thinkers have perpetually beheld to be more inviolable and consistent than truth itself. We make neither defense, nor excuse, nor apology for whatever it is that inspires progress among humankind. It requires none and for asks none. Our only service is in the service of the kind of Truth which manifests independently of what we would like our objective truths to be, or what might fit our intellectual convenience.

"Quid est veritas?"

While wars may rage and power plays run rampant across the latitudes and longitudes of our spinning globe, while noble histories lie fragmented and fallen under the heap of rubble and the clash of politically expedient norms and sanctions, some things do not change. Man and womankind have ever had their hearts and deepest inner longings bear witness to a process that lies both within and without and which, in all ways, permeates the entire fabric of our existence, forming an escapable weave - a net, a pattern of recombining thought, word and deed. In sum, these simply mirror the eternal pageant - the recreative struggle to give birth to greater refinements and more astute appreciation for those things which can be better viewed as a "process" rather than an end in themselves.

"Look upon my works oh ye mighty and despair!"

Many see the triune Goddess as the symbolic and eternal initiator and receptor of all earthly forms and while some may see only emptiness and subjective mythologizing, we know what the Buddha had to say about form and emptiness. Beyond, beyond - out of sight and out of mind, on that sixty-fifth square, the board of life avails an opportunity and an eternal secret. From the grave or beyond it, as anyone who has ever fought, won or lost an earnest battle of any kind must attest, we do live to fight again. That some may view such attitudes as dangerous heresy and an affront to good science, is the pitch which allows others to distinguish between the limits of reason and unlimitedness of more intuitive calculations. As theoretical physicist are coming to understand, while we live in a world of number, the hearts which inform the very dipolar substance of our being bring about a logos which can be perceived less by mathematics than by feeling and experiencing a divine unity that, in and of itself, knows no gender, no limits, nor any inwardly or outwardly contentious moments.

Let the skeptics come. Let them rub against the rough walls of our Lady of Towers. Let them attempt, if they will, to undermine the battlements and drain the moat. It is hopeless to contend. Forever we become the thing that we oppose, even as the skeptic will ever be snared in his or her own skepticism, led by the nose, often blindly and unwittingly into the labyrinth of soul and spirit - the catacomb of fear and hope and love wherein Our Lady presides tenderly over her Church of Chess, the game of the Goddess and the inheritance of all those curious children who flock to her miracle.

Copyright Donald A. McLean, 1999

---