A Long Time Ago... #1
Hello there.
Welcome to the first of these posts exploring art, fiction and history. Every other Sunday I'll be sharing some insights into my two major passions - Star Wars and history, or specifically, ancient art.
Art as a means of representation, observation and meaning, has survived tens of thousands of years, expressed now in a mesmerising multitude of ways. I'm fascinated by its origins, and a particular subgenre of art known as the Star Wars franchise.
Today, April 7th, seems like the perfect day to start this. My English Heritage uniform arrived yesterday. (See my March Roundup for details of my volunteering at North Leigh Roman Villa this summer.) And two days before that a brilliant-looking new Star Wars show was announced, a treat for lore-loving timeline-treasuring fans like myself as it will dive into the gaps in certain characters' journeys. Tales of the Empire will be out on May 4th! I can't wait to see Barriss Offee again since her last appearance in The Clone Wars, and see Morgan Elsbeth go from Nightsister survivor to Imperial Magistrate.
Today is an even better day to start this new project, though, as a year ago today I was at Star Wars Celebration at the ExCel, a day that fuelled my passion for this franchise and its community, and really impacted me as a writer. As both a fan and creative I felt a part of something, perhaps like the ancient artists that ceremoniously decorated caves together.
I wrote about the experience (of attending the fantastic Lucasfilm showcase and learning of all the new projects, of meeting the lovely Star Wars authors and more) quite a lot in my 2023 Roundup but I felt like sharing a few photos today of perhaps the best moments amongst so many great ones - it was like being a kid in a candy- or rather, Star Wars toy - shop.
I'll also share again a link to my first ever newsletter post, when I started this journey on Substack the day after my 21st birthday, titled Get to Know Me through My Shelves.
I wrote then:
The rows run along into other units, so you can tell I’m a decent SW fan, and I take a certain joy in arranging the books (and comics in the folders above), in chronological order. I suppose it's the same part of my brain that over-complicated my own fictional universes with overlapping timelines.
I was a fan of Star Wars toys, and even the Clone Wars magazine, before I’d even watched the films properly, but in an exponential way I now own most canon SW stories…
And that brings us to why we're here. For the first however many of these, I'm going to take you through my Star Wars bookshelves, focussing on the canon Skywalker Saga stories. Hopefully my timeline order and 'insights' will be educational to people wanting to get into Star Wars books, or those that just want to know more about this tapestry-universe. (For any true collectors reading this, I must admit there are books missing!)
Then I'm going to cover ancient art sites that I've learnt a lot about, those that have inspired short stories from me over the last year (and some still to be written) ranging geographically and temporally. Okay...
In a Galaxy Far, Far Away...
These first books are the earliest in the timeline, taking place before and after Episode I: The Phantom Menace, covering about twenty years up to just before Episode II: Attack of the Clones.
Padawan, by Kiersten White, is a YA book published by Disney-Lucasfilm Press - you can tell their books through the lightsaber logo, compared to Del Rey's older paperback logo or Penguin's Century hardcover imprint. We learn a lot about Obi-Wan's days as a youngling and his struggles as Qui-Gon's Padawan, as well as a fun solo mission. We also see the beginning of Obi's friendship with the four-armed diner-owner Dexter Jettster seen in Attack of the Clones.
Master and Apprentice, by Claudia Gray (I got it signed by her a year ago!), continues with the theme of Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon as, well, the title gives it away. All Star Wars books are required reading, but this is one of them that adds so much depth not just to the characters but the questions of the saga as a whole, namely the prophecy of the Chosen One and Qui-Gon's knowledge and fascination with it.
The Living Force, what sounds like will be a Star Wars book to be remembered, a novel with POVs of all Jedi Council members, will go here. (I'll have to make space!) I've got one of 500 Inkstone Books editions signed by John Jackson Miller coming soon in the post!
Queen's Peril and Queen's Shadow are the first two in a fantastic trilogy focussing on Padme Amidala and her handmaidens. E. K. Johnston expertly develops the cast of young women, partially adapting The Phantom Menace in Peril and then showcasing Padme's journey from Queen to senator between films, with so many insights into many facets of Naboo life.
I must admit I haven't yet read Cavan Scott's first Choose Your Destiny book, An Obi-Wan & Anakin Adventure. But, knowing the author (subscribe to his Cavletter!), and as a childhood fan of such multiple choice/ending books, it'll be good. And this is where it goes in the timeline, with this master and apprentice duo close to their Attack of the Clones selves.
Dooku: Jedi Lost is another book that I'd say adds so much depth to the saga as a whole (which is why I chose it as the one book I got signed by Cavan Scott a year ago!). Count Dooku is a great character in the films and animated shows, but this audiobook/script really makes him such a vivid character in the whole franchise, a tragedy on par with Anakin's journey. This book also explores the master and apprentice between Dooku and his Sith apprentice/assassin Asajj Ventress - in fact, it's through her narration and investigation that we learn all there is to know about Dooku's past.
Ventress was first introduced in Clone Wars animation, but this marks her first appearance in the Star Wars timeline, and this story is a great introduction to the character who features in many more written works to come. (And she's recently returned in animation after an eleven year break on The Bad Batch!) Since it's such a readable script, you can, like me, read this in three sessions!
In Maros-Pangkep, Sulawesi, Indonesia...
Over forty-five thousand years ago, ochre was pulverised into a powder, mixed with liquids, imbued with the imagination-dream-vision-connection of humanity, and painted as a purplish red onto limestone walls in the back of a cave in a valley’s cliffside. The paint depicted a forest pig, a wild Sulawesi warty pig, aptly named because of the pairs of warts on its long snout, triangular in profile, on the border between cute and fierce.
The artwork, roughly life-sized, captured the animal in two-dimensional life, with an enlarged stomach and a furry body, this hide portrayed by long lines of negative space. It has four short legs and a thin strand of a tail, details down to its warts, small ears, eye, nose, mouth and scruffy mane on its head.
That's what I wrote last year as the start of a short story, more of a vignette piece, about the site. The story will feature in some form as the first interlude in what will be my third full-length novel, but that's a way off, so I felt comfortable sharing it here, as it describes the art pretty well...
So, this panel is the the oldest known piece of art representing an animal, over 45,000-years old. Considering it was painted certainly a long time ago, the artwork is wonderfully detailed, full of life, and intact. Other depictions of pigs across from this one in Leang Tedongnge cave sadly didn't survive the ages. (You can see their remains on the right.)
You may also notice something beside the intact painted pig - negative handprints. Some more imaginative theories say that the handprints are a way of connecting with some force within the stone, within the Earth. Perhaps they are just artists’ signatures of sorts.
But what fascinates me is how this same technique, this basic human desire to leave the outline of their hand, is seen across the world. Ancient people across continents and tens of thousands of years sprayed paint around their hands as they touched cave walls. These negative handprints at Sulawesi aren't the oldest found; there're stencils like those in the photo above over 60,000 years old.
Outside the mouth of the cave pictured above is a sprawling greenery-frosted karst landscape of cliffs and valleys. I can only distantly hope that I'll one day be able to visit this site, perhaps not the oldest, but the oldest known figurative art as we know it. The artists put a lot of detail into the lines of the pig's fur. I wonder what they were thinking as they realised their image.
The warty pigs are still around too, like us. They were obviously significant if our ancestors committed their ancestors' story to paint.
That brings us to an end of this exploration of a long time ago. I hope you enjoyed, and maybe learnt something along the way - that the two facets of this post balanced each other out. Any feedback would be much appreciated.
Thank you very much for reading,
Harvey