The definition of fire

I have always liked fire. Many people do, but their pleasure and mine are different. Think of the things you like about fire: comfort in the grate on a cold day; late night contemplation after too much good wine; the raging excitement of a bonfire. Yes, I enjoy all these, but I take a particular pleasure in tamed flame, the slow burn of a night-light or an oil lamp. Above all, I like fire that fits – a pilot light, cigarette lighter or camping stove are just right. It’s not just about control, although there is an element of that. It’s more about fitness for purpose. A fire’s place isn’t necessarily in a fireplace.

To a lesser degree, I have always liked cats as well, enough to have one as a constant companion throughout my long life. Unfortunately, the two don’t always mix, and that is the start of my story.

In my teenage years, in a life blighted by public examinations, I retreated to my bedroom with school homework. I always had a night-light burning, not for vision but for comfort. More often than not, a cat would wind around my legs and purr for attention while I desperately tried to learn all my possible Latin translations by heart. The beauty of a set text is that you can learn it by rote without having to develop any understanding of the language at all – memory was likely to be enough to get me through.

I was a sensible, pragmatic lad, and my parents had no qualms about letting me revise with fire. My older brothers had revised to the radio, much more distracting. Anyway, one of the mock questions for a biology test struck a chord. “With particular reference to fire, viruses, chicken eggs and changing high-street fashions, discuss the definition of life.”

That was the only biology question that I ever scored an F for failure. I argued that flames must be alive because how else could we talk of taming them. This academic blip was soon forgotten, and I passed my exams comfortably, even my Latin.

Years later, I found myself marking exam papers in quiet moments between other freelance work, and came across the same question: “With particular reference to fire, viruses, chicken eggs and changing high-street fashions, discuss the definition of life.” With a jolt of recognition, I still believed that flames were alive. I still worked with an oil lamp burning next to my low-energy electric light, but hadn’t seen fit to question my beliefs in years.

I also knew better than to rock the boat. Not one of the candidates took my point of view. However paltry, misguided, mis-spelt or rushed their answers were, no one else recognised the obvious truth of living fire. I contemplated my oil lamp, convinced of an alternative wisdom.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting up in a hospital bed and coughing violently, blackened drool sticking to my lips and throat. This was a good thing. Apparently, Sequin, my current cat, had knocked the lamp over and caused the fire. While I slept an overpowering sleep, my neighbour had alerted the fire brigade and one way or another I had been dragged outside into a waiting ambulance and carted off. Sequin had found her own way out.

At one level, I knew the fire was my fault. I had kept a flame harnessed for nearly fifty years, but it was bound to escape. I couldn’t help thinking that it was a judgement from the fire, for abandoning my faith in the face of academic conformity. Soon enough, that judgement was confirmed.

After a few flame-free and uneventful days in hospital, I was released and allowed home. The fire, it seems, wasn’t extensive. I had been waylaid by toxic smoke from smouldering furniture before it really caught hold, and the fire service had managed to keep the main damage to only three rooms. Of course, the whole house was blackened, soaked from the hoses and smelling of a devil’s cocktail of exhaust products, but I was insured and knew I could rebuild.

The only embarrassing loss was the exam papers. The tidy pile on the table had caught first and floated across to the sofa and carpet. The firefighters said it was a miracle that there wasn’t more damage. I wasn’t sure then about miracle. I suspected influence.

The experience had left me exhausted, literally, and the shock of seeing the combustible nature of my possessions brought to the fore, like whey squeezed from soft cheese didn’t help. I sat down and stared glassily at the mess, and that’s when the message came to me. Was it written in the ashes or in the twisted circuits of my mind? Was it real and open to anyone else who could see, or simply post-traumatic delusion? I don’t know, but I have never deserted my oil lamps since. I was right. Fire is alive. It is now, to me, no longer a matter of faith, but knowledge. At the risk of turning into an Ancient Mariner, this is what fire told me.

A red letter to a human, from a fire
If you, human, really existed in any sentient form, you would probably want to call me sprite or sylph. You would be wrong. I am not some spirit living in the flame, but fire itself. Conflagration. Inferno. Incandescence. Flare. Phlogiston. Perhaps you should call me Blaze. My own name is beyond your skills to pronounce, and besides, you would want me to alight on just one name. I am sure you would argue that such discrimination is part of the definition of naming in your language. Don’t expect your logic to govern my world. Words work for the corporeal, but you need a different grammar for a burning community, a plural life form.

But if you just listen, even with your limited ears, to the language of the fire, you will detect pops, squeaks, hisses, crackles and assorted flickers that transcend the boundaries of sight, sound and touch. These are all names and conversations between ourselves, the firefolk, the sprites, the sylphs, the flames. You hear from us in every conflagration, but you never really listen. We do.

I am a philosopher firebrand, living mainly in the school science laboratory. I am content to manifest myself from Bunsen burners every few days, but that’s not my only outlet. We glowing brethren pop up in plenty of places. That’s how we keep our sentience going in the face of short-term extinction. What you call a flame, isn’t a viable life form any more than a single honey bee can claim to be a species. Is it easy for you to think of fire as having a hiveless hive mentality?

Perhaps you could think of us as a fungus, with silvery threads invisible to your eye, but bursting forth in flame. Snuff a flame, pick a mushroom or an apple – it won’t make much difference to the life form. So long as somewhere I have an outlet, a flame, then I survive. And with a fire-site like mine, I will always find an outlet. I don’t worry about extinction, let alone extinguishers – they are such a cute notion!

One pilot light is enough, the glow of a cigarette provides minutes of security, and a glowing ember is home for hours. Have you ever listened to an ember? Try it. Warm your ear. Hear anything? No? I said your ears were feeble. My conscience lives within these communities of flame.

Bigger flames don’t mean a bigger consciousness or bigger personality. We don’t care whether we are the cool yellow of coal, the bright blue of North Sea gas or the imperial white of a magnesium firework because we all have the same potential for uproar. What differentiates me from my neighbour is simply territory. We overlap, mingle and mate, but it would be easiest for you to think of us as staking a claim on a particular fire-site.

Where conversation, argument and trade are required, our voices rise; we consume more; in your terms, we spread. Make no mistake. That is our choice, not yours.

That consumption is of interest. You think that fanning the flames encourages us to feed, but it’s more like reading. Different combustible materials contain different amounts of information, different stories, and that’s what we consume – the inflammatory in the inflammable.

Last year, in a local incinerator – we love the steadiness of incinerators – I was consuming old exam papers. With so many hands and so many inks, I finally started to understand one of the questions and answers. It spoke to me. “With particular reference to fire, viruses, chicken eggs and changing high-street fashions, discuss the definition of life.” It has spoken to you as well, hence this missive.

By gently licking some papers and fiercely combusting others I got the impression not only that you think that flames are not alive, but that you also think that cats, dogs and humans are! Can you imagine our shock? The crackling increased that night, I can tell you.

Apparently, your kind believes that single non-combustible entities like moving people are actually alive, despite displaying only a few characteristics of life. Yes, you move about and feed, but do you read? I haven’t seen any evidence that you caress the printed word in the way we do. Do you reproduce? Barely, I would suggest, and certainly without the great ebbs and flows of population that characterise true life forms. You move, it is true. But so does the wind, and being elemental isn’t the same as being alive. Force is one thing; life force another.

What people call villages or towns are nearer to true life. Individual elements within a village, people if you like, come and go, more like a real fire, but some don’t produce smoke and yet still seem to flourish. You can’t have it both ways. There’s no life without smoke.

And where did you come from? What is your point of origin? We have heard all sorts of primitive ideas from you over the years, from the supernatural to the profane. You can trace yourself back through the generations, but that’s no more than tree-rings to us. And don’t try telling me that a tree is anything more than a direct physical response to the environment! But where does this tracing lead if not back to yet another human. There is no spontaneous combustion event that brings you to life, no big or little bang. You are just a continuum, a long-term dribble of organic molecules, dating back to a supposed start point that does nothing more than end in a puddle of speculation. You may say that there is a modern consensus around evolution, but not everywhere. The origin of life isn’t a democratic business. It’s fact. Without that factual zap, that bolt of surety, you can’t claim to be alive.

We, the glowing race, know we are alive because we see the moment of our generation – lightning. Its crack brings the flame and spreads into a new territory, a new body if you insist. From there, the blazers live or die, compete or cooperate, and take their chances among the hotspots of the world.

OK. I have been patient. Your individual interest in confined fire – your tame flames - has given me a refuge through the damp times. That’s why I chose to bless you with the truth about life. I feel a slight kinship for you. You radiate the comfort of a favourite chimney. I don’t go for dramatic finales, flourishing finishes. My individual style is simply to peter out and cool off. Just don’t let me hear any human say that fire isn’t alive again. Be careful. We aren’t all nice you know. Some of us are incandescent.

When I refocused my eyes on the ashy mess that used to be my living room, I realised that no one else would be likely to discern the message. I photographed the scene for memory’s sake and booked into this hotel for a while.

If I am not struck off the list for burning papers, I will continue to mark exams. If the question of defining life comes up again, I will still take the conventional route. It’s not the kids’ fault that feats of memory and formatting knowledge are valued more highly than original thought and an open outlook. Some of them may even have their suspicions that fire is alive, that viruses are mere chemical assemblages or that fashions represent a mimetic life form in the making, but the smart ones won’t own up in a public examination.

Perhaps inside most people there is a secret knowledge that we daren’t let slip. I’d ask yours, but you’d be a brave and foolhardy soul to admit it after such a brief acquaintance.