The water flowed over the nearby weir with a soft high pitched gurgling. Far downstream on the island, flocks of wild ducks were clamoring; at that distance their quaking and screaming also had a soft, monotonous sound and merged with the flowing of the water over the weir to produce that magical murmur of eternity into which one can sink, lulled and blanketed as by the sound of rain on a summer night or by softly falling snow. I stood and looked, stood and listened, and for the first time that day I had a brief taste of the sweet eternity in which one knows nothing of time.
From the French window I walked out under a kind of pergola covered in part by a climbing rose tree, in part by laths, one inch wide with half an inch of space between them. The sun was shining and the shadows of the laths made a zebra-like pattern on the ground and across the seat and back of a garden chair, which was standing at this end of the pergola. That chair -shall I ever forget it? Where the shadows fell on the canvas upholstery, stripes of a deep but glowing indigo alternated with stripes of an incandescence so intensely bright that it was hard to believe that they could be made of anything but blue fire. For what seemed an immensely long time I gazed without knowing, even without wishing to know, what it was that confronted me. At any other time I would have seen a chair barred with alternate light and shade. Today the percept had swallowed up the concept. I was so completely absorbed in looking, so thunderstruck by what I actually saw, that I could not be aware of anything else. Garden furniture, laths, sunlight, shadow - these were no more than names and notions, mere verbalizations, for utilitarian or scientific purposes, after the event. The event was this succession of azure furnace doors separated by gulfs of unfathomable gentian. It was inexpressibly wonderful, wonderful to the point, almost, of being terrifying. And suddenly I had an inkling of what it must feel like to be mad.
Recently I have been recieving mail from factions of the New Age movement who claim to have clairvoyant knowledge that Barrack Obama is a powerful ‘lightworker’, here to usher humanity into a fifth dimensional reality, an age of peace and enlightenment, a coalition of the spiritually willing that awaits the righteous beyond 2012. The spiritual channel 'Magenta Pixie' stakes the veracity of her political insights on her psychic power, ‘vibing’ photographs of Barrack Obama and gazing into his aura, and from mystical communication with a group of higher dimensional beings she calls ‘The Nine’, Magenta Pixie claims that her spiritual and psychic abilities afford her a privileged insight into Obama's true political agenda, and that the day shall soon come to pass when the unenlightened amongst us will awaken, embracing his policies as the messianic orchestrations of a modern day Jesus Christ.
Sadly the more sombre and weighty views of those analysts who shy away from the pastel end of the political spectrum have been hindering Obama's coming as they continue to dabble in the dark machinations of political negativity. Noam Chomsky notes that In a pre election speech to AIPAC regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict Barrack Obama "broke records in obsequiousness" (Chomsky, 2009), and that "nobody in history had ever gone so far in flouting international law and Security Council resolutions. In fact Obama’s speech was so extreme that his campaign had to publicly retract his statements" (Ibid).
John Pilger notes "in the first 100 days of office, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government. He has kept Bush’s gulag intact and at least 17,000 prisoners beyond the reach of justice. On April the 24th his lawyers won an appeal that ruled Gauntanamo prisoners were not “persons”, and therefore had no right not to be tortured. All over the world, America’s violent assault on innocent people, directly or by agents, has been stepped up." During the recent massacre in Gaza, reports Seymour Hersh, “the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of ‘smart bombs’ and other high tech ordnance that was already flowing to Isreal”, and being used to slaughter mostly woman and children (Pilger, 2009).
Magenta Pixie, keeping in step with her favourite "saviour of earth" Barack Obama, says she expected negative reactions to her visionary insights because “there are a lot of different levels of people’s consciousness, of where they are and what they see, and everybody is seeing what they are supposed to be seeing” (Pixie, 2009). She proclaims that Obama’s higher self has given permission to those of the 'correct frequency' to see that these imperfections are merely a flickering in his messianic light (Ibid). The logical inference being that those who do not enjoy the good fortune of a 'correct spiritual vibration' or worse still, exhibit un-American political attitudes, can hope for ascension through a machine gun hail of U.S. benevolence.
John Pilger reports, "in Afghanistan, the US "strategy" of killing Pashtun tribespeople (the "Taliban") has been extended by Obama to give the Pentagon time to build a series of permanent bases right across the devastated country where, says Secretary Gates, the US military will remain indefinitely. Obama's policy, one unchanged since the Cold War, is to intimidate Russia and China, now an imperial rival. He is proceeding with Bush's provocation of placing missiles on Russia's western border, justifying it as a counter to Iran, which he accuses, absurdly, of posing "a real threat" to Europe and the US" (Pilger, 2009).
One can only wonder if Obama and his administration share Magenta Pixie's reticence for those spiritually retarded souls, vibrating at the incorrect frequency, who neglect to rejoice at the slaughter of their loved ones, or stubbornly persist in the habit of being exploded to smithereens by American drones. Despite her profound spiritual insights, Magenta Pixie stresses that she does not regard herself as being better than others. She is confident that eventually people will see the truth of Obama's saintliness, not by looking with their eyes, or enquiring with their brain, “but by opening your heart and looking with your energy" (Pixie, 2009). Magenta Pixie asserts that she has a right to see what she sees without being ridiculed, teased or attacked. I can only conclude that there are indeed a lot of different levels of people’s consciousness, of where they are, and what they see, but if it weren’t for the fact that Magenta Pixie’s excruciatingly ignorant and vacuous opinions are shared by so many in one form or another, they wouldn’t have the power to be such a killing joke.
Reference List Chomsky, Noam. (2009), Chomsky on Obama's Foreign Policy Available:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVVDNIeQ77I&feature=related Pilger, John. (2009), Obama's 100 Days -- The Mad Men Did Well Available:http://www.zmag.org/zspace/commentaries/3848 Pixie, Magenta. (2009), Saviours of Earth interview Brad Johnson & Magenta Pixie discuss Barack Obama Available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etn0AVf0sr4
Correspondence with Magenta Pixie:
Nick Hi Magenta Pixie. I'm confused about your proclamations in the interview by Brad Johnston. You claim to have clairvoyant knowledge that Obama is a powerful lightworker here to usher humanity into an age of enlightenment. I dont share your confidence and I wondered, is it possible that The Nine occasionally make mistakes? I find it hard to share your reticence for those spiritually retarded souls, vibrating at the incorrect frequency, who fail to see Obamas saintliness, who neglect to rejoice at the slaughter of their loved ones, and persist in the habit of being exploded to smithereens by American drones. Please help me understand how those who are dying as a direct result of Obama's policies can adopt a 'correct spiritual vibration' and overcome their un-American political attitudes so that they to can share in your profound visionary insights.
Magenta Pixie Hi Nick - No I made no claim to have clairvoyant knowledge regarding Obama, I simply spoke about what i see. Is it possible the Nine may make mistakes? I would not call anything they speak of as a mistake but from our perspective you could see that possibility if you wish, that would be regarding timelines and future outcomes although they show me the infinite possibilities and their are no "mistakes" in that grand design, however from the perspective you mean all I can say is that it is possible although i have not come across anything that could be regarded as a 'mistake' yet.
Also I do not see any "spiritually retarded souls" on this planet - we are all equal and no one is above or below anyone else although it is correct to say we grow at different spiritual rates. Regarding Obama the person who I have come across who speaks the most truth regarding him is David Wilcock of devine cosmos website, I sugest researching his perspective so you may widen yours peace
Nick Magenta Pixie, if you were simply voicing your opinion that would be an honest and benign position, and in such circumstances your vacuity could be easily excused. However, you claim to channel an omniscient spiritual authority which you say affords you a privilaged insight into Obama's true political agenda. Consequently your spiritual proclaimations demand of you the highest level of accountability. Let us not forget that Obama's policies are resulting in death and destruction. Given the hyperbolic nature of your predictions for Obama's presidency, it would be wise to subject them to a modicum of scrutiny.
Jeremy Scahill notes that "What we see with Obama's policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and the broader Arab and Muslim world, as well as his global economic policies, are a continuation of the most devastating and violent policies of the Bush administration--while placing a face on it that makes it easier to expand the iron fist of U.S. militarism and the hidden hand of the free market."
Anthony Arnove continues, "it's clear that Barack Obama was able to get elected by signaling, even if only rhetorically, a shift in U.S. foreign policy. But as Jeremy points out, the continuity is really disturbing on a number of fronts. There are striking similarities to the policies of the Bush administration. Take, for example, habeas corpus rights. The Obama administration made a lot of noise about closing down Guantánamo. Yet in a series of briefs, the Justice Department has said that prisoners held in any base other than Guantánamo don't have habeas corpus rights--for example, prisoners being held in Bagram, Afghanistan.
In Iraq, although Barack Obama promised he would have all troops out by 2012, the ground is being laid for troops to stay in Iraq for years and years to come. The army chief of staff, Gen. George Casey, said that the Pentagon was making preparations to keep troops in Iraq until the year 2019." (Arnove Scahill 2009)
You claim that Obama is here to usher humanity into a fifth dimensional reality, an age of peace and enlightenment and that eventually people will see the truth of Obama's saintliness, not by looking with their eyes, or enquiring with their brain, “but by opening your heart and looking with your energy." These are incredibly bombastic proclaimations! If any of this were true it would characterise Obama as a modern day Jesus Christ!
You say that you do not see any spiritually retarded souls on this planet, "we are all equal and no one is above or below anyone else although it is correct to say we grow at different spiritual rates." Given that you are measuring a persons degree of spiritual development (vibration) based on whether or not they share your ridiculous political views, and the ease with which you brush aside Obama's militarism and the resulting death and destruction, it is difficult not to construe your spirituality as irresponsible visionary posturing characterised by a lack of genuine care and compassion. I agree that most of what you say seems to bypass your brain, and yet I detect a disquietingly Orwellian cleverness in your doublespeak, something like, "All animals are equal but some are more equal than others."
I think heart and energy are a great start when engaging with the world but can I suggest you use all of your senses, why limit yourself? After switching your brain back on maybe you could reactivate some common sense?
In the words of Robert F. Thurman; "... voidness does not mean nothingness, but rather that all things lack intrinsic reality, intrinsic objectivity, intrinsic identity or intrinsic referentiality. Lacking such static essence or substance does not make them not exist - it makes them thoroughly relative."
I was asked a question about my art, but at the time I lacked the necessary presence of mind to apprehend the attitude which was its origin. I answered as best I could. However, the question remained with me, lodging in my subconscious, resonating with an uncomfortable disharmony that called for resolution. Initially it had seemed trivial enough and I mightn't have given it more attention, but for the marked fervor with which it was asked, remaining like a residue, an enigma, a sign post I had rushed by all to quickly, missing something of significance. “Are your photographs real or are they computer enhanced?” The authenticity of the work seemed to hang on this question. There was a moments silence and I could feel the air charged with anticipatory tension. The work had obviously affected X on some emotional level but her experience was incomplete, tempered by reservations symptomatic of the criteria against which she alone measured the work. The quality and authenticity of the images, and therefore the validity of X’s experience of them, was dependent on the answer to this question. I explained that the vibrancy and wash of colours was achieved by a long exposure which contributed to the saturation of light, creating the ethereal quality that I wished to convey. There hadn’t been any computer enhancement. ‘I took these photos after sunset. The camera is on a tripod. I leave the shutter open for about 30 seconds.” As I imparted this information a strange visual flashback seemed to rush in through X’s widening eyes. The suspension of her belief was released in an impassioned expletive. She was now prepared to believe that her experience of the work, whatever that had been, was indeed REAL! X’s extended process of engagement beyond her initial exposure aroused my curiosity with regards to the multiple and variant layers of thought that inform our visual perception and shape our understanding of the world. Contemplating the curious impression this exchange had made upon me it later occurred that all my photographs are manipulations of reality, whatever reality is, and that ones experience of reality is always filtered through ones “reducing valve,” as Aldous Huxley called it. The philosophical bases of Huxley’s assertions are given voice in his essay “The Doors of Perception,” and derive from the eastern philosophical notion of Emptiness, that there is no objective reality, only constructed representations that we experience depending on our cultural and individual conditioning. Whether the photos were the result of manipulation by computer or camera is only relevant as far as an investigation of mechanics is concerned. Regardless of the process, the images remain no more or less real than anything we may choose to focus our gaze upon. Illusions! By this I mean that one person may experience the same photograph, as they may experience any given phenomena, in an infinitely varying number of subtle and profound ways depending on their previous experience, cultural heritage, and individual idiosyncrasies. X’s experience of the work (a fascinating example of this philosophical premise) had been unique to her, and characterized by her own value judgments.
Emptiness Emptiness is a key concept in Buddhist philosophy, or more precisely, in the ontology of Mahayana Buddhism. The phrase "form is emptiness; emptiness is form" is perhaps the most celebrated paradox associated with Buddhist philosophy. It is the supreme mantra.
Sunyata Widely misconceived as a doctrine of nihilism, the teaching on the emptiness of persons and phenomena is unique to Buddhism, constituting an important metaphysical critique of theism with profound implications for epistemology and phenomenology.
Śūnyatā signifies that everything one encounters in life is empty of absolute identity, permanence, or an in-dwelling 'self'. This is because everything is inter-related and mutually dependent - never wholly self-sufficient or independent. All things are in a state of constant flux where energy and information are forever flowing throughout the natural world giving rise to and themselves undergoing major transformations with the passage of time.
This teaching never connotes nihilism - nihilism is, in fact, a belief or point of view that the Buddha explicitly taught was incorrect - a delusion, just as the view of materialism is a delusion (see below). In the English language the word emptiness suggests the absence of spiritual meaning or a personal feeling of alienation, but in Buddhism the realization of the emptiness of phenomena enables liberation from the limitations of form in the cycle of uncontrolled rebirth.
Rawson states that: "[o]ne potent metaphor for the Void, often used in Tibetan art, is the sky. As the sky is the emptiness that offers clouds to our perception, so the Void is the 'space' in which objects appear to us in response to our attachments and longings."[4] The Japanese use of the Chinese character signifying Shunyata is also used to connote sky or air.
Emptiness in Physics Ernest Rutherford invalidated the billiard ball theory by conducting an experiment, which suggested that atoms have an internal structure. He established that atoms have a nucleus containing most of its mass and that electrons orbit the nucleus. Moreover, he established that the nucleus of an atom is only about one ten-thousandth of the diameter of the atom itself, which means that 99.99% of the atom's volume consists of empty space. This is the first manifestation of emptiness at the subtle level of matter.
Not long after Rutherford's discovery, physicists found out that the nucleus of an atom likewise has an internal structure and that the protons and neutrons making up the nucleus are composed of even smaller particles, which they named quarks after a poem of James Joyce. Interestingly, quarks are hypothesised as geometrical points in space, which implies that atoms are essentially empty. This is the second manifestation of emptiness at the subtle level of matter.
The terms "quarks" and "points in space" still suggest something solid, since they can be imagined as irreducible mass particles. Yet, quantum field theory does away even with this finer concept of solidity by explaining particles in the terms of field properties. Quantum electrodynamics (QED) has produced an amazingly successful theory of matter by combining quantum theory, classical field theory, and relativity. No discrepancies between the predictions of QED and experimental observation have ever been found. According to QED, subatomic particles are indistinguishable from fields, whereas fields are basically properties of space. In this view, a particle is a temporary local densification of a field, which is conditioned by the properties of the surrounding space. Ergo, matter is not different from space. This is the third manifestation of emptiness at the subtle level of matter.
A manifest particle, such as an electron, cannot be described in terms of classical mechanics. It exists as a multitude of superposed "scenarios", of which one or another manifests only when it is observed, i.e. upon measurement. Therefore, matter does not inherently exist. It exists only as interrelations of "empty" phenomena whose properties are determined by observation. This is the fourth manifestation of emptiness at the subtle level of matter.
Emptiness of emptiness. In The Art of Living (2001) the 14th Dalai Lama says, "As your insight into the ultimate nature of reality is deepened and enhanced, you will develop a perception of reality from which you will perceive phenomena and events as sort of illusory, illusion-like, and this mode of perceiving reality will permeate all your interactions with reality.
I composed and recorded this sketch, 'Clouds Break' in 2005. Three guitar pieces have been layered over underlying atmospheric vocals. The feeling of the piece complements the Gothic tone of some of the descriptive writing I have posted here...
The movie Waking Life opens with the suggestion that dream is destiny. It soon becomes apparent that the protagonist ‘Wiley Wiggins’ is caught in a lucid dream from which he cannot escape. “A lucid dream occurs when the dreamer becomes conscious that they are dreaming, allowing potential for the manipulation of identity in surreal situations” (Lee, 2000). The lucid dream motif informs the hallucinatory visual style and fractious narrative structure of Waking Life. The visuals, shot on digital video, have been layered with animation by a team of artists, each in their own style. The different animation styles change between expressionistic and cartoon-like caricature, echoing a general theme that seeks to probe the multiplicities of cultural and social identity, and question the reality of the world in which we live.
Raymond Lee in his essay The Self, Lucid Dreaming and Postmodern Identity, proposes that lucid dreaming allows freedom for the deconstruction of self identity.The phenomenon of lucid dreaming allows such manipulation to occur, freeing the individual to explore various possibilities of selfhood without the burden of conformity to waking roles. It parallels the postmodern perspective on the decentered nature of the self. The postmodern self subsists on fractal identities that in lucid dreaming form the basis of personal creativity. Lucid dreaming converges with postmodernism to suggest an alternative method for transcending the conventions of everyday life (Lee, 2000).
In this essay I will investigate what I consider to be a binary opposition within Waking Life, existing between a post structural narrative, and the reoccurring suggestion of a potential for ultimate self awareness; a juxtaposition between postmodernism’s arbitrary self and the advocacy of personal responsibility and self realization. By drawing out the different and seemingly contradictory threads of discourse that run through Waking Life I hope to demonstrate that the resulting destabilization of meaning operates as a prompt for viewers to seek their own resolution to the posed existential dilemmas by pushing beyond the limitations of the rational mind into a heightened dream state lucidity.
Waking Life begins with Wiggins walking through a train station atrium and it appears that the physical world is threatening to fall apart as walls, floor, and ceiling drift out of position. This destabilization extends to traditional narrative structure. Wiggins moves between vignettes without any disclosure of linear relationships in narrative space or time. Seemingly disconnected meanderings of dream narrative allow for a number of characters, disconnected emotionally and dramatically, to engage in lengthy didactic monologues about existentialism, politics, science, philosophy, theology, metaphysics, and mysticism. Transitions between scenes re-enforce the characteristics of a disordered dreamscape. Wiggins lies on his bed and floats to the ceiling. The camera establishes a point of view simulation of disembodied dream travel as it drifts above suburban rooftops. Impersonal and lacking destination the drifting camera references the ramblings of the content, divorced from the meta-narratives that characterize our rational waking life.
Parallels can be drawn between the dream motif and post structuralism. Post structuralism defines language as a field of interrelated meanings that lack underlying intrinsic certainties. The disjointed narrative of Waking life reflects the uncertainty of textual analysis as asserted by deconstructionists."One consequence of deconstruction is that certainty in textual analyses becomes impossible. There may be competing interpretations, but there is no uninterpreted way one could assess the validity of these competing interpretations. Rather than basing our philosophical understanding on undeniable truths, the deconstructionist turns the settled bedrock of rationalism into the shifting sands of a multiplicity of interpretations." (Jones)
Waking Life has the potential to become an overwhelming miasma. Sympathetic to Roland Barthes’ seminal critique Death of the Author (1967) in which he seeks to liberate the text from authoritative tyranny, the narrative in Waking Life has been treated as a multi dimensional space, open to interpretation and providing no didactic answers to its many questions. The viewer must forge their own meanings, navigating their own path through the dreamscape. The poetic ‘Speed’ Levitch (an actual New York tour guide) appears on Brooklyn Bridge suggesting that “We are all co-authors of this dancing exuberance…Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each others' presence… and as one realizes that one is a dream figure in another person's dream....that is self-awareness” (Linklater, 2001).
Despite the deliberate ambiguity of meaning within Waking Life, I recognized a sympathy to an affirmative existential position. Early in the movie Professor of Philosophy Robert Solomon appears as himself to champion an existential outlook on life. He suggests that the idea of free will is missing from a post modern philosophy that views the individual as a confluence of forces. This negates individual responsibility and results in cynicism, implicating post modernism as a negative theoretical position. Alternatively, existentialism acknowledges the absurdity of life while maintaining the active agent of choice; your life is yours to create. As stated by Solomon, “I think [existentialism] has something very important to offer us for the new century. I'm afraid we're losing the real virtues of living life passionately, in the sense of taking responsibility for who you are, the ability to make something of yourself and feeling good about life” (Linklater, 2001).
Waking Life, by disrupting narrative structure, establishes itself within a post structural context, a field of interrelated meanings that have no underlying intrinsic certainties. Consequently it could be concluded that Waking Life is unconcerned with any totalizing truths through which one might comprehend the enigmatic nature of the absurd environment in which Wiggins finds himself. However Wiggins (and the viewer) are not completely abandoned within a groundless and drifting nihilistic nightmare. The suggestion of the possibility for self awareness within the absurd environment of the movie implicates an agent of personal responsibility and free will, negating absolute arbitrary identity.
I recognize the dichotomy between free will and pre destination; Spiritual self realization and post modern deconstruction as being interwoven between the filmic treatment and theoretical content. Lee, in his essay on postmodern identity and lucid dreaming quotes Sarup to suggest that a fragmented self seems to have emerged from the crisis of the modern self
Are we all made up of bits and pieces of this and that? Is identity nothing more than an illusion of socialization or a fiction of ontology? It is difficult to imagine a self without an integrated identity, a “subject in process” that is “constructed in and through language” (Lee, 2001).
I suggest that the ontological inquiry suggested here by Lee is the redundant activity of objective rational discourse that Waking Life avoids. Any attempt to imagine an identity constructed through language has already assumed the objective identity of the searcher which post modernism rejects as untenable. Accordingly the movie assumes no objective position and offers no direct answers, remaining sympathetic to a post structural position that regards it impossible to step outside of discourse and survey the situation objectively. The existential dream narrative leaves interpretation open to interpretation. I am reminded of the old Zen Proverb that states, ‘searching for self is like riding an ox in search of an ox’.
The binary opposition between spiritual realization and post modern deconstruction is continuously at play as Waking Life unfolds, forming two interlocking aspects of the filmic content. Could Waking Life be making an oblique affirmation of mystical traditions that view ultimate truth as existing beyond the dualistic comprehension of the rational mind? It is a principle of structuralism that all language is hinged on binary oppositions. The western Zen Buddhist Scholar Christmas Humphries observes that, “when thought is divided dualistically, it seeks to favour one at the cost of the other, but as dualism is the very condition of thought, it is impossible for thought to rise above its own condition” (Humphries, 1969, p.16).
In Waking Life the Character Aklilu suggests the immanence of “[a] greater, greater mind. A mind that yet is to be” (Linklater, 2001). and thatThe moment is not just a passing, empty nothing, yet, and this is the way in which these secret passages happen, yes it's empty with such fullness that the great moment, the great life, of the universe is pulsating in it. And each one, each object, each place, each act leaves a mark, and that story is singular, but in fact, it's story after story (Ibid). Aklilu introduces the idea of a transcendent moment liberated from the aspirations of a linear, self affirming narrative. He describes union with this ‘moment’ as a universal transcendent experience. The idea is revisited by a number of different characters. An old man suggests that to say yes to one instant is to say yes to all of existence while the director Richard Linklater appears as a pinball philosopher and describes a multi dimensional reality where linear time collapses. Linklater draws the conclusion that all we really have is this moment, and that life is a journey from the no to the yes, the absolute embracing of the moment. There's only one instant, and it's right now, and it's eternity. And, it's an instant in which God is posing a question, and that question is basically, "Do you wanna be one with eternity, do you want to be in heaven?" And, we're all saying, "Nooo thank you, not just yet." And so time, is actually just this constant saying "No" to God's invitation. I mean, that's what time is…There's just this one instant, and that's what we're always in (Ibid).
The power of Film as a creative force for manipulating social perceptions of reality and shaping self making narratives is introduced through the film theory of Bazin and the ‘holy moment’. The film maker Caveh Zahedi appears in Waking Life to explain.
Cinema in its essence is about an introduction to reality… It's just that reality is actually reproduced. And you know, Bazin is a Christian, so he believes that God obviously ended up being everything, and for him reality and God are the same. So what film is actually capturing is like God incarnate, creating. And this very moment, God is manifesting as this. And what the film would capture if it was filming us right now would be like God as this table, and God as you, and God as me, and God looking the way we look right now, and saying and thinking what we're thinking right now, because we are all God manifest in that sense. So film is actually like a record of God, or the face of God, or the ever changing face of God. (Linklater 2001).
Bazin felt that life and art (Which he recognized as a spiritual pursuit) were objectively divorced from each other. He wanted to re-inject the magic of creative reverence back into people’s lives from which he felt it was missing. He opposed divisive narrative structures in film. He felt that traditional narrative structures were corrupted by a slavish adherence to script and ideologies, resulting in a disruption of the viewer’s experience of God in the moment. A didactic film could stifle the creative capacity of the imaginative human being, which Bazin recognized as being holy. He was inspired by a deep desire to utilize film as a medium for the revelation of truth.Bazin recognized that film art always condenses, shapes and orders the reality it records, but what he looked for in film-makers was a kind of spiritual disposition towards reality – an intention to serve it by a scrupulous effacement of means and a corresponding unwillingness to do violence to it through ideological abstraction or self-aggrandising (sic) technique (British Film Institute, 2005).
The presentation of Bazin’s film theory unfolds with Wiggins sitting in a movie theater watching David Jewell & Caveh Zahedi (both film directors) appearing as themselves, on screen discussing Bazin. An inversion takes place as the discussion of Bazin’s theory becomes a movie within a movie. Are these actual film directors or are they actors? Zahedi seems unaware of the presence of the camera “what the film would capture if it was filming us right now would be like God as this table, and God as you” (Linklater, 2001). The discussion cuts away to Wiggins sitting in a movie theater watching the movie within the movie. This device is used to demonstrate Bazin’s theory, bridging the dualism he felt existed between art and life. I believe this device was employed as a prompt, to awaken the viewer to their role as an implicitly active agent in the creation of the dream narrative of the movie/life/dream. Jewel finishes the scene with the comment, “Everything is layers, isn't it? I mean, there's the holy moment, and then there's the awareness of trying to have the holy moment. It's the same way that the film is the actual moment really happening, but then the character is pretending to be in a different reality, and it's all these layers” (Linklater, 2001).
Professional intellectuals underrated the profoundly dialectical nature of Bazin's thinking. To put it another way, they were stone-blind to Bazin's poetic genius - his ability to hold contrary terms in a state of paradoxical suspension that transcends mere theory and approaches mystical understanding.(British Film Institute, 2005).
Language as an illusion weaving tool is implicated in the construction of self identity, binding the individual to an imaginary past. Benedict Anderson’s theory of Imagined Communities (1983) is referenced in relation to the instability of identity and linear time. Two women appear in Waking Life discussing Benedict Anderson’s theory. One woman suggests that to tie herself to a baby photograph she must invent a story which is essentially fictitious.
So, you pick up this picture of this two-dimensional image and you say, "That's me." Well, to connect this baby in this weird little image with yourself living and breathing in the present, you have to make up a story like, "This was me when I was a year old, and then later I had long hair, and then we moved to Riverdale, and now here I am." So, it takes a story that's actually a fiction to make you and the baby in the picture identical....to create your identity (Linklater, 2001).
Her companion explains that when she was young she always thought she would arrive at the object of her striving; at some kind of plateau, “When I was younger, there was desperation, a desire for certainty, like there was an end to the path and I had to get there” (Linklater, 2001).This is what self and identity mean in postmodernism, “a movement that disparages closure and completion. Because of linguistic relativity, the self cannot maintain a solid identity but must defer to the arbitrariness of all conversational interactions. Hence, the self appears fragmented as a consequence of the fluidity of speech” (Lee, 2000).
I suggest that the self only appears fragmented if it is interpreted from the frustrated objective perspective of a self that assumes permanency. Accordingly I believe that linguistic relativity and its related branches of thought have deeper implications within the content of Waking Life, informing the employment of dream narrative. Waking Life repetitively contrasts the rational scientific, academic, intellectual modes of philosophical inquiry with a metaphysical and mystical sensitivity, intimating but never committing, to a transcendent beyond. Collaboration in the animated construction of the unique visual world of the movie can be interpreted as a metaphor for what I suggest is the underlying theme, that life is a co-authored dream informed by a synthesis of shared human experiences and simulated constructs that lack any permanence.
At the conclusion of the movie, a distraught, flummoxed, and highly unstable Wiggins, floats off into the sky. Sympathetic to Wiggins predicament I decided to write the remainder of this conclusion from within a lucid dream, the problem being that dream reality renders narrative structure, academia, and stylistic conventions essentially indecipherable groundless and absurd. Indeed, it appears it has been my mistake from the beginning to regard them as anything other.
The genius of Camus and Beckett lay in their showing us the fundamental absurdity of modern life. Death is reason's limit. If everything must end in the utter silence of the grave, what reason do I have for living? In strictly rational terms, life is fundamentally absurd and meaningless. Therefore whatever meaning we see in life cannot come to us rationally. It must come from somewhere else, even if it amounts to a courageous engagement with the Absurd as such, as in existentialism. It must come to us through the faculty of intuition (Martel, 2009)
My landscape photographs operate in their widest sense as short hand terms for investigating the ways in which I interpret the world, inquiring beneath the surface of nature into the lattice of the self. Simon Schama suggests that:
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"Although we are accustomed to separate nature and human perception into two realms, they are in fact indivisible. Before it can ever be repose for the senses, landscape is the work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of the memory as from layers of rock" (1996, p.6).
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Sympathetic to Schama’s statement I regard the fluctuating climates of the mind as instrumental in the creation of my emotional, philosophical, and physical environment. Consequently, my images of atmospheric light, storms, and expansive cloud swept skies operate as metaphors for the nature of perception. They function as contemplative vistas resonating with the poetic sentiment of Edward Young (1683 – 1765) “Fond man, the vision of a moment made, dream of a dream, and shadow of a shade” (cited in Shepard, 2005).
Thought Form 1 Photograph, Pencil, Charcoal, Chalk
Through contemplation of the changing and ephemeral forces of nature, my work inquires into the shifting physical and psychological nature of place. Walt Whiteman wrote that "Nature consists not only in itself objectively, but at least just as much in its subjective reflection from the person, spirit, age, looking at it, in the midst of it, and absorbing it: [it] faithfully sends back the characteristic beliefs of the time or individual" (cited in Hill, 1996).
Thus, my journey through landscape is a meditative process of self-reflection flowing in the tributaries of cultural influence that feed my artistic production. Through this process, I sift the silt of accumulated cultural memory from the streams of my subconscious. Wes Nisker writes:
"The concept of self - along with the innermost sense of what it feels like to be a person changes over time. A nomadic tribesman of 500 B.C., a medieval peasant woman, and a modern middle class corporate employee would have very different notions about their place in the cosmos, their self-importance, their personal freedom, and their relationship to the forces of nature and other people. Who we think we are depends to a significant degree upon which wave we ride in the streams of biological and cultural evolution-where and when we are born. We don’t create our self so much as the evolving idea of ‘self’ creates us" (1998, p. 10).
Romantic notions of liminality and transcendence are apparent in my work. German idealist philosophy of the late 18th and early 19th century attempted to shift mystical and theological motifs into a newly articulated aesthetic experience. "In experiencing the work of art one is brought to the limits of the self and made to look into the beyond. This signals a universal desire to escape the linearity and finitude of history, to escape time and place, to transcend the limits of selfhood" (Morely, 1998, p. 28).
Historically, representations of nature were regarded as the best vehicle for the communication of the sublime experience. Edmond Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757) contributed to the development of a romantic tradition that looked for the sublime in the least reassuring aspects of nature, in darkness and storms, in the wastes of the sea and desert. Having lost favour within contemporary discourse, this aesthetic tradition requires re-contextualization, and a re-interpretation of its sublime possibilities.
Postmodern critique deconstructs the utopian aspirations of a romantic tradition that sought to exemplify edifying ideals, instead positing an absolute relativity of phenomena. This theoretical position, popularised in academic discourse by Jean Baudrillards philosophical treatise Simulacra and Simulation (1985), denies the art object’s claim to utopian functionality by democratizing all images within a groundless simulacrum. Subsequently, no image can claim to function as the authoritative embodiment of visionary experience. The artist Violet Hopkins “highlights this relationship between the limitations of art and the boundlessness of nature, yet proposes that there can be a reconciliation of these two positions through a self mediated experience” (cited in Choit, 2001). Hopkins makes her art, “not as a way of attempting to create the sublime within a singular representation but to demonstrate a longing for it by the act of trying to represent it within such a limited means” (Ibid).
Conversely, it is through a meditative process of self-reflection that my work celebrates a relationship with nature, following its movements outwardly and inwardly in hope of apprehending the sublime possibilities it my yield. Self is implicated in my work as a dynamic and evolving agent, with a focus on mindfulness and self-awareness. In the words of William Blake “to the eyes of the man of imagination Nature is imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees” (1995, p. 35).
The positioning of my work is intentionally ambiguous, oscillating between romantic sincerity and cultural pastiche. Accordingly, repetition between images of form and subject matter references simulation, while intimations of a romantic sublime dislocate the artist’s intentions within an eclectic haze. This ambiguity establishes a tension between shifting modern and postmodern paradigms, providing a background from which to reflect upon changing attitudes towards beauty and sublimity, and again highlights how changing attitudes influence perception.
By acknowledging multiple parameters for interpretation, echoed in a vaporous blending of multimedia, I blur the conceptual boundaries of my imagery within a multi dimensional space in which there exists the possibility for many different readings. Thus, I make my work accessible to an audience as a means for engaging in discourse rather than rhetoric. Absence of definitive meaning allows for a state of constant flux, these mirrors of passing clouds and liquid surfaces, ephemeral as dreams, evade the grasping imposition of the rational mind. Abandoning any attempt to arrive at a final interpretation they can be regarded as an invitation to abandon all judgments and silently merge with the sensuous and mysterious unfolding of the moment. This paradoxical position refuses and simultaneously confers meaning. Indeed, it is a principle of structuralism that all language is hinged on binary oppositions. The western Zen Buddhist Scholar Christmas Humphries observes, “when thought is divided dualistically, it seeks to favour one at the cost of the other, but as dualism is the very condition of thought, it is impossible for thought to rise above its own condition” (Humphries, 1969, p. 16). My images evidence relationships between oppositions; modernity and post modernity, mystical aspiration and theoretical deconstruction - A beam of sunlight splits the clouds dividing a seascape into opposite halves of light and dark. Rawson notes, "one potent metaphor for the Void, often used in Tibetan art, is the sky. As the sky is the emptiness that offers clouds to our perception, so the Void is the 'space' in which objects appear to us in response to our attachments and longings."
Thought Form III Photograph, Chalk, Pencil
The employment of multimedia, blending elements of sketching and photography with painterly subject matter, alludes to the indeterminate and dream-like nature of reality, and can be regarded as an attempt to focus the viewer’s gaze on a sense of place and identity that transcends finite boundaries. It is not my intention to establish a position from which to defend or enforce a particular point of view, but rather, to fabricate a radical contingency. As the painter Simon Morley states:
Art is always a negotiation at the borderline, it can never cast us into the unbounded...art’s goal is to register the impossibility of making present again what it depicts. What art does, therefore is mirror the ways in which structure - our finite sense of self - is entirely contingent, and how this contingent self can be made into a vehicle through which the transcendent possibility can be experienced (1998, p. 33).
I recently read a wonderful story 'A Need to Believe," by Daniel Pinchbeck, about his father's life and work as an unrecognised abstract expressionist. This is my response to his article.
Years ago as an aspiring poet and artist, I lived and worked in a poky pub in Greenwich village London, pulling pints of brown swill for an endless procession of tourists who filed up the hill to the Observatory. They stopped to sample T&J Bernard's podgy pies and complain about the shabby British service. None of the staff in the Tavern were British and I had my suspicions about Hussein’s pie preparation. We were grossly understaffed and overstretched to maximize profit margins. The Kings Arms Tavern was more Mcfranchise than English tradition, with hundreds of identically furnished establishments placed strategically along tourist routes, and appropriately priced for customers who were never likely to return. T&J's authentic pub experience could be relied upon to dampen moods more thoroughly than the insipid London weather, and I marvelled at how many people travelled so far to have such a thoroughly awful time. My parents, worrying that I had been drifting aimlessly for far too many years, visited me from New Zealand, sugesting that I return to finish a Degree. They looked doubtful when Hussein reassured them that I was doing all right. I personally felt less in need of orientating influences than the aged tourists who hoped to capture 'Greenwich Mean Time,' on their video cameras, or any other edification the Observatory might offer. Being so desperately short on time, I wondered if they sat in the pub contemplating how a life of hard work and responsibility was culminating in the abject suffering of an eternity waiting for Hussein’s podgy pies. I cheered myself by reassuring the most miserable whingers that at least that much of their experience was thoroughly English. In the evenings, the locals would filter back in, wary from their grey office jobs, and resign themselves to their places in front of the slot machines. Or take in the England Germany game, resuscitating the tired glories of "two world wars and one world cup," in a histrionic chorus of drunken song.
At the local markets, I bought a book on Ancient Chinese Landscape art. Opening its dusty cover revealed a world far removed from the pies and pokies of the tavern; it elevated my imaginings to the mystical peaks of Taoist philosophy. The landscapes and accompanied writings danced with poetic and mystical significance, speaking of the lost ancient world of the Chinese philosopher sages whose beautiful scrolls revealed “waves of silence” their mountainous peaks shrouded by “intangible, instinctive, and emotional perceptions, such as flavour and resonance, which escape recognition by the eye and definition by the mind, and defy linear drawing.” The writing was unapologetically romantic, yielding an ethereal quality in words and images, sentiments of a profound spiritual reverence for nature that I felt was sadly absent from the mediocre world around me. Inspired by youthful idealism and romantic escapist fantasies I copied into my diary a sentence that had particular resonance. “By freeing oneself progressively from the demands of false ideals, academia, and stylistic convention, the minds contact with the surrounding universe becomes correspondingly closer.”
Worn down by the monotony of menial jobs I eventually returned to New Zealand to finish a degree in Fine Arts, mindful of the polarities between the business materialism of the commercial art world and the joyful child like purity of undiluted creative freedom. Reading this wonderful story about your father’s life and work has prompted me to recollect this episode in my life, stimulating my contemplation of the relationships between the grating callings of life and responsibility, and the romantic artistic struggle for pure authenticity and sublime creative release.
In his paintings Wang Wei could sugest the indescribable and the unshapable, instinctive and emotion perceptions such as flavour and resonance which escape recognition by the eye and definition by the mind and defy linear drawing. He could capture those ineffable perfumes and waves of silence which can only be siezed upon by a highly aware sensability and picked up by a heart that is perfectly calm, devoid of egotistical desire and fully contemplative, an echo chamber at the centre of being wich must not be desturbed by interuptive inner sounds. The heart should be a celestial promenade. The depths of the heart must remain permeable to the influx of heaven
Yeats thought himself to be one of the last of the classical Romantics; he celebrated the power of imagination to help people see and empathize deeply, he recognized the dangers of abstract reasoning divorced from imagination and the natural world, and he sought a kind of lost knowledge not taught in schools or churches. Yeats rejected realistic, imitative art. He believed that only art that recognized and celebrated the panpsychic power of imagination, myth, and symbol could reveal the deeper truths and intuitive meanings underlying everyday experience. In his poem “Who Goes with Fergus?” Yeats invokes the ancient king of Irish legend who abandoned his high office and its grating, relentless demands to head to the woods and learn the mysterious “dreaming wisdom” of the Druid priests.
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.
Fergus is a hero of the imagination who leaves the everyday human world to revel in the mysteries of nature and spirit. The “shadows of the wood” and “the white breast of the dim sea” represent primeval knowledge and beauty that can only be glimpsed through experiences of wilderness solitude, trance, magic, and meditation. Full of fantasies of a better world, the young Yeats struggled to accept regular life on earth and sought desperately to find a way into other dimensions of space and time. In “The Stolen Child,” he portrays an alluring, otherworldly kingdom that calls us from the frustrations of everyday life to the eerie phantasm of the faery dance.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles and is anxious in its sleep
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
The landscape is lit up with moonlight, under which things dark and hidden become visible. The powerful faeries (creatures who in Celtic tradition are emphatically not small, cute, or winged) call the poet to “the waters and the wild,” the fluid, frothy, and sometimes freaky realm of visionary trance and imagination.
Nick (Auckland) A group of prominent Chinese intellectuals recently called on their government to begin talks with the Dalai Lama and allow UN investigators into Tibet. In an open letter, a group of 30 writers, university professors and rights activists urged the Communist Party to hold direct dialogue with the Dalai Lama. It seems there are different view points on the Tibetan conflict even within the Chinese community. My understanding is that the Dalai Lama does not want independence but rather "a meaningful degree of autonomy under Chinese rule". This would allow the Tibetan people the freedom to practice ideological/cultural forms that differ from Chinese Communism without the fear of persecution. Currently the cultural values of the Tibetan people are being systematically erased by the Chinese government. I acknowledge that Western countries are also guilty of trampling on human rights, and N.Z. Pakeha have a chequered history in relation to the Maori. Do Chinese people think China could benefit from dialogue with the Tibetan people like New Zealand has benefited from dialogue with the Maori through the Treaty of Waitangi?
Wayne Lo (Hong Kong) Nick (Auckland): you say "cultural values of the Tibetan people are being systematically erased by the Chinese government." This is wrong. If the Chinese wished to 'systematically' erase Tibetan culture, they would have done this when China was completely shut off from the outside world during the first 30 years of the PRC, when the government was openly anti-religion, anti-old traditions - of all of China's ethnic groups, including the majority Han. Just think. About 2million Tibetans in 1950, 450million Chinese. If there was ever any intention at cultural or physical genocide, the Tibetans would have disappeared as quickly as the Tasmanian aborigines.Yet in the first 60 years of 'colonial' Chinese rule, Tibetan population,life expectancy has doubled. Compare this with the situation in NZ between 1840 and 1900. Maori population declined from 200,000 to 50,000 (6% of population). Tibetans are still 90% of Tibet. But yes, Tibetan traditions are being eroded-but not by the Chinese. Instead by a process called 'modernization.' In respect of this I refer you to the wonderfully nuanced posts of one Mark Anthony Jones.http:/www.blackandwhitecat.org/2008/04/01/separatism-and-tibet/
Nick (Auckland) Wayne Lo (Hong Kong): You make some valid points about the negative impact of colonial rule on indigenous cultures. However, I think it is wrong to site Maori population decline from 1840-1900 as a comparative moral victory for China's conduct in Tibet. There were mitigating factors in Maori population decline during that period such as the use of the musket in inter-tribal warfare and European diseases. I suggest ethical standards are a more exacting measure of our countries different colonial attitudes. Maori are not tortured for exercising freedom of speech, waving the Maori flag, or voicing support for Tino Rangatiratanga (Maori sovereignty). I am grateful that we have a forum here for open debate. Maori also have a high percentage of representation in New Zealand parliament. What percentage of representation do Tibetan people have in Chinese politics? I question the figures you present on Chinese population transfer. "Tibetans are still 90% of Tibet." This from the Tibetan government in exile website. "In Tibet today there are over 7.5 million non-Tibetan settlers including Chinese and Hui Muslims while Tibetans inside Tibet comprise only six million. The increasing Chinese population transfer into Tibet has reduced the Tibetan people to a minority group in their own land.” Your earlier comments have prompted me to further research the Tibetan issue from a Chinese perspective, and the historical context which gave rise to the Peoples Republic. The gross exploitation of the Chinese at the hands of imperialist powers during the Opium Wars, and invasions by multiple foreign powers until WWII places the preceding hard-line PRC policies in a more understandable context. But this does not make totalitarianism any less frightening. I am glad that the Chinese modernization of Tibet has aided in the dissemination of the profound wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism to a world that is currently destroying itself. This Tibetan conflict is symptomatic of a much larger problem that all of humanity is embroiled in. How can we live together on this earth without destroying each other and the planet?
Wayne Lo (Hong Kong) Nick of Auckland: I appreciate your efforts to appreciate the Chinese perspective.My figures are for the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Tibetan exile groups are hardly a non-biased source, but in any case their figures, are I believe for all of what they consider to be the historical Tibet - not just the TAR. But thanks - I will look more into this.I take your point about the differences in circumstance between Maoris and Tibetans, which caused the decline (initially) of the former, although my main point stands. There was never any attempt at genocide against the Tibetans, contrariwise the Chinese govt has improved the lives of Tibetans in countless objective ways.It is true that there is less freedom of speech in China than in NZ. But you imply that Tibetans are singled out for particularly rough treatment. This is untrue. The human rights problems, real or perceived, are no more, no less than for all other Chinese. Even during the Cultural Revolution, there was no campaign against Tibetans. There was a campaign against all Chinese culture of all nationalities. In fact most of the damage to Tibetan cultural relics at the time was by Tibetan Red Guards - the sons of former serfs.
