Summertime in Cleveland has me sprawled on the back porch like a flayed goose, awaiting the nightly visitation.
Mini-gangsters breach the imperfections of my nylon mesh. Careening buzz saws trumpet their arrival, merciless high frequency their taunt.
I am the oversized sixth grader on a playground of bullies. Or, is this a single Lilliputian who dives at my sweat sodden skin from here to eternity in the heat of the midwest night?
Though I might escape to the drone-free inferno of the great indoors, I stay and study my supporting roles as life of the party and warm buffet in a multi-legged wedding bash my mini-mob is staging.
Ancient salves of lanolin give scant relief nor sane belief there is a balm in Gilead. Alone with my itchy discontent, the self control of planet earth could not contain the madness.
I punch the pillow one more time, my brave resolve ignored by all creation.
The shaman has been revered by purveyors of culture who link our storied past with a starker spiritual present.
Shamans of tribal lore dreamed in technicolor so that humbler sorts might have a taste of raw wonder. Are the artists of today our shamans then?
Surely not all artists. Some sell out. Some mistake celebrity for art or feast on tawdry expectations.
What separates the shaman from the shameless, in a word, is dream. The shaman artist slips into madness for awhile to gather up insanity for a world gone sane. Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne ‘shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers... while Suzanne holds the mirror.’
Why do we need what the shaman offers? Ah - because we are so dangerously civilized. Take it from the jungle lad, who sees these things.
‘The city people are very careless and very dirty. Unlike animals, they have no sense of personal cleanliness. They do not eliminate odor and sounds as do animals in the jungle. They could not go half an inch in a jungle without being killed by somebody.’ Dhan Gopal Mukerji, Jari, The Jungle Lad (The following Mukerji quotes are also from this book)
Shamans deal with life and death, it seems. The further we roam from our astute animal instincts, the less protected we are. Devoid of nature’s teaching, people crowd together, calling it sane to hoard the wealth.
‘It looked to me as if people were always saving money in order to be robbed.’ Mukerji
The artist shaman brings us close to nature, a drama of the here and now.
‘This is what I call drama, this theatre of nature, where no one hoards for someone else to steal.’ Mukerji
So here is the secret of nature; it happens now. We may champion the profit motive, but profit forces us into the future. What value do we find in the work inspired by profit and how does the chasing of gold poison our character?
Humans, with our vast intellect, have been caged and humiliated by our noisy swagger, prey to the very fools we emulate.
‘Being noisy and thick-skinned has made a fool of the rhinoceros. I have known people who have killed him from the grass by driving a poisoned spear into his belly.’ Mukerji
There is a shaman musician, deaf only in the worldly sense out of which she steps in the giving of her art. She would have us overflow with now-ness in the otherworldly principle of sound.
Photo Nick Farnhill, White Rhino in the waterburg Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0
