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Dreaming the Day Before the Day Before the New Millenium
"The ancients had affirmed that for any question a sole answer existed, whereas the great theater of Paris offered him the spectacle of a question to which the most varied replies could be given. Roberto decided to concede only half of his spirit to the things he believed (or believed he believed), keeping the other half open in case the contrary was true." [Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before, translated from the Italian by William Weaver, Minerva, London, 1996] It is 5am on December 30th 1999, the day before the day before the first day of the third millenium. The night is beginning to recede here at French Farm Bay, on New Zealand's Banks Peninsula. A few lights reflect on the water beyond whale-shaped Onawe peninsula, virtually an island at high tide, at the inner end of Akaroa Harbour. The hauntingly resonant dawn chorus of bellbirds speaks to my soul. I give thanks for the few native bird species that continue to flourish here, lamenting those that disappeared when the lush indigenous forests were razed, a process begun haphazardly by Polynesian settlers, roughly a millenium ago, but largely accomplished in a few 19th century decades by European timber-millers and farmers. "The moa, for at least 70 million years, was New Zealand's most notable land creature. About a dozen species of moa still existed in New Zealand when the Polynesians first arrived, with at least four of these living on Banks Peninsula. Within 500 years the moa was hunted to extinction along with the flightless goose, giant rail and numerous other defenceless bird species. The arrival of Europeans hastened the removal, between 1850 and 1900, of another 12 species from the Peninsula including the kaka, both the red-crowned and yellow-crowned parakeets, kokako, weka, saddleback and piopio." [Gordon Ogilvie, Banks Peninsula: cradle of Canterbury, GP Publications, Wellington, 1994] So much unique autochthonous beauty irreparably destroyed in such a short time by so few, justified by human greed, economic progress, historical inevitability the irresistable tentacles of globalising civilization. Just what are we celebrating at the end of the 2nd millenium? 1. I am painting on a huge canvas laid out on the ground, in a vast exhibition space with people walking by. The abstract shapes in subdued and tasteful colours become representational, then three-dimensional, and finally a neo-conceptual slice of 'ordinary' life in which people can interact and make themselves at home. But 'finally' is as entirely fictional in dreams as in the Heraclitean flux we call life. The fiction inherent in our chronology is that Western history began with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Yet Jesus was probably born sometime between the 8th and 4th centuries "BC", and Western civilization's inception lay significantly earlier, with the ancient Greeks who owed much in their turn to the Minoans and Egyptians before them. Greek-speaking invaders colonised the Aegean area around 2000 BC, and their gods and heroes, subjecting and assimilating the local variants, were to be comprehensively chronicled by Homer and Hesiod, transformed into tragic drama by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and abstracted into philosophical Forms or Ideas by Socrates and Plato. I would pick Socrates, not Jesus, as the founding father of Western civilization, for his relentless querying of all received or authoritative wisdom, no less valid in the 'information age' than in the classical period. But even that would be arbitrary: there was no actual beginning, always an earlier "day before" lost in the mythological pre-history of the ancient world. 2. I wonder why I have created a work of art to all intents and purposes indistinguishable from a fairground or market or display centre. How will these people milling about know that it is my unique creation? Perhaps it is their creation and I no longer have anything to do with it? Perhaps it is no longer 'art' but simply reality? Though reality is never simple, especially when you're dreaming it. The West is no longer living in an exclusively "Christian Era". The essential intolerance of the monotheistic stance, the admonition to "have no other gods before me", is fundamentally antagonistic, hence intrinsically aggressive, towards other religions, other gods, other world-views and points of view. Classical polytheism or pantheism, by contrast, was an inclusive concept to the extent that it enabled diverse gods to find an accepted place somewhere within the whole pantheon. Greek rationalism gradually usurped mythology and the mystery religions, but philosophers such as Pythagoras, an Orphic devotee, aimed for synthesis between reason and religion. Plato was the synthesiser par excellence of opposing tendencies in Greek thought, reconciling elements from Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, et al. "Plato suggested that the highest philosophical vision is possible only to one with the temperament of a lover. The philosopher must permit himself to be inwardly grasped by the most sublime form of Eros that universal passion to restore a former unity, to overcome the separation from the divine and become one with it." [Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western mind: understanding the ideas that have shaped our world view, Pimlico, London, 1996] 3. Someone gets argumentative, I try to pacify him, explain what this work of art is all about. Not that I'm entirely sure myself. He looks easily capable of violence and I don't want to offend him. He is young, good-looking and androgynous, and I suspect I'm attracted to him at the same time as a little afraid. Rationality is only part of human experience. The irrational, religious, spiritual, mythological, emotional, creative side the Dionysian as opposed to the Apollonian is the opposite side of the coin from reason. The millenial celebrations provided an opportunity to consciously, irrationally, sacredly or even narcissistically occupy the centre of the universe, to assert that "I was there" at the time. New Year's Day is traditionally a time of reflection on past and future, January taking its name from the two-faced Roman god Janus, guardian of domestic portals, who looks ahead and backwards simultaneously. In pondering the significance of our individual selves balancing precariously in the fleeting present, we are drawn to the big questions of the meaning of time, the cosmos, human existence, history, and death. We only have to wonder at the mystery of it all and we are back in the ancient or prehistoric "day before" only superficial appearances have changed, the overarching cosmic reality has not. 4. It seems like this is a street-wise part of London and I'm taking part in some sort of colourful masquerade or carnival. The young man has metamorphosed into an equally-attractive young woman, one of a gang of brightly-dressed, raffish-looking, beguiling, petty-criminal types I have to placate and go along with. I am unsure what they want of me, but know that I have to be extremely careful in my dealings with them. They understand the streets, belong to the street-life, whereas I'm the Mr. Jones who knows that something's going on but doesn't know what it is. With family and friends I greeted the first day of the new millenium atop Onawe peninsula, once the site of a Maori pa or fortified village which was brutally sacked by a marauding North Island tribe. On the summit is a Stonehenge-like cluster of huge volcanic boulders, a natural or perhaps man-made shrine. Ensconsed on the rocks we awaited a sunrise which never appeared. There were too many clouds overhanging the hills encircling the harbour, and light was dawning gradually, softly, diffusedly, anticlimactically. Someone spotted an ominously-transparent low cloud approaching abruptly from the north, and a few minutes later we were beating a hasty retreat down through the long grass of the gently-sloping hillside, besieged by a squall-driven downpour. An ambiguous portent from the gods? This was far from the pristine, balmy summer weather we'd hoped for. The women among us called it spiritually cleansing, and the men, despite momentary scepticism, concurred. "The earth, we begin to remember, is also a living body with a soul, and it is at sacred sites like Delos, the hub of the Cyclades, that her energies gather. Strung along ley lines, the earth's energy meridians Delos is linked to Palestine in the east and Stonehenge in the west these places of pilgrimage are magnets and transformers: those who are drawn to them find mystical experiences, life-changing insights, portentous dreams. 'Delos' means 'the revealed' (it's the root in 'psychedelic'), and the island's ground is 'permeated with dreams'." [Annie Gottlieb, Voyage to Paradise: a visual odyssey, (paintings by) Thomas McKnight, HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1993] 5. I realise that I too am acting a series of parts and have no fixed identity, and am probably as odd-looking as the gang, at least on the surface. Others would think me one of them, one of this shifting, unpredictable troupe of street-jesters that keep popping up all over the place. I have lost my separateness, my sense of alienation, and have merged with the characters I've been following. The pohutukawa tree in our garden at French Farm Bay is blooming into deep red efflorescence. The male korimako (bellbirds) are going crazy around it, darting in to sip the nectar before another gives chase, two or three or more singing forcefully at each other in magnificent unison, puffing up their feathers in dominating display and vocalizing each note with maximum gusto. And the large, beautiful kereru (native pigeons) enchant us every time one soars vertically skywards with wings and tail spread wide, stalling momentarily before gliding downwards as if revelling in skiing or surfing the air, repeating the manoeuvre once or twice for good measure. Recurrent wonder and innocence of vision is the key to remaining young at heart. In delighting in the timeless splendour of the world's natural beauty, so long as there is any left, one's innermost being radiates timelessness. "If life is to be thought of as a process of dying, it is also to be lived at each moment; and in each of these moments time is to be found entire. Being entire, even in its parts, lets us share in the mystery of the timeless." [Francis Huxley, The Way of the Sacred, Aldus Books, London, 1974] The "mystery of the timeless" is evoked simply by proximity to, and contemplation of, the natural world, which remains unified and detached from human divisions of time. But neither are we separate from the world, from Gaia the earth goddess, despite humanity's convincing usurpation of the divine role for itself. We need only recall the hubris of Icarus and similarly tragic classical heroes, and ponder what the fates hold in store for us, if we continue to destroy the natural birthright of our future generations. 6. I get on a crowded bus and make my way to a seat at the back. A strangely impressive pale-faced man, possibly masked or made-up, clambers on after me. Everyone must notice that he's someone very special, important in a knowing, wise kind of way. As he goes past he turns to fix his large, almond-shaped, all-seeing eyes very deliberately, very particularly on me, as if to share an esoteric secret or impart some profound knowledge. I disengage and turn to look out the bus window. Above some trees a huge flock of flamingos is flying en masse out of the London Zoo. A week after New Year's Day I found the following quotation in a display case in the Akaroa Museum, headed "Te Pa Nui o Hau (The Home of the Wind)": "The rocks at the crown of Onawe are said to have once housed an Atua, or guardian the Spirit of the Wind. The spirit jealously guarded Onawe from any trespasser by confronting them in a chilling voice and commanding them to turn back. However, the first firing of a musket on the peninsula is said to have caused the great spirit to abandon its Onawe home in fear." Signifying the ousting of the old mythology by the new, by superior and deadly technology. Of course my rational half believes the Atua existed only as superstition in the primitive mind, never in empirical reality. But my irrational half does not concede this, preferring to imagine that, on significant occasions such as the dawning of the new millenium, it may still return from oblivion, from "the day before". This article originally appeared in *spark-online issue 5.0, Feb.
2000, at: |