Shamanic diarrhoea: sound and symbols
Aug. 27th, 2004 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootYes, there is more. Those who know me will understand that I go through crazed burns like this..they peter out after a short while, and normal service (whatever that is) is swiftly resumed.
This is not even really a continuance of my meditation post...if anything, it's a side issue. Don't read it if this sort of thing isn't your bag. Without a moment's hesitation I can assure you it makes even less sense than the last one.
Using the drum. What was the point in the making of the first drum? From the little we think we know of early man, the hunt and connection with the wild was important, sacred. Maybe this was a rationalisation in itself of powers seemingly overwhelming and irreconcilable, a hope of the most harsh of gods, nature, being merciful.
Does the drum begin as consciousness of one's own heartbeat? Using the skin of the wolf to cover one, giving one the strength and warmth of the wolf, using the skins of goats as drumskins, the horns of the bull as trumpets...shamanic practices still consider these forms of music as magical empathy, the beast singing through your hands, your breath. Even now, certain monasteries in Tibet and Nepal carve musical instruments out of the bones of former inhabitants. Though dead they lie, they sing yet, and when you use the flute or pipe or whatever, you are joining with your former brethren in sacred sound.
My drum is a cheap little fifteen quid thing with some celtic knotwork on it. For all I know it's not even made of a real skin, and in the damp all it says is blah. But at the moment, its notes are complex and resonant, rich, high and low. The sounds it makes brings pictures to my eyes, ancient cave paintings, the sound of morning prayers in desert lands. I am not connecting into anything that I have hunted, that I have lived with or killed. I am plugging into my own beloved library of pictures and symbols.
And I use these symbols now. In doing so, I had to disassociate myself from the phenomenon of listening to the actual drum, just as someone watching the sunset has to separate themselves from total immersion in the experience if they want to share it with you. There needs to be a split second's removal from experiencing the sunset, while they turn their attention to you and to the symbols they are about to use in order to communicate 'Look at that sunset.' I disassociated myself from the drum to tell you about the drum. My attention moved from the sound, to the drum, to tapping out these symbols.
Symbols and alphabet. Magicians will tell you that if you want your talisman to be powerful, it must be in a language known to few, and best if it be unfamiliar to yourself; a symbol's power is in its mysterious edges, the lack of limits to it. Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness (originating story for Apocalypse Now) was a Polish Anglophile, whose love of precision was baffled by the English Language. Conrad famously said, 'All English words are instruments for exciting blurred emotions.'
He explains further:
'Oaken,' in French means 'made of oak wood' - nothing more. 'Oaken' in English connotes innumerable moral attributes: it will connote stolidity, resolution, honesty, blond features, relative unbreakableness - also, made of oak...the consequence is that no English word has clean edges...'
This language, a powerful compilation of mutual symbols, one of the most powerful in the world. Effective use of it requires craft and analysis: there is no analysis without a certain level of distance, of disassociation. You cannot judge your writing if your emotions are deeply tied into it. Can the same be said of that other great lexicon of symbols, Arithmetic?
Don't know. Dead end. Don't understand maths, never have. A language I cannot master.
To use the language of symbols means separation from the experience they are trying to denote. We don't need them to connect to the given experience. We need them to connect to one another. Cogito Ergo Sum means I think therefore I am. I am not you. I think so I must be (me). And we don't necessarily understand each other, but we are smart, you and I. We will work out a code so we can reach that stage of understanding. Through a series of gestures and symbols, we will work out if we can empathise or at least pass on information.
And there is much new age warbling about this being a bad thing, how we were once unconscious,part of the uni-mind, how in defining separate ego, we set limits on ourselves, and instead of being part of universal one-ness, we shattered into lots of little fragments all claiming to be whole mirrors.
Hmm. I think the myriad shards are illuminating and entertaining and astonishing. I'll meet/think about/totally surrender to the universal oneness later.
Separateness and consciousness are powerful indeed. The serpent did not lie when it said the knowledge of life and death would make us 'As gods.'
Disassociation is necessary in making decisions, in making judgements. The flip side of disassociation is that it is a continual process; ie what began as empathic use of music and sound via animal or human 'parts' in which the instrument, the beast spirit and the musician become one, fades into pure tool use, fascinating, complex...and all about power without empathy, always easier than total immersion. Total immersion can mean getting it wrong (in terms of entertaining an audience)It was Uncle Oscar's belief that 'All bad poetry is sincere.'
What do we care about? Do we really disassociate from everything and use doubleplusgoodducktalkerusage to justify to ourselves and each other how little we care, how little we really feel, how lost we are without our toys?
Has homo sapiens taught itself the power of positive schizophrenia? Disassociation is good when the judgement is pro-me, good when I get to use the tools, good when I get to play, get to boss, get to control..the power of disassociation is bad when I'm lonely, bad when I need empathy, bad when I need sincerity, bad when I am not the power user, but the used. 'Perception is everything,' until I get hurt, and then those words are a facile tool for disregarding pain if it becomes uncomfortable to observe. I am more than animal when I make decisions about how to use others. I am an innocent beast when they use me.
Much of the earth's human population is miserably used, stripped of drums and manipulated by symbols.
Why then should I look at the beginnings of thought, the beginnings of language? Who cares how it began? What matters, surely, is what it is doing now.
And yet, I want to know.
And once again, I arrive at the blank wall of my ignorance and my chatter, if possible even less focused than before.
A shamanic teacher would say that these posts are just getting rid of the froth at the front of the mind. I feel it has to go somewhere or I will never get anything done.
Farewell, LJ, I must leave headland for a while and pay attention to the ordinary world.
Addendum (added much later): Yes,this goes on forever too, with no guarantee of sense or conclusion.
So where has this poor happence worth of semi-meditation brought me?
No great conclusions here, nothing that isn't a truism or obvious. And yet, I record it. Even when the territory's well charted, we remember best the maps drawn by our own hand.
Human cognisance has traditionally been associated with separation/the 'fall'/alienation from God, the World, Nature. To recognise the world and to become aware of that recognition and through it,our own consciousness, means feeling like an outsider because to judge we have to stand back and consider.
And we assume that is how all cognisance must work; we assume it begins with realisation of self as separate from everything around self. This makes sense to me, but I suppose the potential mistake here is in deciding that no other form of cognition/intelligence can exist just because I can't envisage it.
Language might be an evolutionary tool. Animals have languages of differing kinds, ways of passing on information. But we are the ones to have created layers and sub-texts to this code, to have invented other intricate codes alongside it. We are the ones who trust it the most.
Perhaps the first code, if born of cognition, was the child of consciousness separated from nature. Complex codes = lack of other viable ways to pass information + surfeit of information. All very obvious.
Does it then follow that once Man had language, control rather than empathy would have become the main point for this tool's deployment? Bear in mind Man's background as a weak primate, controlled by fear, hunger, weather and incomprehensible forces. How much better to control these things than to feel with them, become one with them. First of all, becoming 'one with them' may be impossible. And anyway, pragmatically speaking, one's slave is more easily secured than one's equal.
Language helps where there is separation and potential lack of empathy. It can foster empathy, my personal sense of its original goal, but it can also be used as a substitute for empathy, and in this, its neatness and malleability make it a magnificent tool for control. But where is the actual evidence of this being unavoidable and irrevocable? I do not see that.
I suspect Language as an agent of control is not necessary for Humanity. It is necessary for the frightened elements within Humanity.
So is fear part of the human condition?
First, I would have to believe there was such a thing as a permanent human condition. I'm not convinced it isn't just another excuse for us taking the easy way out.
I will think on this much more. And arrive at even fewer conclusions than before.
And at some point in all this, I must try to be still!
This is not even really a continuance of my meditation post...if anything, it's a side issue. Don't read it if this sort of thing isn't your bag. Without a moment's hesitation I can assure you it makes even less sense than the last one.
Using the drum. What was the point in the making of the first drum? From the little we think we know of early man, the hunt and connection with the wild was important, sacred. Maybe this was a rationalisation in itself of powers seemingly overwhelming and irreconcilable, a hope of the most harsh of gods, nature, being merciful.
Does the drum begin as consciousness of one's own heartbeat? Using the skin of the wolf to cover one, giving one the strength and warmth of the wolf, using the skins of goats as drumskins, the horns of the bull as trumpets...shamanic practices still consider these forms of music as magical empathy, the beast singing through your hands, your breath. Even now, certain monasteries in Tibet and Nepal carve musical instruments out of the bones of former inhabitants. Though dead they lie, they sing yet, and when you use the flute or pipe or whatever, you are joining with your former brethren in sacred sound.
My drum is a cheap little fifteen quid thing with some celtic knotwork on it. For all I know it's not even made of a real skin, and in the damp all it says is blah. But at the moment, its notes are complex and resonant, rich, high and low. The sounds it makes brings pictures to my eyes, ancient cave paintings, the sound of morning prayers in desert lands. I am not connecting into anything that I have hunted, that I have lived with or killed. I am plugging into my own beloved library of pictures and symbols.
And I use these symbols now. In doing so, I had to disassociate myself from the phenomenon of listening to the actual drum, just as someone watching the sunset has to separate themselves from total immersion in the experience if they want to share it with you. There needs to be a split second's removal from experiencing the sunset, while they turn their attention to you and to the symbols they are about to use in order to communicate 'Look at that sunset.' I disassociated myself from the drum to tell you about the drum. My attention moved from the sound, to the drum, to tapping out these symbols.
Symbols and alphabet. Magicians will tell you that if you want your talisman to be powerful, it must be in a language known to few, and best if it be unfamiliar to yourself; a symbol's power is in its mysterious edges, the lack of limits to it. Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness (originating story for Apocalypse Now) was a Polish Anglophile, whose love of precision was baffled by the English Language. Conrad famously said, 'All English words are instruments for exciting blurred emotions.'
He explains further:
'Oaken,' in French means 'made of oak wood' - nothing more. 'Oaken' in English connotes innumerable moral attributes: it will connote stolidity, resolution, honesty, blond features, relative unbreakableness - also, made of oak...the consequence is that no English word has clean edges...'
This language, a powerful compilation of mutual symbols, one of the most powerful in the world. Effective use of it requires craft and analysis: there is no analysis without a certain level of distance, of disassociation. You cannot judge your writing if your emotions are deeply tied into it. Can the same be said of that other great lexicon of symbols, Arithmetic?
Don't know. Dead end. Don't understand maths, never have. A language I cannot master.
To use the language of symbols means separation from the experience they are trying to denote. We don't need them to connect to the given experience. We need them to connect to one another. Cogito Ergo Sum means I think therefore I am. I am not you. I think so I must be (me). And we don't necessarily understand each other, but we are smart, you and I. We will work out a code so we can reach that stage of understanding. Through a series of gestures and symbols, we will work out if we can empathise or at least pass on information.
And there is much new age warbling about this being a bad thing, how we were once unconscious,part of the uni-mind, how in defining separate ego, we set limits on ourselves, and instead of being part of universal one-ness, we shattered into lots of little fragments all claiming to be whole mirrors.
Hmm. I think the myriad shards are illuminating and entertaining and astonishing. I'll meet/think about/totally surrender to the universal oneness later.
Separateness and consciousness are powerful indeed. The serpent did not lie when it said the knowledge of life and death would make us 'As gods.'
Disassociation is necessary in making decisions, in making judgements. The flip side of disassociation is that it is a continual process; ie what began as empathic use of music and sound via animal or human 'parts' in which the instrument, the beast spirit and the musician become one, fades into pure tool use, fascinating, complex...and all about power without empathy, always easier than total immersion. Total immersion can mean getting it wrong (in terms of entertaining an audience)It was Uncle Oscar's belief that 'All bad poetry is sincere.'
What do we care about? Do we really disassociate from everything and use doubleplusgoodducktalkerusage to justify to ourselves and each other how little we care, how little we really feel, how lost we are without our toys?
Has homo sapiens taught itself the power of positive schizophrenia? Disassociation is good when the judgement is pro-me, good when I get to use the tools, good when I get to play, get to boss, get to control..the power of disassociation is bad when I'm lonely, bad when I need empathy, bad when I need sincerity, bad when I am not the power user, but the used. 'Perception is everything,' until I get hurt, and then those words are a facile tool for disregarding pain if it becomes uncomfortable to observe. I am more than animal when I make decisions about how to use others. I am an innocent beast when they use me.
Much of the earth's human population is miserably used, stripped of drums and manipulated by symbols.
Why then should I look at the beginnings of thought, the beginnings of language? Who cares how it began? What matters, surely, is what it is doing now.
And yet, I want to know.
And once again, I arrive at the blank wall of my ignorance and my chatter, if possible even less focused than before.
A shamanic teacher would say that these posts are just getting rid of the froth at the front of the mind. I feel it has to go somewhere or I will never get anything done.
Farewell, LJ, I must leave headland for a while and pay attention to the ordinary world.
Addendum (added much later): Yes,this goes on forever too, with no guarantee of sense or conclusion.
So where has this poor happence worth of semi-meditation brought me?
No great conclusions here, nothing that isn't a truism or obvious. And yet, I record it. Even when the territory's well charted, we remember best the maps drawn by our own hand.
Human cognisance has traditionally been associated with separation/the 'fall'/alienation from God, the World, Nature. To recognise the world and to become aware of that recognition and through it,our own consciousness, means feeling like an outsider because to judge we have to stand back and consider.
And we assume that is how all cognisance must work; we assume it begins with realisation of self as separate from everything around self. This makes sense to me, but I suppose the potential mistake here is in deciding that no other form of cognition/intelligence can exist just because I can't envisage it.
Language might be an evolutionary tool. Animals have languages of differing kinds, ways of passing on information. But we are the ones to have created layers and sub-texts to this code, to have invented other intricate codes alongside it. We are the ones who trust it the most.
Perhaps the first code, if born of cognition, was the child of consciousness separated from nature. Complex codes = lack of other viable ways to pass information + surfeit of information. All very obvious.
Does it then follow that once Man had language, control rather than empathy would have become the main point for this tool's deployment? Bear in mind Man's background as a weak primate, controlled by fear, hunger, weather and incomprehensible forces. How much better to control these things than to feel with them, become one with them. First of all, becoming 'one with them' may be impossible. And anyway, pragmatically speaking, one's slave is more easily secured than one's equal.
Language helps where there is separation and potential lack of empathy. It can foster empathy, my personal sense of its original goal, but it can also be used as a substitute for empathy, and in this, its neatness and malleability make it a magnificent tool for control. But where is the actual evidence of this being unavoidable and irrevocable? I do not see that.
I suspect Language as an agent of control is not necessary for Humanity. It is necessary for the frightened elements within Humanity.
So is fear part of the human condition?
First, I would have to believe there was such a thing as a permanent human condition. I'm not convinced it isn't just another excuse for us taking the easy way out.
I will think on this much more. And arrive at even fewer conclusions than before.
And at some point in all this, I must try to be still!
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Date: 2004-08-27 09:42 am (UTC)Fragments of a Hologram Rose.