art as ritual

I'll be checking this article out in a second...

Wow Dys loved the article lots of good information. It brought back so many wonderful memories. For years traveling back and forth between Colorado and California we stopped many times in many places in NM and AZ to see Indian art and attended Pow Wows. My Favorite stop was Gallup, NM, and many times we went through to Grand Junction via Monument Valley and Moab.

Joanne: i certainly hope that on at least one of your trips from the Junction to Moab you took the Cisco cutoff following the river road into Moab and crossed the famous Black Bridge (the one lane old narrow gauge railroad bridge) a few years ago they tore it down and put in a "modern" bridge. was very sad.

Yes we did and once when I was older I drove to. One year close to Moab going towards the Junction we hit a sandstorm that was so bad our 58 buick was almost blown off the road.

Needless to say I cannot wait for the trip to NM in May. Smelling sage right this moment. What do they call that when a memory invokes a sensory reaction like certain smell?

I once watched Tibetan monks, visitors in Manhattan, create a sand mandala -- I think it was in the Museum of Natural History. Quite an experience: silence, precision, dedication, humor, and lack of permanence. At the end they tipped it into the Hudson River. As you watch them work, you are cured, if only temporarily, of your worldliness, your egotism, and the sense that you have a right to life...

About five years ago, I was fortunate enough to study with an american pottery teacher who had lived in Japan. Our class was based on eastern principles and rituals. On one occasion we gathered at his home for a 24 hour firing. The place was on about 10 acres on top of a hill. Everyone performed menial tasks. I split wood all day for the 16 foot wooden kiln. I don't remember if any of my stuff got fired that day. What I do remember was the calm I felt as I brought my arm down and the ax went through the wood. It was through experiences like this one that I learned the intrinsic value of art and creating. I learned humility.

Joanne, in acting it's called sensory recall. Yours is very good.

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Kayla, musicians speak of "muscle memory" that which is needed when playing music so fast that one cannot do it "consciously." I suspect the term is also used by dancers. How is muscle memory related, if at all, to "sensory recall?" I guess I want to know more about SR.
Also, the humility you speak of in your total attention to the ax/arm dropping on the wood. Was there a feeling at that moment that you were in a state of completeness, nothing was missing, especially Truth. No grand understanding was needed, just this simple (but very real) occasion. I suspect that is what Japanese Haiku poems are about--not to mention the dictum of the mustard seed.

I never could understand the concept of the permanent sand painting. I went to 4-corners where a pretty good sized group of native americans come to sell wares. There was a house in which you could buy a sand painting to take home with you. You could even have one made for you. Of course, these were often not what is discussed in the article - they are icons of the SW made from sand glued to a board. But, they were selling a myth that was supposed to be as transient as the wind.

What I find fascinating about these art forms is their purposeful transience. It is what makes them truly sacred--intricate and beautiful art without ego, created solely for the purpose of healing.

Maybe the humility required to create this art is what one learns through excersises such as that experienced by Kayla.

" transience"
"humility"
i think you have the key

I think most people create their art in humility. Rare is the person who makes a dot on the marketplace..

What I forgot to mention was that 3 weeks prior to splitting wood I had cracked my right elbow playing softball. The cast had been off for just 2 days. I experienced no pain during or after my task. There was a feeling of fluidity. The ax was part of my arm and it was passing through the wood toward the earth. Dance must be very much like playing a musical instrument. You learn the choreography until your body becomes the instrument and your mind meets with the music. Then it is all one. Sensory recall is an exercise in acting. You recreate an object or place in your mind, focusing on the colors, sounds, textures, temperature, smells etc. Sometimes it works and you can actually feel or smell the past. The more you do it, the easier it gets. An extraordinary element to this exercise is that sometimes other aspects of the past experience come out as well. Integral parts of the experience that were locked in your subconscience will surface, an emotion maybe. Some acting teachers go for the emotion, emotional recall. I never advocate that. It is dangerous and can even exploit the actor. We were taught sensory recall at Juilliard. Strasberg used to be into emotional recall. He was a putz.

Thanks for the discussion, dys.

I'm a "synaesthete," one of those weirdos who hears color, feels landscape as an impact on certain areas of my body (hills rubbing against left shoulder), sees particular hues in association with days of the week, letters of the alphabet, etc. etc. Was interviewed !!AT GHASTLY LENGTH!! by someone at NIH where they were doing a study of synaesthesia. ("On a scale of one to seven, what number would you give to the strength of the red you see in Wednesday?") Your discussion of sensory recall reminds me of my conviction that we are all synaesthetes, all sensory recallers, though many of us don't recognize it or use it. Art isn't a talent given at birth, a wand touching the baby on the brow, not in my view. I think it's inherent in all of us -- some of us develop it, some don't. As in anything, some are better at it than others. In our culture we tend to see art as a permanent object and/or a career. In other cultures, the unrecorded song, the sand of the painting tipped into the river are no less art for being impermanent. Bruce Chatwin's book, The Songlines, is recommended to those who haven't seen it...

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Thanks, Kayla. I can see how the evocation of emotions could "exploit" the actor (I would phrase it: "dominate, instead of facilitate, the actor's performance"). In the case of muscle memory the musician learns a fast or difficult passage by playing it over and over again, at first VERY slowly and little by little increasing the speed (with the help of a metronome, preferrably) until the appropriate performance speed is reached easily.
You advocate, I suppose, developing the ability to create (even to fabricate) the image of emotion rather than give expression to actual emotions. If so, I would agree. Expression, it would seem, is dangerous for the creation of a precise impression (meaning the effect required by a script and director). It is essentially a hit or miss resource which is an unreliable substitute for actual technique. Now, I am not too passionate an advocate of "technique" in painting, especially abstract painting, because in that context, spontaneity, serendipity and other fortuitious accidents ARE resources to be built upon. But in acting--as I very naively understand it--such "resources" are as inappropriate as they are in architecture.

Kayla, the extraordinary experience you have described so beautifully sounds like one of those quiet and profound moments that change our lives for the better.

Tartarin, I have read that art is in everyone and I agree. Too bad many of us never are able to tap into it. Once, in San Francisco, in the 60's, I tried LSD. During that trip I experienced music in many different ways, as touch, it flowed right through me, as color and as movement. I saw the notes as they would have been on the sheet, but in neon colors, flowing through the air. I became the music.

I certainly don't advocate the use of LSD; I never wanted to try it again, even though it was one of the most amazing and beautiful experiences I've ever had. I do think it confirms in a small way what you said about the ability being in all of us, somewhere in the midst of our brains, to experience our senses in every possible way. Amazingly, it is always available to you.

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Tartarin, I heard a discussion on public radio some months ago about synaethesia. I was fascinated. How fortunate you are; I hope there is no downside to your facility. I remember once in the sixties asking a professor of a physical psychology class the hypothetical question (we were on the subject of the physiology of perception) if it were at all possible that some day we might be able to cross the neurological lines from receptors in, say our eyes, ears, finger tips so that images might end up not in the occipital region of the brain but in the hearing areas, , i.e., if we could see the sensations of touch. I meant it as a purely hypothetical question, hoping even to hear why it could not be possible. He dismissed my question as a waste of class time (I don't know if anybody knew about synaesthesia at that time). Now I feel vindicated. I've never taken LSD but I messed around a bit with hash in the 60s, and it gave me once or twice an experience similar to Diane's. It was very strange. But I can also feel it strangely wonderful when hearing Bach in a completely sober state.

Never tried acid either -- when there was an opportunity I finked out. Smoked pot and hash to be sociable a couple of times and then admitted that it gave me nothing but a headache! (And thought, What's WRONG with me!!) But as to the synaesthesia, I've noticed that when I've described it to friends, many have responded that they've had similar experiences but didn't know it was "different." So I really do believe that, just as one might have pursued basketball or a math degree or other paths not taken, synaesthesia is available to those who want it. Would be interested to know if anyone here has experienced it? N.B. Richard Cytowic (with whom I first talked about this) is the neurologist who "owns" synaesthesia and has written a book called "The Man Who Tasted Shapes: A Bizarre Medical Mystery Offers Revolutionary Insights in EMotions, Reasoning, and Consciousness."