Informance of Performance

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Permalink Reply by martin shaw on February 18, 2010 at 3:12pm

I am very encouraged by the igniting of 'an electric fire, inert from millennia'. The thought that myth is about 'a long time ago' is grievous, and also extremely common. I'm adding some thoughts i am working on regarding a reclaimation of the word Culture in relation to Wildness, rather than 'Culture AND Wildness'. A culture like that would contain the porosity of imagination to inhabit these performative questions as central to an informed ritual life. I am frequently asked why, as a storyteller, i am so drawn to 'old' stories-why not make some new ones up (this is a whole other, horrible discussion)-but of course they are not 'old'.I use the word myth to describe an intensity and spaciousness located in certain key images, that produce both an intimate, emotional reaction and at the same time a wider range of relational awareness, Gastor’s sense of the ‘eternal’-a distinct change of conciousness. These glimpses of what are we calling eternity, or outside daily time, seem to have little regard for catagories. (cue endless quibbles about folktale, myth legend, wondertale.). Its not about the catagory but the arcane velocity of the image-language.

Myth is less about the past and more concerned with an intense present that the storyteller invokes. It is less ‘once upon a time’ and more ‘once below a time’, or ‘a time before time’. That eternal is not time bound-not ‘everlasting’, and the ritual conditions of storytelling are a chance to be transported into a magical present. As Eric Dardel say’s, “The mythic is not the past" So its interesting to contemplate the many ways we access these 'electric fires'. Could, in a parched and desperate society, Illness sometimes offer an authentic door to this frame of renewal (odd as that could sound-more in the second half of the below)

So these few lines are in hope of a developing 'informance of performance'. Very much looking forward to anything you have to say about the word 'associative'.

A Culture of Wildness

Culture…had meant, primarily, ‘the tending of natural growth’, and then, by analogy, a process of human training. But this latter use, which had usually been a culture of something, was changed, in the nineteenth century, to culture as such, a thing in itself.
Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, (The Hogarth Press, 1958) p.xvi

It is the opinion of this essay that the chymeric posture of the ancient storyteller offered a contribution to William’s ‘tending of natural growth’, in fact amplifies the sense of ‘culture’ past more contemporary, anthropocentric, connotations, and offers a culture that includes the wild-nature, visions, ecstacies, contact with the spirits of whales and mice. I believes that certain initiation rites, which have diminished widely since the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century, were an attempt at a culture of wildness, and that, in fact, Williams assessment of the current associations of the word ‘culture’ connotes grave damage.

By ‘Culture of Wildness’ I mean a cultivation, a ‘tending of natural growth’, in an individuals life, that is receptive to wider perceptions of reality than just what is engendered in ones daily surface grind of existence. The Vision Quest is one example. As we know, a key point in the Vision Quest experience, in fact in almost all initiatory rites, was the return. That you would, over time, contribute to the social and aesthetic life of the society by crafting some form of artistic expression from your experience in the bush, mountain or forest. This then created new passages of information that then re-energised the very structure and imagination of the wider group.

Suddenly culture has both wider and fresher connotations- that large parts of its symbolic life are informed by the move beyond the domestic into untrammelled pathways of the profoundly experiential.
I suggest a reassessment of what constitutes culture is necessary, an awareness of profound damage caused by its current anthropocentric bias, and the return to the use of a culture ‘of’…its current, rather monolithic status, in the face of ecological issues, appears shaky, to say the least. This growing lack of connection, this assumption of culture or wildness (wildness is not only chaos), has created a legacy we see daily around us. The role of the storyteller, in this authors estimation, plays a part in the re-establishing of this broadened perception of culture.

An association of the etymology of the word ‘culture’ is colere, which means ‘to till’ (19) Concise Dictionary of English Etymology (Wordsworth reference series, 2007) p.94,.. To till is to dig, to sweat, to make contact with the texture of soil, root, and worm; it is a move downwards, towards the subterranean. Its seeks relationship to the information of earth, through a certain labour and discipline, that ultimately flourishes into startling images for the wider community.
This broadened perception is also crucial for the health of the imagination, it creates a conduit for un-prescripted image to carry the myth of a person, community or country forward and into uncertain futures, rather than caught in the petrified symbology of the entirely consensual. A desire to return to childhood is often really a desire to be connected again to a free-ranging imagination (the reality of such a return would be untenable to most.) A culture of wildness would seek to engender that associative, curious consciousness in an adult, rather than a regression to childhood. To be child-like in this regard, rather than child-ish.

It is this very capacity that enables us to revision the transgressions and triumphs of our lives, to mythologize our pathologies. This is all symptomatic of the imagination in full health, rather than anchored to a tiny set of ingrained symbolic references. Oddly, it is often a descent from physical lustre that creates that very imagistic freedom- Andre Gide says that illness opens doors to a reality which remains closed to the healthy point of view.
So this re-seeing deepens perception, encourages metaphor and includes attention to marginalised, abandoned, bizarre, troublesome, absurd mythic impulses that arise without permission. When the orchestrated crisis of initiation is abandoned, we are more likely to encounter such heretical visions in the throws of illness than the brightly lit lecture hall. As the discredited, shocking image-language shuffles forward we create accord again with the wisdom of stagnant pools, roadkill and the shovel of the gravedigger. We allow the propulsions of unbidded vision to be accommodated within the wider remit of ‘knowledge’. This propulsion offers linguistic health too; we could argue that there is a significant passivity in much contemporary language, a disappearance of vital, thoughtful words that match the fast decline of certain animals, forests and stretches of wilderness. It would suggest that words are quietly disappearing from dictionaries daily.
A culture of wildness is accommodating of these rough but subtle images. It does not seek to stagnate but to stay true to its essential mythic promiscuity. If there is no move to the margins, no complicated assignation of rationality and intuition, then myth cannot truly exist.

The etymology of the word ‘wild’ includes associations of ‘astray, bewildered, confused’ (20) Concise Dictionary of English Etymology (Wordsworth reference series, 2007) p.590, which indicates its very genius lies next to vulnerability and the bereft. It is a culture of inclusiveness, and suddenly the Gods are everywhere; implicit in conversation, symptoms of illness, fetish, relationship-we start to possess a vision-language of the deity that stand behind the impulse. Nothing is ignored, even science is not to be chastised but located in the realm of the Magician, still accommodated within a mythological framework. This perception is polytheistic,un-literal, and connected to imagination more than belief, at least in its concrete sense.

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Permalink Reply by Daniel Deardorff on February 18, 2010 at 4:48pm

Thank you Martin, this is leaping at its best. "the pre-existent and ever-present originary chaos" has its own wild tempo, and myth I think is the dance. The word present (as verb) implies a go-between or mediator that heralds something or someone in advance of being "sent." To re-pre-sent brings us one step further away from the actual sending. Signs, symbols, concepts, and icons are pre-sent-ations and re-pre-sent-ations of something that is ab-sent; an image is a sending of itself whole and complete—that is our participation in trans-generational, pre-existent and ever-present project of myth-making.

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Permalink Reply by Tim Russell on February 23, 2010 at 4:24pm

I particularly like the simplicity in the statement that 'Ritual is performance with the intention of efficacy rather than entertainment'. when related to the archegestic task of epistrophe and renovatio , it becomes a very powerful force. Although I hadn't considered its potential until recently , I've just started thinking about the resonance of particular archetypes and archetypal patterns within the body. It implies a powerful potential for deep and specific healing and certainly worthy of further exploration.

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