Art and music belong to us all (or so I think) and may transform us differently according to our needs. This painting by Wanbli Wiwohpe (right) speaks to me in a powerful and personal way, even if I don’t share the artist’s cultural identity. It reminds me of a sketch by Henri Breuil based on a paleolithic painting discovered at the Les Trois Frere caves in southern France, sometimes referred to as “The Sorcerer” (see below). We have no way of knowing the artist’s intent some 30,000 years ago, but we respond anyway based on our own present knowledge and cultural experience. Perhaps we discover something universal in the essential spirit of being.

The elk antlers connect us to the primal world, expand our limited sense of human awareness. In Wanbli Wiwohpe’s painting, the flute — what he calls siyotanka or “great song” — both connects us and helps us express this primal spirit, which begins to transform us, as the butterfly suggests. We envision a close connection between masculine and feminine principles, reinforced by the image of the moon and implied sunlight (maybe the moon and sun are the same). The outer world is darkness or divine nothingness. The inner world is what we cling to even as identity (the faceless image) melts into the mind/body essence. Ego is replaced by primal instinct, even if for only a few precious, restorative moments. This force arises not from the head or intellect, not even from the heart of emotion, but rather from the belly of hunger.

Plato & Aristotle in Raphael's "School of Athens"

An important dictum for all creative writers is to avoid cliches and trite expressions. One I’ve heard a number of times recently is the idea that analysis leads to paralysis, a take-off from the critics of Socrates (as told by Plato) that the over-examined life is not worth living. My own sense is that very few people are in danger of even living the examined life — preferring instead a life of blind instinct, dogmatic truth, or reckless abandon.

Don’t get me wrong … sometimes instinct and immediate action are called for, but these “animal” behaviors rarely pause long enough to ask the why questions about what we do in life. They seem almost to deny the possibility of human evolution, that which raises us above our animal instincts. In mythology, we see this wonderful struggle illustrated by creatures that are half-human, half-beast. Satyrs and Centaurs tend to focus on our sexual lower halves; while Minotaurs focus on our bull-headed stubbornness. Somehow man is caught metaphorically between the beasts and the angels, our better selves.

Stillness, silence, reflection — and dreaming — are at least as important as seemingly certain knowledge and action. The world needs both philosopher/poets and action heroes in order to grow and survive. Interpretation — like prayer — is my way of conversing with the universe and taking time to listen to the response. It helps me confront and understand myself, and it helps me break down the divide between subjective and objective worlds. Risking a trite expression, I become one with the universe — and at least for the moment I become both God and Man, and Beast (since I cannot deny my shadow). For a short time, I forget that there are distinctions … and then a feeling of peace washes over me. Rather than suffering from paralysis, my being becomes expansive and infinite. Then off to work I go …

There were many wonderful workshops at the INAFA convention in Eau Claire, WI. From Frank “Anakwad” Montano, I learned about listening in silence to my surroundings, and from Ann Licater/Jeff Oster I learned about the art of improvisation. On the second morning of the convention, I awoke early and took a couple flutes to find a quiet place outside to play. I didn’t much feel like walking down to the Chippewa River, and settled instead for a nearby park bench beneath a pine tree. It wasn’t an ideal spot … apartments behind me, a road in front of me — though it was a pleasant, cool morning with a gentle breeze.

I thought to begin playing, then remembered the words of Anakwad … instead closed my eyes, centered myself, and just listened. Birds, wind blowing the leaves, traffic — a lot of traffic from a main highway about two blocks away. I remembered what Ann had said about conversing through the flute and began to talk to the birds, playing short phrases, listening carefully to their response, answering in turn. I began to lament the sounds of cars accelerating and stopping. Occasionally, one whooshed by in front of me, distracting me from my conversation. Though I was annoyed, the birds didn’t seem to care. They kept singing their beautiful music, three or four separate flocks of them and one lone voice that rose above the rest. I talked to them all and found that my mood was changing. We began to share the beauty and happiness of the song. We found communion, and the cars no longer mattered. When another one drove past, I simply played a happier melody.

When I opened my eyes, I happened to look down at my feet and saw an ant hill … but no ants. I had been playing a mid Fm from Colyn Petersen but now switched to a high Bm from Randy Stenzel. The birds, a thought, a voice … I don’t know, but something told me to play to the ants and call them forth from the earth. So I closed my eyes and played for awhile, then opened one eye … still no ants. I closed my eyes and played again, longer this time and with more heart, opened one eye … again no ants. I complained to the birds, but they just laughed and counseled patience. I kept playing and playing, then once more opened an eye … finally, lo and behold, a single ant poked its head out of the hole, followed by another and another. My music had called forth ants into the light of day!

My job was done, so I quickly packed up my flutes, headed back to the dorm, and reflected on my experience. I wondered for instance why I chose to play a mid Fm for the birds and a high Bm for the ants. If I had thought about it much, I would have reversed this and played the higher key for the birds, the lower one for the ants. Perhaps I was trying not only to sing the ants up out of the earth but also sing the birds down out of the trees. I was, in essence, calling them to me, perhaps to show them what I had learned.

But then something strange happened. My perspective began to shift. It occurred to me that the birds had lifted me up to their song, that they had taught me what I hadn’t yet learned about singing in traffic. The ants had brought me down to their level, taught me patience and how to emerge from my own dark hole into the light of day. Both the birds and the ants taught me something about de-centering the ego and communing with nature. Expectation has it that we try to imitate the birds with a higher key flute, or imitate the ants with a lower key. Turns out I wasn’t imitating either one, but speaking from my own stance. I was unconsciously “imitating” myself. In doing so, a separation between myself and the nature I was attempting to converse with was revealed, and only then — when I became aware of it — could I really begin to understand and communicate with birds and ants. As a result, I came to find peace with the traffic as I focused more on the beauty surrounding me … the pleasant morning, the birds and trees, the earth, a nearby fountain filled with water.

Some will argue that interpretations of experience are meaningless or relative, but I think they are crucial to self-discovery, transformation, and growth. Birds and ants, and all things — even traffic — are conduits for revelation if only we will listen.

Lee Zimmerman & R. Carlos Nakai

Three days later, I’m still recovering from the sights and sounds of INAFA 2010 in Eau Claire, WI — five days of performances, workshops, vendors, and forging friendships. Bill Webb and I arrived on Wednesday afternoon in time for the tornado sirens and had to be ushered into a safe zone. Didn’t last long, though, and we were back out making our rounds as the vendors were setting up. My first purchase was a beautiful, eastern red cedar low Am from Colyn Petersen. I had met him three years earlier in Oklahoma when I was just starting out on my flute journey and bought two flutes from him … seemed like meeting an old friend. Also had a chance to meet new friends or get better acquainted with both vendors and performers: Butch Hall, Randy and Shelly Stenzel, Randy Starnes, Leonard McGann, Jeff and JoAnn Calavan, Michael Graham Allen, Jan Seiden, Randy Granger and others … and that was just the first night! Randy’s a hoot, I’m here to tell you, and we connected right away — though I’m sure Randy connects with most everyone he meets. How can you not like a guy who wears a kilt and plays a hang drum?

It’s easy to become a little star struck at first by the likes of Mark Holland, Jeff Ball, R. Carlos Nakai — players we listen to and try to imitate — but they’re just like us, friendly and down to earth. They just play a little better than we do, although there were plenty of amazing performers to go around, both on and off stage. Trying to keep this short for now, but I have so much more to say about what I learned in the workshops, my “audition” with Peter Phippen, and an early morning encounter with ants.

Wishing everyone well …

Bill Miller and Me

Not often does a performer of Bill Miller’s stature come to perform at Lincoln Land Community College, where I teach. How great to take a break from grading papers in the middle of the day, take the elevator downstairs, and settle into a front-row seat to watch a two-time grammy winner, as well as winner of many Native American music awards. He began by playing four tunes to each direction of the winds, on High Spirits flutes by Odell Borg. He told stories of growing up on the reservation in northern Wisconsin, attending art school in Milwaukee, and how we all need to experience other cultures and settings outside our comfort zones–things we can’t read in a book or learn from television. He played guitar and sang an eclectic blend of music from Native American songs to the Allman Brothers and Bob Dylan. I’m here to tell you he plays a wicked good blues guitar, having learned from players on Maxwell Street in Chicago during the 1970s. What a privilege it was to talk to him afterwards, pick up a couple of his CDs (Cedar Dream Songs and a new release Spirit Wind North), and have my photo taken with him. Thanks, Bill. Your influence will always have a positive effect on me.

 The Greek Muse Euterpe

Mythologies, perhaps, originate as dreams, and their meanings are often open to debate. I like to think that the opportunities they afford for reflection and discussion are the meanings. Linda R. Herzog is an artist I discovered recently when searching online for images of Euterpe (yoo TER pee), the Greek muse of music who is usually depicted playing a flute or double aulos. Herzog tells us that her fantasy visions come to her in the night while she sleeps. They are so vivid and powerful that she wakes up to sketch them before falling back to sleep. Is this how it works … mythology? Her images are fantastic and surrealistic — surprising and fun — but we might be left puzzled at their meaning.

The work depicted above is called Euterpe and was painted in 2006. It immediately made me think of Darwin and the biblical Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The parting waters might also remind us of Moses parting the Red Sea. Euterpe, I naturally assumed, plays the flute. I’d seen images before of Adam and Eve depicted as monkeys. This one stands unabashedly exposed, minus a fig leaf — clearly before the biblical Fall (and perhaps even before the creation of woman). At the same time, he is depicted as a kind of Pied Piper, perhaps luring (a devil in disguise) or leading (Moses in disguise) his people out of slavery in Egypt and toward the Promised Land. The image is at once ominous and hopeful. But why connect the obviously male figure to the female muse?

Not much information is available about Euterpe. Hesiod identifies her only as one of the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory). Only later, in classical Greece, was she given a flute and associated with music and lyric poetry. We also learn that she became pregnant by the river god Strymon and bore him a son. His name was Rhesus who, Homer tells us in the Iliad, led a small army of Thracian soldiers into the Trojan War, where he was tragically killed by Diomedes.

Don’t bother to look up the etymology of rhesus. I couldn’t find a Greek meaning for the word. The rhesus monkey, as it turns out, was arbitrarily named after the Thracian king. Each one of us has an rh (rhesus) factor helping to identify our blood type. So … the rhesus monkey in Herzog’s painting is not Euterpe, after all. It is representative of the son that Euterpe bore. It emerges out of the river (the god Strymon) and has inherited its mother’s flute. And because we are all blood-connected by the rh element, the painting ultimately depicts our own image mirrored back to us. Maybe we view ourselves as Adam tempted by the knowledge leading to his fall, or maybe we view ourselves as the Thracian king Rhesus fighting for a seemingly noble cause tragically leading to his death. We might even view ourselves as Moses leading “our people” to a better place, or as a semi-dark figure luring others toward an ambiguous end.

The monkey’s shadow connects him to the Tree of Knowledge, and the small bell suspended from a branch above him connects his mother Euterpe to both music and the fruit of knowledge–of both good and evil. When we call upon the muse, do we anticipate a tragic ending or a comic progression, or something else? If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I call it a journey of the dragonfly, my spirit mentor and, increasingly, mirror image of my own psyche. Imagine my surprise and delight, then, upon discovering that Herzog’s paintings were featured in a Kevin Costner film entitled Dragonfly.

The concept of transformation implies several additional ideas worth reflecting on … origins and end points, for example, and current states of being. Origins imply the idea of being first in some respect, but even this simple statement requires clarification. There are first flutes, as discovered by archaeologists; and there are stories about first flutes, as discovered in the written literature. But also there are almost certainly yet undiscovered flutes predating recent finds in southern Germany—bone and ivory flutes dating to the Paleolithic period 40,000 years ago—and there were many stories about flutes circulating in oral cultures long before the invention of writing. We might even refer to the first idea of a flute in the mind of paleolithic or neanderthal man before he ever thought to fashion one for himself. And let’s not forget my first flute, or even my first F# or my first from a particular maker. It’s said that you never forget your first—but there may be lots of other firsts in competition. These, though, will suffice to make my point.

My point is this: While it’s true that I haven’t forgotten my first flute, or my first serious experience of hearing one played, I also haven’t forgotten the one I’m playing right now—or the ones I will play tomorrow … or the ones on order that I have yet to see or play … or the ones I plan to order some day … or the ones I don’t yet even know about. Each flute has its own song. Each inspires me in a different way. Each participates in my continual transformation of self. More importantly, each flute challenges me to transcend my concept of self and partake in a higher order of being—for me, this means a higher order of humanity. Mythology inhabits the murky realm between gods and man, or between man and beasts. It’s where our awareness of the “first tree” or the “first flute” confronts the dreamy, silent past or the dreamy, silent future. To “just be yourself,” I think, means to set aside these impractical dreams which make transformation possible. Mythology both obscures and reveals to us who and what we are, hence the paradox.

Family-oriented daytime hours for the festival are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Night time entertainment starts at 6 p.m. and runs until 10:30 p.m. According to the festival’s website, this “top shelf undertaking spotlights the best in art, music, theater arts and culinary arts.” I’m deeply honored to be included in this year’s events.

The festival is located at the Nelson Park Boat Basin (2301 E. Lake Shore Drive) in Decatur. From Springfield, take I-72/US-36 East. At Decatur, keep right to take US-36 East via exit 133A and continue for 7.4 miles. Turn right onto IL-105 and go less than a mile before turning left onto Lakeshore Drive.

Hope to see you there. Stop by and say hello if you get a chance. Stay late and enjoy the fireworks!