The Belly of Hunger

Wanbli Wiwohpe (James Starkey) has persuaded me to change my references to “Native American” and even “Native American-style” flutes to North American flutes. While it can be argued that non-Irish play Irish flutes and non-Japanese play shakuhachi flutes, I make the change out of respect for a culture that has had so much of its identity co-opted, often for profit, in a way that potentially alters its essence. The flute is a meditative and healing, perhaps even what we might call a spiritual, instrument; so I continue to encourage its use for promoting peace, inner balance, and wisdom. The Journey of the Dragonfly is about seeking my own transformation and identity — but not at the expense of others.

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.

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Thriving on Ambiguity, Irony and Surprise …

 

 

 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.

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Devil in Disguise?

Many superstitions surround the dragonfly. Some of them are reported in a brilliantly illustrated book by entomologists Forrest L. Mitchell and James L. Lasswell entitled A Dazzle of Dragonflies. One such belief is that dragonflies are poisonous and that their sting is fatal. They are said to be servants to snakes and the devil. Still today, one common name for the dragonfly in the U.S. is “devil’s darning needle.” They are to be avoided at all costs. The book’s authors assure us that these beliefs aren’t true, but they also admit that dragonfly lore is beyond their expertise. Truth can be powerful medicine, although many people resist it. But stories can be powerful medicine, too–or powerful poison.

 

Native American writer Thomas King (The Truth about Stories) tells us that we are our stories. We have to be careful with them because, as he says, they contain “relationships that help to define the nature of the universe and how cultures understand the world in which they exist.” Truth would seem to eliminate the need for stories, reducing existence to little more than biological and physical facts, which is fine if you’re a rock, an ocean wave or a fruit fly. But since we’re self-aware, self-conscious humans we need stories to define who we are. We might say that fiction is our truth–that it provides meaning, purpose, direction to our lives.

 

Truth is, Dragonfly might be poisonous after all. He can make people fearful and angry. He can fill them with shame. He can, it is said, sew up the fingers and mouths of nagging women, mouthy children and men who cuss up a blue storm. One story says he can fly right into your ear and penetrate your brain. It’s true … I swear! He really can! In fact, he has just penetrated your brain and is waiting there now for your response. The dragonfly is a trickster, though. A.R. Campbell (Bats, Mosquitoes, and Dollars) referred to the dragonfly in 1925 as “man’s best friend in the insect world” (qtd. in Mitchell, Lasswell). He can cure malaria by eating mosquitoes. I swear … this, too, is true.

 

The devil may be in your own mind, and so may the healer … the good and bad together, says a Lakota man I know about. A constant refrain in King’s book, referred to above, is that (in my partly paraphrased, partly quoted version) you may do whatever you want with the story–scoff at it, dismiss it, forget about it. Just don’t say that if you had heard it earlier you would have lived your life differently. “You’ve heard it now.”

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Dragonfly Awakes …

How does a trained skeptic write about a “mythology” he doesn’t quite believe in or comprehend because he stands outside of the culture that produced it? I’m not just talking about Native American stories, either. In school, we often study stories as if they were lifeless insects impaled through the heart by long, sharp needles affixing them to a bed of white cotton. It isn’t often possible to immerse ourselves in living oral traditions we aren’t part of, and even if we could we’d always be outsiders to some degree, ethnographers rather than full participants. Still, we might learn something by exploring the ironies, the distance between illusions and reality … we might even lessen the gap a little among skeptics and believers—assuming this is a worthy goal, and I believe it is.

 

With the best of intentions, a desire for truth and wisdom, is it still possible to be misled by the dragonfly guide–to steal or misappropriate stories that don’t really belong to us because they must be lived to be understood, not interpreted? Whose story is being told or retold? Whose purpose is being served? Whose well being? Recently, I was led to a book that should become essential reading before anyone embarks on this journey of the dragonfly.

 

A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children is an encyclopedic collection of critical reviews of books written about Native Americans for children between the early 1900s and 2003, along with stories, essays and poems from its contributors. In an “Open Letter to a Non-Indian Teacher,” a mother asks “What values, class prejudices, and moral principles do you take for granted as universal? [….] Can you help [my child] acquire the intellectual skills he needs without at the same time imposing your values on top of those he already has?” That’s a tall order, for sure, but one that can’t be ignored because lives and identities are at stake.

 

Three children’s books about Kokopelli are reviewed, all written since 2000 and “all written by cultural outsiders,” the reviewer informs us. She goes on: “[They] will undoubtedly appeal to people who collect Kokopelli lamps, Kokopelli coasters, Kokopelli napkin rings, Kokopelli-printed toilet paper, and the like.” She cites an unnamed but well-known Hopi storyteller who says “In our traditional beliefs, Kokopelli is a Katsina of fertility, he is a deity. He does not go around playing a flute; he’s carrying a cane or rod. And he’s not a ‘humpback,’ he’s carrying a burden. Whenever he appears in our rituals, he is copulating. When the Katsinam come out, he goes around trying to hump people. Grown men run from him! It would be more appropriate to put his image on a bottle of Viagra or on a condom vending machine than in a children’s book.” The storyteller remains anonymous not from a desire to hide but because it is considered impolite to make others appear foolish or stupid.

 

And so … at the risk of making myself appear foolish or stupid without help from anyone, my journey with dragonfly continues. I invite your comments.

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Dragonfly’s Journey Begins …

Beneath the ancient cedar

Actually, the journey began at least two years ago with regards to the Native American-style flute, though who knows exactly what set the stage? Since then, many hours practicing by myself, leading to eventual connection to other flute players locally and around the globe via internet. Now a bit of local fame in the State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL). See the e-version of the article here: Musicians March to a Different Drum. The dragonfly is emerging into the sunlight of public scrutiny. I’ve given a lot of thought to this blog site, its purpose, what I hope to accomplish with it. Sure, partly it’s about self-promotion and the desire to share my flute song with others, but it’s more than that. The journey of the dragonfly is about self-exploration (and I will have much more to say about that in future posts), but it is also about combining my love for native flutes and literature to give this site more global meaning and interest. Stay tuned … the dragonfly is just warming up.

 

Photo © 2009 Shannon Kirshner/The State Journal-Register

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