Telling the World With the Stories We Tell

"Story Teller"  by Lorraine Capparell

Lately I've felt at a loss for words.  So I felt like pulling up some worthy words by a few people I admire about how to manage life, art, and creating reality.  Spider Woman in Pueblo traditions is also called "Thought Woman", because she makes the world with the stories she tells about the world.   So do we...........

  

Spider and Cross, prehistoric Mississippian Culture ornament

"God needs us as much as we need God.  We need God because we are God's stories.  God needs us because we are God's way to make new kinds of stories."

David R. Loy, "The World is Made of Stories" 

 People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons.  From within. ”

― Ursula K. Le Guin

"Progress might have been alright once upon a time, but it has gone on for too long."

---Ogden Nash

"Stories are not abstractions from life but how we engage with it.  We make stories and those stories make us human.  We awaken into stories as we awaken into language, which is there before and after us.  The question is not so much "What do I learn from stories" as "What stories do I want to live?"   Insofar as I'm non-dual with my narratives, that question is just as much, 

"What stories want to come to life through me?"

David R. Loy, "The World is Made of Stories" 

"As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.”

― Ursula K. Le Guin

"Our job was not to just re-tell the ancient  myths, but to re-invent them for today.  Artists are the myth makers."

Katherine Josten, The Global Art Project

 
"With every passing hour our solar system comes 43 thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in the Constellation of Hercules. And still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress."

---Ransom K. Ferm

"What's a day without a good rationalization?"

---Fred (Bartender at the Crystal Korner Bar, Madison, Wisconsin)

Crop Circle, Wiltshire,England, 2009

Masks! And the Spirit of the Mask!

Here's a Shaman mask I made from my friend Arjuna's face.

 Well, it is almost Halloween, and I've been doing some life review.  I've been making masks for 30 years, and I think it's about time I honor the "Spirit of the Mask" for blessing me, a lot of people who've worked for me over the years (or copied me)  and now have businesses of their own, and all the people who've used the masks, their dances that I saw, or never saw, the energy of the masks going on beyond me.  THANK YOU!  BLESSED BE!

Of course, the "Greenman" has been my most enduring!

Here is a story to tell that has come true:

Back in the early 90's, when I first began to make masks,  I belonged to a women's group, and a member of the group did something called "Re-Birthing".  We lay down on the floor, and with eyes closed,  did rapid breathing while she coached us.  This put us each into an altered state of consciousness.

The result was a visionary experience for most participants, and for myself, I had a vivid vision of myself looking at a kind of fissure in the earth from which emerged a mask (I remember it was red and pinkish, very elaborate).  As I "watched" the mask rapidly turned into another mask, and another, and another...............one after another, constantly changing into brilliantly colored masks!

When we gathered in a circle to discuss our journeys, I told everyone that I had just met the "Mask Deva".  And all these years later, I think I did, and I've been able to "uncover" a few of those masks that were revealed to me.  What a blessing!  So I felt like sharing a few along the way here.......................

First and Foremost, THE MASKS OF THE GODDESS PROJECT.  Begun very magically when I lived in Berkeley, California in the late '90's, and had my Rites of Passage Gallery.  My first Collection I made for the 20th Annual Spiral Dance by the Reclaiming Community, held at Fort Mason Center.  Truly, I was blessed to be given that work, and the work continues.  No artist could ask for more.  

 

Here's an early Samhain ritual mask, the Crone aspect of  three.

Crow Man and the Bone Goddess, two personal mythic figures that kept emerging in my dreams around the time of my divorce.  I think, in retrospect, they were guides, helping me to deal with the difficulties of that time.

 

           "Gaia" from a wonderful Solstice Residency at I Park Artist's Enclave in 2005 in Connecticut

                                      

                          

                               and the Goat Mask for Tragos, a film by the brilliant Antero Alli.

I never showed this mask of Kilahua giving birth to new lands, erupting into the future..........

A Butterfly Woman, one of my favorites and not so fierce as some.

This mask was the result of an  encounter in the summer of 2005 with a Luna Moth.  When I make these masks, there is always the hope that they won't only end up on someone's wall, but will be "activated", someone will find their own story for the mask.............how could anything as amazing as a Luna Moth not have a story that needs telling?

"La Mariposa", a rather ferocious Butterfly Woman. 
 As Clarissa Pinkola Estes said, to be a pollinator, one must have "los ovarios".
  It's not a job for sissies.

 I used to tell people, "Give me a story and I'll make you a mask for it", but in this cynical world, most people didn't believe me.  Yet stories, and the collective stories that are called Myths,  are what fueled my imagination.  Give me a story and perhaps we can find its Face.............

 One of many "Heyoka" masks.  You can't do ritual theatre without the Liminal Heyoka circling, reminding us of the chaos and humor at the borders of "reality".  And have you ever noticed that there are some people who are just born for the job?

Another "Spider Woman" mask.  I was inspired by a story I read by, of course, Ursula K. Leguin in which the author described a person with eyes that were full of stars.  I think Mercedes Lackey was also inspired by her vision when she wrote about the Goddess of one of her worlds, called "the Starry Eyed One".

 I love this mask, which was inspired by a creation of another mask artist I saw. 

 It's "The Deva of the Rose".

Two "Shields" I did with my former husband, artist Duncan Eagleson. 

Both were sold long ago.

One of many Gaia masks.  This one I made for the Mask Symposium I participated in in Carbondale, Illinois at the University of Southern Illinois in 2005.  A wonderful event and exhibit, and a fun trip to Carbondale and the area.  

 

A recent Goddess mask.........."Oya", African Goddess of storms.

People have suggested that I put eyes in the masks so they are more sculptural, can be "hung on the wall".  But I'm always telling people that that's not really what they're for............they are in their very essence collaborative, and metaphorical of the human multiplicity of being as well.  I like having the open eye holes, because they invite (hopefully)  exactly that, collaboration with others.  The Artform is open, the eyes are open, and the mask always has the possibility of someone else putting it on, telling a new story, dancing a new dance.  Open.  

 And the open eye holes suggest the mystery and eternally changing formlessness behind the face we see, or think we see, the face that is ever changing...........

Me in one of my Renfair booths, probably back in 1996.  I did Renaissance Faires for many years.   I don't know what's next, to be honest..........the "Numina" masks project bubbles and perks in my imagination, unformed as yet, and await those who will give them life and story with my collaborator in California, Annie Waters and her amazing community. 

Sometimes I have to wait for the story to turn up.  

World, give us a new story, a Good Story..............and let's find out what its face looks like.

Doris Lessing & my "Book of Common Miracles"

"Writers are often asked: "How do you write?" But the essential question is:

"Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write?"

Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words, the words your characters will speak, ideas - inspiration. If a writer cannot find this space, then poems and stories may be stillborn. When writers talk to each other, what they discuss is always to do with this imaginative space, this other time. "Have you found it? Are you holding it fast?"

Doris Lessing,

Nobel Prize Speech, 2007

My friend Rose says that I should compile a little book about syncronicities. I think, if I did, I would call it the "Book of Common Miracles", or perhaps, "Grace". Because I've often felt there is a Conversation going on that, in a quantum sense, once we notice, becomes continually more animated. In other words, we're often "tapped on the shoulder" by angels, and pre-occupied with our daily concerns, fail to notice little miracles fluttering under our very noses.

Ecologist David Abram commented that perception is:  "a reciprocal phenomenon organized as much by the surrounding world as by oneself" and suggested that a two-way dynamic of intention, or energy exchange, may be going on. In contrast to our idea of a non-living world we simply observe, he went on to say that "the psyche is a property of the ecosystem as a whole", suggesting that we move beyond the notion that "one's mind is nothing other than the body itself".* 

A Conversant World. Or as writer Alice Walker has often said, "the Universe responds."

So the story I would like to tell today concerns one of my 5 favorite writers, a woman whose visionary books, most significantly SHIKASTA, has informed and inspired me since the mid '70's, Doris Lessing. The excerpt above is from her 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature speech, which she received at the age of 88. The visual is her personal note and autograph, found on the back cover of a paperback I found lying on the sidewalk at my feet, a pile of discarded books just a few blocks from where I live in downtown Tucson, Arizona. To me, it's a talisman - infused with energy from the living hand of this prolific and visionary writer, whose long and enduring gift she has never failed.

I've been very depressed this winter, which led me to go into therapy to tell and reveal to myself, some of the stories of my personal life, and hopefully untangle them so I can move through the bardo of transition I've been mired in. I do not like the cynicism and bitterness that post-menopausally "haunts" me.......the Habit of Loving is the discipline from which creativity arises, and without it's hopeful window, the river dries up. I've been blessed to find a wise counselor to listen to me. And in the "unmasking process" (as she puts it) I've often felt like a ghost within the "legend" of my former self.......therapy is rather a painful process! And I've had plenty of doubts as to whether being an artist matters anymore.

So when I found"The Habit of Loving" at my feet while strolling down a residential street near where I live I picked it up with pleasure. To find a personal autograph on the inside (dated 1982) by the author........is pure magic. Personal magic - because if it was by Stephen King, or any of the thousands of authors I don't know or don't care about, it wouldn't mean a thing to me. But this is a talisman, as if, in some wonderful way, a creative spark was passed on to me from someone I tremendously admire. And a reminder to not only respect, but CHERISH the gifts of creativity and expression we're given. It's too easy to forget - they are high privilege.

In her acceptance speech, Lessing remembers her life early life in Africa, in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, as well as her life in England. And she urges us to remember how precious knowledge, and the gifts of literacy, really are.

"We are a jaded lot, we in our world - our threatened world. We are good for irony and even cynicism. Some words and ideas we hardly use, so worn out have they become. But we may want to restore some words that have lost their potency.

We have a treasure-house of literature, going back to the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans. It is all there, this wealth of literature, to be discovered again and again by whoever is lucky enough to come up on it. Suppose it did not exist. How impoverished, how empty we would be.

We have a bequest of stories, tales from the old storytellers, some of whose names we know, but some not. The storytellers go back and back, to a clearing in the forest where a great fire burns, and the old shamans dance and sing, for our heritage of stories began in fire, magic, the spirit world. And that is where it is held, today.

Ask any modern storyteller and they will say there is always a moment when they are touched with fire, with what we like to call inspiration, and this goes back and back to the beginning of our race, to fire and ice and the great winds that shaped us and our world.
The storyteller is deep inside everyone of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is attacked by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise . . . but the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us - for good and for ill.

It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative.

The poor girl (in Zimbabwe) trudging through the dust, dreaming of an education for her children, do we think that we are better than she is - we, stuffed full of food, our cupboards full of clothes, stifling in our superfluities?

I think it is that girl and the women who were talking about books and an education when they had not eaten for three days, that may yet define us.

© The Nobel Foundation 2007

*"The Perceptual Implications of Gaia", David Abram, THE ECOLOGIST (1985)