Critical thinking

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128 Edmund Carpenter

could be taken away from you by an enemy shaman. Yet eventually you wanted others to know that you 'had something.' Probably all [ethnologists who have worked on the Northwest Coast] have heard hints and half-revelations about what people 'have.' [Being possessed] by a song at the winter dance is, of course, evidence that you 'have something' and the words of the song and the movements of the dance may hint at what it is. But it must be tempting to hint in other ways, though dangerous to go too far.'

In some tribes, visions were never concretely represented. Elsewhere they were portrayed, but with constraints that affected artistic expression. One effect was a tendency to make images that were essentially in-visible. When you look outward, you see nature. But when you look inward, you see those invisible forces that underlie nature, including human nature. This is the in-sight of the blind seer. It is also the method of the modern scientist who insists that reality is not in appearances, but in the laws that govern them.

Eskimo artists concern themselves with both natural appearances and inner realities. As hunters they observe nature carefully, and as artists they match their carvings with nature. Some carvings are so accurate, so detailed, that one can tell, say, a common loon from a red-throated loon.

But when these artists depict inner reality, art becomes making, not matching, and images become surrealistic. As one Netsilik woman said, "We believe that people can live a life apart from real life."

The Danish ethnographer Knud Rasmussen tells of asking Anarqaq, an Eskimo shaman, to draw spirit visions: "He would sit for hours with closed eyes, solely intent on getting the vision fixed in his mind, and only when this was done would he attempt to put it into form. Sometimes the recollection of the event affected him to such a degree that he trembled all over, and had to give up the attempt."

Anarqaq consented to make these drawings on the condition that Rasmussen take them to his own country and not show them to Anarqaq's people.

Ritual words can be more important than visions. Sometimes they are a source of artistic inspiration or the basis for skill and status. And sometimes they are the power behind certain ceremonies, incantations, rites. The efficacy of ritual paraphernalia and protective designs often depends on them. Like visions and silent music, ritual words are privately owned by individuals who keep them to themselves.

Silent Music and Invisible Art 129

How do you paint a song? How do you carve a word? One way is to use an acoustic model: make the eye subservient to the ear by patterning space acoustically. An essential feature of sound is that it fills space. We say, "The night shall be filled with music," just as the air is filled with fragrance. The concertgoer closes his eyes.

Auditory space has no favored focus. It is a sphere without fixed boundaries, space made by the thing itself, not space containing the thing. It is dynamic, always in flux, creating its own dimensions moment by moment.

Alaskan Eskimo mask makers were inspired by songs heard in dreams. Each design, obedient to an inner impulse, creates its own dimensions, asserts its own identity, unhampered by external restraints. Used once, each mask was then burned.

Japanese and Tibetan Buddhism are full of esoteric paintings and images not supposed to be seen. Certain Buddhist mandala must be destroyed almost as soon as they are completed.

In the Japanese secular art of bonseki, the artist is required to destroy his sand paintings after about two weeks. Navaho sand paintings qualify as "sand mandalas" with the same requirements. In fact, sand paintings in many parts of the world are generally erased as a final step in their production. Chants associated with them are kept secret.

Rituals and sacred dances are impermanent art forms, and often the articles produced for them are destroyed at the close of the performances. This custom is so widespread as to suggest great antiquity.

Among the Eskimo, carvings are rarely saved. When spring comes and igloos melt, old habitation sites are littered with waste, including beautifully designed tools and tiny carvings, not deliberately thrown away, but with even greater indifference, just lost.

To the Eskimo, a carving, like a song, isn't a thing. When you feel a song within you, you sing it; when you sense a form emerging from the ivory, you release it. As the carver holds the unworked ivory lightly in his hand, turning it this way and that, he whispers, "Who are you? Who hides there?" And then: "Ah, Seal!" He rarely sets out to carve, say, a seal, but picks up the ivory, examines it to find its hidden form, and if that is not immediately apparent, carves aimlessly until he sees it, humming or chanting as he works. Then he brings the form out; the hidden seal emerges. It was always there. He didn't create it, he released it; he helped it step forth.

Eskimo are more interested in the creative activity than in the product of that activity. Art to them is a transitory act, a relationship.