So in the art, in the art of our tradition, it appears we have been going a long time, I remember once thinking. It was some years ago in the Drakensberg mountains of South Africa and I was walking back down a steep track from some rock caves which I had spent most of the day reaching.
The shallow rock caves, which were in the cliffs above a long valley at whose mouth an isolated smooth round green hill rose that was called Inkayamba, or ‘rain snake’ since it attracted a large number of thunderstorms and lightning strikes, preserved several examples of polychrome paintings by the San People. The paintings were not in fact that old, or put another way they had been reworked and restored over the centuries until about one hundred and fifty years ago when the occupants of those caves had been forced to abandon them to the new settlers in the valley, but the art appeared to belong to a tradition stretching back over the millennia.
The main figures in the large polychrome paintings were eland deer antelope, several of them moving together in a herd which was being chased by running male hunters. I could tell they were male because they all sported strong erections as they jumped and leapt in an attempt to keep ahead of the herd. However, the human figures were much thinner and smaller than the eland deer antelope, who, with their smooth shoulders, soft back humps and fat rounded bellies, filled and dominated the landscape across the cave wall. Then in another cave there was a painting of a single eland stood in the centre of the smooth wall surrounded by men and women, some of whom appeared in part-human, part-animal form. The eland looks directly out at me with its head lowered, the front legs bending and the back ones crossed over each other.
The ways of discovering the tradition, at any rate the ways recommended by Professor Lewis-Williams since he began writing on Bushmen art several decades ago, are through the aesthetic, the narrative, and the interpretive approaches. It was later in the day and I was back in the valley at the Visitor Centre shop reading this from out of one of his books on sale there, while I chose what else to buy. One of the things I came away with was a cushion-cover which had one of the more beautiful running and leaping hunters printed on it, although it disappointed me to observe (and it still does!) that his erection had been ‘air-brushed’ out of the cushion-cover copy.
In our tradition, I mean that tradition we follow here on this our walkingtalkingwriting blog, there are times when we feel similarly ‘air-brushed’ out. Take the question; What is our tradition? It depends on the approach, we might begin by answering with a gesture, a story, and an explanation, before pointing out the journalistic aspect of our weekly deadlines, or our sometimes ironic comic style, or our critical post-modernist dialogicity. You seem invisible to me, a laughing younger voice mocks.
After all older men should not show their erections.
Or so it generally goes. In our older state of words here, it is true the life energy has become different than when we were young. It is simply a new wave, with a slower and less jagged rhythm, and a curve that is more limited in range, it beats.
Let us invite the question about our tradition another way; What are we saying about women?
Beatrice, my friend announces at this moment.
The eland is looking at me, I say.
Look. We are both creating love. It is a new wave.
(A friend tells me that the eland is an antelope… hence the necessary corrections I have made! mmj)