Mother Culture Croons All Night
This weekend I began recovery from reading Ishmael. Objectively, I probably took an extra-hard hit from because of some unprecedentedly awful allergies. Even so, it’s hard not to wonder how we’re supposed to move forward from this damn book. Quinn himself, in an author’s note at the back, refers to it as much more than a book. I see its footprint, or the prints of similar feet, everywhere now.
As promised, at line at the Flying Star, I see Mother Culture peering from behind the prices. At work, I stare at my computer screen, pausing on how irrelevant my job – any contemporary job – is to the continuing survival or meaning of our species. I smell her in my car exhaust, hear her in the rattle of allergy pills in an ever-emptying bottle. I think about being caged by civilization, and how satisfied I am with this life. How with my privileges that satisfaction is easy. I wonder how I could escape, if I wanted to badly enough. I figure, sure I could; we all could.
This brings back that terrifying point: every indigenous culture, every indigenous language that is lost now is another that has been the result of evolutionary refinement reaching to the beginning of our species. Every Leaver culture stamped out is one fewer that can help us (humans) navigate our future. This must be what Jill Milroy meant when she said everyone is indigenous, but not everyone is practicing or living in their own country.
I’m beginning to triangulate Ishmael with Custer Died for Your Sins and last year’s SEED dialogue. I suddenly feel I have a framework for understanding Jill’s frustration with the myth of progress and the need for time travel:
The Western view wants to escape place and time. Time travel is alluring, but it’s another escape, and unnecessary. “Progress, ‘the best is yet to come’ is a dangerous view.” To an aboriginal view, the best thing that could happen is the Dreaming, which is already happening.
I think I’m beginning to get it now, in a way I only intuited before: if your culture is the compacted & distilled output of three million years of wisdoms, of course you will see time flexibly. Ours – that of the Takers, the colonizers – is the only culture the world has ever known that reinvents itself – and thus reinvents time – with each generation. Deloria touches on this, too, when he laments that American culture institutionalizes revolution. This is having a huge effect on me already, the first of it appearing over the weekend.
Art from the Dreaming should be mysterious to us because we have no reference to its ancestry, not no connection to its spiritual identity.
I wonder what will be left when we return to pre-Agrarian ways. I’m comforted that while there will likely be no books, there will still be stories, and room for their bards. If I have my words, I can always make my peace with the universe.
That’s a selfish wish. Ishmael’s explicitly about education, not secession; teamwork, not roguing. But I suppose each of us must reconcile our lives as we know them with what it seems is our destiny. Read the book. It’ll reboot your entire perspective. Then know you can come here to discuss it. Until there is no here. Then, we’ll have to face each other as we speak.
I almost feel like welcoming you to humanity. It’s refreshing, isn’t it? A little scary, but completely cathartic. To understand that it’s not US as a species that’s the problem with the world, but only one culture throughout the history of human cultures that is problematic, is a great relief.
But don’t jump to conclusions too soon. There most certainly will be books if humanity’s still around 200 years from now. It’s just they won’t be mass produced. And in this case, you’ve got a jump on the rest of the world’s writers because you already know how to build a book.
Also, while it’s still fresh in your mind, read The Story of B. It’ll “reboot your entire perspective” all over again. Honestly, I’ve read Quinn’s Ishmael series close to a dozen times in the six or so years I’ve known about him, and they’re still enlivening, enlightening and inspiring.
And I’m so glad that when we now talk about topics related to those in Ishmael that I can stop censoring my language and just spit out “Takers,” “Leavers,” and “Mother Culture,” among other terms, to get at the point more directly. It’ll save me a world of self-editing during conversation. And it gives us a common ground from which to make all kinds of new connections to the ideas already spinning in our heads and menifesting in the world.
When we get together to talk about your “lesson plan” for the upcoming Constantine collaboration, I’d also like to examine Ishmael a bit and see if we can’t answer some of the questions we’ve both got concerning the material.
I think my concern is a little more apocalyptic than yours, so thanks for reigning me in some. It’s a good reminder that books will likely still be around. I’m still shaken by thinking of stories as something that are trapped by writing, though, á la Thoth, and books are seeming more problematic to me than they ever have.
Yes, I’ll get on The Story of B, and yes, don’t hold back anymore! Quinn’s given us such elegant shorthand for these ideas, it’s really as important a gift as the discussion. He’s really affected me, on levels both craft and philosophy, and I’ve already planned him into my speech. God, that’s due soon, huh?
Apocalyptic visions still hold weight. Just look at the state of the civilized world right now. It’s a mess, to say the least. But that doesn’t mean it has to, or will, end that way.
And when should we have another sit-down? Are you open this week? I’ve got no commitments Thursday or Friday after work, and Saturday’s completely open. Maybe Sunday, too. Let me know if you can make the time on any of those days.
I’m trying to plug Deloria and other Indian & indigenous voices into the framework Ishmael provides. I think this relationship might be the key component I’ve always missed in appreciating anything like an Indian perspective. No wonder they remain pissed, and horrified! They’re trying to save not only their cultures, which have served them well since mythical time – they’re planning to outlast us.
Shit’s completely bananas right now, but I’m trying hard to get a lecture draft in order by the end of the week. I’d feel it’s a waste of time to sit down before I can hand it off for comments, at least. Let’s say Saturday ’round 11:00?
That’ll work. Usual spot at Flying Star’ll work, too.
Excellent! See you then, boss.
Also, these comments are starting to look like a late Beatles song.