Fake!




Today I visited the Victoria Museum and saw some big beasts that could be made into delicious gourmet meats. There were traces of civilization going back over 80,000 years. This must be fake! Didn’t life start with Adam and Eve?
The most fantastic part of the museum was the indigenous art. WOW! It must be fake!  No art school education, no u-tubes, no computer assisted drawing programs. The massive totems, the intricate sewing of bark into clothing, the beautiful symmetry in the carved stone bowls, the amazing man tools and weapons must be all fake.  All these amazing skills of making tools, clothing, and providing for oneself could not have been possible without the superior knowledge of the white man. It’s all fake!

It seems to me the people must have had time, lots and lots of time.  Other than taking time for survival they had time to teach skills, time to pay attention to details, wear and surround themselves with hand made beautiful art.  Nobody has ever had this much time to create beautiful things. They were fake people! They must have been!

Comments

John Bauman said…
Carly Simon already wrote your post 40 years ago. :) (especially the part about walking around nekid.)

I remember a time, rompin' through the woods
Sun against our skin instead of clothes
When we felt hungry we would eat, whn we felt glad we would dance
And whenever we felt drowsy we would doze

It was so easy then never takin' any stands
It was so easy then, holdin' hands


I remember a time when our fears could be named
And courage meant not refusing dares
I remember when we took such cares to step never on the cracks,
No only on the squares
Or else we'd be abducted by the bears

It was so easy then never makin' any plans
It was so easy then, holdin' hands
It was so easy then never makin' any plans
It was so easy then, holdin' hands
Anonymous said…
It was a mammoth story . . .

Totem all up . . .

They were rav'en about it!
Anonymous said…
When I was at OCA, the Ontario College of Art in the early 70's, not OCAD and not OCADU, one of the teachers, they weren't called professors or masters yet, the teacher (my sincere apologies to him that I have forgotten his name) suggested that "people create art when there isn't anything else to do." He meant it both literally and metaphorically. The indigenous people of the west coast lived in an environment where making a living was a bit easier than in other places. Those big ass salmon almost jumped into their laps. They had time to smoke a pipe, gather a few mushrooms and make art. I see you sitting next to the totems and it's a bit of a blur and a drawing comes to mind of the Clennell mug, a mugshot as it were, drawn as part of a totem, but on what rung does the artist place him. It makes me chuckle to imagine him on top, on the bottom and in the middle. ...dh

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