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Unless otherwise stated, this image is the copyright of the submitter. Contact them for permission to reproduce it. |  | | Description | Dance of the San Women
Rock painting from South Africa.
Why is it that we value the beautiful and astonishing cave paintings of France and Spain yet ignore the equally impressive and far more numerous paintings of Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa? Why do we still cruelly persecute the world's few remaining hunter gatherers? Why have we denied them their land, their language, their culture and their way of life? We tell them they cannot hunt the farmers' livestock, we tell them they cannot "poach" game in the national parks, we tell them they cannot keep their own animals in case they infect others. What is there left for them but to dance for tourists and to seek oblivion in alcohol? Lament for the last of the lost!
Engraved on wood by Peter Herring. One of an ongoing series of copies of ancient art. |
| Posted Comments: A.
(2005-05-28) | What you said was so true and sad. It's a beautiful rock painting. The same could be said for the way the Native American Indians were and are treated in the U.S. | creators
(2005-05-28) | I have to say that you have hit this too honourably for the times we are living in. That time has ceased to exist for all of us and it hurts more than words can say. It is a daily grief. I feel it in every visit to sites that are now merely tourist attractions. Who listens and who ever did? It was either lived entirely or lost completely. What middle ground is there, or was there, ever?
From my perspective your work is beautifully evocative to a lost soul in these dreadful times.
Thank you. | creators
(2005-05-28) | I would also like to say that finding a response to this has taken many visits to the Portal. I came, I saw, and was dismayed. But I had to keep coming back, looking and trying to find words to express my personal dismay that you have hit eloquently. It is loud Thorgrim! | Thorgrim
(2005-05-28) | We long to be hunters and gatherers still. Isn't that why we go HUNTING for remote stones lost on the hills and moors? Then we GATHER them together as photographs and put them on the Portal - as TROPHIES. | creators
(2005-05-28) | I do know that I put pictures here as trophies, but I do not believe that is why I exist or why I take pictures. I belong to this site, as much as I belong to anything, and that is entirely the point as far as I can see, and what your original post was all about. Hunter gathering was not about mere predilection, with which I am entirely able to engage, but something else, and it is that something else that I require, as a personal and essential need, not yet met. Perhaps I have not yet engaged with my vision quest, but I must and will, or die in the attempt. This is a hard post you've put here, Thorgrim. | Thorgrim
(2005-05-28) | Creators - every one of the wonderful photographs that you add to the Portal shows us something of your vision and your quest - so eloquently and graphically. You don't just record what is there - you seek and find and show us something ethereal that awakens a deep and profound longing in our very souls. The vision, like the Grail, must always be unattainable and just out of reach. To attain it is to lose it. | creators
(2005-05-29) | Isn't it odd though, I go to Avebury to meet a soul thing in which people are entirely absent. In fact I go there very specifically to avoid people. So unlike the person who created your original I am not celebrating community in my work, quite the reverse, I am, in a sense, celebrating/defining my sense of alienation. Perhaps that is why photography appeals to me so much, it's a selfish and self centered occupation. What would the person who created your rock painting say to that I wonder?
I am starting to sound precious, which is not my intent nor a very admirable quality. The alienation of our times is utterly real, and in travelling to Avebury I am always conscious of the journey, and here I get to your comment about the grail, it is in making the journey that anything happens. It is in the never arriving that the magic occurs. I can't really describe how it feels to be moving towards Avebury. Even sitting here at my computer, I am still travelling towards Avebury, carrying/bearing/wearing it in my soul.
There is something that happens on every trip to Avebury, there is a certain point in the journey that crosses from merely driving to entering the sacred/profound world of Avebury and exactly the reverse occurs in returning home. I have mentioned this to several people who've travelled with me, and though they too have felt this, not one of us has ever defined the crossing point. It slips by and all we can ever say is, 'Oh, we're in,' or 'Oh, it's gone.'
Was there a time when people were not burdened by words and alienation? Was there a time when people were not 'precious', I think I mean precocious?
Living in the West Country I am on a tourist route which was completely grid locked yesterday. I can entirely understand why they would want to come here, what I cannot understand is why they would want to inflict that on themselves. It is a journey of utter frustration and makes a mockery of the destination. What I am trying to say is, if you can't enjoy the journey, don't go THERE, because the event is always over the horizon.
I am just saying what you've already said but need to get it out of ME. It's 5.30 in the morning here and I am in need of yelping and yowling. I think I have achieved that, so now I'll bugger off. | Croik
(2005-12-01) | What the hell is this? It's horrible and looks like the great bears of the pacific. |
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