Ta. It's quite good. Gyrus has laid an introductory overview of prehistoric art exposing the stubborn rejection of altered consciousness by academe. I am quite familiar with (and very wary of) the recent art=drugs theories. Even though I think Devereux's The Prehistory Of Psychedelia (which I am surprised is not mentioned in the bibliography) is a great read, I am glad Gyrus did not expand too much on the details of altered states. Not that I reject them, it's just that it's a place I'd like to reach from 'without' as opposed to many people who grab the whole thing from 'within'. I am by no means rejecting the use of hallucinogenics in prehistory BUT, as I said, I rate Gyrus' article high in that it focuses more on the difficulty of our modern perception as it is too rigid and fundamentally 'poor'.
In other words, illiterate societies are/were more evolved in 'the other languages' (i.e.90% of language) whereas we overuse the oral and written varieties. The fact that we have lost a lot of perception in our process of modernisation is a fact (we physically hear and see less well too so we 'get' far less in terms of mystical perception from nature). Therefore, we cannot pretend to claim understanding of megalithic art unless we accept the 'polysemy' and 'non-rational' (i.e.non-Western) quality (which Gyrus calls 'poetic') of art. I reckon researchers first need training in that before attempting to 'judge' aspects they do not understand. Experiment and all that. Another aspect which he deals with is the multiformed character of ancient art, which I agree with. I find that the fact that Life and Art were one and only in pre-Western thinking was never more true. I've always lamented this Western / XXth century obsession with severing Body and Soul, Life and Art.
I got to work one hour late today due to the time change (yes, I am that daft) only to be greeted on the way back this evening by the twilight, my favourite time of the day. And I was thinking how we have lost the perception of that magical moment of the threshold between night and day. Surely we are as out of touch with this as we are out of touch with megalithic art. But I believe that immersion in one does not rule out the other so the meaning is not entirely lost, it just slumbers.
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