wonder of the ethnosphere
Not to be overlooked in the weekend’s expected powder frenzy (opening day at JHMR, Storm Show premiere) is a dose of stimulation for the mind.
Following on the heels of last night’s lecture by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon, renowned anthropologist and National Geographic explorer Wade Davis will give a talk at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Center for the Arts.
Like his mentor at Harvard, Richard Evans Schultes, Davis could be described as a cross between Indiana Jones and Timothy Leary.
He has immersed himself in native cultures around the world and studied their languages and religious customs. He is perhaps best known for his work in Haiti, documenting voodoo, a project that led to his book The Serpent and the Rainbow.
He has described shamans, or voodoo priests, as “the ones who go into the mystic waters the rest of us would drown in. They’re the ones who enter the spaces that most human beings don’t even want to know exist.”
In a way, Davis could be considered a shaman of our culture. His journeys have taken him to some far-reaching places, physically and metaphysically. The Yanomani of the Amazon, for instance, have a powder they call “semen of the sun.”
“To have that powder blown up your nose is rather like being shot out of a rifle barrel lined with baroque paintings and landing on a sea of electricity,” he says.
Davis argues for preservation of cultural diversity, as indigenous peoples can teach us through their different ways of relating to the world. Homogenization, achieved through power and domination, will “reduce the range of human imagination.”
A British Columbia native, Davis is a brilliant thinker and eloquent speaker. Attesting to his sense of humor, he also is one of the stars of the movie The Lost People of Mountain Village, a spoof filmed in Telluride. (The movie deserves its own post.)
Introducing him on Saturday will be Wilson resident Brot Coburn, a Himalayan explorer and author who will talk about his recent discovery near the Tibetan border and upcoming expedition.
Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students. A portion of the proceeds will go to the American Himalayan Foundation.
Click here or on the video image above to watch a 22-minute clip of Davis addressing the TED Conference in Monterey, Calif., in 2003. Or click here to watch a shorter clip of him on CBC.
Music fans might take interest in some of Davis’ observations about voodoo, which is a distillation of African religious beliefs. Through the rhythm of the dance, participants invoke spirits that “momentarily displace the souls of the living,” he says.
“For that brief, shining moment the acolyte becomes the god.”
“White people go to church to talk about god,” he says, while blacks in the voodoo tradition “dance in the temple to become god.”
Anyone who’s taken part in a New Orleans musical sweatfest can attest.
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