Starbook (39 page)

For a long time it did seem as if all was lost. But, after a century, a myth began again in the minds of historians and artists who sought an explanation of how such a rich artistic heritage came to be, and how or why the community that created it so suddenly and completely disappeared. Its legacy was now spread throughout the world, enriching the hearts and dreams of strangers and the secret children of the tribe all over the globe. The hidden masters maintain still that nothing is ever lost, but abides in the dreams of humanity, and in the infinite story, in the infinite book among the stars.

But in the land, with time's passing, only children playing in the dreamtime of their most innocent years, when spirits are as real to them as birds or trees, only such children would one day stumble on the monoliths and statues and enigmas in stone of the vanished people, and release ancient spells into new centuries.

It seemed that only their dreams given form remained, concealed. And when these works were discovered it would be surmised that they were created by masters from a distant planet, a more advanced civilisation ... alien artists creating in solitude and homesickness for their magic constellation ...

... and the prince had undergone his final test; as a slave he had endured his last crucifixion. Among the slaves he had spread dreams of freedom, dreams of illumination, which never perished. He was, by all accounts, a secret master who saw it all, suffered it all. It is whispered that this was his last time on the wheel, in the dust of living.

After the years of slavery, spreading a new message in the undergrowth of those who suffered, he returned, it is said, to the realm of his father, the laughing king; and served the kingdom in the highest way, among the stars and in the whispers of the soul.

The maiden's parents survived, as did their grandchild. The tribe did regroup from among those who scattered in the forest and among the hills; and quickly, leaving everything behind, they began their migration, never staying anywhere long enough to be noticed. Time passed and one day a mysterious deputation of wise men and women appeared amongst them and came to claim the grandchild as their future king. They brought great gifts. The masters of the tribe of artists recognised this act of destiny, and the maiden's parents acceded to this extraordinary claim. In ceremonial splendour the grandchild was led back to the palace of his paternal ancestors, led to the throne, and to his rightful inheritance. His coronation was as legendary as the mystery of his lineage. But the kingdom ever awaited the return of his father; and the laughter of the original father was heard again, in faint harmonies, growing in clarity, throughout the kingdom.

Though the tribe of artists had regrouped, it had only partially recovered; and its strength was no longer able to hold out against the dissolution wrought on it by the destruction of its old ways. The tribe survived long enough as a people to have one last stage of almost great flowering. It was the swan song of their golden age. It was the last days of their old dispensation before they vanished into the dust of time.

They must have felt acutely this last air of their days. An elegiac mood pervaded their works. They created with the terrifying intensity of a people who know they are dying and want to populate the world, to fertilise the universe, with the potent seeds of their invention, their creativity. These last years, before they succumbed to oblivion, were their most poignant. Everyone created, shaped, dreamt in stone, in wood, in nondurable material, on cloth, in songs as if turning their lives into forms that must endure and survive the passing of their flesh, their bodies, their hearts. Children created as intensely as the aged who were dying. Everywhere among the tribe they began to create their testimonies, their whimsies, fantasies, prophecies, and pure forms of no purpose other than to salute the mystery and the unappreciated joys of living.

The maiden's parents were very old now. Most of the masters had gone to join the ancestors. The Mamba and his followers had raged in the forest for a time, had marauded, and terrified surrounding peoples, had, some of them, been caught and bundled off to slavery, and others had grown old too, and were heard from no more. No one knew what became of the Mamba, though tradition has it that one day, following the legend of the gaps that led to a fabulous kingdom of gold and happiness, he had stumbled into one of the worst gaps of all, and had been seen spontaneously combusting into wild red and fiery green flames from which he could not be rescued. And such was the awesome nature of his fiery consummation that his followers, such as were left, were terrified by the sign and fled away from the forest, back to the open plains, and sought ways to redeem themselves among the living.

How did this tale come down to my mother, this tale that she began to tell me when I was a child?

Somebody has to create a myth. Somebody has to turn a life into legend. Someone has to project a story into the future. This is how a fragment of that legend came down to me.

Around the time of the swan song of the tribe in its elegiac stage, the maiden's father, now on the verge of death, and in great secrecy, invented a new kind of drama. He had long abandoned the art of sculpture, and had been silent as an artist since his daughter disappeared one night and was never found again. Out of his great silence, his great age, and the profound nature of his myth, he created a new form to add to the ritual and memory of the race. And so one day actors appeared near their new shrine and performed a new kind of story-telling theatre, and astonished the tribe in their dying years. The first act went something like this ...

Griot (standing in a circle's centre): Memory is better than gold. And so listen to this legend as it is told. Now that there is little time left, this is the only way to tell it quickly. Listen wisely with your souls, and not your eyes or ears. Become this drama I am about to show you. Listen as if to the good ones dead, who have a light in your head.

Then silence. Then in the darkness different voices, interspersed with hells, drums, sighs, bird calls, flutes, koras, cowhorns, recite these lines.

Voice: If you enter through the magic gate, if you walk through the encampment of the tribe ...

...You will find them carving at wood sculptures in open workshops, hammering at bronze, singing poignant songs in groups, in lovely harmonies. You will see children making new objects out of rejects, drawing pictures on the ground. You will see the women painting cloth in vivid colours, or creating new forms with jewels and cowries, practising new dances in the square. You will find the old at work, directing great projects, telling stories to the young, listening to the dreams of maidens.

You will see sculptures everywhere, in wood, in shining bronze, in copper, in stone. You will see sculpted shapes of animals imagined or dreamt, of visitants from the sky, of gods, ancestors, the unborn, of spirits, or the noble busts of sages. You will see images of harvests and beautiful women, and strong men, images of the future, shapes drawn on walls.

You will find a place alive with art in every corner, art in the square, art all around the shrines. You will find a place alive with constant creativity. Such was the place the prince encountered as he entered the encampment of the tribe, disguised as a humble man, according to his principle of the heron, in quest of a maiden.

He had for many years heard tales of gods who made love to maidens disguised as birds or gentle animals. He had understood from this that to get to the best woman the man must be simple as a swan. He had also taken from this that it is best not to frighten a special maiden with too much power. To be lowly, to be low, was the only way to gain her trust. The highest became the lowest to do their highest work. The seduction of the maidens by the gods he took to be a metaphor of enlightenment, of the penetration of the soul of humanity by the ecstasy of the godhead. The soul of man is a beautiful virgin; the god is the instrument of the great God. These thoughts he had toyed with in the forest as he journeyed onward. Now that he was of the tribe of artists, he was overwhelmed by the beauty of their way. More than anything, he felt at home there.

He made his way to the maiden's father, and offered to be his servant, for nothing, for no pay. The father saw the spirit of the prince in the guise of the beggar. The father set him seven tasks of art and love, and if he performed them he could be his apprentice.

When, that evening, the prince caught a glimpse of the maiden in moonlight, crowned in white light, he nearly died from concealed joy ...

This is how a fragment of that story came down to me, and haunted me.

That was how it seemed before that cycle ended, before their golden age perished, before they passed away into the sands. The maiden's father died, and her mother passed on not long after. The tribe slowly disintegrated from loss of vision, vigour and guidance.

Where do all the sculptures go afterwards? And why was it that only minor works followed? That was the high point of its culture. It had no name then. Afterwards, during its descending ages, the works displayed were of rumours, of incest, of abominations, of men making love to animals, animals making love to women, images of alien colonisers, of big-bellied children.

The tragic nobility had left their art because when it spoke clearest, and with the greatest beauty and grandeur, the people did not listen, did not see, did not interpret clearly, did not prepare, did not heed the warnings in the golden light. And so their golden age died, and their true way died, and their world lost its axis. And it got set on a new course, at the low ebb of a new cycle, that may or may never again know the simple grandeur of its past.

But all was not lost. It only seemed that way for a hundred years or so. In their disintegration the tribe of artists all but disappeared from the known spaces. They had finally learnt their lesson. They were forgotten, they became invisible, and yet their works continued to appear in the land, in the world, along trade routes, in marketplaces, in palaces, in the new centres of the changing world. They became the world's tradition and its future.

They had followed the fragments of the guidance of their secret masters and had moved often, till they dwelt in a place called no-place. There they thrived in quietness, responding to the needs of the world in art.

The decades passed, and as the world settled round the changing ideas of the new centuries, the tribe lost its taste for frequent migration, and slowly became visible again. But they were not the same as they had been. Their art had much diminished. Their golden age was long over and was now a whisper. They didn't even have a sense of connection with the art of the tribe that was all over the kingdom, mysteries in the forests or in caves. They were not heirs to themselves.

Their artistic creation was good enough to inspire delight among the uninitiated, but not astonishment among themselves. They are now a celebrated community in the land; and people from all over the world make long journeys to see their latest creations. If you walk into the town, down its main streets, you will see paintings and sculptures on display everywhere, but you will not see what was once a ...

And yet somewhere, as yet undiscovered, among the images of prophecy and vision, in the vast storehouse of the tribe's hidden trove of artworks going back to its earliest times; among these works that foretold, in their images and codes, world wars, genocides, the destruction of great cities, turning points in the history of humanity, the assassination of world leaders, the death of whole tribes by unnamed diseases, the discovery of vehicles that can fly, the first publicly acknowledged encounter with alien beings from distant constellations, and the hint of the end of the world, which is really the beginning of true illumination; among these undiscovered works that hide underground, in deep forests, there is an image of haunting beauty and simplicity, made of pure lines, a heavenly light and an unaccountable pathos – the image of a dying prince.

And among those which were found was the image of a maiden as a princess, which was carried away from its home and stares mutely behind glass at the curious eyes of countless generations ...

The ways of time are indeed strange; and events are not what we think they are. Time and oblivion alchemise all things, even the greatest suffering.

All is not lost. Greater times are yet to be born. In the midst of the low tide of things, when all seems bleak, a gentle voice whispers in the air that the spirits of creativity wander the land, awaiting an invocation and the commanding force of masters to harness their powers again to noble tasks and luminous art unimagined.

They wander and they wonder at the unseeing eyes of men and women who dwell in the splendours and darkness all around them, in an unseen world.

What more is there to tell? Just fragments seen in the book of life. All stories lead to infinity. There is no end to them, as there was no beginning. Just an epic sensed in the unheard laughter of things. Just fragments seen in the murky mirror of mortality, when bright beings shine momentarily in the brief dream of living.