manifesto
I don't know how the world works. I only know that it's magic. I know that time is an illusion and that there is only forever. I know that a wild fire is a sign, as is the long soft gaze of a deer, and looking down to find the perfect stone at your feet. I know the dead want to speak to the living. I know that dreamers can travel through other dimensions. I know that nature heals, and so does love, and that laughter is medicine, and so is taking off your clothes and dancing around a tree in the moonlight.
Our ancestors lived in a world brimming with magic and meaning, and so do we. They ventured deep into the velvet darkness of the cave, to secret, sacred places, and made images that call to us through thousands of years. Living images of bison, reindeer, horses. And also abstract images of stars, circles, handprints, zigzags.
Those abstract marks have been ignored for a long time. But what if they matter? What if they are doors into the past, into systems of memory, story, and meaning that we can still enter?
I think that they do matter. I think that they are doors. And I believe that working with these signs is what I am called to do.
I've been learning about the Paleolithic and ancient art for many years now and last year I finally made a pilgrimage to see cave art in the Dordogne. Whilst in Les Eyzies, I had a dream that I was invited to make art with my ancestors.
I stood in the cave and looked at the rock by flame-light until I had a vision of what I was to paint: a reindeer. It seemed strange, childish, and clumsy compared to my ancestors’ beautiful dynamic paintings. But it was the vision given to me, and I rendered it as faithfully as I could. When I had finished painting, the ancestors gathered around, watching the image by the light of their torches. The painting somehow began to move in the light, and the ancestors cried, “It works! It works!” They accepted the painting as an image of power. And they began to dance.
If that’s not an invitation and initiation, I don’t know what is.
My work is to contribute to the re-enchantment of the earth. The point is not to prove that a certain sign means a certain distinct thing — although how wonderful it would be to know — but to practise an enchantment upon ourselves. My vision is of a dwelling where artists and dreamers can come and stay for a while, with studio space for art-making and a cave in the woods where we can time travel, paint, and dream. It’s a vision of an ancestral hearth, a storytelling fire, and a deep conversation with the Dead.
This is the work I feel called to do. Everything I’ve made, written, and experienced in the past five decades has led me to this.
At its heart, re-enchanting the world and ourselves is simply a matter of remembering who we are. What the world really is. Why we are here.
We are already enchanted. The world is already magic. By the dark of the cave and the light of the fire, we are called to remember.