No. 38

Where the tigers are…

[No. 38]

WHICH DO YOU PREFER? SURREALISM OR DADAISM?

A guest post by poet & mystic Monique Mitchell

“The mind of the man who dreams is fully satisfied by what happens to him…….”

It is a hundred years ago.

Both Dadaism and Surrealism emerge as a rebellion to Reason. Surrealists create a form of art called Exquisite Corpse, in which artists draw a body part, fold the paper, and pass it to the person next to them to continue the thread. 

This Summer, Reason rebels against me. 
From June to September, I witness 2 corpses: a mentor and a muse. 

Then, I meet a man, Leslie, who is so alive. 

Un-seduced by the hypnotic trance of the American Dream, Leslie is a director, a scientist, and as Breton puts it, fully satisfied. In my search for understanding, I go to logic; he goes to feeling…as we watch Savion Glover tap his way through the historic opera house, I wonder how it might feel to set down the world’s dreams for me and pick up my own?  

The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dalí (1931)

Summer feels like a Dali painting. 

Everything melts: the clocks. 
The ground. 
Myself. 

In June, a week after my mentor dies, Leslie recounts his time in Vietnam, of tigers who emerge from the forest to play with monks, like toy poodles and their doting owners. Except the monks don’t own the tigers. Every being was connected, yet free.

In September, I say goodbye to a musician, a muse, a friend. As I stare at his flesh in the coffin, I feel like he’s going to wake up. And then I understand: there is life beyond materiality. There is something greater than our bodies and minds.

Dadaists made art to resist societal ills [the first World War, capitalism]. They questioned the laws of life, while Surrealists reveled in the absurdity of it [the exquisite, collaborative dream]; reasoning was mostly a futile attempt to bound what is boundless [like a you, or a me].  The secret: flesh is nothing more than the vehicle of our dreams. While I remember that flesh fades summer by summer, we may honor our dreams, the unruly gods that they are, by worshiping the sanctuaries that house them.

Resistance is investment, and that’s where I think Dadaists get it wrong. You become what you engage with. I prefer the Surrealist approach: an ecstatic surrender to wonder. Just like the tigers of Hanoi, and imagined exquisite corpses, I would like to stay connected, free, innocent, and nonsensical like a child. In other words, I would like to stay wild.

“…Kill, fly faster, love to your heart’s content. And if you should die, are you not certain of re-awaking among the dead?”
ANDRÉ BRETON
Manifesto of Surrealism

HOW DO YOU CHANNEL YOUR INNER SENSE OF NONSENSICAL CHILDLIKE WONDER? HOW DO YOU STAY WILD?