The Lion's Gait is a metaphorical expression established during the age of Chauvet; a golden age, when human beings first exhibited an amazing clarity of social vision. That's what my work Dream Duet is all about, building mind bridges; bridging the modern trained mind with the ancient metaphorical, the conscious with the subconscious, the theoretical with the experiential, the individual with the social. In short, Dream Duet is about how to cultivate your MOJO!
The adventure starts with dream exploration, as that is where self awareness begins, and social awareness began millenniums ago. I understood them to be the same process, when I recognized the semantics and syntax of my dreams as being identical to cave-art's from the Mousterian Industry. Which means art was mind-tech (AI), in fact it's our core-tech, because it was the first social extension of how the human mind naturally built meaning, and still does -art!
However, as our conscious mind is trained exclusively in the socially evolved form of language, while our subconscious mind still swims in ancient metaphorical waters, we have developed a crisis of mind and culture, because linguistically hind sight is not 20-20.
Consequently, a dissociative identity disorder erupts from the mind-tech, splitting cognition into the con and sub-minds, because the creative aspect of our mind, especially the sub-mind, can never be trained. However, as it is designed to mature in tandem with the con-mind, yet the con-mind is lost in a descriptive fog from its mind-training, the sub-mind is left "infantile" in favor of hybridization. Hence, the mental disorder. Socially, the mental illness is reflected in a palpable yet chronic conflict between the two camps, academia (orthodoxy) and the arts (heterodoxy)!
Likewise, it would be problematic to speak of ancient language and its knowledge academically. Necessarily, Dream Duet is a work of art, in the Mousterian sense of its meaning. Which is to say, epistemology springs from linguistic ontology. Because meaning does not reside in the evolved aspect of language, despite its persistent attempts to claim otherwise across the academic spectrum. It resides where it always has, in those ancient waters. Ergo, if we want to know how we know anything, we need to learn to swim again by reintroducing meaning building into our disembodied language and its crisis driven culture.
The work addresses unsound social myths about the evolution of Art, Language and Mind via an epistemological Odyssey from the dawn of self/social awareness to mathematics. The lion's share of the work metaphorically deconstructs the profound knowledge established in the caves of Chauvet, Altamira and Lascaux, thereby unearthing that which is most mysterious to us, ourselves. However, the most interesting aspect of the work is the realization that a bridge to social meaning becomes possible, if we recognize our imagination, not as flawed as Plato's genetic fallacy alleged, but formidable as all-get-out!
I don't know the limitation of our imaginative dreams and never will, they continue to amaze me. As Heraclitus so eloquently put it, "so deep a logos does it have" (Heraclitus, Circa 535-475 BC). However, one thing I do know with absolute certainty, to ignore our dreams is to make light of our passions and interest. It's to have never truly lived a life of our own free will, to have never been afforded an opportunity of knowing who and what we truly are, reach our full potential, or having access to untold knowledge inherent in being.
About the Author: If the nexus of art, dreams and language were a precipice, Ed would be hanging over it trying to figure out how we could look at the situation differently. He considers art to be first and foremost a probative state of mind, that is, listening as opposed to hearing. Ed's creativity is based on conceptual art making that's rigorous, with a tenacity and endurance. He studied art foundation at Pratt Institute and completed his BA and MFA at Goddard College.
