Page 201 - Tributaries Catalogue
P. 201
water-y likeness: the un-common archetype
in poetry and song
Luan began the presentation by citing not the case with water. There just is that these are not fixed – as an
part of the |xam-Bushman creation no specific archetype for water (such archetype is fixed. Luan went on to
myth; the story of the youngest sister, as, birth, life and nourishment), but show and discuss diverse, mostly
“Waters.” Of all the anthropomorphic instead myriad differentiated ideas of South African, poems and music,
environmental figures (mountains, what water is, means and could be. during which the audience was asked
plains) that were once humans, he Luan adds that “water” can be seen as to note striking words, ideas, phrases,
remarks, “Waters” is the ambiguous a “hyper-object”: it defies attempts to associations or memories evoked by
one (and it makes sense that her say “here it is, here it is now” and to what is seen, read or heard. Towards
name is in the plural). “Waters” is the put it in a box, contain and localize it. the end of his presentation, audience
only one that can change in the It defies time and space. Water members began to engage in a lively
cosmology. The wind is a bird, and it cannot be phased, it moves between exchange first evoked by the music
can never not be a bird, but water can phases, between spaces, between that Whitacre set to Paz’s “Agua
take myriad forms. The ambiguity of objects. Also, he reminds us “we are Nocturna” (Water Night). For one
water, as Luan notes, got him thinking seventy percent water. So we are audience member the effect of the
about the notion of archetypes – more water than we are not water. night sea in the dark was strongly
these are associations “that go back Water controls us as much as we think present, while another (a daytime
millennia.” They are “engraved in our we might control it.” This does not swimmer) couldn’t see the sea in the
primordial mind.” If this is so, then the mean that we lack symbolic ideas and music. Conversation moved across a
associations with them should be understandings of what water is, vast array of associations with water –
universal and static. But a brief look at where water comes from and what confirming the truth-value of the
poetry and music will show that this is we might associate with it. It is just ancient creation myth first cited.
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