Freak Show Hippy Idiots
“The mind of man is a maze but his heart is a labyrinth”
The difference between a maze and a labyrinth is not commonly known and seems to the uninitiated as insignificant. But to ‘initiates’ it is the difference between happiness and madness, between illusion and reality, between tragedy and comedy.
At the gates of Caerdroia, the largest labyrinth in the world cut into a pine forest on a mountain in North Wales, is an oak plinth and lying on top a relief in slate of the labyrinth’s design: seven circuits, winding outwards and then inwards, back and forth, a sinewy intestine doubling in on itself to a definitive end at the centre. The plinth has been recently vandalized; someone has taken a hammer to it, smashed the labyrinth into pieces and knelt down in the dirt to engrave in the soft blue stone –
“This is Pen Parc not some freak show, hippy idiots.”
Pen Parc refers here to the farm that once laid underneath this Forestry Commission plantation and before that the house of Sir Richard Wynn’s Gamekeeper.
The earth’s crust and Pen Parc upon it is a palimpsest, defaced and drawn upon by nature and its prodigal son. Is Pen Parc, the people who lived and died there, the grass that grew, the cows that grazed, the hunting dogs that barked, the words written on countless maps: is that place any more valid than the temporary superimposed path lain among the superimposed spruce, the stage for regular performances of Sensory Labyrinth Theatre created by Cynefin - the ‘freak show’ mentioned in the graffiti, performed by ‘hippy idiots’ - an intercultural mix of local volunteers of all ages, and artists and performers from across Europe?
You see, the maze has dead ends and at each turn you must think what to do before deciding which way to go, and it could be the wrong decision. You might need to turn around and go back and find another way. Maybe there is no way out.
A labyrinth has only one path. It goes round and around up and down, in and out. But it is only one path. You have nothing to decide, no need to think and nowhere to go other than where you are going. There is nowhere else you should be. No right or wrong, only is.
The maze and the labyrinth correspond to the two different modes of being - doing and being. Doing of course is a type of being (you can’t do non-being) and we are all familiar with it, we are forever doing being. But ‘just’ being is a mode which is as elusive as it is ubiquitous. It is Thomas’ Gnostic pearl, the Emperors rosy flesh, and the childlike state of simple bliss and belonging for which there is such a deep and dreadful yearning that we have grown a husk around it like bark around barbed wire.
Sensory Labyrinth Theatre is a response to that longing to be and to belong. To scrape the palimpsest right down to the papyrus, to let a gentle breeze blow apart for a moment the 40 veils of illusion behind which we hide our true face. We are told that it is our culture, our national identity, our family, our heritage, our lineage, our beliefs, our friends, our maps that tell us where we belong. Or that we are what we have and what we do, what we want to have and what we want to do, what we’ve had and what we’ve done. But really we don’t know the first thing, not the first thing about whom we actually are and why we are here and deep down we are terrified of this: so terrified that we will kneel down in the dirt and carve upon the palimpsest “I will not be not go gently into that dark night, you freak show hippy idiots.”
The difference between a maze and a labyrinth is not commonly known and seems to the uninitiated as insignificant. But to ‘initiates’ it is the difference between happiness and madness, between illusion and reality, between tragedy and comedy.
At the gates of Caerdroia, the largest labyrinth in the world cut into a pine forest on a mountain in North Wales, is an oak plinth and lying on top a relief in slate of the labyrinth’s design: seven circuits, winding outwards and then inwards, back and forth, a sinewy intestine doubling in on itself to a definitive end at the centre. The plinth has been recently vandalized; someone has taken a hammer to it, smashed the labyrinth into pieces and knelt down in the dirt to engrave in the soft blue stone –
“This is Pen Parc not some freak show, hippy idiots.”
Pen Parc refers here to the farm that once laid underneath this Forestry Commission plantation and before that the house of Sir Richard Wynn’s Gamekeeper.
The earth’s crust and Pen Parc upon it is a palimpsest, defaced and drawn upon by nature and its prodigal son. Is Pen Parc, the people who lived and died there, the grass that grew, the cows that grazed, the hunting dogs that barked, the words written on countless maps: is that place any more valid than the temporary superimposed path lain among the superimposed spruce, the stage for regular performances of Sensory Labyrinth Theatre created by Cynefin - the ‘freak show’ mentioned in the graffiti, performed by ‘hippy idiots’ - an intercultural mix of local volunteers of all ages, and artists and performers from across Europe?
You see, the maze has dead ends and at each turn you must think what to do before deciding which way to go, and it could be the wrong decision. You might need to turn around and go back and find another way. Maybe there is no way out.
A labyrinth has only one path. It goes round and around up and down, in and out. But it is only one path. You have nothing to decide, no need to think and nowhere to go other than where you are going. There is nowhere else you should be. No right or wrong, only is.
The maze and the labyrinth correspond to the two different modes of being - doing and being. Doing of course is a type of being (you can’t do non-being) and we are all familiar with it, we are forever doing being. But ‘just’ being is a mode which is as elusive as it is ubiquitous. It is Thomas’ Gnostic pearl, the Emperors rosy flesh, and the childlike state of simple bliss and belonging for which there is such a deep and dreadful yearning that we have grown a husk around it like bark around barbed wire.
Sensory Labyrinth Theatre is a response to that longing to be and to belong. To scrape the palimpsest right down to the papyrus, to let a gentle breeze blow apart for a moment the 40 veils of illusion behind which we hide our true face. We are told that it is our culture, our national identity, our family, our heritage, our lineage, our beliefs, our friends, our maps that tell us where we belong. Or that we are what we have and what we do, what we want to have and what we want to do, what we’ve had and what we’ve done. But really we don’t know the first thing, not the first thing about whom we actually are and why we are here and deep down we are terrified of this: so terrified that we will kneel down in the dirt and carve upon the palimpsest “I will not be not go gently into that dark night, you freak show hippy idiots.”
posted by ArmchairDJ at 11:42 am
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