The Art of David Rankine

 
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  November 14th 2009

The Shaman's Rattle - Punk's place in music
 

Hey Folks

  In my writing and also in my workshops, I often speak about the role of music (especially percussion) in a shamanic journey. Shamanism is about healing and much of what nees to be healed is reality- or at least reality as we see it. The rhythmic shaking and beats melt that which defines things as being either this or that, good/bad , hot/cold....the sound returns us to a primordial state of being in which we are held within and make up the ALL
   Punk music, or the punk movement, to me, seemed to be about enacting a primal (sonic) ritual that would heal the place and role of music in society. By the mid 1970's  popular music- especially rock had lost its rudder - not that it ever had a rudder or a sense of direction but in that it seemed to be no longer about experimentation and engagement in a process. It had become a product.
   Punk came along and by its return to simple forms of rock, engaged the audience and performers in a co-creative process. The rules were broken, the fortress walls were shattered and yet nothing was lost as the pieces were re-assembled, albeit in simpler forms.
   A lot of attention was paid to the "dress" of punk and the anti-social behaviour - much of it generated by a news hungry press for its own purposes, but underneath all that was basic desire for young musicians who had little musical training to create something fresh- to be in the process, to find their own sound, reflect the people they were playing to and  yet still pay homage to earlier bands who blazed a trail through calcified mediocrity even though these same very early bands had become their own "product" and had lost their sense of process.
   Punk was (and is) process - and process is creation, and creation is not always pretty or sweet but is raw, bloody, painful and joyous. In the end it is always destructive as it dissolves that which was there to make room for that which is possible and what can be, in essence stagnant energy allowed to flow once more in the relentless cycle of creation.

So... if the Punk movement of the late 1970's shook up the perceptions of a previous decade , what do we have now  that shakes us up and what do we have that continually returns us to source and process?
Ourselves
Get out there! Create, question, test , combine, co-create and engage in the resonant pattern of Creation. Become, each and every one, a "resonant attractor" - that which draws like minded souls together to engage each other head on.

D

 
 Jan 22 2009  A Comfort Level for Beauty
  A few years ago I had a showing of my art in a public gallery. It was the largest display of my visual art to date and the gallery room looked marvelous. The show was set to last a month and the Gallery decided to hold a second  "meet the artist" day on the final Saturday of the show. This day happened to coincide with an Anniversary of D-Day (June 6th) so the Gallery had set up extra displays of wartime memorabilia in the same room as my art. Talk about contrasts!
   On the day of the event, I observed many people looking at the displays of  memorabilia- (photos, ration books, helmets, rifles, gun and howitzer shells, bullets etc) but very few people looked at the art on the walls. I overheard some comments like: "oh look -a 20mm cannon shell" but I did not talk to anyone about my art. In fact most people seemed a bit intimidated by the art on the walls...yet they seemed comfortable with the artifacts of war and extreme violence and hardship in the display cases.
   Indeed, this was VERY interesting! I was observing the fact that we (as a society) are more familiar and comfortable with acts of violence than acts of beauty. Our media is full of it and often references it while art- has little place in it. Generally people are uncomfortable in art galleries - as Art has been sold and promoted as something "professional" artists do- just as music is something  "Musicians" create and the rest of us listen to.
   So perhaps that is where the problem lies - not that we "like" war (or violence) or are comfortable with it, but that we no longer seem to have a reference point for acts of beauty or acts of creativity. We are so often told that Humans are a violent species- that violence, and therefore war, is inevitable. But, how often do we read that we are a creative species- that acts of beauty and creativity are inevitable? So, instead of accepting that violence and warfare are human, let us focus on and accept that it is our creativity that makes us human and divine and our acts of cruelty and violence that take us further from our humanity
 

 

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