"Andrá" by Sigur Ros

The power of Music.
The power of Sigur Ros.

Like the people in this video, I have my own Sigur Ros story:

It was late summer of 2001 and my mom had been diagnosed with end-stage lung cancer and given six months to a year to live -- we found out her diagnosis on 9/11, the day the Towers came down. A few months later, not wanting to be around for his wife’s death, my dad shot himself in the temple. I took care of my mom as best I could, but the grief of my dad’s death and watching her slip away took a toll on me. One afternoon while shopping in a homeware boutique looking at pretty objects to take my mind off things, I became aware of a song playing on the store’s sound system. The sound and texture of the song caught me and I stopped at a table of handmade ceramics. I stood frozen, pretending to look at bowls and plates while listening to a song so gentle, so lulling, so ethereal, so otherworldly, I literally did not know what was happening to me. An organ and music box contrasted with a primal roaring … then a rhythmic pinging sounded like sonar … and then a singer, with the voice of an angel, kept singing what I heard as “It’s you…it’s you…it’s you…” This song did not come from this world, it did not belong in this world. It was huge, cosmic, echoing. It shook me, comforted me, spoke to me about my grief. It said: there is something bigger, there is something else, it’s okay, everything is going to be okay. It was the sound of compassion. I went to the counter to ask what was playing, and found out the song was "Svefn-g-englar" (literally “Sleep Angels” or “Sleep Walkers” in Icelandic) and the band was called Sigur Ros. The feeling of the song stayed with me and I can still feel it 22 years later when I hear it. It is as if it holds the liminal idea of being born and dying at the same time. When I discovered the song’s lyrics translated in English, and learned that the chorus of what I thought was “It’s you” is actually Jónsi, the lead singer singing “Tjú, tjú, tjú,” an Icelandic cooing sound traditionally used to calm a baby to sleep, it all made sense. I have always said if heaven had a houseband, it would be Sigur Ros.

https://sigurros.com/

Santcum by Levi van Veluw

Late last summer 2019, artist Levi van Veluw created an incredible installation, Sanctum, shown at Tenuta Dello Scompiglio, an Agricola and art/cultural showcase outside of Lucca, Italy.

This intense, transcendent space resonates with me deeply for many reasons and on many levels. I will let the artist explain:

"The installation Sanctum, developed especially for Tenuta Dello Scompiglio, testifying of a fictitious religious conviction, engages all the senses of the visitor. The last room where visitors ended their journey in Kerguénnec, nell'installazione 'The relativity of the matter', becomes the starting point for a more elaborate proposition in the expositive space of Dello Scompiglio. Levi van Veluw based Sanctum on of the first religious buildings, the Tabernacle, also called the tent of meeting. This tent served as a place of worship and symbolized God’s presence amidst those who had gathered.

The interior of the Tabernacle consisted of 3 spaces: the Forecourt, the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies, sacred in ascending gradation. Like the Tabernacle, Levi van Veluw’s work features symmetry and harmony, to express the strive for divine perfection and reflect the divine holiness through the careful gradations of the three phases. As such, he plays with the age-old composition of the religious structure and thereby lures the spectator deeper and deeper into the Sanctuary.

After a long descent, a mysterious dark blue glow shines through a narrow crack in the wall. The visitor enters through this opening into a high-ceilinged, underground space, the forecourt. Massive columns emerge on both sides and mountains of coal lie scattered across the floor, while the path in the centre is kept open. Static forms set in repetitive sequences recall the structure of an ecstatic building, made to glorify an unknown higher purpose. The space slowly comes into view, an open passage at the end leads to what appears to be a ritual environment, the Sanctuary. Fragrant water flows through an ordered pattern of geometric incisions in the floor. At the centre, there is a chapel, composed of a detailed network of grids, boxes and openings, the Holy of Holies.

Is this an opening to a new world in which religion, again, plays an important role? Or does the artist use existing symbolisms to lure the mind into a new religion? These are questions the artist leaves the spectator with."

Please do take three minutes to watch this beautiful walk-through of the installation which will give you a clearer picture.

Many years ago, in what seems like another life now, I attended regular Friday night services at a Hindu ashram in Oakland, California. They were wonderful times, but the thing that sticks with me is the magnificent sensory experience of the main Meditation Hall. It was bathed in a low indigo-violet light and the heady smell of incense (delicious Nag Champa and Dhoop). After a video talk by the guru (or sometimes a live talk if the guru was in residence), we would chant or sing in Sanskrit (thankfully it was always projected in phonetic English on a wall), and I regularly had transcendent experiences in which I felt a unique consciousness shift. It was very special and van Veluw's Sanctum seems like it has a similar feeling with its deep, penetrating color and fragrant water, and the sense of a place that is a manifestation/representation, however limited it may be, of a state beyond the physical.

And this profound installation has been resurrected for a site specific presentation at Het HEM, a former ammunition factory, now a home for contemporary culture, in the Dutch city of Zaandam. The artist refers to it as a semi-permanent installation, so it seems to be an open-ended chance to see this marvelous piece.

"Sanctum is a deep blue chapel that appears to float in between two floors. The work invites for contemplation while examining what the architecture of the spiritual consists of. Why do we assign value to objects, to the tangible, within the immaterial realm of faith? What is the basis of our devotion to altars, relics and icons? In the colossal space of Het HEM, Sanctum tests the boundary between an artistic and a spiritual experience."

What the artist is really working with is the idea of symbols and stand-ins for ideas and states of consciousness that are beyond our physical world. These objects become the machinery of the sacred, while ritual is the technology of the sacred. Of course these things can be used in ways that are not so pure or transcendent, which is the basis of a great portion of human suffering. But in a pure form, objects and rituals can be illuminating and serve as a connection to a place in us to which we all, all of us, personally have access.

https://levivanveluw.com/

The Holy Circle

The circle is the first, original shape, the primary form, the sound of the universe...

"The circle (or sphere) is a symbol of the Self. It expresses the totality of the psyche in all its aspects, including the relationship between man and the whole of nature. Whether the symbol of the circle appears in primitive sun worship or modern religion, in myths or dreams, in the mandalas drawn by Tibetan monks, in the ground plans of cities, or in the spherical concepts of early astronomers, it always points to the single most vital aspect of life – its ultimate wholeness." Aniela Jaffé, in "Symbolism in the Visual Arts" from MAN AND HIS SYMBOLS by Carl Jung

The Japanese word ensō may mean "circle" but the Zen Buddhist concept it represents is far larger than a single word. It contains the ideas of enlightenment, cycles, unity, time, nature, the void, infinity, and the totality of the universe itself.

Everything makes a circle.

Imagine for a moment that you are man primeval, on a plane, looking out around you, with little or no linguistic skills, and certainly no scientific or objective knowledge of what you are seeing. Above you is a flaming circle, giving light and warmth. When that goes away, quite regularly as it turns out, it is replaced by a great white, glowing circle that inflates and deflates over a short period of time. The two of these things chase each other in a circle as they go from side to side in the sky. At night, the sky is peppered with tiny twinkling circles. On the plane around you, berries and fruits and flowers are circular. You turn in a circle, surveying the reality around you, as your body describes the shape of a circle, and you stand as the still point, the center of this circular universe. You are in the center of the circle. The still point of the circle is where ever you are. Plants grow, are harvested, it grows colder, tiny white cold circles fall from the sky, and then soon, the warmth comes back and the plants once again begin to grow. The circle of time. And reality is an endless circle which allows that to happen.

If I were to invent a religion, its symbol would be a circle.