Day of the Dead, Sacred Art

Last Tuesday, at the Arts Forum I helped put together via the Missoula Cultural Council and Humanities Montana, Katie Knight showed slides of people using art to communicate spiritual and survival information. Colorful concentric circles represented maps of watering holes . Cultural information was embedded in embroidery. She talked about a time when art had a purpose, and how -- to abridge an entire evening of discussion -- Western society developed this notion of abstraction, individual expression, and hence art began to deviate from its civic purpose. For better or worse, art is no longer seen as intrinsic to our communication, where artists, who are everyone, play a shaministic role in their act of creation. Imagine art being intrinsic to the nature of a society, and to the nature of the individual.

Enter Day of the Dead. This year was the finest Day of the Dead parade in years. It wasnt 20 below, it wasn't raining, and the full moon was actually rising behind the African dancing, the tuba-playing, drumming, car stereo-playing Manu-Chao, giant skeletons bowing, the billowing steamroller prints , and all the skull-face painted bike riders you could ask for. Not to forget, the Dead Debutantes.

I watched it over by the XXX's with my friend Mark. All my friends recognized me , even though my hope, when I smeared my own skull-like blob face on with tempera paint, was to blend in. In fact everyone I knew, even Abe, whose face was totally covered with a weird beard and a hood, was simple to spot, which I find remarkable, that we transcend our appearances so vividly. Obscuring ourselves in paint and costume draws out this other way we "know" who each other are. Whether you view it as sensory or spiritual, to know another human being due to a more holistic recognition seems to me just one aspect of art-meets sacred, and is a community-building, socially strengthening practice, even if you aren't fully aware that you're doing it.

The Parade itself is the more obvious place where art meets the sacred. And wait--- let's not get too lofty with the term sacred--- I think its sacred includes when people are silly together, or when people kind of meekly not quite know what they are doing but theyre marching in a parade anyways, together. And "When the Saints Go Marching In " has to compete with "Me Gusta Tu," or when the giant Bernice's skeleton puppet is handing out bone-shaped donuts.

I watched it three times, running alongside it to the beginning, my own ritual was so fun, seeing everything coming again, my anticipation remaining consistent each time. It was thrill for me to be true to my impulse to do this. As a creative person, (or really just as a person) letting these impulses be done is essential, nurturing, encouraging. As I ran, I thought about the 3 people and one very special golden retriever I know that have died this year, in fact all within the last 6 months. And when I stopped running, I was kept in the present moment by the energetic mob once again. My only wish for this parade is that public crying did not seem a downer or like it's attention-seeking. But I think that taboo is part of Western Culture, and too big a fish to fry in this entry... Regardless, it's healing to grieve properly for those we miss , and of sacred importance to consciously focus for a minute on how blessed, crazy, imperfect, strange, intense, creative, and truly precious this life is. And this is how I view public, community art as a way of (healthy) survival.