The Blessing

In many Native American tribes the Shaman or medicine man is considered gifted because he can enter into an altered state and converse with the gods and thus give advice or instruction. There exist many ceremonies in which the shaman smoke marijuana or ingest other hallucinogens in order to reach the spirits. There have even been recorded events of shaman starving themselves, or staying up for days dancing themselves into delirium.

Nowadays people have dismissed the notion that anyone can converse with spirits that the majority of people do not even believe in. and the gifts of the shaman are written off as a result of drugs and hallucinations. But what if it were true, like sixties icon Timothy Leary advocated in his “turn on, tune in, drop out” campaign, turn on to your physical being and become aware of yourself and the workings of your body. Tune in; work harmoniously with yourself and the world around you with your newfound self awareness, and drop out of involuntary commitments, be painfully aware of everything you do. What if drugs really did take you to a higher plane, expose you to a new altered state that went beyond physical form and on to “a plane of truth” as artist Claire Hooper calls it.

With her 360 degree film “The Blessing” Claire explores these altered states of consciousness and what they imply. Derived from accounts of acid trips as well as prayer and meditation, the film follows an art appreciator as he experiences a very physical epileptic seizure, and his transcendence into an altered consciousness. What struck me as intriguing was the “observers” as I have dubbed them. Are they supposed to represent spirits? They are the characters wearing the Native American looking smocks with the pattern of what looks to me like an eye on the front of their vestments. Does the eye hold any symbolic importance, does it verify my theory that they are the observing spirits? I cannot say, but they fit into my interpretation.

Another intriguing aspect was the juxtaposition of this man’s very physical reaction while looking at art, and his euphoric state of mind. Some would say that looking at art, or making art involves a certain level of meditation, one must enter an altered state of being and concentration to make art, I cannot help but recall scenes from Heroes the television show where a character goes into a trance and paints the future. But making real art is not too dissimilar, I have on many occasion found myself so immersed in what I was involved in that hours pass and time flies by without me even noticing. Such is the same experience when I look at art, I can find myself staring at the same painting, noticing every detail I get lost in time. This man has exactly the opposite experience, while mine is mental, his is physical, he literally goes into fits in the middle of an art exhibit. However, while experiencing something so physical his consciousness wanders into some cosmic state. Is his experience not too far derived from the meditations brought on by physical deprivation of the Shaman? As the title suggests, he is blessed to experience this altered state, this “plane of truth” closer to God, or whatever entities may exist, closer to revelation.

lindsay butcher