The Arts and culture of Indonesia just kills me!!
No country and its cultural heritage holds more dearly to me than my ancestral home of Indonesia. My grand mother and my mother were born in Medan, Sumatra in Indonesia.
It was said that my grandmother was closely related to the Sultan in Medan during the rule of the then President Soekarno who in his campaign against the rulers all over Indonesia deposed off the Sultans and hunted down all their relatives. My Grandmother was said to depart Medan and took refuge in Penang, Malaysia.
Far fetched as the story may be knowing my grandfather who was an artist and a member of the 'Bangsawan' group of Troubadours I am not surprised if he and the Sultan were drinking buddies in the prime time of their age. My grandfather was a handsome man and was aslo responsible for painting the backdrops of each show performed.
He was a fair skinned Singhalese from Ceylon or Sri Lanka as it is known today.
If nothing else it makes for a good storyfor a family tree if I were to trace my ancestery both on my grandfather and my my grandmother's lineage. How more colorful can it get and if proof be asked two of my mother's sibblings are still alive and can testify to my claim.
I am proud to be who I am being a product of such colorful mixture of characters whose cultural as well as Religious heritage runs deep and ancient and I hope my children whose mothers all three of them being Americans and a European will learn to appreciate who they really are.
It is my hope that they wouls look at life far beyond what is the material day to day humdrum of life and understand of themselves their intertwined genetical make up that encompasses so far across time and space into the cultural spiritual dimension of existence.
My children must be proud to acknowledge that their grandmother was Indonesian and their Grandfather a Sri Lankan as well as their German, Irish and Swiss ancestral Grand Parents. This is awareness of who you are in more than just the physical sense.
Sometimes when one's feelings or actions are hard to explain, or one's dream is way out of the normal track, one wonders where it is all coming from, to be aware of one's psychco-genetical heritage or make up can help to ease the burden of mystery.
The demons and monsters, the prince and princesses, the sages and warriors of our mental states have their roots deep into the beds of our forefathers literally as well as metaphorically. We are what they sowed and we become who we are conditoned by our own environment but the strain of genetical heritage stretching back into the beginningless time of our ancesstery still holds sway at the far end of our deeper conciousness, whether we know it or not.
Why does one chose to become a healer, a doctor, while another a soldier or a fighter, why one becomes an artist while the other till the land, random choices? I stringly believe we continue on being who we were meant to be as set by our past ancestral heritage and the closer the choice made the more adept we become who are albeit an artist or a scientist. Our destiny may have been written however our free will still moves our final state of being who we are even if it is in a sense of just wishing for;I wish i had been a...
IN this day and age we wear masks to hide our true nature from fear of being rediculed, frowned upon, left out, not being in sync with..'society'. When confronted with who we are, I am a Malaysian, an American, an Indian or Chinese or caucasian or Arabs, but we have less and less understanding of who we really are deep beneath the skin, within our hearts and minds our spiritual yearnings or lack of.
Today our ancestral histories are mostly hidden away behind showcasses in museums or sold off on auction blocks. They have become objects of curiousity for the ignorant to entertain their need to kill time and curiousity. They have become assets for those who has the ingenuity to see the prospect of making a fortune out of antiquity. Most are forgotten hidden in clossets and discarded eventually to make way for their replacements.
The loss of our ancestral cultural heritage will be felt by the future generation when there is no more sense of belonging, no more sense of awesomeness of the unknown, no more understanding of who or where we originated from and there is only the ever increasing momentum towards self destruction through one form of escapism or another.
Whats the difference from an abstract or so called modern art and the construction of the shadow puppet? So called modern art today is often the product of chance discovery of one of the many aspects of art, a technique, a design or a medium or expresssion, however most of these so called modern art painter have no ground from which they can stand and defend themselves and their works when put into question. They lack the lineage, the have found a short cut that appeals and sells as art what they create and self claim themselves as artists in their own right. In time as this keep happening that which is creativity in art will no more be authentic or true to the human spirit...like the shadow puppets.
The genuine creator, he who creates from the heart, for the love of being creative itself will be a rare bird. One has to seek for him just as one has to seek for the antiques left behind by his predecessors. His work place will no more be as unique and simple but crowded by computers and scanners and printers, sterile from any form of spiritual prescence.
There is nothing right or wrong about it all it is just a matter of change in the way we see things, our interests or lack of, our awareness there of. Should we be concern? Perhaps not as all is being taken care of in one way or another, there efforts being made to preserve and conserve and efforts being made to educate the future generations. Is there?
Is your children aware of any of these objects that is now being put on into this blog?
Do you have any idea of who or where or why these puppet dolss were created? What has it got to do with who you are?
Lord Date Masamune , 'The one Eyed Dragon', Shogun lord of the Tohoku region of the Northern territories of the Miyagi Prefecture. He had the Aoba castle built at Sendai and ruled the region.
The people of Sendai enjoying the Hanamori in spring at one of the many parks in Sendai.
A panoramic view of the City of Sendai from the top of the hill at Yasoen (Wild Flowers Garden} where our Apartment was located.
The Godaido...a historical temple built on a little island of the coast of Matsushima.
Yesterday, 11th. of March a major earthquake hit Northern japan with the magnitude of 8.9 causing a Tsunami that swiped large areas of the Sendai City areas of the Miyagi Prefecture and surrounding areas.
Most of the drawings and sketches of the 'Clash of the Titans- SUMO!! were done while I was living in Sendai for three years of my life.
My late wife nancy was a lecturer at the Kawaijyuku Bunri and my two children attended the Mukaiyama Yo Chien or Kindergarten there. We had many great friends in this City
To all those who we know and those we met on the streets daily in Sendai and to the rest of the Japanese People I bow my head and raise my heart to the heavens for a mercyful recovery. May all the Buddhas come to the aid of those in need.
