Let’s talk a moment about Art and our prehistoric Artistic ancestors. I maintain that all humans are by their innate nature prone to create some understandable order from disorder- this human tendency is called Simulacra. Without all the Psychological babble it means we as humans yearn to see something familiar in everything around us. Faces in rocks and trees and billowing creatures in cloud formations. The Man in the Moon is a perfect example.
(Yikes, I think that third image is Robin Williams!)
I was lucky enough to view the natural rock formation in New Hampshire dubbed The Old Man in the Mountain before it slipped away into a pile of dusty rubble. It was very upsetting to see something that had been a part of our continent for millennium vanish over night! Who of us is enduring if even that ancient stone man eventually succumbed? He was a an extremely awe-evoking phenomenon. You drove along the winding highway gazing up at the endless, unchanging bank of looming, vertical granite. I always feared I would miss seeing him, that it would be too subtle to make out his features. Then suddenly, you rounded that corner and looked back at the mountain and to my utter amazement, every time, the granite suddenly twisted into an unmistakable profile. Half a mile back…nothing. Half a mile forward…again nothing. You had to stand at just the right angle and distance to see him. He was not subtle! The rocks could be nothing but a giant’s face.
Who saw him for the first time I wonder? Ancient Americans lived all over this countryside. Did someone out hunting moose, back in the haze of antiquity, happen to look up at exactly that position and go “Whoa! Where did he come from?” It had to be unsettling! They had to go get someone else to come see it to make it real. I wonder if they were torn between validation and loosing the mountain man forever? He couldn’t know that the face was always there, hidden from every vantage point except this one single spot. I’m going to go with Sacred Spot. It had to be special and unworldly to every viewer. I felt that strange thrill eons later. There are many websites devoted to examples of Simulacra. Who could ever forget the face of the Madonna on that grilled cheese sandwich?
People have traveled for hundreds of miles to witness an oil slick on a window that seems to be a miracle.
