I'm flipping through an oversized magazine. A comics section catches my eye. One page is an intricate ink drawing with color washes--it shows a TV dance show like Soul Train, but the studio's been invaded by Indian protestors--several High Plains tribes, allied.

Out on the dance floor, they demonstrate a new Ghost Dance. A medicine man grabs the MC's mic and says a new prophet had a revelation in dreams of a spirit dance that'll halt the capitalist rape of nature and the theft of Indian land. But this Ghost Dance is inclusive--the vision said "Give THIS dance to ALL Americans!"

Sadly, his speech balloon in the comic shows us only a few disjointed phrases; I only got this much. Our cartoonist cares nothing for dreams or visions; all he cares for is the scene.

The ink cartoon's tangled, cluttered, with spiky lines full of energy--but their faces are jagged scrawls. "Visual noise to make it artsy" I think sourly. Even their figures are harsh--expressing only the artist's raspy energy, not their feelings or characters. Anti-Indian prejudice? But the club's non-Indian dancers, whether gawking or joining in (as quite a few are), are scrawly-generic too. Not racism, then: just universal misanthropy.

Because that's so much better.

The only one with any grace is a skinny girl in her early teens dancing madly in the foreground, naked but for feathers beads and leather wristlets. Crazy sexy energy, but her face is just an angry scrawl, like the other humans.

Humans alone. In contrast, the several horses in the dance, toward the back but definitely in the studio, are better drawn, with soulful expressive eyes. It seems clear our cartoonist prefers horses to humans. Jonathan Swift?

In the upper left, outside the studio, on a grass strip by an elevated freeway, several braves in breechclouts and chaps are riding high on giraffes. High in two senses: yes, they've shimmied up giraffe necks to shout slogans at startled drivers passing by, twenty feet up... but they also pass round a huge reefer, as big as a sage-bundle but definitely pot. Toss the gargantuan doobie between giraffes, and shout stoned-out surfer slang above the pop-music din--"Duude! Catch the spliiiiiiffff!" What?

Sex, drugs and rock and roll is the new Ghost Dance? I'm not sure Wovoka would approve.

But then... this is just a jaundiced caricature in a magazine, not the Dance itself.

And for white coverage of an Indian protest, just getting scrawled is an achievement.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Horses and skinny, crazy girls wearing only paint & feathers: echoes Amazon Offer, a recent dream with a whole tribe of interdimensional horsewomen--though Ancient Scythian, not High Plains. They seemed to mean risk-taking--or magic. So these protestors may be mad I've been playing it safe. Or they may be mad that rich city folk are dancing while poor rural folk starve--the recession did hit farm states hard. I couldn't tell--since the cartoonist in the dream censored their words.
• Bizarre, fascinating scene scribbled badly: dreamwork itself? Have I been doing THIS bad a job lately? It IS about par for modern media coverage of dream research. "Wow! This just in! Dreams may not be TOTALLY meaningless garbage!"
• Wovoka: the Ghost Dance prophet. Look him up. If you can find a non-patronizing account. Good luck.
• Druggies ride giraffes, freak the freeway drivers: echoes an earlier dream, Yellow Serenade.
• ACTION: Well... draw it. But not like the dream-comic! I longed to be there dancing, but disliked its media rendering. I'll try the ink lines--a good experiment! So unlike my usual cautious pencil. I'll omit the studio walls so I can show the giraffes too. But... draw the humans with the same sympathy the cartoonist gave the horses alone. After all, if I totally copy that dream-comic's harsh spidery spatters, I'll only achieve "Fear & Loathing in Studio 54". One Ralph Steadman's plenty. No need for two.

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites