Today for you, Tomorrow for me
In Search Of A Conversation
I would like to begin by expressing my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has joined me here. Your decision to subscribe especially means a great deal to me. I have also received kind and thoughtful comments on posts and restacks that validate the time and effort I put into writing my pieces. Thank you.
When my family suggested I start writing again and publish on Substack, I had no idea how much I would enjoy it. What began as my own musings about albums, artists, and songs have gradually evolved into something more. Thoughts have sprouted from the initial seed, bearing fruit and blossoms of new ideas. I now feel that I am beginning to discover my own voice as a writer.
Is this not the case with all forms of art, tho? When I start a painting, I often have little or no idea where it will lead. I make marks or write on a blank canvas and then begin painting. My approach to painting is like the title of the Hawkwind album, ‘In Search Of Space.’ I am not necessarily searching for physical space, nor am I a megafan of Hawkwind. When I paint, however, I am always In Search Of A Conversation. The painting is never complete until it starts speaking to me. When that conversation becomes reciprocal, fruitful, and positive between myself and the artwork - that’s when I know it is finished.
In many ways, this is how I also approach my writing.
I often don't know what I will write about until later in the week. It always begins with the song - from there, my quest is to find the conversation. There have been some anxious Fridays because I have yet to write anything. On weekends, I wake up very early and spend several hours writing. The wee hours of the morning have consistently provided a sense of clarity to my art and writing. Along the way, the piece begins to converse, and I finally discover what I have been searching for.
All of this said - I am about to take a break from writing for a couple of weeks because my wife and I are traveling to Peru!
Peru has been on our bucket list for a long time, and I am super excited that we are finally making it happen. Over eighteen days, we have a brilliant itinerary planned that will take us from Lima down to Arequipa, over to Lake Titicaca, and finally up to Cusco and Machu Picchu. Initially, my goal was to have three completed pieces ready to schedule for posting while I am away, but the truth is, with a full-time job, it is challenging enough to find the time to write one piece, let alone two or more in a week.
As an artist, I have learned that taking breaks often allows me to come back with a fresh perspective and renewed creativity. I am also excited to explore a different country, immerse myself in a new culture, and quench my thirst for inspiration.
Most of what I know about the Incan Empire comes from my college Art History classes. I’ve since bought a book* and have begun some pre-travel reading for deeper insight into the Sacred Valley.
At its peak, the Incas were the largest empire in the world, ruling over 10 million people and spanning more than 2500 miles across South America. This vast territory included parts of present-day Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. Yet it lasted only a century, as a combination of smallpox, internal strife, and curiously fewer than 200 Spanish invaders made the mightiest empire in the Americas crumble virtually overnight.
A lot of our knowledge about the Incas comes from documents written by the Spanish and oral stories passed down through generations. They domesticated very few animals, had no written language, nor had they developed the wheel. Yet, their empire was comparable in size to the Romans. Despite the absence of a written language, the Incans used an intricate and complex system of colorful knotted strings called khipus to record numerical information.
Anthropologists have yet to decipher all the information on khipus nor found the equivalent of the Rosetta stone to help crack their code. The prevailing thought is the khipus were similar to a spreadsheet and census that allowed them to keep track of the number of crops, people, taxes, and livestock. While some scientists view the khipu as the closest thing to a written language, others think the Incans may have used it as a solar and lunar calendar. There have even been suggestions that the Incans believed the khipus to be sentient.
The Incas also upheld a complementary power structure between men, women, and individuals of a revered third gender called Quariwarmi. They were devoted astronomers and sun worshippers, revering the mighty sun god, Inti. The worship of the sun and the stars permeated various aspects of their lives, including architectural designs, festivals, and the divine status attributed to the Sapa Inca, the Incan royal family.
If I were to worship anything/something, the concept of the sun as the creator and sustainer of life resonates with me far more than any human representation of a god. After all, it is the sun's rays that provide us with the perfect light and warmth for water, allowing plants and all living things to survive and thrive on this beautiful pale blue dot we call home.
While it’s easy to romanticize admirable aspects of Incan society, as with all cultures, they were not perfect. Far from it. Nevertheless, there are valuable lessons we can derive from the Incans, particularly their profound understanding that nature, humanity, and the Earth, Sun, Moon, & Stars coexisted harmoniously and were intricately interconnected.
The Incan principle of ayni is also worth cherishing. Ayni, from the Quechua language, beautifully translates to "today for you, tomorrow for me." This term encapsulates the notion that we exist within an interconnected community and world, where each person must give before they can receive.
All Is Connected
In the spirit of my adventures, I'll share two songs, one from Peru and one from Chile. While I am, by no means, an expert on Peruvian music, I recently picked up a fantastic compilation of obscure Peruvian Chicha/Cumbia from 1972 to 1986. Cumbia, the music and dance of the indigenous people, originated in Colombia but has since found its way into many Latin American countries, each with its own unique versions. In Peru, it is a beautiful fusion of local adaptations of the original Colombian Cumbia genre, traditional highland huayno, elements of Amazonian music, and various rock genres like surf rock and psychedelic rock.
I know even less about Los Royals de Pucallpa than I do about the Incan Empire. However, their 1975 single, 'Descarga Royal', completely blew me away when I first heard it. From the initial wonky blurriness of its wah-wah to the energetic percussion, drums, and warbling surfy guitar - my feet immediately want to start moving. Every time I play the song, its charming vibrancy never fails to bring a huge smile to my face.
At first listen, the stoned Chilean psychedelic band - La Hell Gang (later becoming Chicos de Nazca) may seem worlds apart from the Peruvian track. However, considering the historical reach of the Incan Empire into the region south of present-day Santiago, I can hear faint similarities in the dreamy, treble-soaked, and reverb-drenched neo-psychedelic sound of ‘Everywhere I Go’. Despite the noticeable difference in tempo compared to the Peruvian track, elements such as the opening guitar riff and crashing cymbals resemble each other. The crunchy guitar riff at the 1:57 mark is also remarkably similar to the final moments of Los Royals de Pucallpa’s track. The distorted yet melodic guitar solo in 'Descarga Royal' and the saturated sustain control on the explosive fuzz in the closing thirty seconds of 'Everywhere I Go' also share a comparable intensity.
While Los Royals de Pucallpa’s tune is energetic and fun, a prevailing sense of warmth radiates from ‘Everywhere I Go’. It glistens and shimmers with the life-affirming light of the Atacama emanating from Inti. The immense, dense waves of celestial feedback growing and swelling in the background are as hypnotic as the night sky. Together, it paints a divine sonic landscape of constellations and galaxies weaving across the deep sky like an aural khipu of knotted silver light, time, sound, and energy.
In search of space, indeed.
I am not expecting to hear any psychedelic Cumbian music on my travels, let alone South American psych-rock, but I will pack these songs and others as I head south of the equator in my continued search for the interconnected conversations of life, art, music, time, and space here on our third rock from the sun.
Today, I give this post to you. Thank you again for your support of this page. It means a lot to me.
I’ll be back, I promise. Until then - Enjoy, be kind, make art, listen to music, and take good care of yourselves and others.
Ayni
🌞
*D’Altroy, Terence N. The Incas (Second Edition). Oxford, UK, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2015.
Wow! I love your artwork! I am the same with both my painting and my writing. Sometimes words just fall off my fingers and onto the page (and then I refine them) . Painting is even more that process. I start fiddling with colors or a line and I see where it takes me.
I hope you are enjoying Peru (or did enjoy it?). I spent some time in Colombia some years back.... interesting places, for sure!
Still trying to catch up on unread Substacks (getting there) and stay on top of my weekly column (not sure, we’ll see) so I’m quite late on commenting.
You may well be back home by the time you read this. If not, I hope you have an amazing trip! Tina and I visited in 2007, seeing all of the areas you’ll be seeing and then spending a few days in the Amazon. It was incredible. I’m sure you’ll love it and I look first to hearing about it.
One thing to look out for in the Peruvian art is the manner in which the indigenous population painted the Christian icons in their paintings. They were banned by the colonizers from worshipping their own gods like Pachamama, Mother Earth. But the artists paid homage nonetheless by transferring iconography from their own religious traditions into the European style colonial religious art. It’s fascinating. A common example includes painting the Virgin Mary in a triangular dress reminiscent of the shape of mountains thus directly honoring Pachamama while mimicking European religious art techniques and styles.