Origins of the Black Lantern.
It began with a mist. It is almost as if it is the first real memory I have for its vividness. The weird thing is, there is an old, grainy photo of it that evokes but cannot contain the memory.
It crept down the surround like a mist—like a mist, it came in on a cool breeze. It came down upon us like a fog and set in. In its vagueness, a sensitivity that was empowering, the superpower of sense beyond sight or experience. A group of young human beings, connected (unbeknownst to them) by more than their years of friendship and collaboration and in pursuit of nothing more than feelings of awe and wonder, committed themselves to an investigation of life in the dark of night at the edge of the river.
A bond was borne of this humble investigation: the willing resignation to our finite naturalness and a commitment to its teachings in trusting exchange for a glimpse of the infinite. A trust in the overwhelming pull to smile and inquire and a commitment to the humility and contradiction of death in an infinite tyme and space. Repeated investigation yielded a beautiful tapestry of life and motion, [a]musing enough to evoke laughter and genuineness. Openness.
We used to believe that all the power of these feelings was locked away in a gravel shore along the bank of a little-known waterway in southern Missouri, a place we knew as the Euberland. That belief was the product of a space that was sacred to us (and, we believe, to many before us) and of a limited (though powerful) perspective. We have come to know that the mist rolls in over many beautiful valleys.
And so we have ventured to distant horizons. Into the misty darkness, we carry our Black Lantern, a paradoxical object that is at once a dark, cold void and a vivid, vari-colored spectrum of light. There is a part of ourselves we can access by way of natural experience in a space lit by this lantern, in a place where we have always existed. I find my shadowbright being at the water’s edge steeped in wonder, gently breathing fluidity, confident in peace. In this dark estuary, the universe thinks itself and expresses itself within us; and we can play its infinite rhythms; and they emanate from us in patterns of undeniable age and shape and wisdom. I always have something to reveal to myself in this space—an invitation to smile and inquire. Here it is that we let down our guard and study the feel of flow, our energy’s movement through form, without the fear that’s prescribed. We know that we can all find some of ourselves out here in the dark, and if we inspect the faintly glowing thing we are holding out to ourselves, we’ll find something powerful.
My name is Troy. I am one of the group described above.
This story is real and true, and it has taken me a decade to come to these descriptions. I have spent those years writing about and photographing these events—our adventures into rawest nature, our fireside rituals–seeking translation of those things humans are forgetting. There are others among us who translate by way of image, song, paint, and thought. Black Lantern Synergy is an exploration of one of these forgotten ideas—the notion of synergy: that in combination, many things unpredictably become greater in their varied forms of collaboration than the measure of their component parts.
My first encounter with synergy was by way of musical collaboration with two very close friends over the course of ten years. My music was often little on its own, but in combination with Nate’s poetry and Wes’s rhythm it was raw and powerful. Yet in time there was something more to it than the mere combination of those individual contributions. I didn’t just offer my part as a whole that must be integrated. I offered my inspired element (a guitar riff) up to a process of total collectivity, as did Nate and Wes. In other words, I was open to my part being rejected entirely and to the possibility of heading in a new direction on a song based on our collective desires and inspiration. Regardless, this process of open and inspired push yielded better songs and more powerful art, and when we took a stage, the celebration of these honest friendships, and the resulting collaboration, was free to ignite all of us and the audience into a single flame.
My words alone are often vague until read in the context of Poncho’s guitar lines, and, then, part of eternal rhythms. My notions of structure and form pale without Matt and Charlie. My consideration incomplete without the depth of Vega’s intellectual fidelity or Lynch’s irreverent sarcasm or Vinny’s psychological perspective. My love shallow without Jay. My push without the light of Dane’s. My images sad and serious without Jeff’s intricate vision-magic. I know I am much more than the sum of my component parts, because I have these people to live in active exchange with. I have learned that if I offer up my most heartfelt ideas and inspiration to those that are intent to examine them and add their heartfelt ideas and inspiration, the result is beautiful and empowering.
And it is no different for my relationship with the trees: my understanding of roots is nothing without them. As I worship friends and family, I give praise to the ancient giants I come across on long hikes, to the gnarly survivors of mean winters and fierce coastal winds, to the adolescent stand recovering from a harvest or a fire, to the seedlings on a suspended nurse log.
For years, creativity has been our means of expressing this connection—expressions of a life force we felt charged with and part of. The Green Circle. In time we found we could offer translations to each other that were pleasant and transportive. And so, several of us have gathered in one way or another around the Black Lantern to provide individual glimpses into the darklight places we have traveled and to combine them into a collective vision by means of the synergy of written word, song, photography, video.
The Radix project we developed over the last year is a great example. It is a six-image set designed by Black Lantern Synergy to represent the basic roots of the Cartesian Eco-FemDarkanism project. The images combine BLS photos, handwritten script, and words with the design aesthetic of Charlie Vega (Lion Architecture). The images represent hundreds of hours of collaborative drafts, edits, and redrafts and redits. More on Radix to come…
The Cartesian Eco-FemDarkanism project is our attempt at art as vehicle to [meet and perceive] sacred space, to reconnect with the understanding that we are a small but powerful part of a larger whole by encouraging experience in natural places. I have found that the show—which asks people to sit in the dark for an hour to revel in spoken word, natural imagery, and song thoughtfully intertwined—often evokes strong emotional responses. Reactions as the lights come up at the end of the performance often revolve around concepts of beauty. But there is also a sense of a deeper “foundational shattersmack,” the resulting egosmash that occurs in the grand face of the colossus of nature and tyme. The goal is to display an inspired frenzy, a sort of natural magic that urges the audience to step outside themselves, to get a little lost in wading out into the infinite, and to help them make a little sense of the perspective such a view brings. We believe that the impact of such a journey on the lives of people is significant and enduring.
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