Rumi's version of the Story of the Blind Men and the Elephant:
"Elephant in the Dark" (trans. Coleman Barks)
Some Hindus have an elephant to show.
No one here has ever seen an elephant.
They bring it at night to a dark room.
One by one, we go in the dark and come out
saying how we experience the animal.
One of us happens to touch the trunk.
"A water-pipe kind of creature."
Another, the ear. "A very strong, always moving
back and forth, fan-animal."
Another, the leg. "I find it still,
like a column on a temple."
Another touches the curved back.
"A leathery throne."
Another, the cleverest, feels the tusk.
"A rounded sword made of porcelain."
He's proud of his description.
Each of us touches one place
and understands the whole in that way.
The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark are
how the senses explore the reality of the elephant.
If each of us held a candle there,
and if we went in together,
we could see it."
No one here has ever seen an elephant.
They bring it at night to a dark room.
One by one, we go in the dark and come out
saying how we experience the animal.
One of us happens to touch the trunk.
"A water-pipe kind of creature."
Another, the ear. "A very strong, always moving
back and forth, fan-animal."
Another, the leg. "I find it still,
like a column on a temple."
Another touches the curved back.
"A leathery throne."
Another, the cleverest, feels the tusk.
"A rounded sword made of porcelain."
He's proud of his description.
Each of us touches one place
and understands the whole in that way.
The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark are
how the senses explore the reality of the elephant.
If each of us held a candle there,
and if we went in together,
we could see it."
Something about Perceptual Blindness Theory, elephants....
1 comment:
There is something I do like about each individual's experience being different. We, in our own way, experience passion, creativity, faith, life, excitement, etc. That parallel exists and could be explored.
I'm not as interested in this as an image, but more of an idea. How might the ensemble create the whole, while having individual experiences? How might the audience? What can we do with the ensemble that reinforces this idea? Can they experience the stories from the coat in an individual way? Is the coat filled with paper titles or objects that each ensemble member can select and use a framing device for a story?
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