Makunaima, my grandparent in me!

by

Jaider Esbell

I happen, artistically speaking, within a process that invites us to critically think decolonization, cultural appropriation, Christianity, monotheism, monoculture and all the dilemmas of the globalized existence. Or isn’t that the case? My emergence comes with the expectation around another term, at least in Brazil: indigenous contemporary art. Not modern art, past and extinct, nor the one to come, but the one belonging to this beginning of the 21st century.

First, I’ll mention that I am not alone, I don’t speak alone, I don’t show up alone. I make known that I belong in all visuality, all traces already exposed of my being are merely a step towards more mysteries. We are the well of all mysteries ourselves. I also make known that we are not defined, that we come from a continuous time, without stop. Before that, I make known that we seek the most abstract meanings, we handle other very firm deals in this passage. And even before that, I should say that both my grandparent Makunaima and me, and I am a direct part of them, we are artists of transformation.

We emerge along with art in all the challenges of the great existence and its most evident individual and collective urgencies. We emerge in the apparent chaos, as described among the great Shamans of the world and as an almost consensus in science, in terms of the directions for humanity as such. The mathematical harbinger of the end of the world is also a scene of our apparition. As a product of this time, I understand that colonization was a process, although I understand it is also a continuous act.

Thus, I looked all around me and saw my grandparent on the horizon. On the horizon, it is also clear that there won’t be a culture or life – much less a quality life – for anyone if nothing is done. It’s not possible, in case we don’t break some extra membrane of the present, to think about any idea of future in issues of our spiritual connection with the earth and with our garbage. I’ll say that Makunaima isn’t just a strong, manly, macho and virile warrior, far from a possible reality, no sir. They are a dense energy, strong, with their own source, like a banana tree.

The initial idea for building this text made me think deeply about the purposes of science in making art an instrument to encourage thought. Seen as I occupy a privileged place of work, I do not shy away from leaving hints and entrances so that all major issues may be contemplated. Do we speak of deconstruction? Gender, sexuality and the extrapolation of worlds will be recurring themes because they are part of life, and everything is the same substance for art. To be free in writing doesn’t mean much when the world needs other viable means to translate itself.

Is there such an agency in school education? These are questions that appeal to us. Loans we must make every moment. Loans coming from afar decharacterizing things and energies and let us not want to have the essence of things, for these things are not there for us lest they succeed us.

I essay writing to socialize a little the sociable part of my relationship with my grandparent, the one who is not a person, exactly as not to be so. Therefore, Makunaima is my grandparent and gender, form and content have their places of action, as we always say, for they are fundamental, but we must go beyond that. Makunaima is beyond and proves it by continually changing. No, they are not a transsexual. Let us dissociate, little by little, Makunaima’s acting-existing from the cognitive effects of gender in our minds.

So, does Makunaima appear to me first as a colonized form? I haven’t even presented my grandparent to you, and I am already asking you to go beyond gender, beyond time. That is because we will have to visit another world. I must give this warning as well. I must warn you that these stories are part of my life and that Makunaima truly is my grandparent; that is a fact. Makunaima and many other grandparents come from here, from the northernmost part of the Amazon Forest. We have a history and a geography. We are direct relatives. It’s a biological, genetic, material and substantially spiritual or energetic relation.

When I take on and reclaim my bond with Makunaima, I am inviting you to go beyond the debate around colonization or decolonization. When I take that as an argument, I mean to say that it’s a part of me to want that everywhere there is some extrapolation from discourses. When I do it publicly in a strategic place, with art, I believe I am being paradidactic. Because I am an artist and as a person, I use my own revelation, the fruit of my research, in my full life, which is also my research.

A meaning for the existence of Pan-Amazonia and its peoples must go through the hands of Makunaima. There is, wherever I take them, a full meaning beyond the factoids of Makunaima’s laziness and lack of character.

In fact, I don’t even want to discuss these questions, although they are what brought us to this point. There is a large in between of possibilities of understanding, rather than explanations. Without entering the gates of the indigenous peoples cosmovisions there’s no way to discuss decolonization. If we don’t consider the cultures that have been altered and are currently open to debate with the represented part of humanity, it won’t be possible to discuss any kind of frontier.

Even before the notes by Theodor Koch-Grüberg and even in Makunaima’s appearance on a book cover and in film, pathways to decolonization may have been opened.

I believe there is another moment beyond East and West coming together to encapsulate thought. New dimensions are opened when old terms are put in new contexts. The fact is that we live in a state of art and walking through other worlds is just a form of thinking and experiencing this much discussed decolonization.

Makunaima and decolonization sound like lost terms in the crowd, that is, the people, those we, media people, seek. Or isn’t that the case? It just happens that Makunaima showed themselves to be part of an available culture. For minimum contextualization, an entire life dedicated to this purpose is announced. We’re going to have a tour around my relationship with my grandparent. Makunaima, in the circles reached by this text, is, or could be known at least for his so far exposed side in the world.

As much as some or all of the other fantastic agents colonized along with our people, Makunaime must be removed from the folklore ward. Markedly, Makunaima is involved in the readings proposed by many influential thinkers regarding the dubious character of the Brazilian people. This is also related to the Week of Modern Art of 1922, a century after which we emerge with this additional demand. The present and future of this nation-people of challenging identity, close to the fantastic, is the point from where art makes its propositions. It’s unfortunate that Mário is not here to see and feel these other sides of the movement. But it doesn’t matter because his offspring, I among them, are around.

Makunaima always knew what they did, I start from this assumption. They exposed themselves alone and with strategy. Now is another time. The time they thought would come didn’t take even a century. Where I fit, I go. I’ll go beyond my direct relationship with them. As an artist, I also skip colonization and go to a time before all this. I believe and feel that in a certain moment I can be in another time, in a time before our pre-colonial diversities.

A total inner vacuum is required from the readers, a nakedness inside to make space. In a larger conception, a total emptying of being is required, so another being can fit. The being is full and brings its own knowledge. The new being won’t stay where it doesn’t fully fit. I repeat, I am not alone, I don’t speak alone, I don’t show up alone. I reaffirm, I belong in all visuality, and all clues left of my existence are merely steps toward more mysteries. We are wells of all mysteries ourselves. I emphasize that we are not predefined, we come from a continuous time, without stops. I repeat, we seek the most abstract meanings, we handle other very firm deals in this passage. I will say it again, both my grandparent Makunaima and me, a direct part of them, we are artists of transformation.

When my grandparent transforms something into stone, they don’t destroy. And Makunaima comes, on his way back, transforming what they transformed when they first went. They always come in another form. When Makunaima came across a large white rock when walking through the savanna, they didn’t hesitate, they stopped in front of the rock and transformed it into a bull. Makunaima had the powers and the decision to transform the rock, and so they did. When they transformed the rock into a bull and the bull saw Makunaima, it attacked them. Makunaima fought the bull. It was a fierce fight. Finally, the bull came to know Makunaima and begin loving them as its parallel, as a part of itself. They create things with his decisions. Everything they see, everything they touch, receives another kind of action, another kind of energy, something that unleashes a movement in their being and in the being that was touched.

As I said, Makunaima doesn’t require a form, a gender, a genesis. They are an energetic state which creates and recreates itself as a banana tree that doesn’t require a partner. It’s the mundane demands of our human senses which require a logical reference. And then Makunaima experiences some form of materiality, of sound, of a sensibility accessible to his descendants, as an idea of gender, for example. They come in many transitory states and start to show beyond orality, beyond myth. They descend from their supreme state arrowed by their pride overcome; then they see themselves beyond pride and after all their essential suffering. They break all barriers, subvert all advice, kiss their grandparent, the tortoise, and go toward the father of us all, the universe.

From the universe, Makunaima sees Mother Earth and, from there, they become sad. Makunaima wishes to be there, but the mother beseeches them, and they can’t bear their mother’s love, and they return. They descend to meet their family. They go to the original place and see the flower buds. One of these will blossom in great poets. And Makunaima visits each of them to see what they carry. They are full of joy and when they come across my hammock, I pull them by their fingers. They see me. Their eyes shine and absorb me. I made myself into my grandparent, we are now really one. Before that moment, a photograph, and in it my grandparent and I are in constant movement. We are in constant passage and our common origin is unknown to many, but there is the living path we want to get to.

I associate in this text in the only way possible. I’m the direct grandson of Makunaima. It’s a family relation, something intimate and sacred, achieved only through respect. So, I am an artist like my grandparent; I’m half like my grandparent. I hold my grandparent’s finger and we go on. With time, I grow and my grandparent Makunaima gets smaller, and we go on until they become a child and I become an old man and the logic of life is inverted and soon something else will be going on.

This is our language, a continuous act in itself, transformation. There, before another came, the conjuncture was the one from there. An origin in itself, a resource characteristic of the great act, creativity. We appeared out of nothing, with everything. We brought the origin of the world, and it was to all that we appeared. To appear is a loanword. We now loan everything to disenchant. To disenchant is a transitory state, directly related to the act of destroying what was then associated with my grandparent in their great journey through the world; the lack of character and the disdain for everything.

Before one century only, we follow his tracks, always. I am here to rescue my grandparent, to take them home, and to care for them. The being I am, myself, a man, a full-grown warrior of 1.68m, 82kg, 39 years old. Free, as it should be. Free as my grandparent Makunaima when they launched themselves on the cover of Mário de Andrade’s book. They let themselves go, is what they told me in one of our many grandparent-grandchild conversations. So they tell me:

My son, I glued myself to that book cover. They say I was kidnapped, that I was harmed, stolen, wronged, betrayed, fooled. They say I was a fool. No! It was I who wanted to go to that book cover. It was I who wanted to accompany those men. I wanted to go make our history. There I saw the chances for our eternity. There I saw the chance so that you could be all together here today. Now you are together with all of them and we are indeed a lack of unity. I saw you in the future. I saw it and threw myself in this. I threw myself half asleep, in the trance of the power of decision, the blindness of levelheadedness, of the great passion’s blown out heart. I was in the margin of the margins, I arrived where none of us went before me. I wasn’t there by chance. I was put there to bring us here.

It was my grandparent who told me all of this. They don’t keep any secrets from me, and they told me to tell you. It was them who authorized me to quote them, claim them, cultivate them, live them, resuscitate them.

My relationship with my grandparent Makunaima is forceful through art and through blood. Yes, we share the same blood, the same wits, the same character. Behold the great artist Makunaima, the great misunderstood being. I was barely born and was raised to my feet with the jump my grandparent jumped to reach me.

They told me: “It is really you. You are the one I expected to go with me.”

So, they showed me the way. But I was only a child and didn’t really know how big my grandparent were, and they soon took me hanging by their shoulder crossing the first hills. This is what my introduction to the world was like, my grandparent showed me the way.

In this life alone, it has been over thirty years of a daily walking in their own origin and trajectory. My grandparent told me that they have tasted the forbidden fruit. They told me that the forbidden fruit is nothing else than courage. They told me the greatest example for our contemporary understanding was throwing themselves on the book cover. When Makunaima decides to throw themselves on the book cover, they knew what they were doing. They didn’t have a choice, their life was happening. Makunaima made the great jump, ate the forbidden fruit whole. When Makunaima decides to expose themselves, they make the universe tremble, something really new comes up, something latent urging in the universe. Nothing would be like before; the decision was made.

When, coming from another time, Makunaima must show evidence for his universal decisions, they tell us about the cutting down of the great Wazak’á tree. Yes, another great act, instrumental to the pan-origin of all of their children; and their is the decision. They cut down the great tree so all these beings that are spread through the vastness of the green forest could exist today. They cut the tree to give life to the inhabitants of the savanna as well, in this part of the world. There had been hunger, scarcity, when nature showed Makunaima and their siblings the great trees. The great God, which is the greater Nature, through the agouti, showed Makunaima the great tree of all fruits and seeds. No, it wasn’t just one, but symbolically we choose the greatest, the most imposing, the first.

The tree of good, upon falling down, brought along the tree of mysteries, the tree of the other beings, the forbidden tree whose trunk still lies today next to the tree of life cut down by Makunaima. And thus, nature brings Makunaima face to face with the great tree. It leaves them there with their neck twisted up and considering the great decision they are about to make. Makunaima stands still, measuring their own existence. Holding their axe, they touch the tree trunk and are electrocuted. It’s a sign for the cutting. They would have the courage. Makunaima delivers the first blows and their siblings, convinced of the following act, aid them in their journey. After a long while, the great tree falls down and the world recreates itself and further transforms itself.

The glorious and transgressive act of felling the enchanted tree is only another moment, another decision, a universal act. One hast to slice up time to achieve the least understanding. One must listen to the silence-thinking of Makunaima between their axe blows. It wasn’t mere felling; it was about bringing life to another dimension. In all passages, my grandparent tells me about their jumping into life, this is what is at stake. Being before the possibility and the following act come with the great decision.

When Makunaima decided to be on the book cover, they knew that from then on, their life would acquire a new dimension. They knew the grandiosity of the act of that representation of realities yet to come as extrapolations. They knew of the importance of the icons in the culture that had arrived. They knew those people’s limits and greed. They knew their mission and went. They went into the book, to the movies, they were subjected and delivered to the world. They went out of knowledge, out of lucidity, out of wanting. They knew that being on the book cover was to be in another environment. They knew that, in a world lacking gods and goods, their image would be associated with something not yet lived, but well known. They knew everything, they knew of every step felt to their full realization, which is now.

The deification of Makunaima allows them to live yet more vividly the necessary bitterness of the triumph to come. The hero without a character was ready to open their arms wide open to the world and to receive its rain of arrows, its continuous lunges and the projection on the indigenous peoples of all existence. They preserved us by delivering themselves, by making themselves prey to the hunter. My grandparent’s appearance, enchantment, maximum suction and abandonment as a useless trickster apparently comes to an end. Martyrdom, a part of the martyr is felt in Makunaimas life, further wisdom and the absolute pleasure of another kind of love; not for themselves.

Makunaima is a being full of courage. They appear humanized. They are considered as a man and partly seen as not having any commitment to life or to love. They are depicted as dry, evil, perverse, possessing the worst qualities, and even as reinforcing the idea of sexism and the patriarchy. And that was precisely what happened when they were raised to the highest visibility, my little grandparent went to meet the thunder, they went to the center of the fire and even drinks tea with Gods and Demons. Makunaima went to be their own journey.

Makunaima’s highest exposure severely reflects inwards into the forest the frivolous idea of a curious kind of monotheism. Then came the isms, with Christianity specially. Reflections from all tonalities of existence affect Makunaima which receives them with couter-reflections. Makunaima would be the great God, the greatest and the most perverse, for that was the imperative attempt to forcibly extract-impose that identity. That was the twisted proposition, which was so celebrated, that failure of feeling which is the face of Brazilian culture. It was a human failure, a shallow, mundane reading.

Nowhere could fit what doesn’t have a soul to fit. There is no substance which could fit Makunaima’s deluges in once again deconstructing and building. It is their current function, in Makunaima’s new life, to undo lies. It is Makunaima’s role by the power invested in them to give back. To give back the visions their aura, and super powerful life stolen by enchantment.

My grandparent will return everything. They will recover the why of all stories, the simplicity of life. Makunaima will take away from themselves the weary eyes of the world and direct them to nature. Makunaima turns themselves into a warrior of inconformity as only they are and shows the owners of each thing the spirit-soul of each thing. We reenter the same open doors, the open veins in the world of the unknown. More curiosity to summon memory, more movement to go beyond. Another time for new glances. More politics and technology, more magic and shows.

We live in a state of art and we accept it. We came from other structures to make ourselves appropriate in this here idea of time. The pathways left by my grandparent open themselves to other walks of life, times of other celebrations. Where he was made useless, that is our destination to go beyond showing new cracks. I must follow them in their revisiting, cross back to where I was reached to learn over. Listen to life in my grandparent’s walking and translate, living as they wish and what they wish, in whichever dimension I end up in. We will be in the tonality of the universe, the color of green forest earth and art in its greatest state of fluidity.

All visions are transient, and there is more than one in me. There will never be a conclusion, and my passage is as temporary as these apparent demands and their urgencies. So, recalling essential details is necessary. The fact that we only recently left full orality, a world more of feeling than literal meanings, weighs heavily on this equation. The fact that we live in a permanent state of colonization also poses a factor of obligation, motivating us to be beyond things. We walk openly along the great themes of the world, faith, education, culture, gender. And we also believe, because of our strongly spiritual nature, that our art my give us reach. Other reaches such that were very little or very much given to us, and be it so that we can at least actively make up the great diversity forever.

Originally published in Iluminuras, Porto Alegre, v. 19, n. 46, p. 11-39, jan/jul, 2018