A Great Soul
I first encountered Philip Moore at the end of 1979 when I returned to Guyana from the United States for the first time in seven years. A relative told me I had to see this ‘monstrosity’ that Burnham had erected in Georgetown. The country was in great ferment – earlier in the year, Burnham had declared to Rodney and the WPA that his steel ‘was sharper’.
But as I looked up at the massive bronze sculpture from across the square, all I could think was: “Who was the artist that could create such a work? The symbolism was so rich and profound; there was no need for any lecture to apprehend Moore’s import. And after that I took time to find out about Philip Moore, this self-taught visionary from the Corentyne. He reminded me of someone I knew well.
I had been raised by my grandparents. My Nana was born in 1896 and his father had arrived from village India. He never went to chool and the Hindi he could read was passed on by his father and the elders in the logies. That the world around us was not as we saw it was unquestioned: maya was not an idea – it was their reality. Symbolism was one technique to convey that deeper reality. The blue of Vishnu connoted his infinitude as of the blue sky; the lotus rising out of his navel, the emergent universe, and so on.
That there were different worlds in different dimensions existing side by side, with the spirit of the pitris or ancestors was also accepted matter-of-factly. But what amazed me about Philip Moore was that while my Nana’s world view – and mine – was passed down orally in an unbroken (albeit increasingly attenuated) line, Philip Moore seems to have been directly in contact with the deeper reality simply through the power of his mind from boyhood.
The mind, we are taught, is the ‘sixth sense’ – connected to the other senses – that reaches outwards to the physical world. But ultimately, its wisdom is a reflection of the inner soul that is part
and parcel of the animating spirit of the entire creation in all the various dimensions. Normal minds had to be stilled through meditation so that we may glimpse at the deeper, unified reality. Philip Moore appears to have been one of those very, very rare individuals who were born with this facility ‘full blown’.
I am not suggesting that Philip Moore was ‘Hindu” but to suggest that all ancient cultures – including those of Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas – accepted the multidimensionality of the universe – or even the multiverse. A multiverse populated with beings most of us are completely oblivious to. Philip Moore was able to unmediatedly tap into his ancestral memories and be in direct contact with these other realities.
The west had begun to glimpse at these truths a hundred years ago – even in its so-called ‘unsuperstitious’ natural sciences. From Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity through quantum theory and string theory, they all speak of realities beyond our senses. Their artistes like Picasso in painting and Henry Moore in sculpture attempted to represent this ‘new’ worldview. Henry Moore is very interesting since he overtly imitated in his ‘modern’ sculptures, the ‘primitive’ art that he studied.
Philip Moore did not need such ‘training”. What he demonstrated to us in his life is that while he later read many of the canonical texts of myths etc. he had already apprehended the forms of the truths he conveyed without books advising him how to crack the procrustean mind created by ‘modern’ education. He did not need the ‘tools of the master.’
And this is what sets him apart from so many of the activists and artistes that aspire to represent the essence of African (and Indian) culture – and why he was somewhat sceptical of them. The minds of those who came to even an honest realisation of the realities he uncovered with ease, are still clouded by the encrustations of Marxisms or whatever other isms into which they might have detoured en passant.
Mr Moore was rooted, yes rooted, in the village. This is not an inconsequential aside. The village is the African bequest to Guyana: created after horrors never before and never since inflicted by man on man. It is my hope, for what it is worth, that those that claim to admire and respect him will heed his message to revitalise the villages.
One newspaper this morning (as I write this) has suggested that the government fund a memorial at Mr Moore’s grave in Auchlyne, Corentyne. And that citizens fund a Meditation Centre in his village of Manchester, Corentyne, to house his works, so that we and future generations may meditate on them for the upliftment of ourselves and, by extension, our country. I’m ready to throw in my two cents.
