The Crimson Wing

Yesterday I watched Disney Nature's "The Crimson Wing" to do visual research for a new series of flamingo paintings. I found myself enthralled by  the cinematography, and confounded by the story of the flamingos of Lake Natron, Tanzania. The documentary itself differed none compared to others about whales, lions, penguins, what have you. Yet something struck me about these flamingos, and seemed to tie together the subconscious reasons why I went on such a flamingo craze in the first place. 

These flamingos are a lot like us.

We see it when the story opens with the bizarre mating ritual. The males gather in one group, the females in another; much like the beginning of the night at a night club when people slowly arrive on the dance floor with their comrades. What follows is a dance of proud, awkward movements, and flashes of their brightly coloured wings, designed to impress a potential mate. From the outsider's point of view, they all look ridiculous. The males throw down one dance move, the females respond with another. The males try to outdo each other, but the females know that they don't need to try that hard because they are the target of the competition... all they need to do is go through the motions. 

This back-and-forth play continues for some time, until eventually the groups dissipate and each male begins chasing a female, pecking at her tail feathers and vying for her attention. The female continues to run away, acting as if she don't want it. Yet she stays just within reach when she can simply fly away. The chase is all part of the game, to see how badly he wants it. And just when it seems like his determination is pushed to its brink, she relents.

Fast forward past the flamingo porn (which is what I did) to the heartwarming scene of an oversized webbed foot stretching out of a newly hatched egg. When the young chicks are born, they encounter the same life events you would observe in other documentaries. It is a beautiful, sweet story of new life. And I will forever be traumatized by the scenes of marabou storks attacking the colony, brutally killing and devouring the adorable fuzzies that the film just suckered you into falling in love with five minutes ago. The parents flutter about frightened and helpless as the monstrous dark shadows wreak havoc on the place. We are reminded that even those who see life literally through rose-coloured eyes are also faced with struggle and defeat. I am happy for the darker side of Disney, showing the circle of life for what it is, although, seriously, I'm surprised I didn't have nightmares.

In becoming enraptured in this documentary and others like it, we are faced with the realization that this world is much bigger than just us. Flamingos are but one species that lives on this earth.This epic story is happening everywhere, in a billion billion ways. If we open our eyes to it, we have much to learn  from  the natural world. If we can see the duality between just one example, the flamingos, and human beings, we can be open to reflect on our own lives from a new perspective. How I interpreted the flamingo mating dance may be different from what you saw. What you might discern from another part of the film, may have never come to my mind.

Added 28-Dec-2012: 

Check out my artist blog salainart.blogspot.com to see the flamingo drawings I've done since!

The Notion of Love as Social Taboo

When we first discover love we develop all of these ideals of what it is, or rather, what it should be. Think about your first experience. It is all sunshine and roses. Everything the light touches takes on a golden glow, the air is filled with a sense of magic. You dream about your white picket fence future and truly believe one day it will happen. You imagine that that is the way life is supposed to turn out.

And then life happens. We grow up. We get hurt, we become broken, and we grow from those experiences. We understand why poets and songwriters refer to love as a rose, with its budding blooms, blood drawing thorns, and eventually its dying petals. We put ourselves in compromising situations, we do things 'for love's sake' that we would never otherwise do. The smart ones carry those experiences with them, they learn from their mistakes. But they become hardened.

At a certain point, we come to realize that all of those ideals and expectations we had at the beginning are naive thoughts perhaps inspired by watching too many romantic comedies and TV dramas. The reality of it isn't the same.

The more brains we have, the more our relationships become complicated. Maybe the girl who follows the old school pattern of staying home, cooking, cleaning, and producing children while her man takes care of her has it easy. All she has to do is perform her tasks and be there with open arms when he comes home. But what about the girl who follows her own path, with a career and dreams for her own individual future. And the guy who loves that girl because he admires and respects her independence and ambition. They both think for themselves. Yet that means when it comes to being together, they need to find some sort of common ground and compromise.

This is the reality of a modern relationship. And with that comes derivations from the path we think we are going to follow. We realize those ideals we had in our mind about the perfect relationship may not be even feasible.

I am starting to think that, as we evolve, we are not meant to be monogamous creatures. Human beings are changing. Our life mission is no longer to procreate and simply survive. We need more. We have dreams and aspirations that become our top priority, and we leave the white picket fence dream for something that may or may not happen along the way.

The word "love" becomes taboo. It is a topic reserved exclusively for sappy music, and a term used loosely by teenagers. Maybe we find the guy or find the girl, but we don't change our lives in order to make love fit in. Rather, we do the opposite. We compromise love in order to make it fit with our lives. Our relationships become complicated, with their own unique sets of rules and habits. Exclusivity becomes rare, and as we are constantly moving about, harder to adhere to.

All of a sudden, the girl who once imagined she would never look twice at a man with a girlfriend, finds some way to justify having an affair with a man who wears a ring on his finger. Somehow it has become ok in our society, to the point that we don't even feel any remorse as long as we aren't the 'guilty party'. But the guilty party may think he or she is equally justified for whatever reason. And the one being cheated turns a blind eye, because that is the compromise they had to make in order to stay in this relationship. They accept infidelity, because they don't want to ruin the best thing they're likely to ever get. Whether they realize it or not, they are coming to terms with settling.

If this is the way things are to be, do we even bother trying anymore? Let us forget monogamy until we realize that we are at a point where our biological time clocks start ticking faster, and only then seek to "settle down" with someone with whom we can find enough common ground to tolerate each other for the remainder of our lives as we raise our children. Why make our lives more complicated than they need to be?

Think of what we would be able to accomplish if we took all of the energy that we put into making a doomed relationship work, and put that energy into creating the best life possible. To get more work done, build stronger relationships, do things that make you happy. To enjoy life while you're young and beautiful. To have the freedom to cut any ties to bind you.