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SWAMP OOZING LIFE by Greg Whiteley
I'm concerned with some of the larger issues such as who we are and what is our part of this, whatever it is we call life—what is our responsibility—these are the issues that underlie the messages I'm trying to communicate with my films. I find the natural world is a fertile place to explore these issues for me—That's not to say that I think religion and philosophy don't have things to offer but I personally find them incomplete. This could be because of my own shortcomings or whatever but I don't find the natural sciences opposed to religious or philosophical beliefs—I don't see a contradiction in the general idea. I believe God created the world and I believe he used evolution and natural science to do it. By studying the mechanisms of a higher power, it helps me to feel more in touch with that power. The more I study the natural world the more I see that power at work; the order, the symmetry, the rhythm, the "coincidences", the perfection of it all. A prominent psychiatrist and neurologist I had the opportunity to study with once, Stanislav Grof, said that "the probability of human life developing all the way from the chemical ooze in the primeval ocean to its present stage solely through random mechanical processes has been aptly compared to the probability of a tornado blowing through a gigantic junkyard and assembling by accident a 747 Jumbo-jet."
My current thinking and the subject matter of my films and images is that basically we are not organisms that have life in them but we are IN LIFE, immersed in it, one with it.
I can remember very clearly when I first had that thought. I was young, laying out on a sandbar around a campfire at night on Cow Creek deep in the east Texas piney woods. This was before "progress" and the Toledo Bend Dam so the creek was basically a part of the Sabine River bottom—much more pristine, swampy and alive. Anyway, I remember suddenly becoming aware of the immense amount of Aliveness that totally surrounded me. The air was full of bugs—gnats, mosquitoes, fireflies. Frogs were croaking. Things were splashing into the water, up in the trees owls were hooting, something else—maybe an armadillo—was rustling around in the palmettos, a distant panther screams. Life was so thick you could taste it when you breathed in through your mouth. It was vibrant, loud and busy—busy going on about the business of the commerce of the food chain and reproduction. Before that moment of realization I had thought I was alone on that sandbar and suddenly as if someone had just reached over and cranked up a volume knob, I found myself totally immersed in a symphony of life. It was in a primordial swamp much like that where amino acids and proteins probably first started the dance. I coined a term for it then—I called it SWAMP OOZING LIFE. The only other place where I've experienced so much diverse life happening all at once is on a coral reef. For me the marine environment is the perfect place to observe and search. It's kind of like being privy to a peep show into the mechanism of creation.
As a result of thinking we have life in us rather than being in life, we experience a sense of separation, isolation, feeling of being cut off from the world around us. If we have life in us then we have anxiety about life going out of us. We also look at parts of our environment as not having life in it or at least not the quality of life that we do. In other words, we not only feel alienated from the natural world but the constant need to control or be at war with it, so we don't relate to our surroundings in a cooperative and harmonious way. This is from where our environmental problems arise along with tremendous amounts of suffering and anxiety. To try to manage this fearful business, we have invented things outside ourselves. From a historical perspective, they have usually just added to the suffering. I think a simple shift in context would produce new perceptions that would enhance our ability to survive. We would realize that what we thought we had lost has always been with us, we are immersed in it, a part of it all along. It is this type of a shift in thinking and perception that I hope to encourage by the images, information and metaphors in my films and photography. Going into the ocean helps to bring about this shift, maybe because you are visibly immersing yourself in a medium, an environment where you are obviously surrounded by life—you can see it below you, swimming above and around you. As you look up toward the sunlight on the surface you can see millions of small alive things swimming and wiggling in a medium you are immersed in. I think this type of a shift in perception is necessary for our survival as a species.
What I want to communicate are feelings—feelings of awe, wonder. I want the observer to feel and notice a connection to the natural process. You see, I don't think we are going to solve the environment problem with our intellects alone. That just doesn't seem to be the case. Only by adding human heart to the equation are we going to make the correct decisions. Only when we begin to take actions that feel right will we reconnect to our natural world and be back on the track of survival.
Years ago Cousteau predicted that going underwater would change the way mankind related to the world. He also predicted it would transform us spiritually—I agree with him.
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