How can we know the general direction we should follow? How can anyone who has not dreamed the whole route begin to locate himself on such a map? When Joseph, or any of the other men, began to draw a hunting map, he had first to find his way. He did this by recognizing features, by fixing points of reference, and then, once he was oriented to the familiar and to the scale or manner in which the familiar was reproduced, he could begin to add his own layers of detailed information.
How can one design? How can we know the general direction we should follow? These words quoted above touch most profoundly what the act of design is in a remarkable manner. The text that they come from, their context, is reproduced below: it embellishes the understanding of this subtle and complex matter.
Most attempts to describe the process of design become too prescriptive, or too vaguely mystical, leaving one concerned with the directions defined as a precisely rational method, (Heath Method in Architecture Wiley & Sons UK 1984 ); or as the seemingly fanciful vagaries of things strangely abstract, (Kandinsky Concerning the Spiritual in Art Munich 1911; translated 1914). Here, in these words as remembered by Hugh Brody, there is a marvellous amalgam of both circumstances, the mystic and factual, that engages both the feeling body and the thinking mind as an acting, responsive whole.
In summary:
When one starts to design: begin by finding the way; recognizing features; fixing points of reference; then, once familiar with scale and manner of reproduction, with this understanding of the realization, add other layers of detailed information.
One is reluctant to add more, other than to note the particular context of these words that expands the relevance of the message; gives it depth and coherence. The words are in Hugh Brody’s Maps and Dreams, Jill Norman & Hobhouse, London, 1981, a study of the Indians on the British Columbia frontier. Pages 44 to 48 are reproduced here in full, for clarification of a matter that is truly difficult to put into words. The point is that the experience is a dreaming of a hunt, rather than the hunt for the clever, dream project; the search for something adequately fanciful, different, and eye-catchingly startling, that can declare one’s brilliance. There is something subtly different embodied here; something rich, modest, and personally meaningful; something true, with depth, that seeks nothing like the ‘bold, creative, bespoke self-expression’ that art and architecture has become - (c.f. Gehry, Hadid).# Silence is important; and a quality of intimate being too: goodness; both matters that are alien to our ‘clever, self-important’ world today.
For those who do not understand, hunting and life itself are restricted and difficult. So the people must be told everything, and taught all that they need, in order to withstand the incursions presently being made into their way of life, their land, and into their very dreams.
#
One could add Mies van der Rohe too – see Alex Beam’s Broken Glass Random House, NY, 2020. The Farnsworth house stands as an example of heroic modernism, still idealised today in spite of its obvious failings. One is left wondering just what we are now involved in with such ‘disastrous’ projects remaining as gleaming icons of our ambitions, listed by the New York Times as one of the 25 most influential post-war buildings. The house was built on a flood plain, with one door and one set of windows; the roof leaked; it was hot in summer and cold in winter; the travertine that cost a sixth of the budget, heaved with the weather . . . etc., etc. - see the book. Yet it is still one of the best, one of the most influential houses in the USA; indeed, in the world. What is happening?
MAPS AND DREAMS
pp44-48
There was a brief silence made awkward by expectancy, though an awkward pause is a very rare thing among people who accept that there is no need to escape from silence, no need to use words as a way to avoid one another, no need to obscure the real.
Atsin broke this silence. He spoke at first of the research. “I bet some guys make big maps. Lots of work, these maps. Joseph, he sure is happy is happy to see maps.”
Silence again. Then Robert continued: “Yeah, lots of maps. All over this country we hunt. Fish too. Trapping places. Nobody knows that. White men don't know that.”
Then Jimmy spoke: "Indian guys, old-timers, they make maps too."
With these words, the men introduced their theme. The tone was friendly, but the words were spoken with intensity and firmness. The men seemed apprehensive, as if anxious to be very clearly understood - though nothing said so far required such concern. Once again, it is impossible to render verbatim all that they eventually said. I had no tape recorder and memory is imperfect. But even a verbatim account would fail to do justice to their meaning. Here, then, in summaries and glimpses, is what the men had in mind to say.
Some old-timers, men who became famous for their powers and skills, had been great dreamers. Hunters and dreamers. They did not hunt as most people now do. They did not seek uncertainly for the trails of animals whose movements we can only guess at. No, they located their prey in dreams, found their trails, and made dream-kills. Then, the next day, or a few days later, whenever it seemed auspicious to do so, they could go out, find the trail, re-encounter the animal, and collect the kill.
Maybe, said Atsin, you think this is all nonsense, just so much bullshit. Maybe you don't think this power is possible. Few people understand. The old-timers who were strong dreamers knew many things that are not easy to understand. People - white people, young people - yes, they laugh at such skills. But they do not know. The Indians around this country know a lot about power. In fact, everyone has had some experience of it. The fact that dream-hunting works has been proved many times.
A few years ago a hunter dreamed a cow moose kill. A fine, fat cow. He was so pleased with the animal, so delighted to make this dream-kill, that he marked the animal's hooves. Now he would be sure to recognize it when he went on the coming hunt. The next day, when he went out into the bush, he quickly found the dream-trail. He followed it, and came to a large cow moose. Sure enough, the hooves bore his marks. Everyone saw them. All the men around the fire had been told about the marks, and everyone on the Reserve had come to look at those hooves when the animal was butchered and brought into the people's homes.
And not only that fat cow moose – many such instances are known to the people, whose marks on the animal or other indications show that there was no mistaking, no doubts about the efficacy of such dreams. Do you think this is all lies? No, this is power they had, something they knew how to use. This was their way of doing things, the right way. They understood, those old-timers, just where all the animals came from. The trails converge, and if you were a very strong dreamer you could discover this, and see the source of trails, the origin of game. Dreaming revealed them. Good hunting depended upon such knowledge.
Today it is hard to find men who can dream this way. There are too many problems. Too much drinking. Too little respect. People are not good enough now. Maybe there will again be strong dreamers when these problems are overcome. Then more maps will be made. New maps.
Oh yes, Indians made maps. You would not take any notice of them. You might say such maps are crazy. But maybe the Indians would say that is what your maps are: the same thing. Different maps from different people - different ways. Old-timers made maps of trails, ornamented them with lots of fancy. The good people.
None of this is easy to understand. But good men, the really good men, could dream of more than animals. Sometimes they heaven and its trails. Those trails are hard to see, and few men have had such dreams. Even if they could see dream-trails to heaven, it is hard to explain them. You draw maps of the land, show everyone go. You explain the hills, the rivers, the trails from here to Hudson Hope, the roads. Maybe you make maps of where the hunters go and where the fish can be caught. That is not easy. But easier, for sure, than drawing out the trails to heaven. You may laugh at these the trails to heaven, but they were done by the good men who had the heaven dream, who wanted to tell the truth. They worked hard on their truth.
Atsin had done most of the talking this far. The others interjected a few words and comments, agreeing or elaborating a little. Jimmy told about the cow moose with marked hooves. All of them offered some comparisons between their own and others' maps. And the men's eyes never ceased to remain fixed on me: were they being understood? Disregarded? Thought ridiculous? They had chosen this moment for these explanations, yet no one was entirely secure in it. Several times, Atsin paused and waited, perhaps to give himself a chance to sense or absorb the reaction to his words. These were intense but not tense hiatuses. Everyone was reassuring himself that his seriousness was being recognized. That was all they needed to continue.
The longest of these pauses might have lasted as much as five minutes. During it the fire was rebuilt. It seemed possible, for moments, that they had finished, and that their attention was now returning to trout, camp, and the hunt. But the atmosphere altered, and Jimmy quite abruptly took over where Atsin had left off.
The few good men who had the heaven dream were like the Fathers, Catholic priests, men who devoted themselves others to helping with that essential knowledge to which ordinary women have limited access. (Roman Catholic priests have drifted in and out of the lives of all the region's Indians, leaving behind fragments of their knowledge and somewhat rarefied and idealized versions of what they had to preach.) Most important of all, a strong dreamer can tell others how to get to heaven. We all have need of the trail, or a complex of trails, but, unlike other important trails, the way to heaven will have been seen in dreams that only a few, special individuals have had. Maps of heaven are thus important. And they must be good, complete maps. Heaven is reached only by careful avoidance of the wrong trails. These must also be shown so that the traveller can recognize and avoid them.
How can we know the general direction we should follow? How can anyone who has not dreamed the whole route begin to locate himself on such a map? When Joseph, or any of the other men, began to draw a hunting map, he had first to find his way. He did this by recognizing features, by fixing points of reference, and then, once he was oriented to the familiar and to the scale or manner in which the familiar was reproduced, he could begin to add his own layers of detailed information. But how can anyone begin to find a way on a map of trails to heaven, across a terrain that ordinary hunters do not experience in everyday activities or even in their dream-hunts?
The route to heaven is not wholly unfamiliar, however. As it happens, heaven is to one side of, and at the same level as, the point where the trails to animals all meet. Many men know where this point is, or at least some of its approach trails, from their own hunting dreams. Hunters can in this way find a basic reference, and once they realize that heaven is in a particular relation to this far more familiar centre, the map as a whole can be read. If this is not enough, a person can take a map with him; some old-timers who made or who were given maps of the trails to heaven choose to have a map buried with them. They can thus remind themselves which ways to travel if the actual experience of the trail proves to be too confusing. Others are given a corner of a map that will help reveal the trail to them. And even those who do not have any powerful dreams are shown the best maps of the route to heaven. The discoveries of the very few most powerful dreamers - and some of the dreamers have been women - are periodically made available to everyone.
The person who wishes to dream must take great care, even if he dreams only of the hunt. He must lie in the correct orientation, with his head towards the rising sun. There should be no ordinary trails, no human pathways, between his pillow and the bush. These would be confusing to the self that travels in dreams towards important and unfamiliar trails which can lead to a kill. Not much of this can be mapped - only the trail to heaven has been drawn up. There has been no equivalent need to make maps to share other in information.
Sometime, said Jimmy Wolf, you will see one of these maps. There are some of them around. Then the competence and strength of the old-timers who drew them will be unquestioned. Different trails can be explained, and heaven can be located on them. Yes, they were pretty smart, the men who drew them. Smarter than any white man in these parts and smarter than Indians of today. Perhaps, said Atsin, in the future there will be men good enough to make new maps of heaven - but not just now. There will be changes, he added, and the people will come once again to understand the things that Atsin's father had tried to teach him. In any case, he said, the older men are now trying to explain the powers and dreams of old-timers to the young, indeed to all those who have not been raised with these spiritual riches. For those who do not understand, hunting and life itself are restricted and difficult. So the people must be told everything, and taught all that they need, in order to withstand the incursions presently being made into their way of life, their land, and into their very dreams.
POSTSCRIPT
While the process of design can be spoken of as noted above - when one starts to design: begin by finding the way; recognizing features; fixing points of reference; then, once familiar with scale and manner of reproduction, with this understanding of the realization, add other layers of detailed information - there is still something missing: how? Something more is needed; something more specific about the process, the experience, is required.
Hugh Brody's text helps here again where he describes the planning for the hunt; the decision-making process. The words are astonishing in their clarity and precision, and hold a subtle relevance to the process of design; to explaining it; to capturing some sense of the involvement necessary without destroying its qualities with the rigorous, rational analysis we see in Heath's text.
MAPS AND DREAMS
pp36-37
. . . the twin spectres of hunger and homelessness, whose fearsome imminence is escaped only in the bright sunlight of planning. Planners consider many possibilities, weigh methods, review timing, and at least seek to deduce what is best. To this end they advocate reason and temperance, and, most important, they are thrifty and save. These ideas and dispositions, elevated to an ideal in the economics of nineteenth-century and secular puritanism, live on in the reaction of industrial society to hunters - and in the average Canadian’s reaction to Indians. And a reaction of this kind means that a person even if inclined to be sympathetic to hunters and hunting, has immense difficulty in understanding what planning means for hunters of the North.
Joseph and his family float possibilities. “Maybe we should go to Copper Creek. Bet you lots of moose up there.” Or, "Could be caribou right now near Black Flats.” Or, “I bet you no deer this time down on the Reserve...” Somehow a general area is selected from a gossamer of possibilities, and from an accumulation of remarks comes something rather like a consensus. No, that is not really it: rather, a sort of prediction, a combined sense of where we might go “tomorrow." Yet the hunt will not have been planned, nor any preparations started, and apparently no one is committed to going. Moreover, the floating conversation will have alighted on several irreconcilable possibilities, or have given rise to quasi-predictions. It is as if the predictions are about other people – or are not quite serious. Although the mood is still one of wait and see, at the end of the day, at the close of much slow and gentle talk about this and that, a strong feeling has arisen about the morning: we shall go to Bluestone, maybe as far as the cross. We shall look for trout as well as moose. A number of individuals agree that they will go. But come morning, nothing is ready. No one has made any practical, formal plans. As often as not — indeed, more often than not - something quite new has drifted into conversations, other predictions have been tentatively reached, a new consensus appears to be forming often seems, everyone has changed his mind.
The way to understand this kind of decision making, as also to live by and even share it, is to recognize that some of the most important variables are subtle, elusive, and extremely hard or impossible to assess with finality. The Athapaskan hunter will move in a direction and at a time that are determined by a sense of weather (to indicate a variable that is easily grasped if all too easily oversimplified by the one word) and by a sense of rightness. He will also have ideas about animal movement, his own and others' patterns of land use ... But already the nature of the hunter's decision making is being misrepresented by this kind of listing. To disconnect the variables, to compartmentalize the thinking, is to fail to acknowledge its sophistication and completeness. He considers variables as a composite, in parallel, and with the help of a blending of the metaphysical and the obviously pragmatic. To make a good, wise, sensible hunting choice is to accept the interconnection of all possible factors, and avoids the mistake of seeking rationally to focus on any one consideration that is held as primary. What is more, the decision is taken in the doing: there is no step or pause between theory and practice. As a consequence, the decision - like the action from which it is inseparable - is always alterable (and therefore may not properly even be termed a decision). The hunter moves in a chosen direction; but, highly sensitive to so many shifting considerations, he is always ready to change his directions.
Planning, as other cultures understand the notion, is at odds with this kind of sensitivity and would confound such flexibility. The hunter, alive to constant movements of nature, spirits, and human moods, maintains a way of doing things that repudiates a firm plan and any precise or specified understanding with others of what he is going to do. His course of action is not, must not be, a matter of predetermination. If a plan constitutes a decision about the right procedure or action, and the decision is congruent with the action, then there is no space left for a "plan," only for a bundle of open-ended and nonrational possibilities. Activity enters so far into this kind of planning as to undermine any so-called plans.
All this is by way of context or background for the seemingly straightforward proposal that we should set out the next morning.
Using Brody's words:
Designing involves pondering a gossamer of possibilities; alighting on several irreconcilable possibilities that give rise to quasi-predictions; no one is committed: something quite new might drift into conversations, other predictions tentatively reached; a new consensus might appear to be forming. Some of the most important variables are subtle, elusive, and extremely hard or impossible to assess with finality, but they are gauged by a sense of rightness.
Variables are considered as a composite, in parallel, and with the help of a blending of the metaphysical and the obviously pragmatic. The mistake of seeking rationally to focus on any one consideration that is held as primary has to be avoided. The decision - like the action from which it is inseparable - is always alterable, remaining highly sensitive to so many shifting considerations. One has to be always ready to change a decision about the right procedure or action. There is no space left for a "plan," only for a bundle of open-ended and nonrational possibilities.
Is this the dreaming of the hunt? Even the good men struggled with explanations:
Those trails are hard to see, and few men have had such dreams. Even if they could see dream-trails to heaven, it is hard to explain them.
We'll have to learn to stop hunting the dream.
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