How many masks to you have?

The art of African masks intrigues me. They're so honest.
The displays in the UCO Library show so much culture, imagination and spirituality.

But in America we Europeans have submerged such art, considering it primitive. Masks still exist in  some Native American cultures like the Zuni and on the Pacific Coast, cultures which are older than ours and anything but primitive. Maybe we're afraid to be honest about our masks.

The only time we're honest about our masks is around Halloween, when we figure that yes, we can have fun again. But otherwise, we hide our masks, thinking we are fooling people.

Instead we speak of "keeping our guard up," or "not letting our guard down," in our work and personal lives.

Some of our masks are physical--costumes of types of dress, offices, houses, automobiles, makeup, hair styles, jewelry--that we use to help give ourselves identity, to boost our egos to ourselves,  and to perhaps cover up who we really are to  other people. They can be harmless or superficial, and easy sources of humor, or turn into resentment and violence. What are social classes and discrimination but varieties of masks?

Our other masks are more insidious because they are attitudes and behavior--thinking we're more important or smarter or more talented or superior to others,  and hiding personal and family problems. The real problem is that they rarely fool other people--unlike Halloween or African masks--people can see right through the. Instead, our masks fool only ourselves. They become hollow parts of our false selves, grotesque art that deprives us of honesty, imagination and spirituality. It's not by accident that the word "hypocrite" comes from the Greek actors and their masks.

It's ironic and  appropriate that the African mask display is at UCO. University campuses are filled with people wearing masks, especially the faculty, administrative and academic organizations, such as faculty ranks, supposed hierarchy of disciplines and publications and academic "turf"--the ruling principle of higher ed. My Mom would call much of that "putting on airs." One staff member said to me this week, looking me in the eyes, "You've got to admit the faculty has some large egos."

What are your masks?

We all wear masks

From Mali and the desert

A Dogon mask from my trip to Mali. Susan says the profile looks like me. Hmph. Hold the wise cracks.

The Dogon are a tribe known for their mythology, mask ceremonies, architecture, and sculpture. They also refused to convert to Islam centuries ago, and had to retreat to isolated areas. These included cliff dwellings much like the Anasazi of the American southwest At first glance at their ruins you'd think you were looking at a the stone ruins of Canyon de Chelly or Mesa Verde in Arizona and Colorado. Today they inhabit villages in south central Mali, south of the Niger...still remote, still independent.

These people are one of the reasons I felt at home in Mali...independent people who resisted so-called "progress." The American Indians also resisted a religious invasion, and would have lost, but they adapted Catholicism to their native religions and survived, Their native religions are the strongest and most mysterious still, as are the Dogon's animism. The other reason I felt at home there was the rock and adobe of dwellings of the desert., and at least two foreign languages. you know you are a visitor, and you stand out to all the native peoples.

This wooden mask used in religious activities says all of this to me. Don't call these people primitive. It reminds me of how many masks and costumes  Americans wear religiously every day--makeup, suit and ties, cowboy hats and boots, obscenely big cars or obscenely expensive ones, houses, club memberships, sports logos, designer clothes, high heels, shorts, low cut blouses, hair styling and coloring, decals on cars, the churches we attend--even the churches have costumes.

As to whether the profile matches mine...well, the nose, the protruding lips. Oh, and the hair! 

Joking aside, when you put this mask over your face, you can smell the wood and the desert and the otherworldly beliefs and mysteries that transcend our recent and material so-called "civilization."