Flight Sunday May 22, 2005
I remember as a boy gazing down from the top of a canal lock, feeling a strange attraction to the empty and dangerous space; if I’d fallen I would have been seriously hurt or even killed. I discussed this with my younger brother and he told me he felt the same inexplicable compulsion. I think there is something deeply primordial, or even philosophical, about the notion of flight.
I’ve had dreams where I was falling or flying, and for about five years I’ve quite frequently gone to the edge of moments when I am just about to slip away or move – that’s what it feels like – and I suddenly wake up with an uncomfortably violent jolt. Initially my dream-mind would present me with a picture of falling off a cliff or something similar, i.e. a situation of physical danger and thus the need to ‘save’ myself. Now I’m familiar with these dream-awakenings, I usually don’t experience that kind of imagery. I ‘know’ straight away that it’s one of those slipping-away moments and although the physical jolt is uncomfortable as ever, it no longer has a sense of dream-world alarm. And it reminds me of the Tarot, which I regard not so much as a divination method as a symbolic system meaningful, for example, in terms of Carl Jung’s psychology. The most important card is called The Fool, traditionally represented as a figure about to walk off the edge of a cliff.
The beautiful film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was frequently reviewed in terms of the (unusual) female heroine and thus feminist themes, and the tradition of martial arts mythology. It clearly invites that level of thematic deconstruction. However I don’t agree that these are the most important factors in the film’s success, and assert that these are relatively ephemeral concerns because we are so familiar with them. They occupy the thinking mind, Planet Earth 2005, because we are highly sensitized to political issues and cultural relativity. But for me the memorable moments of this lovely movie occur at three successive stages, at moments of flight.
The first occurs within the city walls, when we see mischievous robbery and attempted escape as the martial artists float up walls and flit and bounce over rooftops. In one respect this is mere filmic impression, cinematic special effects, and thus nothing to excite the sophisticated adult mind. We wonder about the hidden wires, scrutinize the scenes for signs of computer-generated imagery, and dismiss them as a Chinese mythological idea. But when I saw those scenes for the first time – more lyrical and unexpected than the aerial dynamics in The Matrix – I felt a curious aesthetic attraction that was related to my boyhood moment, and my ongoing dream experience.
In 2005 the skies are full of airplanes with satellites above and hobbyist fliers below. The romance of flight no longer exists; no one gets excited about moon landings as I did when I was a boy, watching the early Apollo missions and making a scrapbook from news cuttings. The physical-technological experience is no longer novel, and only the forays to distant Mars or Saturn provoke widespread excitement. And yet the idea of flight is unchanged and, I believe, as significant and philosophical as ever. The heroine of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is entranced by the desert domain of her young lover, and the narrative of the film concludes with her enacting an old story which says if you throw yourself off a mountain waterfall, you will float and survive. Both situations – desert and waterfall – are transcendent realms where she may experience freedom. As female heroine she resists and rebels against the constraints of her gender and the prejudices which society imposes. She is the student of another female fighter, both of whom feel aggrieved towards the traditional, patriarchal conventions. And yet it is a mistake to limit her rebellion only to feminist concerns; she loves both the young man that seduces her, and his empty desert domain where he too feels free from the subjugations of society. Superficially Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a feminist film, but the idea of social imposition and freedom from it is not gender specific – men are also constrained by prejudice and convention and don’t always have the social power that feminism assumes.
The esoteric teachings of Theosophy and the Alice Bailey books describe dream experience as an event of the astral plane, which corresponds to the emotions. It is possible to map and define this subtle, non-physical level. It is characteristically fluid, and free from the constraints and laws of physical existence. If you think you can fly, you can; if you wish to visit a distant physical location, you can do it in an instant. One of the ideas of these esoteric teachings is how subtle energies eventually inform and crystallise down into the physical level, and the proliferation and development of computer gaming can be seen, in this respect, as a manifest cultural echo of a more subtle shift in consciousness. The same applies to the internet and the notion of ‘cyberspace’: worlds where you can ‘fly’ by changing gender, and having experiences free from physical laws. In Theosophical terms you would say this is a lower octave of astral energy just beginning, very slowly, to represent on the physical plane.
The second stage example of flight in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is when the youthful heroine battles with Li Mu Bai in the green, wind-blown tree tops when is able to fly, fight and stand on the insubstantial branches, but she struggles to maintain her balance compared to the effortless composure of Li Mu Bai . This is a direct reference to the Taoist philosophical notion of wu wei or non-doing. The classic imagery, used in the philosophical text the Tao Te Ching, is a comparison between a rigid tree which will resist and thus break in the wind, and flexible bamboo which bends, adapts and thus survives. We enjoy watching the youthful, combative spirit of Jen Yu but she is outclassed by the spiritual maturity of Li Mu Bai who wishes to guide her. She finally realises her dream – the freedom of flight and immortality – by throwing herself off the waterfall, falling into misty emptiness, and finding that insubstantial space supports her and allows her to survive: the third stage of the flight theme.
The Tao te Ching is frequently interpreted using intellectual categories like ‘mysticism’ or ‘romanticism’, and in its overlap with the more political and accessible ideas of Confucianism. But Taoism was never a religion or dogma and the Tao te Ching is ultimately based not on intellect, ideology or even philosophy as such, but the principles and experiences of meditation. In one section it refers to the sage who ‘travels without moving’, and in some kinds of meditation this is a literal possibility: you sit, eyes closed and physically still, and you move through, explore, and ultimately transcend subtle i.e. non-physical levels. We are not trapped within the constraints of physical laws; there is a doorway that leads out onto levels of greater freedom, where you understand that ‘flight’ is not only a beautiful symbol, but also an internal spiritual possibility.