What is Beauty?

The importance of adornment in the era of tacky excess and cheap t-shirts

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The other day my wife and I went to the bank. We live in a rural, mountainous region of Northern Thailand, a lush, culturally diverse region anthropologist James Scott has often referred to as “Zomia” (although the term was actually originally coined by historian Willem van Schendel) where even today in the era of fast food, blue jeans, A.I., and, well, banks, ancient life-ways are miraculously still found amidst the many distractions of this brave new world. Yet be it as it may, no one can fully escape the tentacles of modernity, so more often than not what is found throughout this once wild, tiger-filled land is clear-cut forests where within hill tribes and Thai villagers spray agrochemicals over genetically modified corn while tribal children eat Lays potato chips while watching tik tok and Lahu women draped in second hand t-shirts sing their babies to sleep with christian hymns.

Once in a rare while however, like the other day when my better half and I went to the bank, we still manage to run into shimmering brilliance, potent reminders of the human capacity for making beauty still laying dormant under “civilized” societies boring, efficient veneer. As we entered the overly air-conditioned, neon lit bank lobby we were immediately fixated on a fully adorned tribal woman covered from head to toe with handmade Story. Our eyes locked with hers right away and she beaming with pride, well aware that our stares were waking a million ancient memories, forgotten desires to re-member and belong.

The woman we saw was an elder woman from the “long neck” Kayan tribe that lives in the neighboring valley adjacent our farm, recently migrated to this region from neighboring Myanmar due to ongoing war. She was with her whole family and they all were, quite literally, glowing. Adorned with handcrafted golden necklaces, their faces covered in intricate, riddle offering tattoos, ears pierced deep and wide so as to allow very large silver inlaid jewels to elegantly dangle from ears well tuned to beauty. Our daughter was as in awe as we were. She helped us, as children tend to do, break the ice.

My first reaction when I come into contact with tribal peoples still wearing their traditional clothes is a bit of shame. Hmm. On second thought, I don’t think “Shame” is the right word but alas english rarely seems to have words for the deepest of human emotions. What is the feeling you get when you see someone who clearly really knows who they are and where they are from? Content. Peaceful, grounded and calm. The entire story instantly expressed vibrationally, beyond words. And here we are, so “advanced” and “developed”. Hmmmmm….

What am I saying to the world as I shuffle through the day wearing an Under-Armor t-shirt and waterproof boardshorts? What story am I telling by covering my head with a functional but storyless, ugly-as-hell hat I have zero relationship with aside from the fact that I bought it? Maybe it isn’t so much shame then that is felt but rather a deep feeling of longing to truly be of a place, to, like the Kayan woman who we fortuitously met, have earned wrinkles in my face that mirror the mountains that birthed me, my children, my ancestors, and of course the fibers that wove the magical Myth-telling shirt I wear. Hiraeth. I suppose this too, is hiraeth. How I long to be always adorned in the deep rooted songs of Home.

Some might argue of course that this is what “fashion” does today too. It expresses ones identity as they perceive their identity to be. It is telling a persons story. Fair enough, I suppose. I happen to follow a few IG threads that focus on what people in NYC wear. Everyone in the feed looks pretty cool to me. They wear it all so well, and with good swagger to boot. I enjoy seeing how people in culturally diverse places mash together differing styles and explode into never-before-seen expressions of what inspires them. It’s pretty dope. I dig it, which is why I follow pages like these. There is no doubt these fly city dwellers are putting genuine effort into telling a story. But the story of the woman we encountered at the bank is far different than the one told by the average kid popping tags in a second hand shop in the Bronx.

Unfortunately, I can’t with any real confidence speak for the good looking youngsters on social media who I only know through having thumbed over briefly while taking a poo. But having rubbed elbows with many models around the world over the years (even dating a few!) I can say with confidence that indeed, the general understanding of what fashion is for, as interpreted by fashionistas in say, Brooklyn or Madrid is worlds apart from how it is understood to a tribal woman from Myanmar. Fortunately, my wife and I did muster up the courage to say hello to that gorgeous Kayan woman who had us so mesmerized in the bank and ask her about the story encoded in her attire. And thankfully for us, she graciously obliged.

Now, with fear of angering some, I need to be careful here. It’s easy for us in the modern world to just kiss and tell, to impress our kin with our stories of adventure and conquest. Yet it seemed abundantly clear to me as we listened that the detailed, multi-generational song that this grand woman was adorned in was not to be shared with everyone. As such, I pause. And in honor of her long life and great courage to wear beauty for all the right reasons, in the face of enormous tragedy, I will refrain from opening here her medicine bundle. She was kind to tell my wife and I about the meanings behind much of what she wore. Yet even as she told us I knew we weren’t initiated enough to properly receive the true meanings of all her tales. Sharing Big Story to people unable to truly hear is like building a zoo, encaging nobility and selling tickets to lazy tourists so they can catch a glimpse of majesty they do not understand. I hate zoos. As such, I will respect her magical, well-earned poetry and not reveal its inner mystery. It wouldn’t make sense to anyone anyway, none of us here are initiated. But the bigger takeaway from our interaction, which is far more relevant to us, I can share. Masterfully woven into her skirt, her shirt, her overthrow bag and headdress, shining off her anklets and bracelets, necklaces and earrings was a timeless Story that speaks clearly to the universal crisis now fogging up our collective psyche. In a nutshell, we need better stories. The Big Ones that align perfectly with Natural Law. In other words, we need more beauty.

The Lords of Algorithm must know I appreciate people who dress nicely, for recently I have been flooded with all kinds of fancy images of people attempting to be beautiful. Some of what comes my way, is truly worthy of awe. For example, I keep receiving images of fully adorned Khampa nomads riding on horses across the Tibetan grasslands, large turquoise stones draped over their faithful four-legged companions as much, if not more so than around their own necks. Images of Whang-od Oggay, a mambabatok (traditional Kalinga tattooist) tattoo artist from the village of Buscalan within Tinglayan, Kalinga, Philippines, who several of my friends who have received ink from grace my feed regularly. Her work is truly magnificent. She is believed to be the last of her kind, as no others are able to do the work she does, art that has been adorning her people since time immemorial. She is now 107 years old and is exploding with Myth still and I believe, due to her dedication to keeping the Story alive, she will not in fact be “the last”. No, no, no. Her tale will live on to be sure.

Yet so too are other stories being told. Just as is happening to the children of so-called “developed” nations, very strange perceptions of what passes for beauty are now being inherited by the children of intact peoples rooted in the kind of Story our Kayan friend beheld. Some may recall a few months back I shared a story of a recent trip I took to Vietnam with a group of young students from a wealthy Atlanta school. We were then surrounded by real beauty. The kind of “Jump up and live again” beauty elder Martin Prechtel often speaks of. Yet all these kids could see was the knock off Travis Scott sneakers for sale in the “Chinese” markets. So hypnotized they were by modernities single story, by the pressure to consume only what the elite tell us all to consume that they couldn’t see the real beauty surrounding them. They might as well have never left Atlanta. And the same is now happening in remote tribal villages. Wetiko is contagious as hell. So slowly, overlooked and unseen those who know how to make real beauty, stop making it, stop wearing it, and it fades back into the earth from whence it all came.

It begs us to ask of course, What story is being expressed when youth traveling to places like Vietnam, a place overflowing with Living Myth stitched intentionally into each thread worn by its countless in-tact peoples, look not at the rich cultural narrative staring them in the face from every direction but gravitate instead to cheap Nike knock offs? What story are we telling when we are more willing to spend several hundred dollars on Lulu Lemon leggings than on a hand-spun dress that took hundreds of hours to make and is itself an entire transmission of ancient wisdom? Who are we when we excite ourselves with million dollar watches (as did Mark Zuckerberg and his wife when they partied with Indian billionaire Anant Ambani recently) but no longer can see, much less understand the multi dimensional education woven into the priceless handiwork worn by women in nearby villages we do not see because we are in a rush to get to the next big new thing they told us was going to be “beautiful”?

Real beauty is still around us however, abundant for those with eyes to see. Because the Earth Herself is still omnipresent and very much alive. Oh we may forget Her and rape Her regularly, stealing her most precious jewels to make silly toys for our weak wrists and foolishly convince ourselves that such useless objects have meaning, but She is still in control and never stops being beautiful.

We modern consumers wrap ourselves in fabrics we have zero relationship with and wonder why we are never satisfied with what we own. The more woke among us try to preserve beauty by abandoning adornment altogether in some sort of righteous protest against opulence. Yet only when what we wear, when the stories we tell and the values we attempt to express are aligned with Natural Law is any of it truly beautiful. Otherwise it’s just a hollow cry into an endless void.

To be sure, as the old saying goes, Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Yet most in this bizarre time of atrophied senses have eyes that have been grotesquely manipulated by forces we do not understand. We see gold but not the miracle that birthed it nor the mine or the enslaved children doing the mining necessary for removing this shining miracle from its home. We see our dinner but not the river that was disrespectfully dammed in order for the Valle de Imperial to forcefully grow what now gives us life*.

Were we to take guidance again not from billionaires and movie stars we don’t know but from the fruits of the earth that we are in direct contact with daily, than over time, The Place where we live might slowly remold us back into people of substance, our perceptions of beauty might then align rightly again and who knows, we might eventually even blossom once more into the radiant, content, at home kind of humans capable of offering peace, like elders of old. The kind of genuine human who adorns herself mainly for the purpose of pleasing Her, as a way of saying, “Thank you Mother for giving us life, for allowing us to know what it means to walk with beauty each day.”

*please listen to ground shots latest interview between ethnobotanist Kelly Moody and founder of Groundwork, Jeff Wagner to learn more about our too often unseen relation with Rivers. (Kelly also has a substage page (groundshots) that is excellent.)

Ground Shots Episode #84: We all eat the Colorado River: this watershed is a microcosm of our society with Jeff Wagner

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🎂 Happy Birthday to James Baldwin who would have turned 100 on August 2nd!

🎂 Happy Birthday to Jerry Garcia who would have turned 82 on August 1st!

We remember you and the seeds you planted have grown into wild life giving forests! Thank you for all the beauty you added to the world!!!!!

#maypeaceprevailonearth