Cactus of Mystery

by Ross Heaven

  15

  San Pedro

  Inspiration and Art

  David “Slocum” Hewson

  I live in the upper Amazon, in the jungle of Peru. When you are in the jungle anything is possible all the time. It embodies limitless potential made manifest through the constant cycles of light and dark, life and death. It also has an uncanny way of grounding one’s nervous system in the biorhythms of the Earth, allowing you to connect more with your surroundings. For me it expresses itself through an unfolding of consciousness.

  Ross asked me to write about art and inspiration through my work with San Pedro, but to do that I have to first go back to an ayahuasca experience ten years ago. I initially drank twice with a shaman in the States, and the experiences were so powerful that I later hosted him and organized groups for two subsequent visits. I did perhaps twenty ceremonies during this period, and those experiences successfully rewired me and allowed me to make fundamental changes in my life. I stopped complaining about the outside world so much and went inside and started maintaining my inner world instead, which is after all the only place where true peace exists. This was the beginning of a path that unfolded further when I decided to visit the shamans in Peru in 2006.

  I had done a lot of traveling by that point in my life. I spent seven years studying and working in Italy and lived for a year in London and a year in India. I was always looking for some kind of artist’s paradise in which to settle—an inexpensive place that offered beautiful models, the company of other artists, and the chance to live a fruitful life. It was a bit of a bohemian dream but it kept a fire within. Italy fulfilled that dream for a while, and India had many attractions, but even there, something was holding me back. By the time I got to Peru I had given up looking for that imaginary place.

  On my first visit to Iquitos I had just finished a religious commission. In fact, the last six years of my life had been dedicated to religious works that provided steady work and also gave me time to create pieces of my own inspiration. After six years though, I found myself wondering if I wanted to do religious commissions anymore.

  I went to the jungle to experience ayahuasca in its place of origin. The idea of a hot, sticky place with lots of insects did not interest me, but the longer I stayed I began to feel a growing sense of connection. I was staying with my shaman friend about ten kilometers outside of Iquitos. We were drinking ayahuasca two nights a week, sometimes with others, sometimes just the two of us. About a month into my stay, however, I realized that he was not the one I wanted to work with, and perhaps that realization opened me to the vision that came next.

  In my vision a native woman came to me as if she was floating on the heads of a group of Shipibo Indian women, set against a golden Shipibo-patterned perspective. I had never seen such brilliant colors before, not even in reality. The woman had humility and seemed to be a healer yet she had a powerful presence. She looked into me eyes and said, “Use your talents, depict the beauty and destruction of the Amazon and show your people.” My previous experiences with ayahuasca had given me beautiful visions, personal and cosmic insights, and transformations, but this incident was very special. It cast light on every cell in my body and it was clear to me that I should not take this vision lightly.

  My first reaction was a bit egocentric. I said out loud, “Why did I not think of that?” Working with ayahuasca, as with any of the master teacher plants, you have to transcend your normal, rational state of mind. The rational approach, in my experience, tends to minimize what it does not understand, and it takes courage to listen to the heart. After receiving that powerful vision there was no doubt that I was going to carry it out, prepared to embrace both failure and success.

  I returned to the States after a few months in the jungle with a new sense of purpose. I sold most of my belongings, gifted the rest, and soon enough found myself back in Iquitos ready to start a new life there. I had no idea how long it would take or how everything would be organized, but I was committed to carrying out the work ordained from the vision. I would take trips into the deeper parts of the jungle and see the beauty and destruction up close. The beauty was clear to me. It was there in the people, in their living mythology, and in the integrative work of ayahuasca.

  I did not want to paint the destruction, however, so I extended into new mediums: film, photos, and maps. From my previous trip I had already begun a dialogue with groups working directly with indigenous causes, championing their struggle for humanitarian rights in relation to the oil companies, which was a great place to start. The idea was to organize trips with a guide to areas where there were native communities, stay with them, drink their plant medicine if possible, and also see areas where the oil companies were working so I could make my own assessments of the contamination problems.

  In the Amazon there is a living mythology and though little is written, all things are known through oral history. Many people have their own personal accounts and I drew inspiration from hearing them. In each community I visited I found the most interesting faces and drew sketches of them. I also asked about their experiences with various figures from their mythology, such as tricksters and spirits of the water. These stories alone led to rough sketches out of my head, which I completed later with live models.

  Drinking ayahuasca with natives was always insightful and often led to creative leaps in my work. I remember drinking raw aya with the Orejone natives, no cooking at all, just chakruna and the vine pulverized for hours and squeezed with our hands in water. I had never heard of raw aya before and was surprised by the effects. After drinking the medicine, the chief of the community, Liberado, put two large tablespoons of granulated tobacco mixed with cacao in my mouth between my cheek and gum. It had an aged ammonia flavor. I kept it in for about five minutes and then was told to spit it out.

  I became very lightheaded and had to lie down. I was out on the floor for thirty minutes, shooting off into space. I was signaled to go to my mosquito net and after lying there for some time I had visions of traversing the jungle ground and water as if looking through the eyes of a serpent. I was at the jungle surface among all the rot and decay of the forest floor where all life begins anew. I saw sprouting plants and flowers coming from the dead and mushrooms gracing the landscape. I thought of my time in India and how the lotus flower emerges from a murky swamp. It is an allegory of the slow awakening of consciousness, the jewel in the lotus.

  As my visions took me under the water there were all sorts of zoomorphic beings: fish heads with human bodies, alligators with wings, mermaids, human serpents, even an octopus. A whole life existed that I had never seen before. Perhaps that’s what happens when drinking in the deep jungle, far from so-called civilization. I realized my visions had an interesting movement about them and became aware that I was seeing through the eyes of a snake. This went on for a while, and later I surfaced into a Westernized bourgeois house setting filled with plastic and air conditioning and people bickering about what they didn’t have and using all their energy to protect what they did have.

  It made me nauseous and I wanted it to stop, but I remained patient as it continued. I was dumbfounded by the vision. Later the shaman told me that seeing through the eyes of a serpent allows one to bridge the material and spiritual worlds. It made sense and gave me relief from the nausea. The next morning I roughly sketched some images that I reworked in the studio a year and a half later. I completed the piece, Water Spirits, which was directly inspired by my experience with the Orejones.

  That trip led me closer to the Ecuadorian border where I stayed with a community of Huitoto natives. They were a larger community than the Orejones. I stayed with them for a week and enjoyed numerous indigenous delights including coca powder with burnt setico leaf, a mixture of pineapple and yucca flower called cahuana, and a tasty yucca flower bread called casaba.

  The community had an abundance of great faces and I stayed busy doing head drawings and sketches. As I worked, hearing their stories of interactions with spirits w
as a creative whirlwind. A man told me he saw Chullachaqui, a forest dwarf and the trickster-protector of the jungle. If someone hears the voice of a friend or family member in the jungle and gets lost, it is attributed to this trickster. This man had a rum still and he claimed to see Chullachaqui steal a bottle and proceed to get drunk as he stumbled into the green density. I was told Chullachaqui also gets upset when there is deforestation and when animals are killed for sport and not eaten. In that I saw a great symbol of resistance against the massive influx of international corporations to the Amazon, companies that are plundering natural resources to maintain the status quo of the West and support “progress” in the East. These stories were so inspiring it led to numerous drawings and paintings of Chullachaqui alone.

  During my stay there, we prepared ayahuasca cooked with a lot of tóe (a plant in the nightshade family also known as brugmansia or datura). I questioned the amount of the datura admixture they put into the brew. They said it was normal but it seemed like a lethal dose. The experience that night was more like datura than aya, so I can only bring back bits and pieces. I was mainly in a confused, drunken state. Of the fifteen people there, only half drank the brew while the others observed. The shaman was so out of it, vomiting and moaning, that it was difficult to know who was running the show! I tried to enjoy the open air and moonlit night but my knees were trembling and I knew something was making me uncomfortable in the ceremony. Many times when that happens I leave the circle. My guide came to help me back to the maloka. As he showed me the door I could see it clearly but my datura-drunk motor skills led me to walk right into the wall.

  The next day I was offered a sixteen-year-old virgin. I talked my way out of it with a little comic relief, stating that I already had a harem and I was not doing a good job of taking care of them. I explained the experience to my guide and he concluded that they were doing witchcraft on me because they wanted me to stay and be part of the community. Not all medicine work with isolated natives is what we project it to be . . .

  Near the Ecuadorian border I was shocked by what I saw. Perhaps I was more sensitive because of a connection with the spirit world through ayahuasca that had brought me to realize that everything is connected, without the intellect getting in the way, rather knowing the truth of things in my heart. So when I saw the pipelines put in by Occidental over thirty years ago, from a technology already long outdated, it was disturbing. In some areas the pipelines seemed to be haphazardly laid on the jungle floor. There were areas of previous spills where nothing grew. I felt a sense of the rape of innocence swell inside me. I photographed and filmed the site, installed by an embarrassment of a corporation that made billions of dollars treating the Earth as a brothel. The recently signed U.S.-Peruvian Trade Agreement (TLC) had opened pristine parts of the Amazon to unprecedented levels of development by mining and oil companies.

  A representative from Environmental Defense had told me that the impact from this development is shaping up to be the largest human-created environmental travesty ever. And nobody is talking about it. I could not be a bystander anymore. The best way for me to be proactive was through my artwork, just as the native woman from my vision had said. I felt profoundly connected with her again; in fact I think she is partially present in every woman I meet.

  Back in Iquitos I began to put it all together. Various trips and meetings were arranged with groups working to tell the truth about oil contamination. I contacted a few environmental groups in the States as well. Since this was a new area for me I turned to ayahuasca for guidance. Much of the inspiration came from my experience with natives and ceremonies, but now it was back to the studio to give it form. At the time I did not have a method to the madness, but in hindsight it seemed to form certain cycles. It took me two years from the powerful vision to finally assemble a traveling exhibit.

  When I was in full working mode, I would have periods of 90 percent raw fruits, nuts, and vegetables supplemented with maca and chlorella. I was drinking aya two days a week by myself and would work for a month to six weeks—then have a little fish and some cooked food in between the dieting periods. I was getting confirmations from aya that this was best to maintain stable energy and good health. There were some weeks I never went more than a block or two from my studio/ apartment, leaving only to get food in the market in Belen. Some evenings there would be a temptation to reward myself by going out to dinner or drinking beer. In those moments of desiring a distraction I would sit and meditate, in most cases I would look over the day’s work and end up refining and adjusting oversights.

  In some cases, if I got blocked on how to complete a piece I would drink aya and “ask” for guidance on one of the various steps in the process. My work is a combination of initial drawings and live models. The drawings are transferred to a prepared wood panel onto which symbols and patterns are carved. The panel is gilded with real gold leaf and the last part is the painting. It is important to have a precise drawing because once carved and gilded the painted parts cannot be moved around much. I found aya very helpful with making decisions about complicated pieces. In other moments of the ceremony I would get inspired to do a completely different piece. The key for me was to surrender my little self, my “ego,” and allow my higher self to communicate to the plant, stepping out of the way enough to be a medium for creativity.

  However, this does not always happen smoothly. The ego has clever ways of slipping back in. Aya has a mysterious way, however, of keeping the ego in check, but of course she can also trick you into thinking it is your higher self acting when it is actually the ego. With aya there is no easy way of discerning what is real and what is illusion.

  Not all the ceremonies were pleasant and not all guided me as I wished. I remember at one point having to look at something from my past that was emotionally painful. I was on the receiving end of what I had done to someone else, reviewing my actions from the perspective of the very person I had done it to. The message aya gave me to help heal myself of this energy was to contact that person and to explain that I understood the pain they had gone through, as a form of atonement.

  I had an old contact for that person but it was a dead end. I searched the Internet off and on for about two weeks to find an e-mail address, but to no avail. I gave up searching, feeling that maybe I should not have to do this, perhaps I was not understanding the message aya was conveying. I left it alone, feeling a bit bewildered by my “clear” mission. Within a month, however, I got an e-mail from the very person I was searching for, a nonchalant note asking me how I was. I felt it was a confirmation to express my truth. Even though it was painful, the humility of coming clean with my behavior healed something profound in me and in the process helped the other person heal as well.

  It can be a very bumpy road to comprehend what exactly aya is communicating with you. Sometimes it can be very explicit and others times caution and careful discernment should be used. I had a dear friend who lived in Iquitos for a time. He had great intentions but he believed everything aya said was the truth, that “ayahuasca does not lie.” This lack of discernment between a direct, unalloyed vision or revelation and the projections of one’s own imagination is a tricky thing to navigate, and not everyone can make a clear distinction. Not doing so led my friend eventually to a series of follies, and ultimately he had to leave Iquitos due to poor financial health. Aya can play tricks on the ego: you have to filter how attached you are to this ego or be fooled by it.

  In the course of organizing my traveling exhibit I had contacted a number of galleries, but most did not find the “destructive element” appealing or sellable to their clients. In fact, there was no money involved with this aspect of the show; it was just a sharing of information. I relied on art centers, a private college, a gallery willing to take a “risk,” and connections of friends. An agent got me into a group show at the United Nations in New York City. Ultimately, I organized six exhibits in eight months in the United States and one in Canada. After the body of work returned with me to
Peru, there were exhibits in Lima, Cusco, and Iquitos.

  I was not alone in this process; I had a lot of help. I compiled information graciously given to me by native communities, civil organizations, NGOs, and environmental groups. With this information at hand I did a series of presentations at every exhibit, showing documentaries on the Amazon, a history of the oil industry, and a presentation of shamanism. I also did demonstrations to show the process of water gilding. The whole thing was the greatest creative and personal transformation of my life, and it all stemmed from an ayahuasca ceremony that gave me the vision to carry it out.

  The transition from ayahuasca to San Pedro (or huachuma as it is also known) was natural for me, although the plants are totally different. Ayahuasca is taken in darkness and there is a journey into the internal world. My huachuma ceremonies, in contrast, were done in daylight and involved going out with an open heart to interact with the natural world. Both plants, however, are masters at teaching you to be in the present.

  By the fall of 2009 my traveling exhibit had completed its North American tour and was on display in Cusco. I found myself in a relaxed, fulfilled state of mind. My host was a shaman who does weekly ceremonies from her home in the mountains just above the city. It is a stunning location and ideally suited for huachuma ceremonies. You open the front door and fifty meters away is an ancient Incan fertility temple known as the Temple of the Moon.

  I had previously tried huachuma four different ways: powder, chips, cooked, and raw. Eating it raw was the most challenging but the most powerful, while cooked huachuma was a close second. The shaman I was working with cooked her huachuma down for many hours, which made it more concentrated and easier to drink. My first ceremony gave me an overwhelming love of Mother Earth—I could see her breathing, a living being. An abundance flowed out, everything that nurtured me came from her. I deeply felt the connection with her, which was a splash of grace in comparison to what I had seen externally in my travels.