'Flying with Strings' part 2: the finished hoopoe
“The hoopoe said…
…I’d rather die deceived by dreams than give
My heart to home and trade and never live…
…We have no freedom to achieve our goal
Until from Self and fools we free the soul.”
― Farid al-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds (1177 AD)
Learning through LOCK DOWN…
Since writing my last blog post A LOT has happened. When I first started making this puppet back in January I little knew quite how long it would take me to complete (nearly 2 months of prototyping and re-prototyping mechanisms). HOWEVER, I certainly didn’t anticipate that I’d be finishing it in lock-down, my workshop shut up for the indefinite future while the world wages war against an invisible virus. Looking over my last post, It’s odd and rather ironic that I allude to the impending Brexit deadline and my fear of losing freedom of movement across Europe. Now, with the whole country being told to stay at home, my ‘freedom of movement’ is more restricted than I ever could have conceived throughout my privileged first-world existence. I sincerely hope this is a once-in-a-life-time phenomena.
To focus on the positives, however, I am still managing to create. I am extremely lucky to live in a household that can accommodate my artistic mess, at least for the time being! Rather than going to my workshop each day I am now working from home, and spending more time in the garden as a result. The birds remind me more than ever of the notion of freedom: in particular freedom from government guidelines! I’ll be beyond lucky if I see a real hoopoe this summer; they are rare visitors to the UK, and it’ll be a while before I can take my puppet busking across Europe. In the mean time however, I have been learning more about these charismatic birds…
The Eurasian Hoopoe: a few ECOLOGICAL FACTS
I am neither a scientist nor an academic, so here are the best bits from Wikipedia!
Hoopoes nest in cavities in vertical surfaces, such as trees or rock faces. Their nests are notoriously SMELLY! This is actually an anti-predator defence, caused by a secretion from the uropygial gland of the incubating mother.
They can PROJECTILE POO! From the age of six days, nestlings can squirt streams of faeces at intruding predators.
During FIGHTS, rival hoopoes will try and STAB one another with their bills, and individuals are occasionally blinded in fights.
Hoopoes can be seen SUNBATHING with their wings outreached, their tail low against the ground and their heads tilted back.
Detail of a cover from a manuscript of ‘The Conference of the Birds’, by Farid al-Din Attar), Iran, ca. 1610. Can you spot the hoopoe?
Hoopoes in STORIES and SYMBOLISM
So, in between all the fighting, stabbing, poo-ing and making foul smells, hoopoes have nonetheless remained a rather popular bird, spanning three continents in their notoriety. Here are some examples:
In ANCIENT EGYPT, hoopoes were sometimes depicted held in the hands of children, indicating that they were the heir and successor to their father (read more here).
In GREEK MYTHOLOGY, King Tereus is transformed into a hoopoe as punishment for raping his sister-in-law Philomela. For a contemporary source check our Stephen Fry’s ‘Mythos’ (2017).
In ISLAM, King Solomon (who can speak to birds) favours the hoopoe as his personal messenger. In the Quran the ‘hudhud’ brings news to Solomon of the Queen of Sheba.
In a ‘spin-off’ from Islamic scripture, the hoopoe takes centre stage in the 1177 Persian poem ‘The Conference of the Birds’ by Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar. The birds of the world embark on a quest to find their Sovereign, the legendary Simorgh bird. As the wisest amongst them, the hoopoe leads them on the quest…which is really a metaphysical journey towards enlightenment!
AND, for something a little more child friendly, I highly recommend Salman Rushdie’s children’s book ‘Haroun and the Sea of Stories’ (1990), which features a mechanical hoopoe, rather like mine!
A common theme seems to unite all of these cultural appearances: the notion of leadership, be it royalty, advocacy or heirdom. I guess that crown of feathers might have something to do with it! By far my favourite encounter so far has to be ‘The Conference of the Birds’. I am yet to read the poem in full, but going by what I’ve seen so far, it’s a beautiful melting pot of both the natural world as we outwardly perceive it and the inner human world. Yum! As an added bonus, the Persian language contains neither male nor female pronouns, so theoretically you can find yourself a translation to fit your gender preferences! (though in most translations I suspect it’s an all-male cast).
Hoopoes from HERE: what next!?
This puppet has been the most complicated invention of mine to date, and I’ve been able to devote my time to it thanks to a DYCP grant (Develop Your Creative Practice) from Arts Council England. Sadly, this fund has been pulled for the foreseeable future due to the Corona Virus crisis, so I consider myself VERY lucky to have been one of its last recipients. In a neat bit of dovetailing, the final puppet was also intended for a scratch performance of a new puppet show ‘Flying with Strings’, to be performed at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen in May. This sadly has also been cancelled.
BUT, if not imminently, I WILL still be making the show, and, since I’m in lock-down anyway, I might as well get cracking with the next puppet. Stay tuned, it WILL be another bird… For more info on my making process, click on the images in the gallery below.
