A Little Inspiration

Analysis

This piece was made in response to Farid-ud-Din Attar’s “Conference of the Birds”. The text relates the story of a large gathering of birds as they set out to travel across a vast landscape in search of the legendary simourgh that will become their leader, only to find in the end a large pool of water in which they observe their own reflections. The lesson of the text is deeply personal to each person who reads it. For me, Attar’s message mirrors closely that of Al-Hallaj and his famous declaration “Ana al Haq”, or “I am the truth”. The message is key to the understanding of divine reality in the Sufi tradition. At the time of Alastu when God asked of creation “Am I not your Lord”, the created world did not exist in the same manner that it is understood to exist today. All creation was unified with God and proclaimed its love for Him. When man was created and given life and form, he was separated from God. The aim of the Sufi tradition is to reunite man with God, but in order to do so, the sufi apprentice must understand that God is not a distant or external entity but rather an inherent part of the self. By letting go of the ego and the markers of self identification that separate the human from God, the human being can achieve a state of reunification with God, which is a state of pure ecstasy reminiscent of the state of Alastu.

In my response, I have used a template of Allah rendered in a digital calligraphic script. The alif, which is the first letter of the word Allah, has been removed. The alif is written in Arabic using a straight vertical line. In my response, I have replaced the alif with a human form and thus incorporated the human element into the name of God. The whole idea of Attar’s text and Al-Hallaj’s doctrine was based on the premise that God is not an entity that is external to the human being’s existence. As such, by incorporating the human form into the name of Allah, I have evoked the primordial relationship between man and God: they are both inextricably linked.