Dali's Elephant and Their Inner World

dali elephant trumpet

The great Salvador Dali once revealed that his greatness was in his self-inquisition, the personal and continual questioning of his own motives, as well as the imposition of form onto matter. His sculptures are incredible works of genius that I will attempt to explain my appreciation for.

You can see the elephant and the old turquoise material gives it a feel of being an ancient Buddhist statue like you might see at the Norton Simon. Some say he looks like a giant spider but that would be a mistake. The spider must stick to the surface while the elephant must trample the surface. It is more accurate to say he is on stilts of some sort, grafted onto the bottom of his feet like a horseshoe. I am astonished that Dali’s imagination would have such vivid accuracy regarding things that would seem impossible to most. In Dali’s mind, the idea of an elephant on stilts is surreal, but as I have seen in a book recently: elephants are fully capable of standing on their back two legs with their nose in the air to grab some fruit. The eyes of this elephant are deep in thought; you can almost feel like he’s using his imaginary third eye to keep watch on his trumpet player. His focus is not on himself; it’s on the player who could shift position at any time and also on his balancing act. This is possibly a depiction of animal cruelty at the expense of human happiness, especially since Hannibal used them so successfully in war, as well as the trumpet; which may be incredibly loud to an elephant, I do not know. When we reconsider the elephant as empowered our doubt dissolves. There is a feedback loop between the player and the elephant in which the elephant is almost tricked in his subordination to imitate the player who has imitated him. He is putting all of his effort into carrying the great image of his existence and he is at his greatest attention with the trumpet playing and balancing his stilts. The great attention is a theme of elephant existence explored generally below. The elephant is majestic and thought of as exhibiting opposite characteristics as is typical. We’re reminded of the elephant’s dexterity with his trunk and how it’s likely translatable to his feet. We’re also reminded, if this is true, that the sheer weight of the animal is what causes us to think the negative things we do about him, which is really unfair if you ask me. The elephant’s back is given a point of focus as the trumpet player may do flamboyant things so long as he sticks to the middle of the elephant’s back.

An elephant can balance on its hind legs, an incredible and acrobatic feat to be sure. We ask: is balance the best expression or representation of the inner dexterity of elephants? The swinging from side to side that makes us to characterize elephants as slow, lazy, clumsy, is more central to the life of an elephant than we imagine. Is it for the reasons above that we also characterize elephants as the “misunderstood” animal? The blind man who touches the trunk of an elephant can’t see that other epicenter of the elephant’s existence. He misses not just “everything” but the essence too. The force with which an elephant can stomp its enemies is also in balance with the elephants’ docile outlook on life and it’s kin. The mean and menacing horns, rough leather, trunk, and legs allow them to live their lives in peace. One could imagine an elephant being much more appreciative of what they have and of life than other animals. When one elephant looks into the eyes of the other it might think to itself, like the Buddha, “can I get a visible reaction or reflection by looking at them in a certain compassionate way?” Or, “if I look long enough into their eyes will I be able to see something I can’t see in myself?’ You might dismiss this as ridiculous because animals don’t speak or have any language but I challenge you to consider this possibility. Consider the popularity of a word like “peeps.” Why was that so popular and yet everyone considered it dumbo.

Walt Disney’s Dumbo depicts the baby elephant flying using his ears. The use of an ear for an elephant is underappreciated in my estimation. They show attention because they’re so large, and allow for balance. Think of the elephant flapping itself to the end of time for its survival. Well, it would do that for one of its kind (not here to guilt trip that way either). Think about the ear as an expression of the elephant: passive, waiting, oversized, covered, weightless: dumbo flys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v2exWrsGOc&index=1&list=LLml9jcp4pNd3vTbJu2_yb8A

Worst expression is an elephant’s lack of dexterity: elephant on its back. This is precisely why the Elephants needed to have their dexterity. The ever-present and sole danger of being stuck in an extremely uncompromising position leads to their dexterity, at least in principle. This doesn’t prove that an elephant lacks dexterity either. This is the sadness of being misunderstood: that your weakness is nothing more than your weakness. So maybe I can offer a better expression of dexterity: the elephant’s tail. The importance of the secondary hidden trunk should not be overlooked. Swinging off the back in the most vulnerable place, highly sensitive and also moveable but in a really pathetic way.

This is why the annoying metronome that nags the elephant and nags the gnats should be considered the elephant’s most driving motivational mechanism for their incredible display of balance and be given its fullest expression as the object that exists to center the animals awareness within itself. It’s almost a second eye, hairy and moving back and forth, back and forth. The danger of being high and mighty and overlarge is transferred to this organ and the tail becomes something the elephant depends on for two things: freedom and vulnerability. If you are skeptical about this psychic transferring of emotion watch this video: it shows the different gestures elephants exhibit and claims there are up to 100 different gestures in their vocabulary. It’s a type of language, and their expressions should be considered in how they reflect the inner mental state of the organisms.

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/elephant-gestures-play

Elephants bury themselves when they are feeling most aggressive and free their feet when they’re feeling happiest. Mothers encourage their children to stomp on them to gain more elephantine qualities of grounding, resilience, boundless compassion and happiness (within juvenile parameters), sacrifice, sensitivity to weakness, and the relation of themselves to the rest of their kind and world. The unique way they bury their horns before attacking should be taken as a kind of expression of their inner mental state and that it is highly sensitive to hidden dangers. An elephant that does not have awareness or respect for the hidden dangers should prepare to die!! Think of the freedom of skwerming your legs around and the ever present need to feel that at least part of you is wild, free, and without boundary.

Here is my conclusion: this is how I reached my conclusions: I can’t remember exactly. Was it the feeling of memory as doubt, motion, constancy, and knowledge? Maybe. Was it Chomsky’s lecture I read about the way unspoken assumptions (rules, arbitrary distinctions) and slight variations are the cause of the diversity of language? Possibly. I can’t say I did much more than consider the trunk, the legs, the ears, and the tail. (Trunk is an impressive tool but doesn’t represent the inner life and dexterity and balance of the elephant but is likely a byproduct, the legs are for strength and that’s more important for survival, and the ears allow for dexterity because the ear cavities are so large, something discussed as being important for homo sapien evolution compared to Neanderthals here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWKCdChaLn0&index=22&list=LLml9jcp4pNd3vTbJu2_yb8A ) I can’t deny that the trunk allows for smelling, touching, interacting. Smell is known as the memory that stays imprinted in our minds and elephants have an incredible memory for trauma. This is, I believe, because there is an isolated place in their large cavernous minds where other elephants are located and praised above all else. (This tendency of pride and joy in Dali’s sculpture.) The inner life of the elephant is the creature within the hard shell, and that’s another reason why I think the tail represents them best.

When I look back on it it’s harder for me to notice the moment I really realized it. I believe that this is just a problem with me trying to figure out why and not questioning or noticing that moment when it occurs. I think that the nature of elephants is similar to the problem of the left and right brain in language development. An elephant’s brain is 11 pounds and each region of the brain is probably isolated from the other (much like the way Chomsky describes language as being isolated from many other parts of the brain.) To operate the function of thinking requires great mental agility and an ability to choose certain thoughts and just go with them. Humans like to consider all possibilities but elephants like to have everything in check and make sure their feet are grounded and their ideas solid. Feel free to call the elephant dumbo.

Me looking back at Dali’s elephant: the tail is at attention, almost like a broom, sweeping at times but in this moment on high alert to something that may be on the ground. Simply beautiful Dali, I’m not sure if you’re really as much of a genius as I think you are! Praise to the elephant! The balance is sublime!

Here is my upgraded elephant with a biogenesysymbolic approach: tail as slow pendulum or metronome: elephants must be able to set up shop and therefore must do everything in time, with time, within time. The poor elephants and their babies have nothing but altered awareness to blame for their clumsiness. Give the elephants their metronome and they will survive anything! The Fitbit be damned, I’d rather have a metronome on my head twitching back and forth. Place it on my skull please; it will do much quieter there! The ears must begin to spiral in a kind of James Bond, Teflon super keyhole. This is because, again, the balance must be held at all costs. The ears as a whole are floppy but creased, knowingly, the perfect origami folds revealing nothing and everything. The trunk has to be reimagined as a mechanism of some sort, possibly as a switch for suck and push. The emergency button has to work in case the elephant drinks too much liquid and it slips up his nose causing him to lose balance. Possibly create a blowhole for the elephant so that it can have a new way of interacting with the kids. Remember that their bodies have been cut down in width so they have a sleeker sensibility to them; it would just be divine. This would create a bunch of show-off elephants once we added the final piece of non-stick shoes. These guys can go anywhere in style. Dali’s melting clocks could constitute a psychedelic elephant with a kaleidoscopic blowhole, swirling ears, and sandals that give them a little taste of the grass. All of this is quite natural for the elephant, which has me thinking: heffalumps and woozles are very confoozles.