All this unfolds to the undulating rhythms of the sea, the eternal backdrop to this garden of life, and all with a remarkable absence of ‘politics’, in our sense, or what Dempsey calls the ‘self-perpetuating, power-hungry ego’. What these scenes celebrate, as he eloquently puts it, is quite the opposite of politics: it is the ‘ritually induced release from individuality, and an ecstasy of being that is overtly erotic and spiritual at the same time (ek-stasis, “standing beyond oneself”) – a cosmos that both nurtures and ignores the individual, that vibrates with inseparable sexual energies and
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