It was once an ancient mystery as to the source of life that allows mushrooms to manifest . Great thinkers could clearly see the enigmatic differences fungi had compared with other lifeforms, and found it a spectacle that such organisms could spring to life out of the substances of death. Unlike plants, they grow without need of the sun and often in the moist and decaying corners of our surroundings. Life seems less easily defined when we compare our own flesh to the life found within mushrooms.
What most of us neglect to notice is the invisible structures that are latticed throughout the soil, the mycelium. A mass of thin strands, it is a root-like system that provides for the mushrooms found above the surface. In fact, the predominant essence of the fungi is in the mycelium; and when it is healthy the fungi grows mushroom caps that act as reproductive parts, spreading new spores into the environment.
Some of the largest organisms on earth are fungi structures, many that span miles in diameter and found deep within grand forests on the surface of the earth. The mycelium grows steadily and without notice, and its true size isn't visible until it 'flowering' mushrooms appear and reveal its perimeter, familiarly known to some as fairy rings.
Different forms of Fungi, Molds and Slime Molds have existed for millions of years, their fossils out date all other of earth's organisms and our entire ecosystem depends on them to digest the material waste on our planet. Yet most of us never acknowledge their importance (or existence outside the supermarket or science lab). Fungi are the first line of defense against bacterial infections, yet what first comes to many peoples minds when discussing mushrooms are their associations as sources of hallucinogens.
NATURAL BEAUTY
The mushroom has been subject of both mine, and other artists' work through the ages. In exploring mushrooms within their environment reveals the beauty in the mundane, and in the sublime discoveries that are temporary in nature. Mushrooms go unnoticed until they begin to appear from the shadows, and once one begins to notice them, to spot them out in nature becomes a thrill.
Their structures vary and can seem very alien. They can be elegant in stature, some tilt and bend as if whispering to the blades of grass, some portly and numerous like a small village gathering. I have seem mushrooms of luminous gold, crimson red, speckled and flecked, of bright blue and charred purple, some that are transparent and ghostly with stems as thin as rice noodles, and some of texture that looks like granite stone. I've seen white ballooned toadstools and feathery grey ones that look like umbrellas. They vary ever much as the faces that pass by on the street, unique and individual.
When first formed they hold complexions as smooth and perfect as could be imaginable. Some seem to glisten with a sheen, other are as soft as marshmallows and emit green clouds of spores when pressed.
Their beauty can be so fleeting. For this reason I believe that mushrooms couple well with photography, a tool which provides the ability to capture their quick existence into a beautiful record of life in death.
SYMBOLISM
The mushroom can be a signifier to many themes, but in narrowing down on the more universal themes of mankind, a focus on death comes to my mind. Mushrooms are synonymous with the darker and seedier aspects of life, or should I say more specifically when that life ends. They can spring out of death, without substrate, without water or sunlight.
Should one eat an unfamiliar mushroom, then that person is surely playing a chance with death. They can contain chemicals potent to the body, and to the mind. Toxins from the decay are used in the strange and alluring structure of the toadstool, and through the ages has caused demise to man and child.
There is a strange and appropriate irony in the way mushrooms find vitality in death. Mushrooms share in the very same demise as other organisms, often having life-cycles even shorter than flowers, while the mycelium below lives for centuries. A symbol of mutability and immortality, in decay and in revival. Only the phoenix is more efficient at rebirth.
Its existence is eternal. Dried mushroom can last years without spoil, spores can exist frozen for millennia, and some ancient Chinese acknowledged it for its longevity and a symbol of immortality. Mushrooms and roots have been used in alchemy and medicine and can have healing properties.
Because of its association with death and its potential to bring new insight to consciousness when some strains are ingested, it can be associated with other-worldly places or the afterlife. Mushrooms are literally manifestations of after-life in they way they rejuvenate life out of death.
Some mushrooms also have a chemical attribute, that seems to suspend the mind in a different form of conscoiuseness. This aspect of confusion and obscurity is discovered when hallucinogenic mushrooms are consumed, presenting the mind with a space that seems at an interval between worlds. It suggests there are worlds that are out of reach from the common man's understanding, but is something that can be sensed. I would suggest this obscure quality is symbolized in the allure of mushrooms.
Without getting too in depth of the subject, I suggest reading the Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley for a genuine and more scientific observation of their effects on the consciousness. It suggests that there is a spiritual impression that hallucinogens can have on the mind, literally bringing the mind into a new perspective, opening the mind to new a relationship with the world and fellow organisms and suggesting a collective consciousness.
"We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves...By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies--- all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable."
Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception.
According to Huxley, some chemicals found in hallucinogens have the potential to bridge gaps in our attempts to empathize and connect with one another.
CONNECTIVITY
What leaves a big impression on me when discussing the fungus, is the way it functions on multiple levels, in different forms and in an unknown communicative method.
How is it that the spores in the air, the mushrooms and toadstools on the ground, and the hyphae that compose the mycelium beneath the surface all work in unison. It is rather interesting how cyclical in nature the fungus is, reminisce of the metamorphosis of a butterfly but at a colony level.
Is there some essence or relay that allows all these parts to communicate, or mutually understand each other? Does it follow instinctual patterns in its genetic code, or can it sense its surroundings? Biologist would probably assert that fungi are much less complex than the human with our brains and neuron structures, but what is there not to suggested that the fungi couldn't have a collective spirit or consciousness on par with a school of fish, colony of ants or pack of dogs?
The way that the mycelium functions as one organism is rather impressive,perhaps more similar to that of a colony of ants than the individual consciousness that you or your dog possess. There is a communication between the singular parts, but how so?
MUSHROOM ANALOGY
What is it to say we as mankind do not share a similar fate of connectivity? What is it to say we are much like those particle spores that float on the surface of the planet, completely unaware of the complex and interconnected structure beneath.
With humankind it is like the familiar idea of a collective consciousness, theory of unity or other socially-connected theory. In this generalized theory we are all in tune with each other on a level indeed more complex than the fungi, and more complex than we realize we are now. It is a level of connectivity that exists and functions in other dimensions, with processes our minds have yet to learn of. If we cannot even identify the soul, how can we suppose there isn't a way we are all connected, at best in analogy with the mycelium of a fungus.
This Mycelium Analogy was in part developed in a work of art I did in 2015.
In this hand-painted Van dyke Brown collage, there are mushrooms that rest on geometric shapes, intended to be a representation of the fungi on a planet.
Within the border of the shapes are small chains of droplets, the droplet representing the individual units that compose the net-like structure of the mycelium. This mycelium is interconnected and suspended within the substance of the soil. It exists within the fabric of its environment, is one with its surroundings and exists in the way a droplet of water is integrated into the sea, without border or distinction.
Around the center mushrooms are faint specks floating in the open space, representing the spores that float above the surface of the soil, free individuals not unlike people, with limited time and little sense of its interconnected-ness with the whole entity below. These spores are indeed connected though, by thin and unbeknownst strings that return it to the whole-encompassing organism.
It is a figurative comparison to lost and wandering humans that seem lost in the sea of populace, yet hold onto a sense of belonging that connects them with both body, mind, and spirit of the whole.