Thursday, March 30, 2023

“The Inuit have a particular kind of person, an isumataq. “An isumataq is not an elder; an isumataq is a person who creates the atmosphere, or the place, within which wisdom may reveal itself. I think Barry (Lopez) was absolutely an isumataq. And that’s what I’m looking for in my own work, and have been looking for all my life. It’s not because I think I know anything. I don’t. I’m probably more clueless than the next person. It’s precisely because I don’t know, that I do what I do.” John Luther Adams in NYT 3/30/23