the tale of “Muad’dib”
How one story fed many images
“I will tell you a thing about your new name...the choice pleases us. Muad’Dib is wise in the ways of the desert. Muad’Dib creates his own water. Muad’Dib hides from the sun and travels in the cool night. Muad’Dib is fruitful and multiplies over the land. Muad’Dib we call ‘instructor-of-boys.’ That is a powerful base on which to build your life, Paul-Muad’Dib, who is Usul among us. We welcome you.”
“Maud’Dib One” (2020)
Muad’Dib, the desert-mouse, rests on a rock outcropping, watching an oncoming sandstorm…not showing any fear…just watching, patiently.
He seems unaware that such a storm could strip the flesh from his bones in a matter of seconds. Why is he so calm; why does he not run?!? Surely he must have a bolt-hole somewhere nearby…
Muad’Dib is not “unaware”, he is not “resigned to his fate”, nor is he unconcerned. He has a kind of genetic memory—once called instinct—that all organisms develop as they acclimatize themselves to their environment. He knows, in the depth of his bones, that this storm presents no danger to him: the leading edge is already dissipating, the sand is the colour of “heavy”, the sun (which is a more present danger) is already breaking though.
He will wait, until he can pass beneath the storm, and only then scamper to his bolt-hole in the rocks.
Iremember when I started this piece. I had just bought my first professional-quality Gansai Tambi style of watercolour paints—a type of paint that is common in east Asia, and uses much larger paint-pans than western formats. I chose these paints for several reasons: there had to be enough selection with 40 pigments to choose from, the pans were large enough for the larger brushes that I prefer, and the price couldn’t be beat. I felt I had progressed as much as I could using watercolour markers (my first supply); I was no longer enjoying the process as bending with budget-priced markers can be quite difficult. It was time to upgrade my supplies!
I can only speak to my own experience, but, there’s an odd relationship that I have with my materials. Let me see if I can explain it…
From my youngest years, I heard several competing messages:
“Make the best of what you have…” was always countered with “Don’t bother if you don’t have the best materials…”
“Results don’t matter if you put 100% in something…” directly conflicted with “If it’s not perfect, you wasted your time…”
“Create!!! Don’t worry about the cost of what you use…” often lost against “Wasting materials is wasting money…”
Marm was always the voice of experimentation, freedom, and creativity; her husband was always the voice of excessive planning, restraint, and “function over appearance”. As you can imagine, this constant conflict had long-lasting effects on how I viewed created art—not to mention how it has influenced my general purchasing attitudes.
Jump ahead some 50 years since I first heard those messages, the year is now 2020 and I’ve decided to take up painting (again) as a creative outlet that will (hopefully) earn some much needed extra income for our family. I decided that “Muad’Dib One” needed to tell a story that was worthy of my new art materials. As always, I went back to the source material to ensure that I was doing justice to it.
In my mind, I saw Muad’Dib (the mouse) as a rather stoic creature. He had grown up, evolved, with knowledge of what the deserts of Arrakis were capable of. He was the product of hundreds, or thousands, of generations of other mice that had learned to “read” the signs of calm or impending trouble. He, much like the Fremen, knew how to survive these storms almost from birth.
I began to wonder, while painting this piece, if Muad’Dib-the-Mouse had more wisdom to impart—outside the very brief snippet that Stilgar gives us in the titular volume of DUNE. Was there something that Muad’Dib-the-Mouse had to say to Paul Muad’Dib? What could and would they share with each other given the chance? Did any part of Muad’Dib-the-Mouse live on in Paul’s descendants?
I had to know more; the story wasn’t yet finished with me….(part 2 soon)
It wasn’t long before I realized that I wasn’t telling enough of the story that both Muad’Dib-the-Mouse and Paul Muad’Dib had to tell.