Ryan Hurd over at Dream Studies is in the middle of a ten-article series on dream interpretation techniques without a dream dictionary, which seems highly useful for more than casual dreamers, as dream dictionaries at best can give you general cultural meanings for symbols, at worst trite new-agey misleadings, and can never give the way symbols are lived for the individual people who experience them (whether in dreams or waking).
This quote from Joseph Campbell sums it up: "I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive."
The articles posted so far (on dream sharing and keeping a dream journal) are posted in the first article's comments section.
Showing posts with label Campbell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Campbell. Show all posts
8.02.2009
11.16.2008
Snowy Day Update
I realize I haven't been posting here in a while, not once all October! School's been rather consuming this semester, as has my writing (not just the storytelling but notes on aesthetic and spiritual systems and the use of fiction as a tool for processing the emotions, but more on that later perhaps), and as always my personal life seems to take more precedence. It also doesn't help that I no longer have home internet access, though I find I'm now getting more done with myself, which is a blessing. Except for when I pick up a stray wireless signal.
Anyway here are some links for your perusal:
The life and work of James Joyce explained
The life and work of Joseph Campbell
Big Dreams and Archetypal Visions
The Future of Science Fiction
Obama on Faith
"I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people. That there are values that transcend race or culture, that move us forward, and there's an obligation for all of us individually as well as collectively to take responsibility to make those values lived." - Barack Obama
4.24.2008
The Mythic Narrative of Beckett's “The Calmative”
The Mythic Narrative of Beckett's “The Calmative”
After recalling that he does not know when he died, the narrator in Samuel Beckett’s “The Calmative” says that he needs to tell himself a story in order to calm down. While he could tell a modern story, the narrator insists that he has to tell his story “in the past… as though it were a myth, or an old fable” (Beckett, 28). Though the narrator’s mental state does not seem to resolve to one of calmness by the end of the story, his choice to utilize a mythic form of storytelling suggests that he may find this kind of narrative potentially more calming than depictions of modern life.
In order to discuss the use of myth in “The Calmative” we must first make a distinction between the popular use of the term myth, which designates something as being untrue, and the more traditional use of myth as a narrative form. Though there are many, and often conflicting, characteristics of what makes a story mythic, the myth-theorist Mircea Eliade gives a generally accepted definition of the term: myths are narratives that a particular culture believes to be true, which often use the adventures of supernatural beings to explain the foundation of and make sense of that culture’s reality (Eliade, 5-6).
While Beckett’s narrator is not necessarily telling a cultural story dealing with supernatural beings, it is important to note that nor is he telling a deliberate falsehood. The narrator’s myth draws on certain forms and themes that can be found in cultural mythologies, which he points to within the text of “The Calmative.” The story must take place in the past, the narrator needs “another age, that age to become another age in which I became what I was” (Beckett, 28). This somewhat circular passage seems to suggest Eliade’s definition of a foundational story; the narrator’s story takes him back to the time in which his reality was made. If we take this reality to be the narrator’s present state of death, then we might expect his myth to recount the events or adventures leading to his demise.
Beyond this somewhat “autobiographical” function of myth, or of stories set in the past tense, Beckett’s narrator also points to certain narrative forms that are common to mythology, which he attempts to use within his calming story. The narrator remarks that his story has to be like the one his father used to read him, the adventures of a boy named Joe Breem, or Breen, who swam for miles through the night “out of sheer heroism” (Beckett, 30). It is suggested that the narrator must go on a similar heroic adventure, one including the plot elements of “the setting forth, the struggle and perhaps the return” (Beckett, 30). This structure of the heroic journey is common to mythic narratives, and has perhaps been made most recognizable by Joseph Campbell, who discusses it in similar terms of the departure, the initiation, and the return (Campbell, ix). The narrator even recognizes the literary tradition of using this mythic motif when he recalls the woods at the mouth of hell, an allusion to, and perhaps a suggestion that he is inhabiting, the journey of Dante’s “Inferno.”
The other mythic form that Beckett’s narrator attempts to calm himself with is that of a fall and redemption, a theme commonly found in Christian mythology. Early in the story the narrator mentions that he fell, called for help, and it came, perhaps within the series of events leading to his death. This is echoed near the end of the story when the narrator actually does fall. For a moment he is “sated with dark and calm” (Beckett, 45), and with the redemptive courtesy of not being touched by the throng that he thinks surrounds him, before this is swept away and he continues on his journey. While the structure of this mythic form is less clearly articulated within the text than that of the hero’s journey, a number of references to the mythology of Christ are sprinkled through the story. From the “Shepherd’s Gate” and “bats like flying crucifixions” to the “colours of the Virgin” in the butcher’s window (Beckett, 31, 44), it seems that the narrator is striving to find a similar mythic calmative as that found by Christ: a redemptive death.
Having established the devices by which the narrator of “The Calmative” hopes to tell his story, we can now turn to the question of how this mythic form of storytelling may be capable of calming him. Beckett returns to the story of Joe Breem, or Breen in the first text from his later collection, “Texts for Nothing,” where it is further elaborated that this story “began unhappily and it ended happily, every evening, a comedy” (Beckett, 79). Drawing on the elements of comedic drama, in which the narrative resolves positively for its protagonists, this suggests that the story told by the narrator of “The Calmative” might have a calming effect because it too can resolve. Looking at the mythic narrative forms discussed above we see that these each have that possibility of reaching a positive ending; a fall can be redeemed, a journey can be returned from, a story told as if in the past can ideally reach the present. The narrator hopes that by telling a mythic story he can reach the calm of a definitive ending.
Another calming element of this mythic form of storytelling is suggested in “The Calmative” by looking at what specifically in his father’s story calms the narrator. It is not enough that his father tell him the story, but it has to be read “evening after evening” (Beckett, 30), without missing a single word or picture. What is calming in this story is its repetition, its familiarity. In “Texts for Nothing” the narrator says that he is “all ears for the old stories” (Beckett, 78); what makes his father’s story familiar, and consequently his own, is that they can draw on the repetition of familiar elements throughout the history of literature and myth. It is calming for the narrator to cast himself in the role of Dante or Christ because he knows these stories, and in them he can hope to find a similar ending for his own. The pictures in the story of Joe Breem, or Breen were already pictures of the narrator. By identifying with these “supernatural,” or at least heroic, literary beings from his cultural tradition, it appears that Beckett’s narrator may indeed be telling a myth in the full scope of Eliade’s definition. Telling his story as if it was a myth allows the narrator the calming effect of existing within an established cultural narrative.
But, having chosen to tell his story in this particular form, what makes a mythic narrative more calming for the narrator than a story set in modern times? What makes him long “for the tender nonesuch” (Beckett, 41), and for the shade of his wood far from the terrible light of the city? Though the narrator attempts to tell his story as if it were in another age, he admits that what he tells “this evening is passing this evening, at this passing hour” (Beckett, 28). He lives in the modern present, where “houses and factories darken the air, trams go by, and under your feet wet from the grass there are suddenly cobbles” (Beckett, 28). If a story set in the past is calming because it can hope to reach towards and explain the present, the present must be anxiety provoking because it can only continue moving forward without allowing the narrator to rest in a specific point in time. With the “scarcity of passers-by” and the “extraordinary light shed by the streetlamps” (Beckett, 38), the narrator is left to ask everyone he encounters what time it is, as if being able to fix himself in a specific moment will calm him. But when he finally is told a time it leaves him just as anxious as before. Even his father’s greatcoat, which would fix his story in the 1900s, has become a sleeveless cloak, perhaps indistinguishable from those worn throughout the ages.
The anxiety causing and alienating effects of modernity echo throughout “The Calmative.” The trams and busses run “as if underwater” (Beckett, 31), the houses and factories, even the people lurking behind their windows are described as if in a dream. Like in his fruitless quest to determine what time it is, the narrator describes these elements of modern life as being unrecognizable, unfamiliar and thus unsettling. Mythic narratives can be calming by presenting a repetition of familiar scenes and characters, but a modern story can only present the nameless goatherd and salesman, people sunk into themselves and all moving in the same direction. Even more unsettling is the narrator’s inability to locate the Shepherd’s Gate and constellation of the Bears. Without these recognizable, mythic elements, the narrator is unable to find his way out of the modern city into the calm of a familiar story. Though the narrator attempts to place himself in the woods of the chronicler d’Aubigné, or the posture of the poet Walther, no element of a modern story can replicate the familiarity of a literary tradition. It is only with the passage of time that stories become culturally accepted, and so the narrator is left to wander through a story that even he is not yet sure how it will end.
The strongest blow to the possibility of a calming modern story is its inability to achieve the structure of myth (though perhaps this also signals the narrator’s inability to tell his story as if it were a myth). The story does not have a recognizable beginning, instead of setting forth the narrator suddenly finds himself in a wood in which “no trace remained” (Beckett, 28) of his previous passage. Nor is there a struggle or initiation. The narrator says, “this evening something has to happen… as in myth and metamorphosis” (Beckett, 29-30), but despite his attempted interactions with the other characters no real heroic action takes place that might calm him. Even when the salesman grabs him the narrator claims that nothing has changed, and he wanders on looking for his moment of redemption.
As for a narrative return, the story “ends” with the narrator still wandering lost through the city. This lack of resolve can be taken as symptomatic of modern stories, because the present still continues to move forward without foreseeable end. In contrast to the contained form of the myth, Beckett presents us with what might be considered a definition of a modern story: the salesman’s story of a life that is “brief and dense, facts, without comment” (Beckett, 40). Though the narrator finds this story almost fairy-like in places the salesman corrects his mistake by explaining that he left his lover Pauline, who will only grow old and die. We do not find here the happy ending of a comedy, such as that ascribed to the story of Joe Breem, or Breen. There is no typical comedic ending of a wedding; there is no rebirth, no happily-ever-after. In this modern story of a life there is only divorce and then death.
Of course, for the narrator of “The Calmative,” a happy ending might be one that ends in his being able to die. But this kind of ending may only be possible in a story told through the traditionally familiar, positively resolving, and foundational elements of mythic narratives. The calming effect that the narrator seeks is otherwise unattainable in the anxiety-ridden and never-ending stories of modern life.
Works Cited
Beckett, Samuel. “The Calmative” and “Texts for Nothing.” Stories and Texts for Nothing. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1967
Campbell, Joseph. “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968
Eliade, Mircea. “Myth and Reality.” New York: Harper & Row, 1963
After recalling that he does not know when he died, the narrator in Samuel Beckett’s “The Calmative” says that he needs to tell himself a story in order to calm down. While he could tell a modern story, the narrator insists that he has to tell his story “in the past… as though it were a myth, or an old fable” (Beckett, 28). Though the narrator’s mental state does not seem to resolve to one of calmness by the end of the story, his choice to utilize a mythic form of storytelling suggests that he may find this kind of narrative potentially more calming than depictions of modern life.
In order to discuss the use of myth in “The Calmative” we must first make a distinction between the popular use of the term myth, which designates something as being untrue, and the more traditional use of myth as a narrative form. Though there are many, and often conflicting, characteristics of what makes a story mythic, the myth-theorist Mircea Eliade gives a generally accepted definition of the term: myths are narratives that a particular culture believes to be true, which often use the adventures of supernatural beings to explain the foundation of and make sense of that culture’s reality (Eliade, 5-6).
While Beckett’s narrator is not necessarily telling a cultural story dealing with supernatural beings, it is important to note that nor is he telling a deliberate falsehood. The narrator’s myth draws on certain forms and themes that can be found in cultural mythologies, which he points to within the text of “The Calmative.” The story must take place in the past, the narrator needs “another age, that age to become another age in which I became what I was” (Beckett, 28). This somewhat circular passage seems to suggest Eliade’s definition of a foundational story; the narrator’s story takes him back to the time in which his reality was made. If we take this reality to be the narrator’s present state of death, then we might expect his myth to recount the events or adventures leading to his demise.
Beyond this somewhat “autobiographical” function of myth, or of stories set in the past tense, Beckett’s narrator also points to certain narrative forms that are common to mythology, which he attempts to use within his calming story. The narrator remarks that his story has to be like the one his father used to read him, the adventures of a boy named Joe Breem, or Breen, who swam for miles through the night “out of sheer heroism” (Beckett, 30). It is suggested that the narrator must go on a similar heroic adventure, one including the plot elements of “the setting forth, the struggle and perhaps the return” (Beckett, 30). This structure of the heroic journey is common to mythic narratives, and has perhaps been made most recognizable by Joseph Campbell, who discusses it in similar terms of the departure, the initiation, and the return (Campbell, ix). The narrator even recognizes the literary tradition of using this mythic motif when he recalls the woods at the mouth of hell, an allusion to, and perhaps a suggestion that he is inhabiting, the journey of Dante’s “Inferno.”
The other mythic form that Beckett’s narrator attempts to calm himself with is that of a fall and redemption, a theme commonly found in Christian mythology. Early in the story the narrator mentions that he fell, called for help, and it came, perhaps within the series of events leading to his death. This is echoed near the end of the story when the narrator actually does fall. For a moment he is “sated with dark and calm” (Beckett, 45), and with the redemptive courtesy of not being touched by the throng that he thinks surrounds him, before this is swept away and he continues on his journey. While the structure of this mythic form is less clearly articulated within the text than that of the hero’s journey, a number of references to the mythology of Christ are sprinkled through the story. From the “Shepherd’s Gate” and “bats like flying crucifixions” to the “colours of the Virgin” in the butcher’s window (Beckett, 31, 44), it seems that the narrator is striving to find a similar mythic calmative as that found by Christ: a redemptive death.
Having established the devices by which the narrator of “The Calmative” hopes to tell his story, we can now turn to the question of how this mythic form of storytelling may be capable of calming him. Beckett returns to the story of Joe Breem, or Breen in the first text from his later collection, “Texts for Nothing,” where it is further elaborated that this story “began unhappily and it ended happily, every evening, a comedy” (Beckett, 79). Drawing on the elements of comedic drama, in which the narrative resolves positively for its protagonists, this suggests that the story told by the narrator of “The Calmative” might have a calming effect because it too can resolve. Looking at the mythic narrative forms discussed above we see that these each have that possibility of reaching a positive ending; a fall can be redeemed, a journey can be returned from, a story told as if in the past can ideally reach the present. The narrator hopes that by telling a mythic story he can reach the calm of a definitive ending.
Another calming element of this mythic form of storytelling is suggested in “The Calmative” by looking at what specifically in his father’s story calms the narrator. It is not enough that his father tell him the story, but it has to be read “evening after evening” (Beckett, 30), without missing a single word or picture. What is calming in this story is its repetition, its familiarity. In “Texts for Nothing” the narrator says that he is “all ears for the old stories” (Beckett, 78); what makes his father’s story familiar, and consequently his own, is that they can draw on the repetition of familiar elements throughout the history of literature and myth. It is calming for the narrator to cast himself in the role of Dante or Christ because he knows these stories, and in them he can hope to find a similar ending for his own. The pictures in the story of Joe Breem, or Breen were already pictures of the narrator. By identifying with these “supernatural,” or at least heroic, literary beings from his cultural tradition, it appears that Beckett’s narrator may indeed be telling a myth in the full scope of Eliade’s definition. Telling his story as if it was a myth allows the narrator the calming effect of existing within an established cultural narrative.
But, having chosen to tell his story in this particular form, what makes a mythic narrative more calming for the narrator than a story set in modern times? What makes him long “for the tender nonesuch” (Beckett, 41), and for the shade of his wood far from the terrible light of the city? Though the narrator attempts to tell his story as if it were in another age, he admits that what he tells “this evening is passing this evening, at this passing hour” (Beckett, 28). He lives in the modern present, where “houses and factories darken the air, trams go by, and under your feet wet from the grass there are suddenly cobbles” (Beckett, 28). If a story set in the past is calming because it can hope to reach towards and explain the present, the present must be anxiety provoking because it can only continue moving forward without allowing the narrator to rest in a specific point in time. With the “scarcity of passers-by” and the “extraordinary light shed by the streetlamps” (Beckett, 38), the narrator is left to ask everyone he encounters what time it is, as if being able to fix himself in a specific moment will calm him. But when he finally is told a time it leaves him just as anxious as before. Even his father’s greatcoat, which would fix his story in the 1900s, has become a sleeveless cloak, perhaps indistinguishable from those worn throughout the ages.
The anxiety causing and alienating effects of modernity echo throughout “The Calmative.” The trams and busses run “as if underwater” (Beckett, 31), the houses and factories, even the people lurking behind their windows are described as if in a dream. Like in his fruitless quest to determine what time it is, the narrator describes these elements of modern life as being unrecognizable, unfamiliar and thus unsettling. Mythic narratives can be calming by presenting a repetition of familiar scenes and characters, but a modern story can only present the nameless goatherd and salesman, people sunk into themselves and all moving in the same direction. Even more unsettling is the narrator’s inability to locate the Shepherd’s Gate and constellation of the Bears. Without these recognizable, mythic elements, the narrator is unable to find his way out of the modern city into the calm of a familiar story. Though the narrator attempts to place himself in the woods of the chronicler d’Aubigné, or the posture of the poet Walther, no element of a modern story can replicate the familiarity of a literary tradition. It is only with the passage of time that stories become culturally accepted, and so the narrator is left to wander through a story that even he is not yet sure how it will end.
The strongest blow to the possibility of a calming modern story is its inability to achieve the structure of myth (though perhaps this also signals the narrator’s inability to tell his story as if it were a myth). The story does not have a recognizable beginning, instead of setting forth the narrator suddenly finds himself in a wood in which “no trace remained” (Beckett, 28) of his previous passage. Nor is there a struggle or initiation. The narrator says, “this evening something has to happen… as in myth and metamorphosis” (Beckett, 29-30), but despite his attempted interactions with the other characters no real heroic action takes place that might calm him. Even when the salesman grabs him the narrator claims that nothing has changed, and he wanders on looking for his moment of redemption.
As for a narrative return, the story “ends” with the narrator still wandering lost through the city. This lack of resolve can be taken as symptomatic of modern stories, because the present still continues to move forward without foreseeable end. In contrast to the contained form of the myth, Beckett presents us with what might be considered a definition of a modern story: the salesman’s story of a life that is “brief and dense, facts, without comment” (Beckett, 40). Though the narrator finds this story almost fairy-like in places the salesman corrects his mistake by explaining that he left his lover Pauline, who will only grow old and die. We do not find here the happy ending of a comedy, such as that ascribed to the story of Joe Breem, or Breen. There is no typical comedic ending of a wedding; there is no rebirth, no happily-ever-after. In this modern story of a life there is only divorce and then death.
Of course, for the narrator of “The Calmative,” a happy ending might be one that ends in his being able to die. But this kind of ending may only be possible in a story told through the traditionally familiar, positively resolving, and foundational elements of mythic narratives. The calming effect that the narrator seeks is otherwise unattainable in the anxiety-ridden and never-ending stories of modern life.
Works Cited
Beckett, Samuel. “The Calmative” and “Texts for Nothing.” Stories and Texts for Nothing. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1967
Campbell, Joseph. “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968
Eliade, Mircea. “Myth and Reality.” New York: Harper & Row, 1963
12.26.2007
Review: "A Short History of Myth"
In her brief but compelling book, "A Short History of Myth," the historian of religion Karen Armstrong presents a succinct introduction to mythology. She traces its function and development for human society from the dawn of history up to the modern scientific view of myth as false, and the absolute need for a return to mythic thinking in the post-modern world. While her introductory definition of mythology draws heavily on the work of Mircea Eliade and his notions of hierophanies and the "eternal return," as well as the ever-popular monomythologizing of Joseph Campbell, it does not however fall pray to the faults of either a rabid comparative mythology that refuses to acknowledge the importance of distinct cultural contexts in the development of myth, or the even more insidious notion that mythology represents a primitive mentality and un-rational explanation of natural phenomena. Instead, Armstrong describes myth as an art form or "counter-narrative," which allows man to "cope with the problematic human predicament" and "live more intensely" in the world (1-6). As such, her definition of myth harks more towards the idea that myth describes not history, but a symbolic or metaphoric relationship that orients mankind in reality. Looking at the earliest examples of religious expression in Neanderthal graves, Armstrong posits five important aspects or functions of myth: they are rooted in the experience and fear of death, are inseparable from ritual actions and re-creations, force their participants to go beyond the extremes of their experience, prescribe how humans ought to behave, and speak of a transcendent reality that mankind is always seeking for in order to affirm their existence (4-5). Starting from the earliest religious myths of hunter-gathering societies, replete with shamanistic behavior and supreme sky gods, Armstrong takes us through the violent mother deities and dying consort gods that accompanied the discovery of agriculture, the cyclic wars and floods that described the conquest of the gods of order over chaos during the rise of the city-states, the blossoming of the ethical sages and religions around the axial turn of the first millennium, the immanent descent into the historical doctrines and mysticisms of the big three monotheistic religions, and the inevitable death of myth at the hands of Western rationalism and science in the modern age. While her discussion of this history of mythology once again relies on Eliade's own theories in his "Patterns In Comparative Religion" and "Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries," Armstrong's glance at the modern uses of mythology strikes home, critiquing fundamentalists who would interpret the Bible literally, the lack of stories that help us understand the nihilistic despair of modern warfare and terrorism, and the misplaced worship of pop-culture icons, suggesting that "myth must lead to imitation or participation, no passive contemplation" (135), or worse, sterile rationalization. In order to offer some sense of hope, and to suggest a place where myth may indeed be thriving, Armstrong wraps up with a discussion of the use of mythic themes in modern literature and art, from T.S. Elliot to Malcolm Lowry. While she laments that the modern novel is at best profane and far removed from the spiritual and ritual context that engendered mythology, she suggests that reading can still be highly transformative and orienting, and that "if it is written and read with serious attention, a novel, like a myth or any great work of art, can become an initiation that helps us to make a painful rite of passage from one phase of life, one state of mind, to another..." and that if "professional religious leaders cannot instruct us in mythical lore, [then] our artists and creative writers can perhaps step into this priestly role and bring fresh insight to our lost and damaged world" (148-9). Despite this pronouncement that myth is primarily dead it may however be possible that we still live under the thrall of mythological tropes even today, in the guise of movie action heroes, the need for an edenic eternal youth, the desire to demonize our strangers and enemies, even in the scientific quest itself to know all that there is to know and build all that there is to build. But nonetheless, mankind seems to want to remain blissfully (or brutally) unawares of this eternal return to the mythic condition, and it may indeed be as of yet unwritten works of literature, and art, that could allow us to once again understand our selves in this world.
12.23.2007
Active Dreaming
Among other fantastic images like last night's flying fish, I have been dreaming for the past week about climbing up the endless stairwells of an enormous tower, traveling to space, and trying to find a way to unlock a solitary window at the end of a long hallway. Certainly these symbols, and the often comic ways they are framed, have some relation to things I have been paying attention to in my waking life recently, and if not, could be considered dream signs akin to attempting to turn on a light. However, I am not trying to psychoanalyze myself, or have a lucid dream, but to have an active dream (or as I might jokingly put it, to go on a dream quest), dreaming of symbols and narratives of ascension in order to dream myself to the heaven of my mythological dream world, much the way that last year I used descension narratives to dream myself "to hell and back." This original idea had come after years of studying techniques of dreaming and symbolizing, Campbell's hero's journey monomyth, Géza Róheim's "The Gates of the Dream," James Hillman's "Dream and the Underworld," and some of the classics of epic and mythology wherein a character journey's to the underworld in order to bring back some family member, lost idea, etc... Having dreamt myself to my own personal hell, to face my deepest unconscious fears head on before getting back into school and moving on with my life, I figured it was time to continue the journey in the other direction, especially since the question of gods and spirituality has been a much larger, imminent unknown for so much of my life.
In order to do this, I have been giving my focus to symbolisms that surround such mystical or shamanic ascents (cf. Eliade's writings on the topic in Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries and Images and Symbols): climbing ropes, stairs, towers, the cosmic tree, birds (and angels), the spheres of the heavens, rainbows, etc... visualizing these kinds of scenes each night before going to bed, and attending to such images as they might turn up in my waking life. So far I have had a rather stunning success finding myself working my way up through the tower of sleep (always a potent symbol in my dreaming), but I also know that I could get stuck here, that some other image is needed, like a puzzle that needs its key in order to move on. During the early stages of my descension dreaming I found myself similarly confronted with and stuck in scenes reminiscent of the accompanying narrative symbols I was trying to evoke until I finally realized that one of the dream characters was asking me for three coins, much like those given to the ferryman by the dead. Consequently I took three coins with me into the next dream (under my pillow, with other similar dream tools), and was finally able to descend to the depths I had sought. Of course, I'm not quite sure what sort of similar symbol or tool accompanies ascension narratives, perhaps being much less familiar with the literature, but my dreams keep suggesting that music might unlock the window so that I can leap out and fly.
In order to do this, I have been giving my focus to symbolisms that surround such mystical or shamanic ascents (cf. Eliade's writings on the topic in Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries and Images and Symbols): climbing ropes, stairs, towers, the cosmic tree, birds (and angels), the spheres of the heavens, rainbows, etc... visualizing these kinds of scenes each night before going to bed, and attending to such images as they might turn up in my waking life. So far I have had a rather stunning success finding myself working my way up through the tower of sleep (always a potent symbol in my dreaming), but I also know that I could get stuck here, that some other image is needed, like a puzzle that needs its key in order to move on. During the early stages of my descension dreaming I found myself similarly confronted with and stuck in scenes reminiscent of the accompanying narrative symbols I was trying to evoke until I finally realized that one of the dream characters was asking me for three coins, much like those given to the ferryman by the dead. Consequently I took three coins with me into the next dream (under my pillow, with other similar dream tools), and was finally able to descend to the depths I had sought. Of course, I'm not quite sure what sort of similar symbol or tool accompanies ascension narratives, perhaps being much less familiar with the literature, but my dreams keep suggesting that music might unlock the window so that I can leap out and fly.
9.15.2007
Faster than a Speeding Pharisee
I finally nerved myself up to talk to Dr. Clothey in person, which if anything will allow me to finally get some sleep and stop imagining what I might say to him. Admittedly I was a bit surprised by how unresponsive he was to the work I've done and plans for studying dreams and myth, but perhaps that was mostly due to being a bit more nervous than I expected to be and not presenting myself clearly. And when it comes to dreams, Clothey claims to not treat them as all that important, rather looking down on Jungian ideas (as well as on Campbell, for the understandable reason that Campbell has tried to draw too many broad parallels in myth without considering individual cultural differences).
However when I started asking specific questions Clothey got much more animated, particularly when it came to the topic of modern myth. I was surprised and a little pleased later to find him recycle much of our conversation into his class discussion, even touching briefly on eschatological myths. As far as modern mythemes that are active in the American landscape (his term, I'd perhaps say mindscape, or symbolscape), he tried to draw a thread from the Mesopotamian myth of Marduke slaying Tiamat and creating the world from her body, a justification of war, land ownership/division, and the concentration of power in the city-state, to our modern mythology of manifest destiny. John Wayne and the Wild West, the demonization of nature and Native Americans, the valorization of war and concretization of power in a figurehead, as we see with George Bush and Iraq, one more conquering saint against his draconic nemesis. Also interesting was Clothey's insistence on the modern myth of the "incompetent male," where once men where supposed to be like John Wayne, now they are portrayed in the media as idiots, yahoos, sexually and culturally impotent, with recourse only in "viagra and guns." Which of course made me want to consider what other sorts of mythemes might be at work to counter such a grim Babylonian vision of America. The environmental and anti-war movements were his two suggestions, though I imagine there could be much deeper mythological themes that could be brought to bear, and may be necessary in order to reorient the direction our culture is heading in...
Today Sophie asked if comic book superheroes might be part of our modern mythology, an idea that I've been pondering for years. She suggested that maybe they related to Nietzsche's idea of the 'superman,' which I thought more suggestive of the Taoist 'supreme man,' a state of self-transcendence. A good number of superheroes on the other hand repair to this world in order to save humanity or establish a new order or morality. The story of Superman paralleling the myth of Jesus, even down to them dying, extolls the need for an external salvation. Of course, many other superheroes were normal people who somehow became more than just that, and in doing a spot of research I came upon a review of a book called "The Gospel According to Superheroes: Religion and Popular Culture," where one of the essayists actually does compare Batman as the Nietzschean 'ubermensch,' and as mythologically important for the modern individual. We are asked to be no longer John, but Bruce Wayne.
Ironic, or synchronistic to all this was an odd dream last night of attending Sophie on some sort of similarly superheroesque quest she was on, complete with a large number of costume or disguise changes. Also during class yesterday Sophie called just as we were discussing the creation mytheme of demiurges and all the incarnations of the goddess Sophia.
[Edit: I'd get some sleep if I wasn't now too busy trying to track down obscure Easter Island and Aztec mythologies to figure out what to focus my paper on. No rest for the curious.]
However when I started asking specific questions Clothey got much more animated, particularly when it came to the topic of modern myth. I was surprised and a little pleased later to find him recycle much of our conversation into his class discussion, even touching briefly on eschatological myths. As far as modern mythemes that are active in the American landscape (his term, I'd perhaps say mindscape, or symbolscape), he tried to draw a thread from the Mesopotamian myth of Marduke slaying Tiamat and creating the world from her body, a justification of war, land ownership/division, and the concentration of power in the city-state, to our modern mythology of manifest destiny. John Wayne and the Wild West, the demonization of nature and Native Americans, the valorization of war and concretization of power in a figurehead, as we see with George Bush and Iraq, one more conquering saint against his draconic nemesis. Also interesting was Clothey's insistence on the modern myth of the "incompetent male," where once men where supposed to be like John Wayne, now they are portrayed in the media as idiots, yahoos, sexually and culturally impotent, with recourse only in "viagra and guns." Which of course made me want to consider what other sorts of mythemes might be at work to counter such a grim Babylonian vision of America. The environmental and anti-war movements were his two suggestions, though I imagine there could be much deeper mythological themes that could be brought to bear, and may be necessary in order to reorient the direction our culture is heading in...
Today Sophie asked if comic book superheroes might be part of our modern mythology, an idea that I've been pondering for years. She suggested that maybe they related to Nietzsche's idea of the 'superman,' which I thought more suggestive of the Taoist 'supreme man,' a state of self-transcendence. A good number of superheroes on the other hand repair to this world in order to save humanity or establish a new order or morality. The story of Superman paralleling the myth of Jesus, even down to them dying, extolls the need for an external salvation. Of course, many other superheroes were normal people who somehow became more than just that, and in doing a spot of research I came upon a review of a book called "The Gospel According to Superheroes: Religion and Popular Culture," where one of the essayists actually does compare Batman as the Nietzschean 'ubermensch,' and as mythologically important for the modern individual. We are asked to be no longer John, but Bruce Wayne.
Ironic, or synchronistic to all this was an odd dream last night of attending Sophie on some sort of similarly superheroesque quest she was on, complete with a large number of costume or disguise changes. Also during class yesterday Sophie called just as we were discussing the creation mytheme of demiurges and all the incarnations of the goddess Sophia.
[Edit: I'd get some sleep if I wasn't now too busy trying to track down obscure Easter Island and Aztec mythologies to figure out what to focus my paper on. No rest for the curious.]
9.06.2007
Myth is Alive and Well (Though Not For Goats)
For my Myth Symbol and Ritual class I was asked to keep in eye on the media for themes of a mythic quality to share in class later today. Though this article is much more related to an instance of ritual than myth, I thought it perhaps a perfect example of how ancient beliefs are still alive in the modern world.
Goats sacrificed to fix Nepal jet. (via Monkeyfilter)
Two goats were sacrificed in front of a Boeing 757 at the Kathmandu Airport to the Hindu deity Akash Bhairav. After the sacrifice, the plane, which had been grounded due to electrical problems, was reportedly fixed and is back in flight. The irony perhaps is that the article describes Bhairav as being a deity of sky protection whose image is emblazoned on the side of the plane, whereas the god is linguistically a transformation of Bhairava, a manifestation of Shiva associated with destruction and prayed to in order to destroy enemies, which makes me wonder just what the Nepalese have in mind for their flights.
Also somewhat mythic is the legendary chupacabra supposedly caught by a hunter in South Texas, which regardless if it turns out to just be a mangy grey fox and not the "goat-sucking" monster, still shows people's willingness to believe in the mythic and supernatural. Though I've never heard of foxes sucking the blood out of live chickens... DNA tests still pending.
I also, true to form, read ahead in my texts for class so that I can be better prepared for the discussions. Reading Levi-Strauss' "Structural Analysis of Myth" yesterday fascinated me with his breakdown of myth as linguistic themes that can be analyzed, much the way I performed something akin to Calvin Hall's statistical analysis on my own dream themes last year. It is interesting to note that dreams are perhaps more rooted in language, as their recall is often based on, is only based on, what one can actually say about the images, that which can be repeated later on waking. Any small detail of a particular dream is important to its significance, from shades of light to pronunciations of names, whereas myth, according to Levi-Strauus, is that which remains when it is taken out of the language, the themes which carry across regardless of the particular linguistic events (a function that he claims places myth at the opposite end of the spectrum from poetry, despite other mythologists' (like Campbell) assertions that myth and poetry are inextricably intertwined). In order to recall a dream for recording, I've found it best to lay in bed half-way between wake and sleep and review the visual images of the dream with specific phrases and descriptions that won't as quickly dissipate upon getting up and being confronted by the stronger images of the World. Another interesting point is his idea that myths linguistically express not only the past and present of a culture, but the continuation of the events into the future, not something quite so akin to prophecy but a subjunctive pattern recognition that also perhaps allows one to make inferences from dreams about projected or desired states of the psyche. How does a story (whether mythic or oneiric) suggest what one might need to do in life? This is perhaps Eliade's take on myth as a paradigm for cultural rituals and actions that reaffirm the cosmological abstractions of the narrative, as well as Jung's assertion that dreams serve the function of self-actualization.
Goats sacrificed to fix Nepal jet. (via Monkeyfilter)
Two goats were sacrificed in front of a Boeing 757 at the Kathmandu Airport to the Hindu deity Akash Bhairav. After the sacrifice, the plane, which had been grounded due to electrical problems, was reportedly fixed and is back in flight. The irony perhaps is that the article describes Bhairav as being a deity of sky protection whose image is emblazoned on the side of the plane, whereas the god is linguistically a transformation of Bhairava, a manifestation of Shiva associated with destruction and prayed to in order to destroy enemies, which makes me wonder just what the Nepalese have in mind for their flights.
Also somewhat mythic is the legendary chupacabra supposedly caught by a hunter in South Texas, which regardless if it turns out to just be a mangy grey fox and not the "goat-sucking" monster, still shows people's willingness to believe in the mythic and supernatural. Though I've never heard of foxes sucking the blood out of live chickens... DNA tests still pending.
I also, true to form, read ahead in my texts for class so that I can be better prepared for the discussions. Reading Levi-Strauss' "Structural Analysis of Myth" yesterday fascinated me with his breakdown of myth as linguistic themes that can be analyzed, much the way I performed something akin to Calvin Hall's statistical analysis on my own dream themes last year. It is interesting to note that dreams are perhaps more rooted in language, as their recall is often based on, is only based on, what one can actually say about the images, that which can be repeated later on waking. Any small detail of a particular dream is important to its significance, from shades of light to pronunciations of names, whereas myth, according to Levi-Strauus, is that which remains when it is taken out of the language, the themes which carry across regardless of the particular linguistic events (a function that he claims places myth at the opposite end of the spectrum from poetry, despite other mythologists' (like Campbell) assertions that myth and poetry are inextricably intertwined). In order to recall a dream for recording, I've found it best to lay in bed half-way between wake and sleep and review the visual images of the dream with specific phrases and descriptions that won't as quickly dissipate upon getting up and being confronted by the stronger images of the World. Another interesting point is his idea that myths linguistically express not only the past and present of a culture, but the continuation of the events into the future, not something quite so akin to prophecy but a subjunctive pattern recognition that also perhaps allows one to make inferences from dreams about projected or desired states of the psyche. How does a story (whether mythic or oneiric) suggest what one might need to do in life? This is perhaps Eliade's take on myth as a paradigm for cultural rituals and actions that reaffirm the cosmological abstractions of the narrative, as well as Jung's assertion that dreams serve the function of self-actualization.
6.08.2007
heroes of the imagination
In response to the criticism of my last entry, it was not meant to be a well thought out essay as much as a rant or ramble just to get out some thoughts that had been building up in my head. With my eminent return to school in the fall I've found myself reading more and thinking more and needing to express my ideas, even if they are not yet coherent (certianly that last entry would not be a very good school paper!) nonetheless, feedback of any sort is always welcome. I've found that I can best articulate myself by "thinking outloud" and having others say, no, that's not it at all.
That said, on the subject of how children play, Sophie and I have been talking a lot about this recently, recalling from our own childhoods how we would take whatever movies or games we were exposed to and recreate them in our own play, rewriting plots of "labyrinth" or "star wars" in order to place ourselves into the action, which listening to descriptions of modern kids playing World of Warcraft seems like is a continuing tradition. How many times have you read a book and said, I really wish I could have been there? Despite the content, or perceived lack of content, in modern play, what remains essentially the same is the use of cultural plotlines in order to offer a jumping off point for the imagination. Whether reading old mythology or playing video games referencing that old material, a child might imagine themselves in that world, in any world that is more interesting than the one they daily live in, and if this kind of play is carried out through their lives could foster a deeper internal reality later accessible for artistic excavation. Indeed that is what I've found to be the case for myself. I watched Star Wars close on a hundred times growing up, and even though the specifics of the "arthurian space cowboy" aesthetic have lessened over the years, the deeper mythological themas have continued to hold importance in my psyche, even as a framing device for other stories. I imagine that Jung and Campbell were not trying to write out specific plot lines for others to follow exactly, but to find common themes that humanity has dealt with in its attempts to create coherent narratives over the centuries, which is what made Star Wars so successful in the first place (as well as the lasting resonance of punch and judy, or tom and jerry, or whichever two antagonistic figures are swinging sticks at each other on tv these days). At heart what is present is a conflict between forces, ideas, family, the need to find a place in the Universe or a sense of meaning to one's actions. It's not so much that today's media spectacles are meaningless in a world where things were once meaningful before, but that there has never been any meaning outside of what we have given to our experiences. The fin de secle writers in France decried a similar lack of meaning at the turn of the last century, which they addressed through various surreal, existential, or symbolic means, but each one an attempt to give personal meaning to modern life.
It is not surprising that superheroes and law-detectives have become the modern culture heroes, they are the figures that people can relate to, they are the legends that strive to rise above the Everyday and take real action in the world. Even if they don't exist, their possibility is enough for some even one kid in some small town to say, I could do that one day, I could do better than that. Or we see books coming out, on the other end of the spectrum from "the Da Vinci Code," where the heroes are intentionally irreal, mythical beings and monsters, who even more than the culture heroes address real human issues of the 21st century. Anne Carson's "Autobiography of Red" retells the myth of Herakles and Garyion, as if they were a homosexual couple going on vacation together, with all the monster's issues with being red, winged and unable to address the world except from behind the lens of a camera. Or Cary Doctorow's "Someone Comes to Town Someone Leaves Town" (which I heard about last night), whose main character is the son of a mountain and a washing machine and has a set of nesting dolls as brothers, and is trying to install free wireless in Toronto (Doctorow is a large proponent of Copy Left). Despite the element of the postmodern and absurd, such characters serve to focus the attention instead on a deeper psychology or perspective of what it is to feel different in an increasingly homogenized world. That in an increasingly wired existence where everyone has a voice, and every voice sounds about the same (like a large buzz from the vanishing bees), we are all still unique, and dealing with the same sense of existentiallity that earmarks such ancient mythic texts. Indeed, the classical gods ran around drunk and fucking each other more openly than the modern culture heroes do, and were worshiped for it.
That said, on the subject of how children play, Sophie and I have been talking a lot about this recently, recalling from our own childhoods how we would take whatever movies or games we were exposed to and recreate them in our own play, rewriting plots of "labyrinth" or "star wars" in order to place ourselves into the action, which listening to descriptions of modern kids playing World of Warcraft seems like is a continuing tradition. How many times have you read a book and said, I really wish I could have been there? Despite the content, or perceived lack of content, in modern play, what remains essentially the same is the use of cultural plotlines in order to offer a jumping off point for the imagination. Whether reading old mythology or playing video games referencing that old material, a child might imagine themselves in that world, in any world that is more interesting than the one they daily live in, and if this kind of play is carried out through their lives could foster a deeper internal reality later accessible for artistic excavation. Indeed that is what I've found to be the case for myself. I watched Star Wars close on a hundred times growing up, and even though the specifics of the "arthurian space cowboy" aesthetic have lessened over the years, the deeper mythological themas have continued to hold importance in my psyche, even as a framing device for other stories. I imagine that Jung and Campbell were not trying to write out specific plot lines for others to follow exactly, but to find common themes that humanity has dealt with in its attempts to create coherent narratives over the centuries, which is what made Star Wars so successful in the first place (as well as the lasting resonance of punch and judy, or tom and jerry, or whichever two antagonistic figures are swinging sticks at each other on tv these days). At heart what is present is a conflict between forces, ideas, family, the need to find a place in the Universe or a sense of meaning to one's actions. It's not so much that today's media spectacles are meaningless in a world where things were once meaningful before, but that there has never been any meaning outside of what we have given to our experiences. The fin de secle writers in France decried a similar lack of meaning at the turn of the last century, which they addressed through various surreal, existential, or symbolic means, but each one an attempt to give personal meaning to modern life.
It is not surprising that superheroes and law-detectives have become the modern culture heroes, they are the figures that people can relate to, they are the legends that strive to rise above the Everyday and take real action in the world. Even if they don't exist, their possibility is enough for some even one kid in some small town to say, I could do that one day, I could do better than that. Or we see books coming out, on the other end of the spectrum from "the Da Vinci Code," where the heroes are intentionally irreal, mythical beings and monsters, who even more than the culture heroes address real human issues of the 21st century. Anne Carson's "Autobiography of Red" retells the myth of Herakles and Garyion, as if they were a homosexual couple going on vacation together, with all the monster's issues with being red, winged and unable to address the world except from behind the lens of a camera. Or Cary Doctorow's "Someone Comes to Town Someone Leaves Town" (which I heard about last night), whose main character is the son of a mountain and a washing machine and has a set of nesting dolls as brothers, and is trying to install free wireless in Toronto (Doctorow is a large proponent of Copy Left). Despite the element of the postmodern and absurd, such characters serve to focus the attention instead on a deeper psychology or perspective of what it is to feel different in an increasingly homogenized world. That in an increasingly wired existence where everyone has a voice, and every voice sounds about the same (like a large buzz from the vanishing bees), we are all still unique, and dealing with the same sense of existentiallity that earmarks such ancient mythic texts. Indeed, the classical gods ran around drunk and fucking each other more openly than the modern culture heroes do, and were worshiped for it.
6.06.2007
The Vienna School vs. the Postmodern playground
Yesterday after packing the car to leave tomorrow i spent the afternoon reading Herbert Silberer's "Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts," which I picked up synchronistically at Caliban's the other day. Silberer was part of Freud and Jung's set in Vienna, and his work with alchemical symbolism predated and influenced Jung's own mounmental theories. The book is an intepretation of an old alchemical parable, called the Parabola, through Freudian dream interpretation and then integratively through alchemical and spiritual symbolism, showing how the analytical pshyco-sexual interpretations can not do justice to material that seeks at its heart to rise the spirit above the gross matter of the individual mind.
Perhaps more interesting than the material itself is the ease with which Silberer refers to a variety of world mythologies, and almost takes for granted that the readers (his intended audience being Freud's set), are already familiar with the process of deconstructing the texts of mythology and folk-lore as if they were the dreams of an individual, including referencing the quote that "dreams are private myths and myths collective dreams" to someone else other than Joseph Campbell and predating the esteemed mythologist! Despite the continuation of this process in Jung and Campbell's work, the idea of interpreting cultural texts as exemplery of the collective psyche seems to have fallen into disfavor (if it was ever in favor), and psychology chooses to focus more and more on the depths of the individual psyche, leaving cultural criticism to the literary critics. This work however points to an older use of this technique that predated psychoanalysis as the aim of the Vienna school, that collected stories, myths, folklore, whether by the Brother's Grimm or adventurous anthropologists, in order to deeper understand the human psyche on a whole. Indeed Freud could not have given such prominence to the Oedipal complex if he was only looking at one person's (or his own) psyche, and not the preponderence of such themes in world mythology surrounding the dismemberment of the parent/ god figures.
Perhaps the closest we come to such "collective psychology" today is found in movie or book reviews, and then only in mortification over the snarkiness and self-referentiallity of the post-modern paradigm (I was wholly disgusted by a recent review of Shrek the Third in the New york times, which could only comment on how the movie was a parable for the ongoing battle between Disney and Dreamworks). Even modern myth-makers like George Lucas, whose original Star Wars trilogy was an homage to his friendship with Joseph Campbell and based directly off Campbell's writing on the hero's journey, have fallen prey to cutesy characters and in-jokes designed solely to hook a young crowd that can not relate their experiences to a deeper mythological spectrum than pop-stars and punch-and-judy style pratfalls. Many of the children in Sophie's after-school program talked incessently of World of Warcraft, which though like Harry Potter and Narnia are fantastic in scope, and many older RPG video games like the Final Fantasy series referenced mythological names and themas, this kind of mythology is only a surface aesthetic, and further removes children from looking closer at the deeper themes and dramas of the original source material. Pretending you are a sword-swinging elf does not replicate the psychological depth implied by the heroic labours of Hercules (and not the Disney version) nor Theseus's struggle through the labyrinth, which are in themselves only metaphors for rising above the twisted and dangerous depths of the individual mind.
Perhaps more interesting than the material itself is the ease with which Silberer refers to a variety of world mythologies, and almost takes for granted that the readers (his intended audience being Freud's set), are already familiar with the process of deconstructing the texts of mythology and folk-lore as if they were the dreams of an individual, including referencing the quote that "dreams are private myths and myths collective dreams" to someone else other than Joseph Campbell and predating the esteemed mythologist! Despite the continuation of this process in Jung and Campbell's work, the idea of interpreting cultural texts as exemplery of the collective psyche seems to have fallen into disfavor (if it was ever in favor), and psychology chooses to focus more and more on the depths of the individual psyche, leaving cultural criticism to the literary critics. This work however points to an older use of this technique that predated psychoanalysis as the aim of the Vienna school, that collected stories, myths, folklore, whether by the Brother's Grimm or adventurous anthropologists, in order to deeper understand the human psyche on a whole. Indeed Freud could not have given such prominence to the Oedipal complex if he was only looking at one person's (or his own) psyche, and not the preponderence of such themes in world mythology surrounding the dismemberment of the parent/ god figures.
Perhaps the closest we come to such "collective psychology" today is found in movie or book reviews, and then only in mortification over the snarkiness and self-referentiallity of the post-modern paradigm (I was wholly disgusted by a recent review of Shrek the Third in the New york times, which could only comment on how the movie was a parable for the ongoing battle between Disney and Dreamworks). Even modern myth-makers like George Lucas, whose original Star Wars trilogy was an homage to his friendship with Joseph Campbell and based directly off Campbell's writing on the hero's journey, have fallen prey to cutesy characters and in-jokes designed solely to hook a young crowd that can not relate their experiences to a deeper mythological spectrum than pop-stars and punch-and-judy style pratfalls. Many of the children in Sophie's after-school program talked incessently of World of Warcraft, which though like Harry Potter and Narnia are fantastic in scope, and many older RPG video games like the Final Fantasy series referenced mythological names and themas, this kind of mythology is only a surface aesthetic, and further removes children from looking closer at the deeper themes and dramas of the original source material. Pretending you are a sword-swinging elf does not replicate the psychological depth implied by the heroic labours of Hercules (and not the Disney version) nor Theseus's struggle through the labyrinth, which are in themselves only metaphors for rising above the twisted and dangerous depths of the individual mind.
10.04.2006
down boulevards of story
"Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."
-Joseph Campbell, from "the hero with a thousand faces"
yup. this book is my new bible. the madness is unraveling and the dreams are all falling into place. if i don't stop myself now, i might try and write the whole blest novel tonight.
-Joseph Campbell, from "the hero with a thousand faces"
yup. this book is my new bible. the madness is unraveling and the dreams are all falling into place. if i don't stop myself now, i might try and write the whole blest novel tonight.
8.14.2006
Masks of Mnemosyne (the formation of memory)
Masks of Mnemosyne (the formation of memory)
"freedom depends on the struggle of memory against forgetting."
- Milan Kundera
• Memory is accreted (like a seashell, armor, crystal) in our bodies and blood*, taking on a recognizable pattern, a body and meaning that can be called a life. when we are young and have no memory we have no such psychic detritus carried around us, but as we age we can't help picking up memories, symbols, songs, and attaching them to ourselves as sort of an addendum to that central self
• Thus we can say of an object, idea, person, moment, that it “gathers world” (ie: accrues meaning), which though often psychic or imaginative in nature can be displayed in a physical manner (wrinkles, collections of junk, crumbling, etc…)
• World itself could be considered an artifact of time, the shell or record (imprint) left behind by the movement of light/ life, in the way vinyl is a physical imprint of the sound waves of a song.
• Memory is not a recollection in the past, but a reconstruction in the present of what one images the past was like, and like dreams, may not bare any factual resemblance to what actually happened.+
• The longer ago something occurred, the less factual or clear the memory becomes. it is much easier to remember yesterday as it happened than last year, or childhood. as memory recedes it turns into myth (ie: its meaning takes on larger and metaphorical proportions turning the contents of our lives into a cohesive story instead of a disjointed series of circumstances).
• Memory is aided by symbolic, emotional, or physical cues (mnemonic triggers) in which the present reflects or replays some similar aspect of the past. music is an excellent example of this, hearing the first strains of a song related to your first relationship can years later still bring tears to your eyes.
• Object-bound (codified) memory is called history, imagination-based memory is called dream, or in the collective, myth. history is no more factual than myth, as both are perspectives relating event to meaning. and as myth is an amalgamation of countless archetypified memories, so is history a collective story we build around ourselves (in the world) in order to give ourselves a sense of time
• Media (writing, recordings, photographs, etc.) act as External Memory Devices, in that they take on the burden of memory into a physical object, thus removing any dreamlike/ mythic qualities of the memory. the current proliferation of EMDs marks a transition from myth to history, as well as the view of World from mind (“God”) to one large medium (artifact, the husk or corpse of “God”)
• While memory remains in imagination (subjective), it is fluid, malleable, and can take on whatever perspective or meaning the rememberer chooses. in a process similar to Dreaming Back, “bad” memories, moments of failure, anger, regret, can be re-remembered in a different light, one that allows the rememberer to get over or move past certain negatively ingrained perspectives or hang ups, thus altering where they stand in the present, as well as what they can make of their future.
• When a memory calcifies into history (becomes objective/ objectified), it is no longer fluid and can no longer be re-remembered in a different angle (unless of course the process of objectification is one of re-remembering), as it is no longer in the world itself. this also means that the memory is no longer personal, and belongs to the collective store of memory, the Record, and thus available to anyone as a memory of their own life. this is particularly true in ages of hyper-information, like this one, where the contents of individuals’ daily lives are offered up and become more readily available to strangers than ones own childhood. an example is a song coming on he jukebox and everyone singing along, even if they do not know the words or hadn’t heard the song before. what this means in terms of collective myth remains to be seen.
• With this vast store of memories to draw on, it would seem the artist should have no end of themes and experiences to draw on, effectively being bale to take on any life that is presented to them. However, art that is drawn from one’s own emotions and experiences rings the most true, as it has been lived, and the artist must be wary of assuming experiences that have no relation to their own. yet there is a balance to be found in taking the historicized memories and already written works of art of the collective and running them through one’s own experiences to create art that is both true and able to touch upon those deepest and most common themes of being human: love, death, family, struggle, the search for place and meaning. this could now be said to be the task of the modern artist, to take these themes that are available in the collective memory and return them to the fluidity of the subjective, where they are once again able to be reshaped or re-dreamed into whatever form imaginable or desirable, and thus to recreate the lost sense of myth in our culture. as Joseph Campbell put it: “dreams are private myths, and myths are collective dreams.”
• * memory and the body– one talks about having intellectual memories, emotional memories, muscle memory (the learning of physical tasks to a subconscious level). really, this separation of memories is a misnomer, as mind and emotion exist nowhere but in the body. there is only physical memory, the storing of tensions in muscle, the decay of skin cells with age, the patterning of genes, which can be read on a variety of different levels. take for example accounts of a person doing yoga for the first time, or receiving a strenuous massage. memories stored in the muscle tension are released and they have a flashback to that memory, effectively reliving the primary experience. however, most of us are not nearly so attuned to our bodies as to have such visceral remembrances.
• + time and memory– the trichotomy of past/ present/ future is also a misnomer, and the perception of time as a linear flow is an illusion, although sometimes a convenient one. Really all we live in is the present, and any perceptions of past or future are but imaginative extrapolations of this one current moment. a kind of subjunctive pattern recognition in which we can assert a sense of causality and desire in order to effectively plan our next action, and feel not so lost in the chaos of sensory data. as World accrues meaning, like seashells or thorns buried in the skin, so does times (our sense of eventuality or continuation) leave shards or ripples of itself in the periphery of our experiencing. these objects of memory are interpreted as a “coming from” that “goes somewhere,” and give us a reason and context for our present. it is also possible to remember the future, interpreting the present pattern in a manner that points to what will happen (prophecy).
"freedom depends on the struggle of memory against forgetting."
- Milan Kundera
• Memory is accreted (like a seashell, armor, crystal) in our bodies and blood*, taking on a recognizable pattern, a body and meaning that can be called a life. when we are young and have no memory we have no such psychic detritus carried around us, but as we age we can't help picking up memories, symbols, songs, and attaching them to ourselves as sort of an addendum to that central self
• Thus we can say of an object, idea, person, moment, that it “gathers world” (ie: accrues meaning), which though often psychic or imaginative in nature can be displayed in a physical manner (wrinkles, collections of junk, crumbling, etc…)
• World itself could be considered an artifact of time, the shell or record (imprint) left behind by the movement of light/ life, in the way vinyl is a physical imprint of the sound waves of a song.
• Memory is not a recollection in the past, but a reconstruction in the present of what one images the past was like, and like dreams, may not bare any factual resemblance to what actually happened.+
• The longer ago something occurred, the less factual or clear the memory becomes. it is much easier to remember yesterday as it happened than last year, or childhood. as memory recedes it turns into myth (ie: its meaning takes on larger and metaphorical proportions turning the contents of our lives into a cohesive story instead of a disjointed series of circumstances).
• Memory is aided by symbolic, emotional, or physical cues (mnemonic triggers) in which the present reflects or replays some similar aspect of the past. music is an excellent example of this, hearing the first strains of a song related to your first relationship can years later still bring tears to your eyes.
• Object-bound (codified) memory is called history, imagination-based memory is called dream, or in the collective, myth. history is no more factual than myth, as both are perspectives relating event to meaning. and as myth is an amalgamation of countless archetypified memories, so is history a collective story we build around ourselves (in the world) in order to give ourselves a sense of time
• Media (writing, recordings, photographs, etc.) act as External Memory Devices, in that they take on the burden of memory into a physical object, thus removing any dreamlike/ mythic qualities of the memory. the current proliferation of EMDs marks a transition from myth to history, as well as the view of World from mind (“God”) to one large medium (artifact, the husk or corpse of “God”)
• While memory remains in imagination (subjective), it is fluid, malleable, and can take on whatever perspective or meaning the rememberer chooses. in a process similar to Dreaming Back, “bad” memories, moments of failure, anger, regret, can be re-remembered in a different light, one that allows the rememberer to get over or move past certain negatively ingrained perspectives or hang ups, thus altering where they stand in the present, as well as what they can make of their future.
• When a memory calcifies into history (becomes objective/ objectified), it is no longer fluid and can no longer be re-remembered in a different angle (unless of course the process of objectification is one of re-remembering), as it is no longer in the world itself. this also means that the memory is no longer personal, and belongs to the collective store of memory, the Record, and thus available to anyone as a memory of their own life. this is particularly true in ages of hyper-information, like this one, where the contents of individuals’ daily lives are offered up and become more readily available to strangers than ones own childhood. an example is a song coming on he jukebox and everyone singing along, even if they do not know the words or hadn’t heard the song before. what this means in terms of collective myth remains to be seen.
• With this vast store of memories to draw on, it would seem the artist should have no end of themes and experiences to draw on, effectively being bale to take on any life that is presented to them. However, art that is drawn from one’s own emotions and experiences rings the most true, as it has been lived, and the artist must be wary of assuming experiences that have no relation to their own. yet there is a balance to be found in taking the historicized memories and already written works of art of the collective and running them through one’s own experiences to create art that is both true and able to touch upon those deepest and most common themes of being human: love, death, family, struggle, the search for place and meaning. this could now be said to be the task of the modern artist, to take these themes that are available in the collective memory and return them to the fluidity of the subjective, where they are once again able to be reshaped or re-dreamed into whatever form imaginable or desirable, and thus to recreate the lost sense of myth in our culture. as Joseph Campbell put it: “dreams are private myths, and myths are collective dreams.”
• * memory and the body– one talks about having intellectual memories, emotional memories, muscle memory (the learning of physical tasks to a subconscious level). really, this separation of memories is a misnomer, as mind and emotion exist nowhere but in the body. there is only physical memory, the storing of tensions in muscle, the decay of skin cells with age, the patterning of genes, which can be read on a variety of different levels. take for example accounts of a person doing yoga for the first time, or receiving a strenuous massage. memories stored in the muscle tension are released and they have a flashback to that memory, effectively reliving the primary experience. however, most of us are not nearly so attuned to our bodies as to have such visceral remembrances.
• + time and memory– the trichotomy of past/ present/ future is also a misnomer, and the perception of time as a linear flow is an illusion, although sometimes a convenient one. Really all we live in is the present, and any perceptions of past or future are but imaginative extrapolations of this one current moment. a kind of subjunctive pattern recognition in which we can assert a sense of causality and desire in order to effectively plan our next action, and feel not so lost in the chaos of sensory data. as World accrues meaning, like seashells or thorns buried in the skin, so does times (our sense of eventuality or continuation) leave shards or ripples of itself in the periphery of our experiencing. these objects of memory are interpreted as a “coming from” that “goes somewhere,” and give us a reason and context for our present. it is also possible to remember the future, interpreting the present pattern in a manner that points to what will happen (prophecy).
10.23.2005
puppets tell tall tales: social ambiguity and the role of the individual to address it
Went to one of those wild events last night, the kind where I get to see all my friends working on a project that is far beyond my chosen capabilities and leaves me in tears of joy and rage, the 7th annual Black Sheep Puppet Festival. For several hours we sat in the back of the dark Brewhouse auditorium as several acts told incredible and absurd stories of the state of the world through the use of handheld puppets and elaborate box sets.
First up was the Coalition of Humans Invested in the Future, who presented a series of panel experts addressing some of the big questions of our times: is the past important, what's wrong with today, where is the future going, and where does stuff belong? The experts included strange animals and plants, a unitarian anteater, dayglow flounders, and the possibility of missiles falling form the sky and being mistaken for obnoxious viruses. Extremely postmodern when they began dissecting social divisions through the dream analysis of a dog dreaming he was a human fetching sticks and living out the endless cycle of going to work and to home watching screen after screen... or was it eating from the bowl and pissing in the litter? As always, it strikes me right here how perceptive art can be when taken to extremes.
Next was Clare Dolan's "When Little Pieces of Very Big Things Break Off and Fall," a script ripped from testimonies related to coal mining disasters bearing on he destruction of the environment and crumbling of the arctic shelf. Brief surreality ensues when the performer finds herself in an artists' coop with several dead philosophers and eventually has to run from death, all while talking about the nature of art to lead us to more meaningful ways of addressing ourselves in the modern world.
After this, a short sweet play by Stranger Theatre called the "Counterfeit Marquise" adapted from an old Mother Goose fairytale about a man who grew up as a woman and suddenly finds herself confronted with falling in love and learning who "she" really is.
The fourth act, by Drama of Works out of NY, impressed me greatly, as it touched on one of the greatest artists of our time, who I've formed a bit of an obsession with recently, Andy Warhol. Telling the story of his life through a series of phone interviews, movie ads, and memorabilia of his days growing up with his mother in Pittsburgh, this show really captured the essence of Warhol's artistic vision, pop art as the easily reproducible and easily recognizable, the assembly line creative process where output and fame are greater than individual creativity. Perhaps most poignant was the portrayal of Warhol, his family, his schoolmates, and coworkers all as Campbell's soup cans. Which of course raises the question for me I think was posed by Warhol's work, are we really all alike?
After another brief intermission smoking down cigarettes in the cold rain, we went in for the act most of us were there to see, the Indicator Species. Comprised of the infamous Etta Cettera and members of the Hollow Sisters, a life size prison cell was erected made entirely of letters from prisoners sent to the local books to prisoners project, Book 'Em, and a heart rending tale was told addressing murder and the age old societal problem of what to do with offenders. Unlike the other pieces presented in the evening, this one was not told through the use of humor or absurdity but was a brutal attack on the hearts and consciences of the audience presenting four separate cases based off real life incidents portraying the moral ambiguity of how to deal with this issue.
Now this piece would have been immensely touching in its own right, if I hadn't known any of the people involved, but hit too close to home as I watched Etta have an actual conversation with a prisoner and then they presented the story of Frank's murder. They didn't mention Frank by name, but it was obviously about him, the kid with a mysterious smile who wandered around town everywhere and into the hearts of everyone he crossed paths with. Last summer Frank was brutally and randomly shot by several kids who had stolen a police woman's gun and car and he is still tragically missed by everyone in this community. As soon as I saw what they were doing I broke into tears, unable to attach emotional reality from the art and uncertain if they were abusing Frank's memory to get their point across. If anything though it only honored his memory and answered the question, no we are not replaceable, we are all individual beings with our own unique lives. And even when we do something that paints us at being at fault to ourselves and our neighbors and society, even when we murder, we are still worthwhile human beings who deserve a chance to exist and express ourselves in our own ways. And despite the stigmas and laws of society, that is something no one should be allowed to take away from us.
First up was the Coalition of Humans Invested in the Future, who presented a series of panel experts addressing some of the big questions of our times: is the past important, what's wrong with today, where is the future going, and where does stuff belong? The experts included strange animals and plants, a unitarian anteater, dayglow flounders, and the possibility of missiles falling form the sky and being mistaken for obnoxious viruses. Extremely postmodern when they began dissecting social divisions through the dream analysis of a dog dreaming he was a human fetching sticks and living out the endless cycle of going to work and to home watching screen after screen... or was it eating from the bowl and pissing in the litter? As always, it strikes me right here how perceptive art can be when taken to extremes.
Next was Clare Dolan's "When Little Pieces of Very Big Things Break Off and Fall," a script ripped from testimonies related to coal mining disasters bearing on he destruction of the environment and crumbling of the arctic shelf. Brief surreality ensues when the performer finds herself in an artists' coop with several dead philosophers and eventually has to run from death, all while talking about the nature of art to lead us to more meaningful ways of addressing ourselves in the modern world.
After this, a short sweet play by Stranger Theatre called the "Counterfeit Marquise" adapted from an old Mother Goose fairytale about a man who grew up as a woman and suddenly finds herself confronted with falling in love and learning who "she" really is.
The fourth act, by Drama of Works out of NY, impressed me greatly, as it touched on one of the greatest artists of our time, who I've formed a bit of an obsession with recently, Andy Warhol. Telling the story of his life through a series of phone interviews, movie ads, and memorabilia of his days growing up with his mother in Pittsburgh, this show really captured the essence of Warhol's artistic vision, pop art as the easily reproducible and easily recognizable, the assembly line creative process where output and fame are greater than individual creativity. Perhaps most poignant was the portrayal of Warhol, his family, his schoolmates, and coworkers all as Campbell's soup cans. Which of course raises the question for me I think was posed by Warhol's work, are we really all alike?
After another brief intermission smoking down cigarettes in the cold rain, we went in for the act most of us were there to see, the Indicator Species. Comprised of the infamous Etta Cettera and members of the Hollow Sisters, a life size prison cell was erected made entirely of letters from prisoners sent to the local books to prisoners project, Book 'Em, and a heart rending tale was told addressing murder and the age old societal problem of what to do with offenders. Unlike the other pieces presented in the evening, this one was not told through the use of humor or absurdity but was a brutal attack on the hearts and consciences of the audience presenting four separate cases based off real life incidents portraying the moral ambiguity of how to deal with this issue.
Now this piece would have been immensely touching in its own right, if I hadn't known any of the people involved, but hit too close to home as I watched Etta have an actual conversation with a prisoner and then they presented the story of Frank's murder. They didn't mention Frank by name, but it was obviously about him, the kid with a mysterious smile who wandered around town everywhere and into the hearts of everyone he crossed paths with. Last summer Frank was brutally and randomly shot by several kids who had stolen a police woman's gun and car and he is still tragically missed by everyone in this community. As soon as I saw what they were doing I broke into tears, unable to attach emotional reality from the art and uncertain if they were abusing Frank's memory to get their point across. If anything though it only honored his memory and answered the question, no we are not replaceable, we are all individual beings with our own unique lives. And even when we do something that paints us at being at fault to ourselves and our neighbors and society, even when we murder, we are still worthwhile human beings who deserve a chance to exist and express ourselves in our own ways. And despite the stigmas and laws of society, that is something no one should be allowed to take away from us.
7.11.2005
on the books
and just because I approve of this meme going around, the 20 books that have most impacted my life (in no particular order):
1. Carlos Castaneda - Journey to Ixtlan
2. Crimethinc. Collective- Days of War, Nights of Love
3. Hakim Bey- The Temporary Autonomous Zone
4. var.- The I Ching
5. Octavia Butler- Parable of the Sower
6. Douglas Hofstadter- Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid
7. Ayn Rand- Atlas Shrugged
8. Joseph Campbell- The Power of Myth
9. Jorge Luis Borges- Collected Fictions
10. Jalaluddin Rumi (Coleman Barks trans.)- Essential Rumi
11. Rainer Maria Rilke (Stephen Mitchell trans.) Duino Elegies
12. Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea- The Illuminatus! Trilogy
13. Jean-Paul Sartre- Nausea
14. George Orwell- Nineteen Eighty-four
15. Victor Hugo- Les Miserables
16. Kurt Vonnegut- Cat's Cradle
17. Lewis Carroll- Through the Looking Glass
18. Jostein Gaarder- Sophie's World
19. John Clellon Holmes- Go
20. Marshall McLuhan- Understanding Media
and though there are countless more books I want to include I honestly can't leave these two out in shaping my approach to living:
21.Bill Whitcomb- The Magician's Companion
22. John C. Lilly- Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer
It pleases me greatly that most of these books are fiction. There's nothing like a good story to really affect one's outlook on the world. Especially if your attention span for nonfiction is virtually nonexistent.
1. Carlos Castaneda - Journey to Ixtlan
2. Crimethinc. Collective- Days of War, Nights of Love
3. Hakim Bey- The Temporary Autonomous Zone
4. var.- The I Ching
5. Octavia Butler- Parable of the Sower
6. Douglas Hofstadter- Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid
7. Ayn Rand- Atlas Shrugged
8. Joseph Campbell- The Power of Myth
9. Jorge Luis Borges- Collected Fictions
10. Jalaluddin Rumi (Coleman Barks trans.)- Essential Rumi
11. Rainer Maria Rilke (Stephen Mitchell trans.) Duino Elegies
12. Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea- The Illuminatus! Trilogy
13. Jean-Paul Sartre- Nausea
14. George Orwell- Nineteen Eighty-four
15. Victor Hugo- Les Miserables
16. Kurt Vonnegut- Cat's Cradle
17. Lewis Carroll- Through the Looking Glass
18. Jostein Gaarder- Sophie's World
19. John Clellon Holmes- Go
20. Marshall McLuhan- Understanding Media
and though there are countless more books I want to include I honestly can't leave these two out in shaping my approach to living:
21.Bill Whitcomb- The Magician's Companion
22. John C. Lilly- Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer
It pleases me greatly that most of these books are fiction. There's nothing like a good story to really affect one's outlook on the world. Especially if your attention span for nonfiction is virtually nonexistent.
1.23.2005
myths, maps, and sealing wax
(reposted from old journals)
As I’ve said many times before, the world is and has always been a rather mythological place for me. That is, I’ve always seen life, and my place in it, more in terms of how my/ our interactions continually play out these high level stories then as being the interactions in themselves.
Looking back at my childhood, this isn’t very surprising. I’ve always been fascinated by mythologies and their epic description of reality. If anything, that has been my own personal disconnect from the world and at times has kept me from being able to interact with the world "as it is." I think this approach was first fostered by being raised Christian, but not in being raised to believe that that view of the world was the correct or only view. As my Dad once said, he raised us that way to believe that there is something in the world to believe in, that we are part of something much bigger than this. With an active and critical imagination, it didn’t take me long to realize that this Christian story was only just another story. And being an avid reader as well I began pouring through the old stories of many different cultures and religions, the myths of Greece and Rome, the Norse, Assyrian, and Indian cultures. And beyond that I was attracted to other more fantastic stories that carried such mythic and epic perspectives, namely the Lord of the Rings, and movies like Tron (which paints a good picture for a late twentieth century take on these old myths) and Star Wars. Actually it didn’t really surprise me to discover that George Lucas had been good friends with Joseph Campbell, as Lucas’ epic deftly portrays a version of Campbell’s ‘hero’s journey’. And as I’ve pointed out recently, that myth itself is nothing but a story for our own coming to terms with being individual humans in this wide and crazy world. And beyond these, my mythic approach was also highly informed by certain epic role-playing video games, namely the Ultima and Final Fantasy series. These last perhaps really set up my beliefs that I was indeed the hero of my own quest through the world or personal legend, and as the hero, was capable and responsible for trying to save or at least change the world in some meaningful and lasting way.
Myths of individual self-importance aside, all these stories also set up my belief that the world would "end" soon in some cataclysmic struggle between good and evil or magic and technology. Looking at this now, I could say that this almost worldwide myth of the apocalypse might just be a story for learning to accept our finitude as mortal beings, or for our personal struggles trying to yoke disjoint aspects of our personalities. What is right and wrong, and should we approach the world analytically, intuitively, or both? Not that the world still doesn’t appear that it might end soon, or at least that humanity might not be pushing it and ourselves to some vast breaking point; our myths and history (and discernable future) seem to point to some apocalyptic climax looming on the horizon. Of course, I still could be reading too much into this, but we’ll never know until it happens.
As they say as above, so below, our personal interactions serve as reflections of higher level cultural interactions and vice versa. If anything, that is how myth works, in finding correlations between our personal stories and that of the cosmos, creating maps for our journeys through the world in the spinning of stars and migrations of our ancestors. One could perhaps say then that our personal interactions are also being played out on collective levels, that each culture, and humanity as a whole, are going through their own hero’s journey of world-discovery and self-affirmation. Perhaps the Universe is going through this as well, as the myths of gods playing, and sciences of physical forces interacting all seem to point too.
In fact, I would argue that it is possibly this mapping between heavenly bodies and natural processes to our everyday experiences and interactions that has allowed us understand our place in the world (at least to a limited degree) and communicate this to each other. Over time we have created elaborate symbol systems that serve to represent ourselves as these higher levels of interaction, and become frameworks to relate to our own and other’s experiences; such as the Kabala’s mapping of the cosmos, or the I Ching’s mapping of organic change. Even our daily language itself has its roots in such symbolic forms of representation, if you look at the old runic alphabets in which each symbol is not only its letter but a communicable concept describing aspects and interactions that had been consistently noticed in the world. And today, even though each concept is not directly mapped from its individual symbols, these jumbles of letters still serve to spell out and represent actual things in the world. Of course, some languages, like Chinese, never forgot this representational quality of the characters used, in that each symbol still represents a concept in itself in the form of a stylized picture of it. Which leads me to say that art in itself can serve as another representative form for communicating our experiences, whether in visual forms, sonic feelings, etc… And in this sense, any action or interaction could be considered art in that it is interpretable of representative of both itself and higher level interactions of our experiences of the world. The act of going to work each day is reflective of our daily animal struggle of fending to survive, but it is also just going to work. The act of going to sleep is reflective of giving oneself up to death and of the fall of cultures and of the inevitable end of all things. But it is also just going to sleep.
Now, the question that is raised in my mind by all this, is if and when it is necessary to frame our experiences in terms of their higher level interpretations. It seems that we have to find some common ground in order to relate our experiences to each other, and myths can offer us a collective framework for our experiences. But if we are trying to communicate more day to day interactions, the mythic filter can possibly distract from or add too much meaning to what is relevant in each information exchange. If for example I want to suggest to someone a good place to eat, it is not necessary to tie in discussions of our struggles for bio-survival or the role that cave drawings once might have played in ancient cultures, but just to say such and such restaurant has tasty and affordable food. But if the discussion were to tend to topics of how we fit into the world, such higher level themes and stories might be necessary in order to paint a decent picture of our experiences of reality. It seems to come down to being aware of what information is practical in any given exchange, and excluding the levels of interpretation that are not. Just because my actions of informing you where to eat could be interpreted as acting out some archetypal role of teacher or guide, it is almost meaningless to point this out when you just want directions. Instead our interaction could suggest to you what you need to know, and just, that unless you aren’t too hungry that you could chat for a bit before you eat. And so, though the mythic interpretation of reality is a meaningful approach to our experiences , it is only really useful in dealing with high level interpretations of our experiences, and not in communicating the actual interactions we have on a more experiential level.
As I’ve said many times before, the world is and has always been a rather mythological place for me. That is, I’ve always seen life, and my place in it, more in terms of how my/ our interactions continually play out these high level stories then as being the interactions in themselves.
Looking back at my childhood, this isn’t very surprising. I’ve always been fascinated by mythologies and their epic description of reality. If anything, that has been my own personal disconnect from the world and at times has kept me from being able to interact with the world "as it is." I think this approach was first fostered by being raised Christian, but not in being raised to believe that that view of the world was the correct or only view. As my Dad once said, he raised us that way to believe that there is something in the world to believe in, that we are part of something much bigger than this. With an active and critical imagination, it didn’t take me long to realize that this Christian story was only just another story. And being an avid reader as well I began pouring through the old stories of many different cultures and religions, the myths of Greece and Rome, the Norse, Assyrian, and Indian cultures. And beyond that I was attracted to other more fantastic stories that carried such mythic and epic perspectives, namely the Lord of the Rings, and movies like Tron (which paints a good picture for a late twentieth century take on these old myths) and Star Wars. Actually it didn’t really surprise me to discover that George Lucas had been good friends with Joseph Campbell, as Lucas’ epic deftly portrays a version of Campbell’s ‘hero’s journey’. And as I’ve pointed out recently, that myth itself is nothing but a story for our own coming to terms with being individual humans in this wide and crazy world. And beyond these, my mythic approach was also highly informed by certain epic role-playing video games, namely the Ultima and Final Fantasy series. These last perhaps really set up my beliefs that I was indeed the hero of my own quest through the world or personal legend, and as the hero, was capable and responsible for trying to save or at least change the world in some meaningful and lasting way.
Myths of individual self-importance aside, all these stories also set up my belief that the world would "end" soon in some cataclysmic struggle between good and evil or magic and technology. Looking at this now, I could say that this almost worldwide myth of the apocalypse might just be a story for learning to accept our finitude as mortal beings, or for our personal struggles trying to yoke disjoint aspects of our personalities. What is right and wrong, and should we approach the world analytically, intuitively, or both? Not that the world still doesn’t appear that it might end soon, or at least that humanity might not be pushing it and ourselves to some vast breaking point; our myths and history (and discernable future) seem to point to some apocalyptic climax looming on the horizon. Of course, I still could be reading too much into this, but we’ll never know until it happens.
As they say as above, so below, our personal interactions serve as reflections of higher level cultural interactions and vice versa. If anything, that is how myth works, in finding correlations between our personal stories and that of the cosmos, creating maps for our journeys through the world in the spinning of stars and migrations of our ancestors. One could perhaps say then that our personal interactions are also being played out on collective levels, that each culture, and humanity as a whole, are going through their own hero’s journey of world-discovery and self-affirmation. Perhaps the Universe is going through this as well, as the myths of gods playing, and sciences of physical forces interacting all seem to point too.
In fact, I would argue that it is possibly this mapping between heavenly bodies and natural processes to our everyday experiences and interactions that has allowed us understand our place in the world (at least to a limited degree) and communicate this to each other. Over time we have created elaborate symbol systems that serve to represent ourselves as these higher levels of interaction, and become frameworks to relate to our own and other’s experiences; such as the Kabala’s mapping of the cosmos, or the I Ching’s mapping of organic change. Even our daily language itself has its roots in such symbolic forms of representation, if you look at the old runic alphabets in which each symbol is not only its letter but a communicable concept describing aspects and interactions that had been consistently noticed in the world. And today, even though each concept is not directly mapped from its individual symbols, these jumbles of letters still serve to spell out and represent actual things in the world. Of course, some languages, like Chinese, never forgot this representational quality of the characters used, in that each symbol still represents a concept in itself in the form of a stylized picture of it. Which leads me to say that art in itself can serve as another representative form for communicating our experiences, whether in visual forms, sonic feelings, etc… And in this sense, any action or interaction could be considered art in that it is interpretable of representative of both itself and higher level interactions of our experiences of the world. The act of going to work each day is reflective of our daily animal struggle of fending to survive, but it is also just going to work. The act of going to sleep is reflective of giving oneself up to death and of the fall of cultures and of the inevitable end of all things. But it is also just going to sleep.
Now, the question that is raised in my mind by all this, is if and when it is necessary to frame our experiences in terms of their higher level interpretations. It seems that we have to find some common ground in order to relate our experiences to each other, and myths can offer us a collective framework for our experiences. But if we are trying to communicate more day to day interactions, the mythic filter can possibly distract from or add too much meaning to what is relevant in each information exchange. If for example I want to suggest to someone a good place to eat, it is not necessary to tie in discussions of our struggles for bio-survival or the role that cave drawings once might have played in ancient cultures, but just to say such and such restaurant has tasty and affordable food. But if the discussion were to tend to topics of how we fit into the world, such higher level themes and stories might be necessary in order to paint a decent picture of our experiences of reality. It seems to come down to being aware of what information is practical in any given exchange, and excluding the levels of interpretation that are not. Just because my actions of informing you where to eat could be interpreted as acting out some archetypal role of teacher or guide, it is almost meaningless to point this out when you just want directions. Instead our interaction could suggest to you what you need to know, and just, that unless you aren’t too hungry that you could chat for a bit before you eat. And so, though the mythic interpretation of reality is a meaningful approach to our experiences , it is only really useful in dealing with high level interpretations of our experiences, and not in communicating the actual interactions we have on a more experiential level.
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