…if we even state that there is such a thing as the collective unconscious, or desire to discuss the dream world, then to say that any way is more or less authentic than another is simply ludicrous. It is the intention of each individual breathing in their actions that defines whether or not that action is ‘authentic’ or not. Authentic to whom?
Journeying on the journey, seeking nothing other than what appears, yet seeing within the appearances all that resonates, one need no goal but intention, no meaning but what is therein. A journey, however, understates the gravity of the situation at hand, for, now this journey undergone, paints and jousts a Dantesque meaning and process.
For truly whether we realize it or not, myth effects us daily, it inhabits us. And as such, an unwillingness to delve deeper and discover the mystery that throbs within the myths, uncovering the meaning behind the sacrality, comprehending the sacred and seeing it reflected in their own self, echoes Oedipus’ inability to see the message in his personal myth as he lived it.
The dissertation direction appeared to me in visionary form, after speaking with a professor about the importance of trees, while playing a soul song on the piano.
Myths, as living stories, free us from our surround while fastening us to it. Myths depend partially upon the environment and interpretation or translation; usually center on deities or spirits; are responsible for creation or the creation of mystery, tensions and change in our world, including natural and so-called unnatural phenomenon, and, as such, wield a sacred influence, an element of mystery and some ineffable power to inform our actions. Myths share similar building blocks, incorporating archetypes; all of which affects our psyche, touching the unreachable and untouchable part of us—the entire Self—that compels us to react emotionally, spiritually and intellectually.
yes, well learning how to write expertly is something I need to do…
First came poetry, from the well of poesis, and then came philosophy as the Narcissus of poetic language. Poetry, emanating from the interiority of nature as it reflects the interiority of the soul in accord with its reflection, allows the unfoldment of the wings of philosophy to take flight.
…beware of thinking myth is only one thing, as black and white. Myth to the eastern culture is different than myth to the western culture as a generalization to the extreme. One does not paint myth white or black or any other color. Myth paints itself; our opinions color our statements but not myth itself. Myths afford more to those who read or live the myths than to those who have myths translated for them.
For, without defining nearly every word we use, how can another know what we say? They may think they know, but we know from experience, that what others think they know we said is not always what we meant to say or said at all at times.
Poetry breathes an alchemicality. Ever it is: creative imagery creating creative thoughts….
I feel like I am beginning to see more in the metaphor of mythology, versus of the metaphor in mythology, than ever before and it is amazing… Myth derives some power from its mystery and more from its commune with the psyche and soul of all in contact with it. What tools, besides our conscious thinking mind should we utilize in discovering the meaning of myth?
When metaphor is borne from the same place of no-thingness that all creativity ultimately emanates from, then how is it not innocent? To call metaphor guilty, malicious, tainted, or worldly, simply because it implies things and points to the ineffableness that it emanates from does not mean that it can dictate process to outcomes. Whenever metaphor emanates from the no-thingness that is the creative and unknowable space of poesis, then it is innocent and incorruptible until it is co-opted by others for their personal devices.
Best of writing and may Ecanus, Ambriel, Akriel and Samandiriel be with you as you write…
I have had writing difficulties as a result of my dad’s passing combined with the seemingly ever-present problem of running out of steam at the end of a degree. This happened with each of the other degrees earned and I need to push through it. I too have entered the underworld, whose heaving underbelly was unbearable grief, and I too have a love that brings me up from such depths of sorrow as never experienced, and asks of me to climb even higher than the heights of keenest sight.
The journey also indicates an understanding of an alchemical transformation, which requires first the descent, then the search, movement, symbolical representation of the process in imagery, and reflection and self-examination in order to transform while the image changes.
Once something is viewed, or experienced in any sense, it is not only deposited in the mind (or consciousness), but also in the body and the unconscious. Too many systems dealing with the therapy of the senses neglect the body, conscious or unconscious, and thus end up not measuring up to the psychic needs of humans.
Mythography does not destroy myth, it opens it up…
The heart attack I experienced in 2004, or was it early 2005, anyways, and the ensuing recovery, was aided by science in the form of chelation treatments, which my father took after his first heart attack and prolonged his life for at least seven years during which time we got to know one another and became friends…science then, minimally, works personally to collectively mythically.
Through art, myth, poetry, psychology, and prose we remember how our bodies, souls, and the earth are intimately connected…
Naming and seeing are, as you know, the first steps in integration, but in my opinion require further work to become foundational in a life. That is the sort of intention I speak of when I mention conscious intention, it arises out of an integration of something that becomes foundational—not that foundational stuff cannot change or remains constant thereafter.
Of course, we all process and write differently, yet, an excellent editor remains invaluable!
My thesis, Part I, compared ideas of Campbell and Jung on Mythology via Alchemy, Mercurius and the Uroboros; Part II was titled Deforesting Tree & Soul.
All energies are in interrelationship, this means that whether one starts with a negative or a positive, one will always be able to find the other at some point: it requires looking and being open, and depending on whether or not one prefers the negative to the positive, the starting point is determined. Of course, there is also the neutral, which seems to be excluded in most related discussions, and it too is part of that interrelationship, which means that one could also find the neutrality of opposing ideas: if one is open to seeing other alternatives.
I choose metaphor over literal, or should I say it chooses me…
I do not see a production dissertation as a reverting phenomenon, but as a liberating one. My initial thoughts were to create a production dissertation with as much theoretical writing as a regular dissertation, only pack it with images. Then, I was told that was too ambitious, and to trim it…
Pinning oneself down is the way to open oneself up to the helixical fractality of the innerness-inwardness-interiority of a particular part of the self, aspect, field or notion. I think it is the most critical step in the dissertation process to do so.
Incredible progress occurred in the form of a breakthrough after being stalled completely due to the over-enormity of scale that I had originally intended to pursue—many lives’ work contained therein—now I have focused in on the notion of Daphne and Apollo in interrelationship, the aesthesis, poesis, consciousness and unconsciousness, the mythical alchemical depth psychological content, the Arbor philosophicum embodied in a moon goddess turned nymph turned moon goddess. Seeing Daphne: A Tree Transforms.
So, I decided to spend the next eight months reading as much as I can lay my hands on about Daphne, including taking a trip to Portugal and then the Madeira Islands to commune with some laurel forests, draw, photograph, paint and write. This will form one of the pillars of my dissertation, I am sure, and so I am excited about the prospect. My intention in this research area is to become the foremost expert, globally, on Daphne, so that the conferral of a Ph.D. means more than I paid for it in sacrifices monetarily and personally.
The trip was, nonetheless, not as profitable as I had imagined, for the laurel trees grew on the edges of steep mountainsides and did not offer much room for examination, exploration or communion, lest I fall to my death. Nonetheless, the power of revisiting a myth while underneath the associated tree proved instrumental. And, I did read a lot about Daphne and Apollo…
I think the ultimate reality is that always and evermore does humanity respond and react more powerfully to images, text, and, music in combination, and, even more so to the actuality of an experience of these within the forest, desert, or in Nature. Visuals and field trips would enhance all dissertations.
As an artist myself, I will attempt to weave image and word throughout the dissertation exhibition, for I think both equally important. I see in aesthesis contaminated by poesis, a way to open people up into worlds never considered on such deep levels, and a way to reach more accord through seeing differences and similarities.
My dissertation will also cover color, but, it is in relation to a developing theory of color affectation upon the viewer/participant. In arranging color patterns in stages throughout the exhibition, my intent is to enable those willing to undergo a transformative experience.
I agree with the importance of writing and focusing on it, and its reinscribing process…but, would see it in combination with the importance of thinking, theorizing, dreaming and imagining about myth (and in my particular case and others as well, creating artwork based on it too), while revisioning it. The very process of revisioning needs closer examination, and how one goes about doing so concerning myths proves even more significant. Revisioning philosophy gives certain tremors, as does psychology, but, when one attempts to revision myth, one enters into a new fray, and chances meeting new judges that do not preside over other fields as often.
Dionysus desires the dynamic processes of life, not resolution, and in this way parallels closely the individuation process, which is an ongoing and lifelong growth. Ensouling relationship and wildness within the civilized, in culture, recall Dionysus, yet they also correspond to the psychic process of realizing the Self. Memory works in re-membering the shadow or Dionysus, moving beyond fear and the extraordinary into the realization of cosmic consciousness—Gaia and humanity beating with one heart.
The Cosmic Tree, Axial Tree, World Tree, Life Tree, etc., each within its system, provide insights of profundity, yet, these all pale as imaginative and later intellectual, intuitional, religious and theological pursuits, when compared and contrasted to the affects one feels when engaging in the same intensity underneath a great old tree specimen/entity. I have been saying this all along and will continue to do so: to remove oneself from Nature and the lessons Nature has for us, each individually and singularly, is to block off a section of our human selves that is integrally connected and interconnected with the Universe. The idea of physical versus symbolic trees is necessary and critical to revisit as long as people still see the tree as merely decoration, symbol, metaphor, home furnishing, paper or shelter.
The negative search is one of interiority, and is no search at all, one that begins with an inner look—not a search for meaning, but, rather an exploration that provides the sense of beingness which for any who have found it removes any thought, need or wish for “meaning”—and fully understands in its explorative nature that nothing that arises is wrong or right, and furthermore that all notions of Truth and Beingness herein reside without reservations or challenges because of the amenability to change.
The re-inscribing myth, deconstructing myth, and reconstructing myth processes all can (but do not necessarily have to) lead one to the process that naturally follows them: revisioning myth. AND, I would say that in order to truly revision myth, one must do so not only in writing, but also in pictorial form, via imagery, as well as through sounds (instrumentalizations and/or vocalizations). To simply (as if writing a revised myth well is simple) revision a myth in writing, in words, regardless of how profound and perfect, is to miss the potential to reach a much wider audience, which holds true for imagery or sounds only, or any of them alone; whereas, in combination they form a revisioning of a most powerful sort!
Myths, in addition to the Donigeristic telescopic, visionistic, and microscopic views, also correspondingly develop as deep and far a molecular structure or cosmic feel as each individual imaginer brings to the observance-encounter; myths are as fractal as life.
Yet, it seems always something remains hidden : there is the element of hiddenness that speaks to more than simply the author and their wherewithfromalloutin…
The book is what hides its face, not the author of the book… And, the reader does not control the hiding, the book hides its face from the reader who is unworthy because they only think, they only research, they only approach the book from a philosophical standpoint, they do not see it alchemically, esoterically (and it is that too, but not alone), imagistically, mythologically, musically, psychologically, naturistically, actively, as well as philosophically and logically.
And, one would be right to point out that the voice is as the voice has been and will be, especially in dialogue with another, although it seems that those dialoguing also ought to give the voice the room to manifest as it will, and so at one point it is this voice and at another that voice, consistent in its constantly changingness.
The numinous encounter makes experiencing life a very lived and transformational life. What is key here is what is key in life itself (all of the cosmos), that is: the presence of change is what makes life continue. To inform what informs the changes in our lives is how we humans shape our lives and destinies.
The study of myth does not destroy myth—it is those who study myth who destroy myth either for themselves or others, who then destroy myth, and only those people who do so… mythology is of the ineffable, the numinous, the sacred, and that can never be realized in language… Is comprehension simple or complex?
After my father died in April, I was not too sure about being ready to write or not, but it seems to have returned, the writing inspiration…
As I have undergone the process of taking back my thinking from my own religious consciousness, I noticed that in some situations, nearly every moment is colored by this lens, and that as one becomes more conscious of this “brainwashing,” that one can will oneself to think differently. A religious consciousness also works its way into one’s thinking on deeper levels, such as psychologically, or philosophically. A deeper meaning, reason, truth, cause, etc., it is all but a drive toward reconciliation with what haunts the innerness of much of humanity.
A religious consciousness is something I am trying to escape; I do not seek to replace God or a God-image with myself or my inner Self or some other passion or intense thought, only to remove myself from its tyrannical clutches. Only then can we say something of originality and intensely human that is not an emanation of historical attachments to God, but rather, a respectful emanation of human beingness.
Nature, on all levels, nurtures and nourishes the human soul, spirit, mind and body, as it also performs similar functions for animals and plants. The kingdoms are not removed and isolated one from the other, instead they are vitally interconnected on levels far more basic than what some may consider—at the molecular and sub-atomic level.
Revisiting anyone we have exposure to, especially the ones that resonate most with or most against our views at the time, will inform us about ourselves and allow us to move beyond current stances into something new. What truly illuminates our views and shapes them are our exposures to thought and our discovery and exploration of what has been inputted, and that which is dreamt.
There is a text, a sub-text, an over-text and a beyond-text that operates at all times.
Concentrated dissertation writing (75-pages minimum theoretical application) and creating of artwork (an exhibition centered on global tree mythologies) for two years, which involves much whittling down, reorganizing, rewriting and editing processes, begins soon.
The soul is both a beingness and a becomingness, a tangible thing in itself and a metaphorical transcendence that can only be formed in its “higher” aspects, and “caught sight of” through the most stringent of practices, regardless of targeted desire of the soul’s many aspects.
Interpretation, our hermeneutical heritage, always risks loss of meaning, and one can never return to the original context or cultural manifestations of the original metaphors and symbols, until time machines become reality. Therefore, such studies as those of the entire field of mythologies and religions of the past rely heavily on interpretation and we cannot escape our own interpretational frameworks ever: hermeneutics is…
Mythological discourse ought to be exploring edges, as in Dr. Casey’s edges…
It is through the archetypal energy of poesis intertwined with the energy of aesthesis (combined in a helixical fractal synthesis), that we tap into passion. It is with passion that we learn—truly learn—more than simple facts, but, also are able to tap into the numinous, which is itself a similar synthesis of completely rational and irrational thoughts, feelings, sounds and images mirroring one another in interrelationship.
I took a LOA for a year, to decide on the dissertation topic, and then withdrew because I felt it was way too personal and not universal enough to warrant a Ph.D.
I have decided to resubmit a revised and new concept paper that re-immerses me in more of the global transformative tree process than what only Daphne would allow. Thankfully, I will be able to use some or much of the research conducted on Daphne as well in the Greek/Roman chapter…. This is most likely what has been brewing all along, but, I needed to let go, and completely, to see the trees within the forest and the forests within the leaves on those trees, in order to be ready to begin fresh and anew…
Thus, the new concept paper returns to the first idea, covering a number of world trees from different cultures, according to scholarship, and in revisioning them, while in a self-induced trance state through being an open conduit to poesis for the artwork for the production arises the potential transformative power, including chapter-ending poems for each. This dissertation seeks to effectuate transformational processes in human consciousness through words, music and imagery in concert.
Transformative as applied, deals with the notion that an interrelationship develops between the creator of artwork, who taps into poesis, the archetypal energy of creating, and the viewer of said artwork, who taps into aesthesis, the archetypal energy of hermeneutical appreciation. This interrelationship puts the viewer partially in the same field of creating energy that the creator tapped into in order to create initially. Any time a viewer taps into the energy of aesthesis, which I see as a conduit for poesis, and vice versa, then they experience a potentially transformative moment. The transformation centers on their consciousness changing, and cannot be consciously prevented through intentional willing, unless one has a highly developed will that can discern between the many types of energies present in any given situation and moment. Such a transformation occurs for the creator as well, but for many artists it occurs unconsciously each time they create because they have not tapped into the energy of poesis consciously; an unconscious transformation occurs for viewer too.
Art is not dead and neither is mythology, nor symbol. They have hidden their faces from most, in shame, for the advantages taken and the lack of appreciation that prevails.
Yes, I have waded through over 18 books now for dissertation purposes, reading completely Writing and Difference. The research has restarted with a vengeance…
If we do not engage in our own personal revisioning of loaded words, then we continue to bask in the previous usages of those words and our exposures to them inform our understandings of them. We each need to reexamine our own personal definitions of all loaded words that trigger strong reactions from us.
To be in the presence of Being and Nothing, and to be aware that one is there, is to tremor and to feel as if one is not part of the reality that others partake in and is to be an outsider while at once being an insider to a degree that traders would envy…
To the level one intends or wills it, rituals and ceremonies connect one with the soul.
Sometimes I think of things and then images come to me, and sometimes images come unbidden and then I think about them.
There is one level at which I think color does not remain a phenomenon of light, and that is at the level of the creative imagination or dreaming—where one could say that color lives instead of depending upon sunlight or artificial light to manifest.
If we delve deeply enough into the interiority of metaphor, into the interiority of what some might term Isis-consciousness or moon-consciousness, then it is that the normal way of perceiving sloughs off, for, I would argue, one finds the way into the interiority of metaphor blocked when one tries to use intellect to penetrate that veil. Metaphor originates from within the same place that poesis does, and this is an unconsciousness as consciousness, or a complete turning on ends of consciousness so that one relies on one’s unconsciousness to guide and direct one, not on the consciousness normally attempting to direct. Thus it is that one can say they are directed, and at the same time could also paradoxically be willing from within the directionless direction.
The ego does not vanish when one enters this form of unconsciousness as consciousness, rather, it is sort-of subordinated to the Self. It operates after the Self has its say, and only then can the ego act. Even still, in this state of interiority, perception kicks in when the ego acts, if not shortly before it thinks of acting. That is to say that whenever the ego is involved, perception too enters, but, is not to say that the Self is devoid of perception. For, the Self also perceives, but, from a place of interiority, not from a place of exteriority (as in most cases the ego does operate from exteriority). So that when on a “drum walk” exercise, blindfolded and with eyes closed, and made to be directionless as seated one meditates, while heading to the sound of the drum (thereby once the drum beats begin one relocates their direction in relation to the drum, which in this scenario the drum beat would be the ego and the relation to it the Self and ego in concert), one can actually “see” trees in proximity.
This Experience of seeing the present but unseeable (due to blindfold and closing of eyes) represents the interiority of Isis-consciousness as best I can manufacture. Such “seeing” proves impossible for most for they have not tapped into that aspect of Self and awareness, and, I would argue more applicably, consciousness. It is this type of consciousness that allows one to enter into the interiority of poesis, as close as one can get to it, and to approximate the process of creating. It is a humbling Experience.
I try to write as directed, not as I wish…
All of life is not text or writing or even words. There are those sides of life that are purely images, purely beingness (without images or words), and/or purely music (no words, images or even beingness seem to factor in here), wherein no words do exist that we only try to word into an experience others will understand later. Certainly, myth is created and destroyed, but does it not seem that even the old myths recycle? Perhaps, only mythologies die to those who see them as dead, or those who would see them dead…
Where is the original position, the ensuing identification of the unity of old ideas and the differences of them and then the unity of these two in the new original position?
Do we all only think in collective ways and not share with others our private understandings of words and ideas?
The revised Concept Paper will feature the scholarly coverage of and revisioning of five Mythological World Trees, as well as the art exhibition/production of them.
Each forest is countless manuscripts of poetry, each leaf a poem or phrase, a stanza or book, depending…which is why I have stated that deforestation is desoulation, for it is a removal of the potential of the exact correct energy needed in poetry to soothe the psyche: soul, spirit, heart, body, consciousness and unconsciousness, of humanity.
The creator, the artist, creates an image, song, writing, or movement and that act of creating is a manifestation of the archetypal energy: poesis.
I am only beginning to write about what color does to the psyche… It factors into my dissertation exhibition as well as in the theoretical dissertation thesis that articulates the necessity of art in transformation—which brings color via the chakra system into play because I intend to provide an opportunity for transformation with the exhibition itself and its arrangement as far as colors go.
It seems to me that Europeans have strangled the myth out of mythology in favor of the logos due to their strangling of the earth, in a parallel or perhaps more appropriately a tangential move to that of the movement of some of Islam, much of Christianity, and some of Buddhism, which have strangled the myth out of mythology due to oppressive doctrines that strangle the heart.
Quotes in the spirit of furthering thought are wonderful, but to use them as a basis to suggest that one’s own thinking is therefore valid, without adequately exploring one’s thought does not work.
The attempt to revision each of the world trees as an integral chapter-ending exercise in seeing into and out of the specific imagery and symbols, while meditating upon them and being meditated upon by them, has reinvigorated me to resubmit and has shown me the way into the material that offers globally-heightened awareness to any who would receive the messages therein.
That is what great art does to us, it evolves into its own interrelationship with our souls and spirits so that the image and our interrelationship continually change and whither and grow, and that is what I would have these trees give to those who attend the exhibition or read the publication.
We are still in the throes of this shift, as human consciousness has not evolved past the notion of ‘natural resources,’ and, since humanity cannot ever return to the notion of trees as deities or progenitors of humankind, we must move into newer territory that is being hinted at by environmentalists, environmentalism and ecologists, accompanied by their shadow of violence.
A minute alone in the forest is worth more than months of scholarly study to the Self and Ego!
Revisioning of myths has been like the tides, for all myths, despite attempts to squelch heroic changes. Once static, myth becomes stagnant, for myth naturally ebbs and flows and seeks not the proverbial djed pillar of clarity. The stagnation clears as mythic flotsam returning to tides revisioned.
However, I would also add, that like Romare (in Spring) hints at by speaking of symbols, and I would flaunt, art and myth are integrally interrelated. At any one point, to truly separate them becomes impossible, because art becomes in its origination and function, a psychomythological manifestation of humanity. Thus, the historical construct of both art and myth begin to join—recall Jung writing about how ‘man’ cannot be divorced from history…
One of the concepts I am working more fully currently involves living sculptures that provide nourishment for the eyes and the body by incorporating fruits and herbs in the designs. A tree factors as the central grounding element, and earth, wood and stones (hopefully from location) become the sculptural attestation to aesthesis and poesis.
When in the studio, or when creating outdoors, in the forests, on the beaches, or on mountains, there is a sense of using both the heart and the mind that never leaves me, even when in the throes of losing three days to sculpting and/or painting. I equate creating with poesis, poesis being the primordial-archetypal energy of creating that once was called inspiration of the Muses or Apollo, the actions/words of Ptah, declarations of God, etc. To construct metaphors or to grasp them requires an activity of interrelationship and intercommunication between heart and mind, for one needs to marshal more than thought, more than feeling, more than emotion, more than intuition, more than action, more than imagination: not one, but all of them in concert provide humanity with the capability to grasp metaphor and/or soul.
Sometimes poesis appears and then disappears, with no aesthesis appearing to occupy that same place or space, and sometimes, aesthesis immediately appears after poesis. Neither is dependent upon the other for an appearance. Instead, the Helixical Fractality of Life envisions these archetypes or energies as being in interrelationship with one another. Aesthesis or other archetypal energies may be the necessary cause for one to tap into poesis, however, poesis does not simply flow in the unconscious of humans awaiting the awareness that one is creating.
Art is a necessary and critical function of mythology and mythological studies, as it is also in religion—icons attest to the central role art has played throughout the millennia. This posits a not-well-developed notion, that of the artist as catalyst to the evolution of mythologies themselves. Art has been long known and recognized as the first source of conveying mythologies, including through oral storytelling, and one could argue either as the first event convincingly. This places both art and word in a similar place of significance in the very studies of mythology and religion, and, yet, who spends time researching these most valuable areas?
Hermeneutics, to my mind, involves two main archetypal energies: aesthesis and poesis. So that to understand the archetypal energy of the numinous requires firstly an experience or encounter with it, even if only a written account of someone else’s experience, which is reflected upon using the tools of interpretation or the energy of aesthesis, and in which process one taps into the energy of poesis to create or language that event. Is not art but perception to the viewer?
To attempt to be a conduit, to be a voicepiece for the unconscious, so that whatever needs to come through can and will, is not an easy task.
When you know something from experiential reality, you speak with authority; it is really that simple, and for some, that authority is seen as dogmatic since it is ‘foreign’ to them. Whatever psychological term one wishes to label such experiences with the numinous as being, is, in the end, reflective of one’s exposure to such terms. Labeling an experience cannot equate to that experience, and so, calling the mystical experience a psychopathic state of inflation is to identify with and align oneself with that terminology, to the detriment of the mystic. I find such terminology as ‘psychopathic inflation’ to be ridiculous…
The transformation of human consciousness is not like a diluvial flooding; it requires varying processes of transformation that seem to act like a tide that moves first this way then that, like the ocean, which has countless chaotic waves, but also contains main currents such as the gulf stream that follow predictable and patterning routes, or the winds like the Santa Anna wind. Perhaps we can attribute no specific thinking to this transformation, but rather, ought to see it as a confluence of any number of varying currents that are then forming one larger current that may then continue to deteriorate into others.
How many of the current currents flowing contain myth and how many contain no myth? Is it rather more to the point that even the ideas that claim to be mythless yet seek mythic status? I think that myths work in the currents of human transformation, and if for now, the notion of an absence of myth needs to flow as a current, from within itself will arise the mythicness. Perhaps we ought to try to stir the mythic from within the current of mythiclessness. Perhaps there is no myth within the mythiclessness.
Although I see and can agree with the notion that while we think, we are (according to Derrida and perhaps Giegerich following him), that we exist while thinking, and that thinking can measure up to our existence at a given moment, there still nags the idea that so too while imagining, dreaming, acting, performing, reacting and perceiving, we also are and that these too can measure up to our collective to individual existences at a given moment. There are times and moments when one receives inspiration that has no thought or thinking attached to it at its conference.
In this way, language appears to be a big game, or battle to the death: chess for chess players who know not the number of levels of the board, nor the pieces present or passive, or any moves prior to them, but whom only know what move they make at that instant and perhaps nothing further. The words we choose to use matter very much; the words we as humans use define us to some extent, and speak to our very natures.
All this defending against attacks sounds like so much insecurity to me disguised in the rhetoric of academic rigors, another chess match with no endgame.
Understandings are; misunderstandings are not possible when you really think about it.
But, the label you choose, and the one I choose do not determine where we go, for that route has been traveled many times over before us. The labeling is not the important aspect of our journey, it is where we go with what we have learned and how we can find a suitable syzygy-coniunctio-marriage for all of this jargon within the confines of art and mythology that truly matters and will either move the field of study further or not. A glimpse of the infinite is possible from whatever angle one glances, if one’s vision is open enough. By vision, I mean to say one’s third eye, one’s supraconsciousness, one’s soul fully opened and receptive…not sight alone, so that through whatever senses one employs, one can tap into this type of vision of unendingness.
Life never stops becoming and being, even in its most generative and degenerative states, the energy persists. Artwork never stops becoming, nor is it the object itself that is the source of the art, rather it is the creation, the very act of creating the work that is akin to the alchemical process of becoming psychologically, and as the artist creates, the artist becomes more psychologically, especially when intent and will are engaged. So true, is it for the appreciator of the artwork, and the artwork in interrelationship with its appreciators, both continue becoming and their becomingness is affected by one another. The conjunction of art-participant and art-work defines the interrelationship of the will and intent of both the appreciator and the creator at that particular moment. The creator imbues their artwork with an element of soul to the degree that they create with intent and will, and the participant engages with that energy-trace through their intent and will when appreciating it. This interrelationship can lead to increased or diminished energy attached to the art-work.
If, in each epoch, there is not an indication or sign of that epoch as clearly represented by the anxiety of language transforming universal thought (according to Derrida) then what does the transformation of universal thought rely upon?
Writing challenges one to see alternatives in everything thought and worded.
How is one to successfully extricate words from a text, from the poet’s experiences and life, and arrive at a meaningfully accurate hermeneutics concerning them?
Poetry, it may be argued, has less diverse recognizable movements than other fine art categories such as drawing, painting, sculpture, and music; yet these reflective constellations (isms) within cultures and the world over in many instances surely made their mark on poetry as well. Mostly the reason for such minimal recognition of poetry by the masses relates directly to the uncomfortability of ‘serious’ poetry, all of which aims in some manner to work the inner workings of the psyche—the process of individuation or the moving in a complex—out onto paper.
When an image materializes in my dreams, there is no penetrating that blind origin, no way to reunite myself or anyone’s self with it’s origin. That type of origin, wherefrom unconsciousness emanates dreams and visions, is ultimately unknowable, and certainly its access not precisely the same from person to person, and perhaps even its makeup entirely varies as well, which would account for the multitudinous forms and ways of presenting creative visions in artwork.
If one has no ideas then one has nothing to write. Ideas flow naturally out of reading another’s words, at least for me, and so I think it is true of all writers.
There is no returning to an original position of a word unless its exact lineage and etymology can be ascertained, and although this can certainly be done for many psychological terms and some philosophical terms, it remains untrue for a majority of the terms in use today. Etymologists disagree on the derivation of the word tree for instance…
Ah, how heavy human hubris weighs the other...so that no feather is light enough to see its soul outweighed! We perpetually kill the liver in every Prometheus chained to rocky dogmatism by turning hubris on its head and damning humanity for damning nature. All of our nature we acquire from Nature, for where else does it come but from within and not from without Nature? The soul more closely parallels wild Nature than it does anything manicured, manufactured or synthetic, yet, even these are but secondary or more exponentially than that, forms or manifestations of Nature itself from within itself, albeit extricated and sterilized in many cases.
But, poetry and the act of poesis is open to everyone, so that anyone could create good art, but, since not many are open to discovering what medium really calls them, and only some find it by accident immediately, and even fewer are drawn to their medium fairly young, the ability to create good art escapes most. Yet, the potential still exists for them, and is there if they but were to explore and discover that aspect within that most closely parallels a divine inspired state when it is exercised.
Poesis emanates from a place of no-thingness, from which no one artist can say they know it intimately, for it is unknowable. The inspiration to create can be said to come from or to well from that same place of no-thingness, and the utter paradox of poesis and creativity, including imagination and thought, is that it also comes from a place of every-thingness. Thus, where poesis and intellect come from is, to me, the same exact place of no-thingness and every-thingness in unified symbiosis. Intellect and creativity can both be practiced, and one can draw from past Experiences as one continues doing either activity, but, where the ability to differ, to do one’s own creative thinking and creating comes from is unknowable. It is this unknowableness that dominates humanity into arriving at divinity as an answer to reason for existence, for how else does it make sense that such abilities as to creatively think and to create could be existent in humanity if not conferred from some-where and some-thing?
Learning is traveling…
The adventurous vision must needs include the ability to travel each time artwork encounters one in whatever setting, once the opportunity presents itself. In the act of traveling while viewing artwork, viewer joins artist in their artistscape, even only momentarily before or after deviating from that particular ‘scape for another more personal one. The artistscape for each piece of artwork, I would argue further, shares some universal themes with all other artwork and artistscapes, the utmost of which is poesis, the power and act of creativity/creation itself, but which list may be quite endless depending on the sensitivity of the viewer and the provocation of the particular artwork itself (for whatever reasons that vary temporarily even for the same individual).
Through creativity, we artists, and all of humanity, have the potential to transcend the mundane, the ordinary, and to enter into the realm of the trance, of the vision, of the sacred as Eliade puts it, and in so doing, to enter into the place of myth, to climb and/or hang on the World Tree that breathes and grows myth, to feel the breezes of future myths ruffling our hair, to see the letters of future myths dancing on the boughs, to feel the rumbles of future myths resonating through the Tree, and to experience all of this in regards former and present myths as well...
Without language, of some sort, there is no communication, and without communication there is no human history, and certainly there is no literary document to discuss.
