Dancin' With Myself, oh, oh, oh...
CAMPBELL: "The myth is the public dream and the dream is the private myth. If your private myth, your dream, happens to coincide with that of the society, you are in good accord with your group. If it isn't, you've got an adventure in the dark forest ahead of you."
MOYERS: "So if my private dreams are in accord with the public mythology, I'm more likely to live healthily in that society. But if my private dreams are out of step with the public-"
CAMPBELL: "-you'll be in trouble. If you're forced to live in that system, you'll be a neurotic."
MOYERS: "But aren't many visionaries and even leaders and heroes close to the edge of neuroticism?"
CAMPBELL: "Yes, they are."
MOYERS: "How do you explain that?"
CAMPBELL: "They've moved out of the society that would have protected them, and into the dark forest, into the world of fire, of original experience. Original experience has not been interpreted for you, and so you've got to work out your life for yourself. Either you can take it or you can't. You don't have to go far off the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience- that is the hero's deed."
-Jospeh Campbell and Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth
Sometimes I really doubt that I will make it....
The funny thing is that I happened to have read the above passage precisely while in a dark forest.
==Why were you in a dark forest?
Because my dreams are not in accord with the contemporary myth.
==And what are you seeking there?
Trial by fire, distillation of essence, to feel the essential of life: essential needs, essential experiences, essential emotions.
==But don't you own a Playstation2?
Yes, but that is only when I am in the city... I am off the track when in the city, out of my path... I need dis-trac-tion... I need to slip.
==When did you first careen off the interpreted path?
Hmmm, I was young, very young. I think I was eight. I was in Catholic school at the time. I threw a fit at my First Communion, refused the Sacrament, and told the Father that I had nothing to say to him.
I never finished high school, you know. I hated school, hated it like nothing else. I am almost entirely self-educated. Autodidactic.
I also told myself that I would die rather than work in an office. Literally, if I had no choice, absolutely no choice but to work in an office or starve to death, I would just kill myself. Literally.
But its never like that you know, there's always something you can do. Be a teacher, be a gardner, be a carpenter. Whatever.
==How was it... I mean, what was it like at first?
I just stepped out a little, you know. Just a little and then a little more, and then I caught site of a bee or a wild flower on the wayside and eventually I roamed about in the field, then when I tried to go back, I found that there was no way back home.
It was like when my mother put me in baseball practice and I got put in out-field. So I went out, waaay out and never went back to the game. The game was over and I was over at the briar... my mother hysterical when she came to pick me up... no one knew who she was talking about... the coach eventually had a dim recollection of some introverted shrimp he sent outfield... so they all went looking for me. And there I was, by some creek, some 300 metres away, amidst the trees. That night was a very dark night at my house.
==Like Calvin, huh?
Yes, I laughed when I read that... when he gets put in out-field... deeep out-field and he catches his own team's ball. I laughed.. and I also got teary eyed.
==Happens a lot when you read Calvin and Hobbes.. the "teary eyed", I mean?
Yes. Too much. Calvin is considered the typical INFP personality... he's kind of like the Logotype of the INFPs. The banner-boy, so to speak. I am an INFP... come to think of it, so are many of my friends. I too had an imaginary friend. His name was Bogolyte.
Don't you still have imaginary friends?
Well... sort of. I talk to dead people.
Like Sixth Sense?
Sort of. But I know these are in my head. I have "discussions" with people I have read. I split my personality and part of me roleplays what that person would be like, what he or she would say about their own work, et cetera. The other day I had mezcal with Marie-Louise von Franz. Recently I also had a cognac with Baruch Spinoza.
==Do you think you're crazy?
Sure, but for different reasons. I live in a forest, don't I? This is my way of truly integrating their work. I have to really understand them, integrate them into myself in order to be able to accurately portray what I think they would say, but yeah, it is still me talking.
You know: Communion. Live the myth, the metaphor. I actually pour a glass for them as well.
==But you don't do this with James Hillman?
Of course not, he's still alive. That would be creepy.
==Why?
Dunno, some things just are, you know?
==Do you talk to yourself often?
All the time... here is an interesting story. The other day I passed by a shop that sold some items I have been needing and need often. So I told myself: "See that shop?" and I replied to myself: "Yup". "So now you know where it is" I said, "yup", I replied.
==Isn't that a little extreme?
Well, I once had a psychiatrist tell me I was schizophrenic when I was about 22, but I think he's a quack. I mean, he's a psychiatrist... But you have to think of the situation, I also sometimes go whole weeks without seeing another human, I mean, not even seeing another human. Besides, I make good conversation, and that counts for a lot in my book.
==So... by the above quote are you implying that you think you are a hero?
Oh Hell no. Heh, that's a question that Sebastian would ask.
I have no intention of showing anyone else the way. My way. Besides, I have not "made" it yet, have I. Who knows if I will. God and I both know I am a neurotic.
==You use "God" a lot.
Sure, he is a literary device for me... well, the "He", God. I do not like that term, "God". It implies an image, something knowable. Some idea or manifestion. It implies an old man with a beard and a bad temper, and if he is a man, then he is necessarily imperfect, for he is only one half of a duality. I mean, what does Old Yahweh do with that Phallus of His anyway? Kind of useless, no? I doubt he pees, I doubt he fucks. Naw, I believe in nothing so imperfect as something that could be called "God", Hell, what I believe in cannot be called at all, for to even speak of it is to go waaaay off the track.
==What do you believe in?
Well, like I said, I cannot talk about it, but here goes; in the imperfection of words and ideas. I believe that I am wholly I, yet also Everything. Just like you are not me, but You-
==Actually, I am you.
Oh yeah. Well, take that lady in the computer behind me. She is She, whooly she, not I, but she is also Everything, just like I am Everything, or like that dog is Everything.
I believe that Energy is Consciousness. I believe that bats, plants and fire are conscious in their own way and we lack the imagination to recognize it.
I believe that the Earth, the Universe, "God" (The Tao, Zeus, Kami, whatever) is conscious through us. The Indians knew this thousands of years ago, there is a passage in the Upanishads, after the Creator, the Demiurge, creates the Universe and all life within it, he says to himself:
"I indeed, I am this creation, for I have poured it forth from myself." In that way he became this creation. Verily, he who knows this becomes in this creation a creator.
You see what this implies? This implies that we are all "God", that "God" is us.
Of course, I move through metaphor, I take none of this literally, that would be bad.
But these are just words, and in talking, I have killed my belief. But we have side tracked, haven't we?
==Oh yeah, you were telling me why you do not believe yourself to be a hero, according to the quote you opened this post with.
Yes. I made an oath to myself about a year ago: That I would make nothing, nothing, at all that would be of any use to society. Produce nothing of practical worth. That is how angry I was.
==Has that changed?
Possibly, I don't know yet. Probably. I mean, I have a big trial, a big adventure ahead of me in Montreal. I will need to shift that attitude... that is if I pass this trial, of course.
But I am still not going to write any books. The thought of people reading my words, you know those people causes extreme nasuea in me... there is also the fact that I am a shit writer and can't form a cogent argument for the life of me.
==Oh come on, you really think that?
Sure. I mean... crap, I can't even say it: There is a gulf, an abyss, filled with Rottweilers, between intention and translation (comprehension). That is the fault with words. I am an intuitive, I see, I grasp, I understand... but I cannot put that experience into words. Soemtimes it is creepy, amazing what I see, what I understand, how clear certain "black" aspects of human nature are to me. I read between the lines, adverts tell me of the human condition and I fear, but I cannot share it. I cannot speak of it, it is beyond words to me, it is my mystery. And I certainly cannot form an argument that would hold in this concrete world... but I also feel little need to convince anybody. Such is my faith.
==Wasn't it Joseph Campbell who explained the difference between understanding and knowing?
No. It was James Hillman. He said that to understand is to share, to participate in a mystery, in an event... to have integrated an experience into yourself. But knowing belonged to the natural sciences.
It is the difference between the Academic and the Shaman...
==You mentioned your Faith, what did you mean by that?
I am glad you asked. Just the other day, as a kind of reaction, I told a friend, here in a comment to one of his posts, that faith was the ability to laugh at yourself. And then I went home that night, and I think that I was on the crapper, when it hit me. "Damn", I said to myself, "I hit the nail on the head". That is true faith, when you canlaugh at yourself.
==Is that your definition of faith: the ability to laugh at yourself?
Oh no, no, no. That is a manifestation of true faith, that is faith as "the thing in itself", see? I hate definitions, but here is what I mean by that.
When something becomes a part of yourself, naturally and without complexes or projections, then it just slips into you. It becomes a part of you, and you have no neurosis about making other people affirm what you "believe", because you no longer need affirmation from others. You have no need to convert others. That is the horror of dogma, the horror of a dead faith, it becomes like a lead in your heart, slowly poisoning you. You become a neurotic, you are filled with complexes and projections and you feel compelled to force other people into your beliefs, into your ethics. You tell other people how to behave and how to act and what cannot and must not be done. Rational Rule becomes Evangelical Law and you find that you have to prove what you are doing is right, whereas it should be that the state must prove, when making a law, that something is wrong.
The illness of this world, the true rot, is dead faith, which leads to that most horrifying of symptoms; hyperliteralism, a most terrible disease. Imagine Christians killing eachother, I mean wholesale slaughters back in the days, because Protestants did not like what Catholics said, who did not like what Calvinists said, who did not like what Babtists said, et cetera. It is stupid. Just plain stupid. I mean, these people believe that there literally was a Garden of Eden, that Jesus literally descended to Hell and then was reborn and ascended to his literal Father's side. Imagine the Greeks literally believing their myths? They would think, they woud know that that would be ridiculous!
No, when there is true faith, living faith, there is no need for such silly things. You realize that all is the same thing, just different words, that is all. No dogma, no laws, no compulsion to have yourself sanctioned through others: no neuroses nor mass hysteria (like what happened to the Germans in the 1940's, or the Americans right now). No ethics. Your faith just moves through you, your decisions may come from that, it may affect your actions, but there is no morality about it. So this one here, he calls "IT" Krishna, and this one over there, he calls "IT" Christ... and if their faith is alive, then we can all sit down, have a nice dinner and laugh. And when I try to explain my beliefs to them, and they point out something silly, then I can laugh with them. I can laugh at myself. Much like I do with my friend who owns the cabin I live in. He's happy simply because I am there and being there makes me happy, it heals me. He is a Christian. Perhaps the only real Christian I have personally ever met. He has living faith, and he and I have exquisite conversations. He is perhaps one of the sweetest people I have ever met, he actually really cares about others... for Christ's Sake, he actually practices the words of Christ! The one's that say "turn the other cheek" and the like, the hard ones, you know.
And he loves my philosophy and my beliefs and we talk a lot about our mutual beliefs. It is nice, it is gorgeous.
See? True faith, living faith. When you really believe in something, when you really love something, with conviction that flows through your veins and through your heart, you can laugh at it. Easily, simply. Because it is now a part of you, and baleful is he who cannot laugh at himself.
==Change of topic. So, why so glum today?
Hmmmm... my analyst dumped me.
==What?
Yeah. She burst out into tears today during the session and said that she didn't have the skills, the experience to work with me anymore. She used those words; skills and experience. We talk half in English, half in Spanish. That she said in English.
==She burst into tears, no shit?
Yeah, no shit. It was weird. She said that she was not the best option for me and that she felt that the last couple of sessions she had been playing a farce, lying to me, because she kept up the facade. I mean, we are talking about a sixty-year-old highly trained Jungian analyst, member of the International Association of Analytical Psychologists. It was weird... I ended up telling her that I thought she was undermining her own abilities. Heh, I gave her a little therapy there.
==Why do you think that happened?
Well, I am not going to obsess over it, but when there is a lot of chemistry, which we had, it is because something is recognized in one another. This is true of any relationship. I might have triggered some issues which she herself has yet unresolved. Maybe, but I really don't know.
I do admire her honesty, but its tough, you know. Its tough to lose your analyst, especially when I thought she was the one. But enough, I do not want to talk about that now.
==So, what do you think of love?
Hmmm... I think this interview is over.
.......................Post Script.................
I fucking love The Mars Volta. They are the evolution of Progressive Rock, which, ironically enough, did not progress very much. I in no way imply that Pink Floyd and Tool, et cetera, were not good bands, quite on the contrary, they were impeccable in their attempt to create something new with a hardcore aesthetic vision. But, it did not evolve beyond that. Art, as a living entity, must grow, must evolve.
Well, The Mars Volta is evolved Prog Rock. Check 'em out. Yeah, man.
.
MOYERS: "So if my private dreams are in accord with the public mythology, I'm more likely to live healthily in that society. But if my private dreams are out of step with the public-"
CAMPBELL: "-you'll be in trouble. If you're forced to live in that system, you'll be a neurotic."
MOYERS: "But aren't many visionaries and even leaders and heroes close to the edge of neuroticism?"
CAMPBELL: "Yes, they are."
MOYERS: "How do you explain that?"
CAMPBELL: "They've moved out of the society that would have protected them, and into the dark forest, into the world of fire, of original experience. Original experience has not been interpreted for you, and so you've got to work out your life for yourself. Either you can take it or you can't. You don't have to go far off the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience- that is the hero's deed."
-Jospeh Campbell and Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth
Sometimes I really doubt that I will make it....
The funny thing is that I happened to have read the above passage precisely while in a dark forest.
==Why were you in a dark forest?
Because my dreams are not in accord with the contemporary myth.
==And what are you seeking there?
Trial by fire, distillation of essence, to feel the essential of life: essential needs, essential experiences, essential emotions.
==But don't you own a Playstation2?
Yes, but that is only when I am in the city... I am off the track when in the city, out of my path... I need dis-trac-tion... I need to slip.
==When did you first careen off the interpreted path?
Hmmm, I was young, very young. I think I was eight. I was in Catholic school at the time. I threw a fit at my First Communion, refused the Sacrament, and told the Father that I had nothing to say to him.
I never finished high school, you know. I hated school, hated it like nothing else. I am almost entirely self-educated. Autodidactic.
I also told myself that I would die rather than work in an office. Literally, if I had no choice, absolutely no choice but to work in an office or starve to death, I would just kill myself. Literally.
But its never like that you know, there's always something you can do. Be a teacher, be a gardner, be a carpenter. Whatever.
==How was it... I mean, what was it like at first?
I just stepped out a little, you know. Just a little and then a little more, and then I caught site of a bee or a wild flower on the wayside and eventually I roamed about in the field, then when I tried to go back, I found that there was no way back home.
It was like when my mother put me in baseball practice and I got put in out-field. So I went out, waaay out and never went back to the game. The game was over and I was over at the briar... my mother hysterical when she came to pick me up... no one knew who she was talking about... the coach eventually had a dim recollection of some introverted shrimp he sent outfield... so they all went looking for me. And there I was, by some creek, some 300 metres away, amidst the trees. That night was a very dark night at my house.
==Like Calvin, huh?
Yes, I laughed when I read that... when he gets put in out-field... deeep out-field and he catches his own team's ball. I laughed.. and I also got teary eyed.
==Happens a lot when you read Calvin and Hobbes.. the "teary eyed", I mean?
Yes. Too much. Calvin is considered the typical INFP personality... he's kind of like the Logotype of the INFPs. The banner-boy, so to speak. I am an INFP... come to think of it, so are many of my friends. I too had an imaginary friend. His name was Bogolyte.
Don't you still have imaginary friends?
Well... sort of. I talk to dead people.
Like Sixth Sense?
Sort of. But I know these are in my head. I have "discussions" with people I have read. I split my personality and part of me roleplays what that person would be like, what he or she would say about their own work, et cetera. The other day I had mezcal with Marie-Louise von Franz. Recently I also had a cognac with Baruch Spinoza.
==Do you think you're crazy?
Sure, but for different reasons. I live in a forest, don't I? This is my way of truly integrating their work. I have to really understand them, integrate them into myself in order to be able to accurately portray what I think they would say, but yeah, it is still me talking.
You know: Communion. Live the myth, the metaphor. I actually pour a glass for them as well.
==But you don't do this with James Hillman?
Of course not, he's still alive. That would be creepy.
==Why?
Dunno, some things just are, you know?
==Do you talk to yourself often?
All the time... here is an interesting story. The other day I passed by a shop that sold some items I have been needing and need often. So I told myself: "See that shop?" and I replied to myself: "Yup". "So now you know where it is" I said, "yup", I replied.
==Isn't that a little extreme?
Well, I once had a psychiatrist tell me I was schizophrenic when I was about 22, but I think he's a quack. I mean, he's a psychiatrist... But you have to think of the situation, I also sometimes go whole weeks without seeing another human, I mean, not even seeing another human. Besides, I make good conversation, and that counts for a lot in my book.
==So... by the above quote are you implying that you think you are a hero?
Oh Hell no. Heh, that's a question that Sebastian would ask.
I have no intention of showing anyone else the way. My way. Besides, I have not "made" it yet, have I. Who knows if I will. God and I both know I am a neurotic.
==You use "God" a lot.
Sure, he is a literary device for me... well, the "He", God. I do not like that term, "God". It implies an image, something knowable. Some idea or manifestion. It implies an old man with a beard and a bad temper, and if he is a man, then he is necessarily imperfect, for he is only one half of a duality. I mean, what does Old Yahweh do with that Phallus of His anyway? Kind of useless, no? I doubt he pees, I doubt he fucks. Naw, I believe in nothing so imperfect as something that could be called "God", Hell, what I believe in cannot be called at all, for to even speak of it is to go waaaay off the track.
==What do you believe in?
Well, like I said, I cannot talk about it, but here goes; in the imperfection of words and ideas. I believe that I am wholly I, yet also Everything. Just like you are not me, but You-
==Actually, I am you.
Oh yeah. Well, take that lady in the computer behind me. She is She, whooly she, not I, but she is also Everything, just like I am Everything, or like that dog is Everything.
I believe that Energy is Consciousness. I believe that bats, plants and fire are conscious in their own way and we lack the imagination to recognize it.
I believe that the Earth, the Universe, "God" (The Tao, Zeus, Kami, whatever) is conscious through us. The Indians knew this thousands of years ago, there is a passage in the Upanishads, after the Creator, the Demiurge, creates the Universe and all life within it, he says to himself:
"I indeed, I am this creation, for I have poured it forth from myself." In that way he became this creation. Verily, he who knows this becomes in this creation a creator.
You see what this implies? This implies that we are all "God", that "God" is us.
Of course, I move through metaphor, I take none of this literally, that would be bad.
But these are just words, and in talking, I have killed my belief. But we have side tracked, haven't we?
==Oh yeah, you were telling me why you do not believe yourself to be a hero, according to the quote you opened this post with.
Yes. I made an oath to myself about a year ago: That I would make nothing, nothing, at all that would be of any use to society. Produce nothing of practical worth. That is how angry I was.
==Has that changed?
Possibly, I don't know yet. Probably. I mean, I have a big trial, a big adventure ahead of me in Montreal. I will need to shift that attitude... that is if I pass this trial, of course.
But I am still not going to write any books. The thought of people reading my words, you know those people causes extreme nasuea in me... there is also the fact that I am a shit writer and can't form a cogent argument for the life of me.
==Oh come on, you really think that?
Sure. I mean... crap, I can't even say it: There is a gulf, an abyss, filled with Rottweilers, between intention and translation (comprehension). That is the fault with words. I am an intuitive, I see, I grasp, I understand... but I cannot put that experience into words. Soemtimes it is creepy, amazing what I see, what I understand, how clear certain "black" aspects of human nature are to me. I read between the lines, adverts tell me of the human condition and I fear, but I cannot share it. I cannot speak of it, it is beyond words to me, it is my mystery. And I certainly cannot form an argument that would hold in this concrete world... but I also feel little need to convince anybody. Such is my faith.
==Wasn't it Joseph Campbell who explained the difference between understanding and knowing?
No. It was James Hillman. He said that to understand is to share, to participate in a mystery, in an event... to have integrated an experience into yourself. But knowing belonged to the natural sciences.
It is the difference between the Academic and the Shaman...
==You mentioned your Faith, what did you mean by that?
I am glad you asked. Just the other day, as a kind of reaction, I told a friend, here in a comment to one of his posts, that faith was the ability to laugh at yourself. And then I went home that night, and I think that I was on the crapper, when it hit me. "Damn", I said to myself, "I hit the nail on the head". That is true faith, when you canlaugh at yourself.
==Is that your definition of faith: the ability to laugh at yourself?
Oh no, no, no. That is a manifestation of true faith, that is faith as "the thing in itself", see? I hate definitions, but here is what I mean by that.
When something becomes a part of yourself, naturally and without complexes or projections, then it just slips into you. It becomes a part of you, and you have no neurosis about making other people affirm what you "believe", because you no longer need affirmation from others. You have no need to convert others. That is the horror of dogma, the horror of a dead faith, it becomes like a lead in your heart, slowly poisoning you. You become a neurotic, you are filled with complexes and projections and you feel compelled to force other people into your beliefs, into your ethics. You tell other people how to behave and how to act and what cannot and must not be done. Rational Rule becomes Evangelical Law and you find that you have to prove what you are doing is right, whereas it should be that the state must prove, when making a law, that something is wrong.
The illness of this world, the true rot, is dead faith, which leads to that most horrifying of symptoms; hyperliteralism, a most terrible disease. Imagine Christians killing eachother, I mean wholesale slaughters back in the days, because Protestants did not like what Catholics said, who did not like what Calvinists said, who did not like what Babtists said, et cetera. It is stupid. Just plain stupid. I mean, these people believe that there literally was a Garden of Eden, that Jesus literally descended to Hell and then was reborn and ascended to his literal Father's side. Imagine the Greeks literally believing their myths? They would think, they woud know that that would be ridiculous!
No, when there is true faith, living faith, there is no need for such silly things. You realize that all is the same thing, just different words, that is all. No dogma, no laws, no compulsion to have yourself sanctioned through others: no neuroses nor mass hysteria (like what happened to the Germans in the 1940's, or the Americans right now). No ethics. Your faith just moves through you, your decisions may come from that, it may affect your actions, but there is no morality about it. So this one here, he calls "IT" Krishna, and this one over there, he calls "IT" Christ... and if their faith is alive, then we can all sit down, have a nice dinner and laugh. And when I try to explain my beliefs to them, and they point out something silly, then I can laugh with them. I can laugh at myself. Much like I do with my friend who owns the cabin I live in. He's happy simply because I am there and being there makes me happy, it heals me. He is a Christian. Perhaps the only real Christian I have personally ever met. He has living faith, and he and I have exquisite conversations. He is perhaps one of the sweetest people I have ever met, he actually really cares about others... for Christ's Sake, he actually practices the words of Christ! The one's that say "turn the other cheek" and the like, the hard ones, you know.
And he loves my philosophy and my beliefs and we talk a lot about our mutual beliefs. It is nice, it is gorgeous.
See? True faith, living faith. When you really believe in something, when you really love something, with conviction that flows through your veins and through your heart, you can laugh at it. Easily, simply. Because it is now a part of you, and baleful is he who cannot laugh at himself.
==Change of topic. So, why so glum today?
Hmmmm... my analyst dumped me.
==What?
Yeah. She burst out into tears today during the session and said that she didn't have the skills, the experience to work with me anymore. She used those words; skills and experience. We talk half in English, half in Spanish. That she said in English.
==She burst into tears, no shit?
Yeah, no shit. It was weird. She said that she was not the best option for me and that she felt that the last couple of sessions she had been playing a farce, lying to me, because she kept up the facade. I mean, we are talking about a sixty-year-old highly trained Jungian analyst, member of the International Association of Analytical Psychologists. It was weird... I ended up telling her that I thought she was undermining her own abilities. Heh, I gave her a little therapy there.
==Why do you think that happened?
Well, I am not going to obsess over it, but when there is a lot of chemistry, which we had, it is because something is recognized in one another. This is true of any relationship. I might have triggered some issues which she herself has yet unresolved. Maybe, but I really don't know.
I do admire her honesty, but its tough, you know. Its tough to lose your analyst, especially when I thought she was the one. But enough, I do not want to talk about that now.
==So, what do you think of love?
Hmmm... I think this interview is over.
.......................Post Script.................
I fucking love The Mars Volta. They are the evolution of Progressive Rock, which, ironically enough, did not progress very much. I in no way imply that Pink Floyd and Tool, et cetera, were not good bands, quite on the contrary, they were impeccable in their attempt to create something new with a hardcore aesthetic vision. But, it did not evolve beyond that. Art, as a living entity, must grow, must evolve.
Well, The Mars Volta is evolved Prog Rock. Check 'em out. Yeah, man.
.