Monday, September 19, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Onward Through The Fog
Hillman's The Dream and the Underworld: “
Admittedly, the dream-ego and the waking-ego have a special “twin” relationship; they are shadows of each other, as Hades is the brother of Zeus. But the “I” in the dream is no secret stage director (Schopenhauer) who wrote the play he acts in, no self-portrait photographer taking his own snapshot from below, nor are the wants fulfilled in a dream the ego’s wishes. The dream is not “mine,” but the psyche’s, and the dream-ego merely plays one of the roles in the theater, subjected to what the “others” want, subject to the necessities staged by the dream."
A secret stage director would be nice.
There's a point in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow where Slothrop, the protagonist, realizes that, much worse than the paranoia he's been suffering, there is no one watching, that he's alone Out Here.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Two Books—Two Books—Two Books in One!
Stylistically speaking at least. It appears that in tone, Subject to Verification is two books. A warm familiar tone in the first, or memoirish part, and a more contrived and theatrical tone that is a toned-down version of what I did on stage—a distinctly cooler voice.
So what I'm hearing via feedback and my own examination is that I should rewrite the second half but in the tone of the first. Warm, brother/sisterly.
The exciting thing is that part of working out these voices would be in the movie, which is starting to show itself bit by bit.
I want to do this again. Road Trip!
So what I'm hearing via feedback and my own examination is that I should rewrite the second half but in the tone of the first. Warm, brother/sisterly.
The exciting thing is that part of working out these voices would be in the movie, which is starting to show itself bit by bit.
I want to do this again. Road Trip!
Friday, September 9, 2011
It Must Be Made
Hillman's The Dream and the Underworld: “The experience of the underworld is overwhelming and must be made. This style of the underworld experience is overwhelming, it comes as a violation, dragging one out of life and into the Kingdom that the Orphic hymn to Pluto describes as 'void of day.'”
I think we just don't get it. Even if we make a study of it—death, our own—with a strong intention to prepare. As Heraclitus said in the previous post. It's not what we expect, because almost everything we do here (in life), by inclination, training, and genetics, is not done there (in death or dreams). It's a different system, a different sense of I...
I had a dream last night. These days I don't remember very much of them. But I do remember this: that I didn't really have a grasp on who or where or what I was. The question didn't arise; I was just wandering around anxious, looking for something I'll never find. I never, in the dream, asked myself: am I dreaming? Why are things so foggy? I didn't have a full rich sense of self that I do during the day. I was just a shadow. And I didn't have the notion that I was just a shadow. I didn't know what was going on.
I think it's because as all the ancients said, over and over: the soul is (mostly) asleep during life. And what we think and feel with during our lives is not available in the dreams or the afterlife/underworld. It's not just 'void of day' - it's void of everything we normally think of as us and ours. We can do something about this, one hopes. It's all about building a soul, building someone who is still there in the place that is 'void of day.'
I think we just don't get it. Even if we make a study of it—death, our own—with a strong intention to prepare. As Heraclitus said in the previous post. It's not what we expect, because almost everything we do here (in life), by inclination, training, and genetics, is not done there (in death or dreams). It's a different system, a different sense of I...
I had a dream last night. These days I don't remember very much of them. But I do remember this: that I didn't really have a grasp on who or where or what I was. The question didn't arise; I was just wandering around anxious, looking for something I'll never find. I never, in the dream, asked myself: am I dreaming? Why are things so foggy? I didn't have a full rich sense of self that I do during the day. I was just a shadow. And I didn't have the notion that I was just a shadow. I didn't know what was going on.
I think it's because as all the ancients said, over and over: the soul is (mostly) asleep during life. And what we think and feel with during our lives is not available in the dreams or the afterlife/underworld. It's not just 'void of day' - it's void of everything we normally think of as us and ours. We can do something about this, one hopes. It's all about building a soul, building someone who is still there in the place that is 'void of day.'
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
What's This Movie Look Like?
Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld: “What one knows about life may not be relevant for what is below life. What one knows and has done in life may be as irrelevant to the underworld as clothes that adjust us to life and the flesh and bones that the clothes cover. For in the underworld, all is stripped away, and life is upside down. we are further then the expectations based on life experience, and the wisdom derived from it. Again, we can follow Heraclitus: ‘when men die there awaits them what they neither expect nor even imagine.’”
I'm making a movie out of my book and previous performances.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Missed Our Connection
Hillman's The Dream and the Underworld:
"..the pervading, though masked, depression in our civilization is partly a response of the soul to its lost underworld. (this work) nonetheless performs the chief function of religion: connecting the individual by means of practical ritual with the realm of death.”
_________________________________
Religions are plainly not doing their job if this is in any way true. What Hillman is saying by implication, and what I’m saying explicitly, is that, for whatever reason, we’ve lost our relation to the realm of death, the realm of the dead. We've lost those who once lived and are now on the other side, (seemingly) far away. And that this loss is the cause of depression—and insanity, and Koyaanisqatsi—that we now live in.
The name “Hades” was rarely spoken in the olden days; the Lord of Death was one of those whose name must not be uttered. Instead a euphemism was often employed: “Pluto”. Pluto is the god of riches, wealth. Like in “plutocrat.” The Underworld, the land of the dead is a place of riches and wealth, that is information, knowledge, ways to do things; the shamans of old knew this and went there to do their tasks.
Why has this realm been walled-off, No Entrance, No Tresspassing? Theories abound.
Qui bono? Who benefits from it? Are we talking about benefits that redound to the human realm, by which we can only mean people who are incredibly short-sighted, or, are we in William S. Burrough’s “Nova Mob” world, where non-human criminal gangs come to Earth, use it up, and then flee the old “shithouse” just before it collapses onto itself? Or are we just stupid? Too stupid to survive? I do not know the answers to these questions.
"..the pervading, though masked, depression in our civilization is partly a response of the soul to its lost underworld. (this work) nonetheless performs the chief function of religion: connecting the individual by means of practical ritual with the realm of death.”
Religions are plainly not doing their job if this is in any way true. What Hillman is saying by implication, and what I’m saying explicitly, is that, for whatever reason, we’ve lost our relation to the realm of death, the realm of the dead. We've lost those who once lived and are now on the other side, (seemingly) far away. And that this loss is the cause of depression—and insanity, and Koyaanisqatsi—that we now live in.
The name “Hades” was rarely spoken in the olden days; the Lord of Death was one of those whose name must not be uttered. Instead a euphemism was often employed: “Pluto”. Pluto is the god of riches, wealth. Like in “plutocrat.” The Underworld, the land of the dead is a place of riches and wealth, that is information, knowledge, ways to do things; the shamans of old knew this and went there to do their tasks.
Why has this realm been walled-off, No Entrance, No Tresspassing? Theories abound.
Qui bono? Who benefits from it? Are we talking about benefits that redound to the human realm, by which we can only mean people who are incredibly short-sighted, or, are we in William S. Burrough’s “Nova Mob” world, where non-human criminal gangs come to Earth, use it up, and then flee the old “shithouse” just before it collapses onto itself? Or are we just stupid? Too stupid to survive? I do not know the answers to these questions.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
LOST
Signed up to do a workshop and I find I don't want to do it. I should be working on a movie instead. Will have to report in on this.
Might have to go back on the road, to work on it. Amazing. Odd requirements for the job. Must have own tools, those thing I can understand. Some of the others, not so much.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Burrow
home from reading and introducing the book at the Ferrin Gallery and the WordXWordfestival.com event in Pittsfield. Hope to return next year with something substantial developed from the book.
McCarren Air Port was more bardo-like than ever today. Long drive up the hill, backed-up traffic on 80, now home. Of course I barely recognize the place. I ate some homemade sauerkraut. I am not an enemy of the people. Goodnight.
McCarren Air Port was more bardo-like than ever today. Long drive up the hill, backed-up traffic on 80, now home. Of course I barely recognize the place. I ate some homemade sauerkraut. I am not an enemy of the people. Goodnight.
At Home In The Dark
Hillman: “So, to reach the fully subjective, a dream-worker must reach into the last pocket of objectivity, the dream-ego, its behaviors and its feelings, keeping them within the image. The job becomes one of subjecting the ego to the dream, dissolving it in the dream, by showing that everything done and felt and said by the ego reflects its situation in the image, i.e., that this ego is wholly imaginal. Not an easy job, for the ego is archetypically an upperworld phenomenon, strong in its heroic attitudes until, by learning how to dream, it becomes an imaginal ego.
An imaginal ego is at home in the dark, moving among images as one of them. Often there are inklings of this ego in those dreams where we are quite comfortable with absurdities and horrors that would shock the daylight out of waking consciousness."
The ego is archetypically an upperworld phenomenon. When we tell someone over coffee or in an email about a dream we had last night, we don't put the we or the I in quotation marks. We say "I" did this, or this happened to "me" without ever examining whether or not the "I" that seemed to dream is the same as the I who's drinking coffee and ruminating. Since that upperworld I - as has been said a million times - is not the stable and almost-concrete entity we're built to assume, it's clear that it isn't the same as the dreaming I. But that's a simplicity that masks a genuine issue: *Who is that dreamer?"* We lead ourselves to think it's the same person we are in the morning, out of habit or ease, who knows. But it is - we are - different. And Hillman is saying that instead of dragging that consciousness and its dream into the daylight, "we" should dive down into that underworld and look around.
"I" once had a dream where a teacher was in my house, second floor. He starts down the stairs. I follow. He turns and says, "Don't get too close to me." And yet I follow, into what PK Dick called the Tombworld. Cold, unmoving, grey, static, entropy done. And then I lost him.
An imaginal ego is at home in the dark, moving among images as one of them. Often there are inklings of this ego in those dreams where we are quite comfortable with absurdities and horrors that would shock the daylight out of waking consciousness."
The ego is archetypically an upperworld phenomenon. When we tell someone over coffee or in an email about a dream we had last night, we don't put the we or the I in quotation marks. We say "I" did this, or this happened to "me" without ever examining whether or not the "I" that seemed to dream is the same as the I who's drinking coffee and ruminating. Since that upperworld I - as has been said a million times - is not the stable and almost-concrete entity we're built to assume, it's clear that it isn't the same as the dreaming I. But that's a simplicity that masks a genuine issue: *Who is that dreamer?"* We lead ourselves to think it's the same person we are in the morning, out of habit or ease, who knows. But it is - we are - different. And Hillman is saying that instead of dragging that consciousness and its dream into the daylight, "we" should dive down into that underworld and look around.
"I" once had a dream where a teacher was in my house, second floor. He starts down the stairs. I follow. He turns and says, "Don't get too close to me." And yet I follow, into what PK Dick called the Tombworld. Cold, unmoving, grey, static, entropy done. And then I lost him.
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