Wednesday, August 27, 2003

FOUR NEW SCISSOR DANCES        Click thumbnail to see larger image. 8:36:21 PM    comment []

Grendel's Laundry List: Additional Reading for Wednesday, August 27 Creative Tension: Social Order vs. Heart This business of creativity was greatly illuminated for me by a letter that Schiller wrote to a young poet who was having writer's block. Schiller said to him, "Your problem is that you bring the critical factor down, before you have allowed the lyric to make its statement." Now, every creative act is going to be unprepared for, and consequently it is going to break rules. Any person in any of the arts must learn how to deal with this problem of knowing how a thing ought to be, and how it turns out as you bring it forth. This personal creative act is related to the realm of myth, the realm of the muses, because myth is the homeland of the inspiration of the arts. The muses are the children of the goddess of memory, which is not the memory from up there, from the head; it is the memory from down here, from the heart. It is the memory of the organic laws of human existence that sends forth your inspirations. One can help oneself to know something about these laws by studying myths, particularly comparative mythologies. Each mythological system develops in a way that is different from that of another. By comparing the ways, one can see what archetypal form is being applied to this, that, or another mode of what might be called "life-prejudices," that is, what one thinks life ought to be, as the prejudices begin to take over and shape things. I have become increasingly aware of the fact that there are two entirely different types of mythologies in the world. There are mythologies that emphasize, with more or less force, the sociological situation to which the myth is to be applied. These are socially based mythologies, and they insist on the laws of that social order as being the laws. We find this kind of mythology in the Bible. I imagine two thirds of the Old Testament is the statement of rules. Moses goes into the tent of the meeting and Yahweh gives him a set of rules, and then he goes the next day and there is another set, and this goes on and on and on. If you are going to live according to the rules, not of nature but of society, you have to have them written out for you. And again, throughout the Book of Kings, the kings are always making sacrifices on the mountaintops, but the text says that Yahweh did not approve of one or the other king because he neglected some set of rules. What was the nature of the mountaintops? It was the worship of the goddess Nature, that is what it was! So then, when you are studying mythology to find what the rules of nature are, avoid the Bible. The nature rules live in the heart. The society rules and gods are always "out there." But the source of the lyric is in here, in the heart. And that is the sense of the inward-turned meditation. There is where the god is that is dictating to you. There is where the muses live, in your own heart, not out there in some book. The classic example of this mythology is the Dionysian system...The socially oriented people, the church leaders, political leaders, and so forth, always get nervous when Dionysus gets going. The descriptions of the Dionysian movement that we get from the Greeks and the Romans are from the point of view of people who do not like Dionysus. You have the case of Pentheus, the Man of Sorrows, who is torn apart. Well, Pentheus is exactly Christ being torn apart. He is the one that comes out of love and says, "Yes, of course you are torn apart. Your individual will and your individual enclosure in yourself is broken, and all the rules are gone." Joseph Campbell, The Mythic Dimension: Selected Essays 1959-1987 Our thanks to Brother Merle for this quote. 6:38:53 PM    comment []

PoD 42: The Memory Hospital or The Home for Wayward Muses 2:03:14 AM    comment []

I HAD A DREAM   rather turbulent, and quite vivid, albeit hard to recall in a coherent way.  Bright fragments, like motes tumbling through the crack of sunlight between drawn curtains.    Some companions and I were driving a big old Buick or something like over a low brick causeway across a large muddy lake.  Old men in flat bottom boats were running trotlines alongside the causeway.  For no particular reason we parked on the causeway and joined in on the harvest.  When we pulled the lines up out of the water what we found on the hooks were not fish, but catfish men, sort of catfish golems, whose limbs were still forming as we pulled them unresisting onto the dock.  There were old clothes in the trunk of the car which we matched to their frames as best we could--they ranged in size from about two and a half to six and a half feet.  Then we would send them toddling or shambling on their way.   The last bit of dream--different dream?--I was walking on a trail of dirt (sprinkled on the ground) from my mother's grave, wearing the black cowboy boots I wore at my mother's funeral.  That's just a tumbling mote, tho’.     1:30:16 AM    comment []

GUEST POET: Heather Matthew:  A woman's tale 12:39:59 AM    comment []

Grendel's Laundry List:  Readings for Wednesday August 27                                                             “That God has managed to survive the inanities of the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence.” Ben Hecht   “The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual.”   “Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the bootmaker.”   “Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it. Bakunin, God and the State   “In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I am thankful that I am not a Republican. H. L. Mencken   “Sin, by definition, is a defect in the quality of an act, a deliberate failure to perform a natural act perfectly.”   Walter Kerr   “It is a sin to eat inferior ice cream.” Eric Gill   "Remember, you can't shave Shroedinger's cat with Occam's razor." Rick Barber   “Logic, like whisky, loses its beneficial effect if taken in large quantities.” Lord Dunsany   “All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are.  And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song—but in this dance or in this song are fulfilled the most ancient rites of conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.”   “If the poet joins this never completed struggle to extend to the hands of each and all his part of this undertaking, his effort and his tenderness to the daily work of all people, then the poet must take part, the poet will take part, in the sweat, in the bread, in the wine, in the whole dream of humanity.” Pablo Neruda   “In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid cities.” Arthur Rimbaud     12:02:55 AM    comment []