Joseph Campbell and Myth

This weekend I watched the remainder of Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. It took me quite a while to get through this two-disc program, partly because it's hard to find six hours to devote to anything, partly because when I did make time, I found myself frequently pausing and replaying sections so I could write notes. I remember wondering how Campbell could clearly articulate so many thoughts and ideas wordlessly residing inside me. Even the ideas contradictory to my own helped me to understand my own reasoning. He also raised many new concepts, which I want to think and read about further.

Some random paraphrased snippets from the program:

• The influence of a vital person vitalizes.
  
• One should seek the experience of being alive, not seek the meaning of life.
• Consider intention (aesthetic) versus nature (expressive)...the beauty of a spider's web comes out of the spider's nature.
  
• Myths and dreams come from realizations, find expression in symbolic form.
  
• Myths need to change as the world changes. The world is changing too fast for new mythology.
• Art reveals through the object the radiance, speaks to the order in one's own life.
  
• There could be no relationship with that which is absolute other (lots in the program about dualities...male/female, man/god, good/evil, man/nature, love/pain).
  
• Images/symbols of myth are reflections and potentialities of all of us.
• Myth, like poetry, attempts to say what cannot be said with words.
  
• Poetry is a language that has to be penetrated...it opens, doesn't shut you off...it is the precise choosing of words that has implications past the words.
• Your (image of) god is your ultimate barrier to the transcendent experience.
  
• This moment now is the heavenly moment.
  
• One must have a sacred place.
• Myths are basically the same all over the world, in separate cultures and separate time periods...two possibilities for this are diffusion (mythology travels with traditions that travel through cultures) and the human psyche is essentially the same all over the world.
  

As I reread these and my other notes, I realize the effect has been diminished, the meaning blurred. It's like eating just the cherry off the top of a sundae. So if you're curious after this post, read Campbell's work or watch the PBS program, listen to these ideas directly from the source, devour the whole dessert. I ate and am more ravenous for it.

Purpose

A thought that inevitably surfaces when you are a poet is why...that is, why write poetry? With so many people who write poetry and so few who read it, I sometimes wonder why should I add to the surplus of this medium?

Sherry Chandler wrote a post related to this recently and what struck me most was this:

If, like the monks who pray at Gethsemane to restore balance to the world, I choose to spend my life as an obscure poet, nourishing my own human spirit and with luck a few readers’, then who is to say that is not a worthy thing to do, whether or not I leave an individual mark on the world at large.

Of course! Why I never thought of it this way before, I don't know, given my Catholic upbringing and its orders of secluded nuns. Absolutely, the world needs the sisters (and the secular) who live and work within our communities, but as much of a critic as I can be, I also (need to) believe that the world also needs those secluded nuns sending forth their silent prayers.

On a related note, this weekend my Netflix adventure was disc one of Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, the long-ago PBS series where Bill Moyers interviewed Campbell, the now-late legendary thinker and teacher. I'm still digesting their discussion and hope to write more about it, but for now I'll focus on the part related to this post. Campbell suggests the artist's function is the mythologization of her environment. This turns everything upside-down for me, in a very good way. For far too long, I've looked at myth as something of the past, something unchangeable. But here's a directive that I, as an artist, am responsible for creating new myths. And, as Campbell points out, the world is in desperate need of new myths that meet the needs of our contemporary society.

Campbell also likens the poet to the shaman of primitive societies, for both share a unique connection to the universe and act as intermediary between the visible world and its invisible plane.

Now, let me be clear, I'm not suggesting I have shaman-esque capabilities or the sanctity of secluded nuns, but Campbell's message and Sherry's post came at one of those times when I was feeling frustrated with the limitations of a poet, the only real role I've felt "called" to do. I guess I'm saying I take my messages of affirmation any way I can get them.