Posts Tagged ‘imagination’
Myths and Madness
Posted in My Notes, novel, philosophical, political, spiritual, writing, tagged dreams, fiction, imagination, Jung, meaning, mythology, personal, visions on November 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Human cultures the world over traditionally revolve around a defining myth. Myths are stories explaining the nature of being, and they change as society evolves, because what does not change to serve the times cannot be true, so myths that do not evolve inevitably die.
In the west we have lost our ability to mythologise. Also, with the decline in religious observance we are losing touch with that canon of mythology recorded in the old and the new testaments of the Christian tradition. This is a sophisticated system, though rendered opaque by the corruptions of piousness, demagoguery, and our enslavement to guilt. So the myth dies and nothing rises to take its place, leaving only an oppressive void in the western soul.
We might argue that, since we live in an age of reason, there is no need for stories to comfort us, that science explains everything we need to know. Science has, after all, vastly improved our material lives but it hasn’t made us any happier, or any less inclined to cruelty and war. True, there are still some myths kicking about, but they have shrunk, become fractured, taken shelter in a million “New Age” ideas, as people cluster around any fragment that gives warmth.
It was Carl Jung who said:
To the intellect, mythologising is futile speculation. To the emotions, however, it is a healing and valid activity; it gives existence a certain glamour which we would not like to do without. Nor is there any reason why we should.
(Memories, Dreams, Reflections)
Myths are not histories to be proven. In trying to prove the historical provenance of myths, we miss the point and rob them of their power. We do not have to believe in them, but there is something in the instinct that requires we maintain at least some degree of supernatural observance.
Nor do we invent myths. They are not fictions created merely for our entertainment or to frighten our children into obedience. They take shape by a process of cooperation between the imagination and the unconscious realms. Beyond waking awareness, the mind is an unknown country. It is unconscious, and only some of what is unconscious is personal. The rest is shared. It is a sea of psychical energies from which common patterns arise.
So, the myths take shape, and it falls to us to birth them into reality. In the past we have called these patterns Gods, and in more recent secular language, Archetypes. They have an autonomous nature, are rich in both personal and worldly meaning and they seek expression through us, for there is something special about us they do not themselves possess, this being the fact of our existence in a realm defined by limitation, number one of which is our mortality which lends a sharp and urgent focus to our thoughts. And it is this, our exquisitely fragile jewel of being, which causes the Archetypes or the Gods to seek relationship with the world, through us.
But the thing about the Gods is they will have at the world, whether we prepare the way or not, and I speak of Gods here in the classical sense, where they manifest as a pantheon of sometimes benign, sometimes mischievous, sometimes blood-hungry energies. Preparing the way, we negotiate with them our defining myths through dreams and visions. This contains the Gods within certain parameters, allows them a presence in the world and a useful function, but without the risk of overwhelming us. Our ultimate reward is death of course, but we trust also, a smoother passage through the underworld. However, when the Gods arrive to find no myths prepared, they act out their excesses without restraint, drive us to madness and despair. And what follows then are the hell realms of our own most terrible imaginings.
I recognise now a negotiation with my own daemons has been played out across the pages of my more speculative novels, allowing a personal mythology to evolve and to give shape to a thing that is otherwise unknowable. Thus a myth becomes symbolic, a totem for the ineffable – if you like the best of a bad job – yet which, as Jung said, heals the emotions and, by its seeming validity, grants a certain glamour to existence we would not like to do without.
Such personal myths are unlikely to appeal to anyone else, so I won’t go into mine in any detail, though you’ll find the threads of it coming together in my various stories. These are perhaps best viewed as an entertainment, aimed at a certain resonance in the hearts of others by virtue of their collective archetypal nature. But personal myths are important all the same, at least to the individual intent on saving his own soul in the absence of any other trusted option. To do otherwise, would be to ignore the very human imperative to mythologise, tempting madness, to say nothing of ignoring a crucial part of our reason for being in the first place.
The Mouseman Diaries – part 2
Posted in journal, My Notes, writing, tagged cathing, dreams, imagination, infestation, literature, mice, mouse, nightmares, traps on July 12, 2017| Leave a Comment »
The more literary kind of story has a habit of fluffing its conclusion, of building you up through a series of struggles, pointing to one final decisive conflict, but just as one is hopeful of a whizz-bang ending, it veers off the mark and cuts to the credits without having resolved anything at all. Critics do effusive somersaults over the subtlety of this sort of thing and provide a multitude of their own subjective interpretations based on impenetrable literary theory as espoused by someone you’ve never heard of. As for the rest of us, we can only trust the whole thing was not a deceit, that the author simply didn’t know how to finish things other than by saying it was all a dream, so he trails off instead, fades away like a ghost.
In similar vein I swear I did not dream of mice last week. I saw them, heard them, chased them, tried in vain to trap them. But I’ve not seen one since, nor been disturbed by one in the night. My house is now bristling with traps, baited with all manner of treats – currently pieces of KitKat stuck in tasty splodges of peanut butter. Yum!
Nothing. No bites. No dead mice.
I’ve been round the outside of the house looking for any means of mousy ingress – tiny holes in the corners of walls and where the drains poke out. I have applied cement here, there and everywhere, just to be sure. I know they’ve definitely been around and where they’ve lingered longest because there’s an eye watering smell of ammonia coming from behind the cupboards in the conservatory. For weeks we thought it was a pair of my son’s trainers, and grumbled for them to be stored elsewhere. But the more savvy visitors tell us this pungent signature scent is actually mouse-wee. The cupboards are fitted and it will take a week to dismantle them, remove them, check for ingress, clean up, put back. Understandably I’m resisting the trial, hoping instead the mice have gone and the smell will fade if we keep the windows open.
No firm conclusion, you see? We trail off into the literary never-land. No bang, no snap of the trap and a clear indication of the saga’s end. It goes on until memory fades, hopefully along with the smell, and some other slice of life takes centre stage. So for now the mice have become ghosts to manifest at every creak or sigh in the night, but without actually materialising in tangible reality at all. Only their smell remains.
I hope.
Goodnight all.
Normal people are weird!
Posted in My Notes, writing, tagged artistic leanings, free writing, guided imagination, imagination, introvert, introverted personality, journal, journals, minority group, neuroses, non literal, secrets on June 6, 2013| 8 Comments »
Question: should a writer keep his dialogues with his soul secret, even from those he loves?
Hmm. Cue long rambling answer:
There are people who think imaginatively, people who inhabit an inner world as much as the outer. They are strongly introverted, prone to depression, and neuroses. They’re driven to write, to paint, to sculpt, to play musical instruments, and they lack truly intimate familiars, even among those they would count as loved ones.
Although amply possessed of artistic leanings, these people are not all recognised – even by themselves – as artists, and therefore do not qualify for the Bohemian enclave where their mysterious whims can be indulged in privacy, safe from the prying eyes of incredulous “normal” people. They are in fact fated to live among “normal” people, spend their lives pretending to be “normal” people, doing “normal” things, like holding down regular jobs, getting married and having children.
And I’m one of them.
If you also recognise yourself here, then read on.
Otherwise don’t.
The introverted personality makes up just ten percent of the population, and we all know the difficulties faced by any minority group. We are misunderstood by the extroverted majority of our fellow humans who believe we are quiet in company because we are cowards and lack the necessary confidence in our ideas. We are easily defeated in debate for sure but but to have experienced the inner world is also to have experienced something the “normal” person is unable comprehend, so we tend not to waste our breath expounding upon it, other than through our art. Our most important ideas are related to this inner world and therefore unassailable to criticism from those ignorant of it. The inner world also dictates our priorities, a phenomenon that makes the business of asserting oneself in public tiresome and foolish to us. So we don’t do it.
Of course the introverted thinker is prone to feelings of alienation. We are like castaways in a land where no one speaks our language. It also means our occasional unguarded utterances are easily misconstrued, so we develop a more circumspect approach to conversation than our more more blathermouthed brethren. We are also masters of disguise.
In the normal life my persona is that of a middle aged guy making way, making a living doing normal things, things that have nothing to do with my artistic pretensions. I drive a boring old Vauxhall Astra, wear a shirt and tie to work, collect pocket watches, old books, and I eschew foreign travel, preferring to holiday in the UK. In short, I sound like a boring old fart (forgive me) – to whit I am gifted books that bear the title: “grumpy old git’s guide to life” or variants thereof.
But no one is what they seem.
I also have this computer, you see? I spend a lot of time with it, often late into the night, when my family are asleep (like I’m doing now). Among all the master copies of the stories I have written, and the blog drafts, there’s a special file and it’s encrypted. Creepy, isn’t it?
I mention this in order to test your reaction.
I wager a “normal” person will smirk and assume my secret file hides the pornographic gleanings of the internet’s seedier side – possibly of a darkly perverted nature – because “normal” people are wont to assume the worst in others, especially of the introverted loners of this world, who are always the first casualties when unsavoury aspersions are cast, and girls go missing. If you’re thinking the same, I forgive you, but there is no pornography on my computer. The file contains only text – millions of words of text. It is the sea upon which my stories float.
It contains my personal journal, along with various other writings – free writing, active imagination, my dream journal too – dark, sometimes, yes, and strange, but hardly pornographic.These are the accounts of the inner life I lead. They are the dialogues with my soul. Incomprehensible to others, but entirely innocent. So why lock them up?
Well, in the real world a man might be happily married, but that won’t stop him from experiencing dreams in which he’s having sex with unknown women, or of being romantically pursued by other women – and enjoying it – or that he’s in love with other unknown women. To the unimaginative man, otherwise loyal to his mate, such dream material will be a source of concern – even torment. To the religious zealot it will be morally shameful and worthy of self flagellation. To the unimaginative mate presiding in judgement over them, they might assume they are dreams of wish fulfillment and grounds for divorce.
But this talk of extramarital sin is dull. What else might I have dreamed? That I am a murderer? a sodomite? or worse: a woman! Well, mostly my dreams are less controversial, just your usual surreal strangeness. But those of us who live the imaginative life are obliged to enter into deeper dialog with the denizens of this strangeness. Failure to do so results in troublesome neuroses as these psychical energies bubble up in ways both unexpected and shockingly various.
Conversations with such strange archetypes allow us to make the necessary accommodations with unconscious energies, and we are rewarded for our trouble with pertinent insights into whatever ails us, also a greater sense of wholeness when we begin to see the interconnected nature of the inner and the outer life.
Meanwhile, to the unimaginative thinker, our writings will appear as the ravings of a lunatic, or as literal confessions to unspeakably vile cravings, because the unimaginative person tends to keep to a very narrow definition of “normality”, and fails to grasp the subtle differences between the literal and the non-literal world.
A romantic might write of pining for a lost love, for a warm hand to guide them through the fog of their lives. I’ve done this, and find there is no other cure as effective for a bad case of the black dog, but would a future reader of my private notes be able to tell the difference between a psychical muse and a mortal lover? I am not concerned with posterity here, but the day to day smooth running of the ordinary life I cherish and would not sacrifice on the rocks of misunderstanding for anything.
So to answer my own question, the private notes of the imaginative thinker can be shown to no one, least of all those we love. I think of this in terms of protecting others from the full force of the imaginative world, because not everyone’s equipped to deal with it.
When a writer puts pen to paper and publishes a story, whatever the content, there is always the assurance that it is “only a story” and we might therefore be forgiven much that would otherwise appear dubious. But the imaginative person also knows the story floats upon a sea of other words – an ocean of free writing if you like – a mish mash of outpourings from the unconscious. And the free-est writing is pursued when we’re not worried about it being fished out of the waste bin by a curious lover or progeny, then picked apart with a lexicon that is ill equipped for the task of accurate translation.
I know – we introverted artist types are difficult to live with. Indeed it’s cruel we’re inflicted on the lives of normal people at all. We are uncommunicative and secretive, but we exist, and we must deal with stuff that would scare the pants off others. We do this the best way we can. And sometimes that means in secret.
If you live among normal people, yet keep a private diary, or you like free-writing, you mustn’t be afraid of pushing it into areas you would ordinarily avoid lest your blather be discovered and instantly misconstrued, because then you’re not being true to your inner life. Your life is being distorted by seeing yourself through the lens of someone else’s eyes. Let your free-writing, your personal journalling take you along the roads less travelled, to the core of your self, through the dense forest of your innermost thoughts. Be not ashamed then to discover your most surprising beliefs, nor to indulge in your most self indulgent fancies – it can be profoundly rewarding. But, encrypt it or be damned.
Because normal people are weird.