It’s another year, and a new chance to refresh our origins—rather than the present cultural activity of driving them into the ground. When does real life begin? As the old joke goes, when you ask a priest, a minister and a rabbi, the first says, “At conception.” The second, “At birth.” The rabbi, though, in his wisdom says, “When the kids go off to college and the dog dies.”
Not that I think life is better without a dog. In fact, my real life did begin with a dog: “Happy (from My Life with Dogs)”. Still, you get the general idea.
Our present cultural life is past its due date, a mass of assumptions stumbling along like a zombie, arms outstretched, blind. We have to go back to origins to renew our world, or else suffer, as Freud continually said, “the return of the repressed.” If we don’t know what was repressed and what can be made conscious again, the unconscious will take revenge. As we see in the revolt of the earth now, both in weather and health disasters.
David Selzer’s “The Mold Cape” looks at one significant wrong turn in the way we organize our cultural life. Those poets. They’re always so onto things before the rest of us. See Mark Robinson’s “For the Cutthroat Trout,” as well as “Caw,” by Marissa Bell Toffoli for proof.
Brian Griffith, bless him, has much to say about “Golden Ages and Paradise Myths.” And Tim J. Myers looks at our true origins in story: “Making the Heart Bigger.”
My favorite piece this issue, though, is “Ballet,” by Bruce E.R. Thompson, a meditation on the misinterpretation of origins, and the loss of joy until wider truths are discovered. Or rediscovered.
Speaking of discoveries, this last year I was part, again, of the World-Ecology Research Network Conference, where there were many to be had. The theme was “Post Imperialism,” and a lot of lively probing went on of true origins, cultural dead ends, and misinterpretations of history that have given rise to so much unnecessary suffering. My own talk was “Visionary Fiction and the End of the Hero.” You can see it here. Many thanks to the World-Ecology Research Network, a loose association of academics and artists looking for ways to move forward on better paths. Great work they do. Check them out.
And lastly, congratulations to long time EAP contributor Tamra Lucid on the publication of her memoir, “Making the Ordinary: My Seven Years in Occult Los Angeles with Manly Palmer Hall.” My particular favorite excerpt from the book, the chapter about Marie Hall, is here. Any creative looks at origins, no matter how apparently irrational, presently needed, and Marie Hall was, as Tamra points out, ahead of her time. She may have confused inner and outer worlds, but we may need a bit more of that before we’re done. Let me put it this way: Logical positivism is a dead end. Anyone up for something more?
Meanwhile, hoping your year is safe, healthy, relatively sane, and endlessly creative.
Welcome back.