Fun with Blasphemy - director's cut
By David Buchanan
dmbuchanan@hotmail.com
Two weeks ago I went
camping with a bunch of people. Among them was a fifteen year
old boy called J.D. and a fifty-something Tibetan refugee
named Karma. The boy watched the man and after some time turned
and said, "Dad, that guy Karma is ALWAYS working. And
he's ALWAYS smiling. He's COOL." I think that young man
was right. My friends and I have talked about this and we've
tried to get at Karma's quality in more intellectual terms,
in terms of Buddhism and peace of mind. But its not necessary
to put it in those terms. Its enough just to see that the
man is cool, especially if you're only fifteen years old.
We're here to celebrate the world's first Ph.D. on the Metaphysics
of Quality. We're here to congratulate Anthony's achievement.
He's driven some stakes into the ground. He's marked out some
turf to establish and perpetuate the MOQ in the academic world.
In line with that, I'd like to offers some ideas about how
the MOQ can be perpetuated at the social level. I certainly
can't offer anything definitive and this whole idea might
even violate the moral codes of the MOQ in some way that I
don't yet see. I really don't know. But I want to believe
that the MOQ can be seen as something that is both intellectually
valid and COOL.
There are three reasons for opening with a quote from the
late, great comedian Bill Hicks. One is that Anthony McWatt
is a big fan. (Me too. I think he makes all the other comedians
look cowardly by comparison.) Also, I think the quote strikes
the right note and that its true. The third reason to open
with a Bill Hicks quote is that its funny. Hicks said...
"The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when
you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's
how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down
and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very
brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while.
me people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin
to question: 'Is this real, or is this just a ride?' And other
people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say,
'Hey, don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because this is
just a ride.' ...And we kill those people."
Dr. McWatt sent that quote to the MOQ discussion group back
in April when Bill Hicks' biographer, Kevin Booth, was on
a tour through the UK promoting his book AGENT OF EVOLUTION.
Good title. I'd like to talk about agents of evolution, especially
the kind that used to get killed or locked up for saying certain
things about reality. I'd like to talk about a certain kind
of evolutionary hero.
I'm guessing there were a few Pirsig fans who would've very
much liked to see a film version of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance (ZMM). I have to confess at the start that I'm
still learning about movies and philosophy, so I can only
offer a rough outline. I can only tell you about some ideas
that I ALMOST have in mind, but not quite. I'm still trying
to work it out, so this will be a bit sketchy. I'd be grateful
if you'd think of it as a way to raise some issues and open
a discussion. Also, I won't attempt to defy the distinction
between film and philosophy or convince anyone that ZMM itself
should be turned into a movie. Instead, I'd just like to offer
some thoughts about how film works and then sketch out a few
ideas about what can be done within those parameters. It seems
we can't have a film version of ZMM, but maybe there's room
for a story that a Pirsig fan could love. Those slick Hollywood
movies need strong characters that take some kind of action
to overcome obstacles and all that. But if we have the right
kind of hero, maybe there's room for a story that could amuse
a Buddhist or charm a mystic. I hope to roughly sketch out,
to suggest what that would look like. It'll be the verbal
equivalent of a gestural drawing, if you will. It might not
even make much sense until we're nearly finished. It'll just
be a few lines here, a scribble and a doodle there, but hopefully
a picture will start to emerge.
Let's start with a couple of observations from LILA.
A few pages into chapter 29:
"The theater's
a form of hypnosis. So are movies and TV. When you enter a
movie theater you know that all you're going to see is 24
shadows per second flashed on a screen to give an illusion
of moving people and objects. Yet despite this knowledge you
laugh when the 24 shadows per second tell jokes and cry when
the shadows show actors faking death. You know they are an
illusion yet you enter the illusion and become part of it
and while the illusion is taking place you are not aware that
it is an illusion. This is hypnosis. It is trance. Its also
a form of temporary insanity. But its also a powerful force
for cultural reinforcement and for this reason the culture
promotes movies and censors them for its own benefit."
Near the end of chapter 30:
"Phaedrus saw nothing
wrong with this ritualistic religion as long as the rituals
are seen as merely a static portrayal of DQ, a sign-post which
allows socially pattern-dominated people to see DQ. The problem
has always been that the rituals, the static patterns, are
mistaken for what they merely represent and are allowed to
destroy the DQ they were originally intended to preserve."
I put these quotes side by side because I think they both
get at something important about these social level rituals.
A suspension of disbelief takes place in our movie theaters
and in our churches. They both offer rituals that shape us,
if you will. In both cases we witness the enactment of a myth
and are drawn into it, engaged by it, informed by it. Or so
we should when these rituals are properly preformed. In order
to get at the distinction between these social level rituals
and intellectual quality, let me back up just a bit.
In chapters 19 and 20 of LILA there is a discussion about
the possibility of making Zen and the Art into a movie. It
opens with a scene where Robert Redford, who "really
would like to have the film rights", comes to meet and
negotiate with Phaedrus in his New York City hotel room. Phaedrus
tells the famous actor that he can have the rights to the
book, but maybe that's just because he's star-struck and doesn't
like to haggle. Under his excitement, Phaedrus has a bad feeling
about it. He tells us that he's been warned by several different
people not to allow such a film to be made. Even Redford warned
him not to do it. So what's the problem? As its put at the
end of that discussion, "Films are social media; his
book was largely intellectual. That was the center of the
problem."
And it's not just that film and philosophy are different creatures.
The bad feeling that Phaedrus has is also put in terms of
the hierarchy of values, in terms of the moral codes of the
Metaphysics of Quality (MOQ)...
"Phaedrus still didn't want to commit himself yet. He
would just have to think about it for a while and let things
settle down and then see what he wanted to do. But what he
saw at this point was a social pattern of values, a film,
devouring an intellectual pattern of values, his book. It
would be a lower form of life feeding upon a higher form of
life. As such it would be immoral. And that's exactly how
it felt; immoral." (Near the end of chapter 20)
And if that's not enough, there's also a description of this
central problem in an actual letter from Pirsig to Redford.
It's reprinted in the Guidebook to ZMM. (By Ronald DiSanto
and Thomas Steele)
"Probably my greatest misgiving of all about this film",
he writes, "is that because philosophy is so hard to
film and narrative is so easy to film there will be an almost
overwhelming pressure to subordinate the Chautauqua to the
narrative - chopping it here and there, working it around
here and there, slipping it in here and there into nooks and
crannies of the narrative, hoping that somehow it will squeeze
in. It won't. What will result is a slipshod, superficial
intellectualism that will smell up the whole film with that
slick commercial shallowness for which America and Hollywood
have become so well known." (Pirsig in a letter to Redford.)
I guess we all know how that story ends. No such film has
been made, at least not so far, and I suspect it never will
be. The Chautauqua, the philosophical part of the journey,
works well in the book but that inquiry into values can't
be translated into film very well. Charts and graphs and abstract
concepts just don't move us the way movies or other religious
rituals can. Stories and myths are a different mode of expression,
which is not to say movies have to be unwise or untrue. I
think Pirsig makes this point in chapter 17 of LILA where
he says, "Science supercedes old religious forms, not
because what it says is more true in any absolute sense (whatever
that is), but because what it says is more Dynamic."
Its just that myths and rituals have to be what they are.
They're aimed at the heart rather than the mind, if you will.
Their power and magic operates below the intellect. But what
if we accept this fact and work within the age old parameters
of story telling? Instead of stinking up the whole thing with
a superficial philosophical treatment or a squeezed in Chautauqua,
how about if we take those old religious forms, the myths
and archetypes we've inherited from our evolutionary past
for what they are? I believe this the way to avoid that central
problem. Simply put, the film makers have to work within the
social level. Don't worry. That still gives us plenty to work
with. I'm not suggesting we abandon everything except stories
from the bible. Mythology is much bigger and older than the
bible and, personally, I have a hard time getting passionate
about that kind of Christ anyway. Its not the sort of thing
that's likely to tickle a Pirsig fan or any kind of Buddhist.
I mean, Mel Gibson is no mystic.
By now you might have guessed that Joseph Campbell's name
would be coming up. He said, "My favorite definition
of religion is 'a misinterpretation of mythology'. The misinterpretation
consists precisely in attributing historical references to
symbols which properly are spiritual in their reference."
I think this is what Pirsig was talking about in his complaint
about ritualistic religion. Again, "The problem has always
been that the rituals, the static patterns, are mistaken for
what they merely represent and are allowed to destroy the
DQ they were originally intended to preserve." So if
myths and rituals were originally meant to portray DQ, if
they originally functioned as symbols referring to spiritual
realities and not intellectual or historical truths, then
we should be able to dig up that original meaning. We should
be able to find and resurrect a spiritual hero within that
rich inheritance. Then our hypothetical script writer could
attempt to render the myth in a way that does NOT misinterpret
or destroy the Dynamic Quality it was "originally intended
to preserve". A few pages from the end of Lila, Pirsig
recommends a good way to explore our myths. "Anthropologists
could do a lot with idols. Maybe they already had. He seemed
to remember a book he'd always wanted to read called THE MASKS
OF GOD. You could discover a lot about a culture by what it
said about its idols. The idols would be an objectification
of the culture's innermost values, which were its reality."
I think I may have found our hero, our agent of evolution,
in this recommended book and THE MASKS OF GOD is Joseph Campbell's
most epic work, but let me first say a few things about movies
and his first book, which was his PhD thesis.
Its no secret that Hollywood has already discovered Campbell.
His first book is called THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES and
was first published more than 50 years ago. There he asserts
that the world's myths, despite the many differences in their
details, all depict the same spiritual and psychological journey,
the same hero's journey. Basically, he says the hero can wear
a thousand different cultural costumes, but there's one essential
figure under all those various outfits. He calls it the mono-myth.
Very briefly, the story begins in an ordinary world where
something isn't quite right. Something is slightly off balance.
The call to adventure comes when this slight illness turns
into a crisis. The crisis eventually motivates the hero to
leave his or her world behind and enter some other reality.
The adventure really begins in this other reality when the
hero is confronted by great challenges, offered help along
the way and confronts the bad guys or slays the dragon or
otherwise struggles to set things right. Then he returns home
to the ordinary world, but brings back a boon, some great
treasure. Or maybe he gets the girl. There are actually a
dozen stages in this journey, but describing the three big
one get the point across, I think. It depicts a transforming
experience.
They say George Lucas was among the first to intentionally
use Campbell's heroic model to write his films, beginning
with Star Wars in the late '70s. But that seems a little embarrassing
now and its just the tip of the iceberg anyway. A studio executive
named Christopher Vogler, who has evaluated more than 10,000
screenplays for the major studios, developed an ever-growing
set of internal memos and writing workshop notes based on
Joseph Campbell's work and on his own experience in the business.
Then he worked it up into full-fledged book called THE WRITER'S
JOURNEY: Mythic Structure for Writers. Its a best-seller and
has been translated into five languages. The movies he uses
as examples include everything from CASABLANCA to THE WIZARD
OF OZ, from PRETTY WOMAN to PULP FICTION. He even uses one
on my favorites, QUEST FOR FIRE. The principles work for just
about any kind of story and if Campbell is right, they always
have.
Its probably safe to assume that just about everyone has seen
THE WIZARD OF OZ, so I'll use that as an example. Dorothy,
the heroine of the story, is experiencing some slight trouble
at home when a storm hits and she is transported to a strange
land over the rainbow. There she confronts witches and a wizard,
finds some friends to help her. In the end she finds the courage,
intelligence and heart to make it back home. And she is transformed
by this adventure. She starts out as a girl and comes back
as a woman. She grows. That's what heroes do. They show us
how to get better.
Christopher Vogler's book blew my mind when I first discovered
it. I had already been told by one of George Lucas's partners,
way back in the mid '80s, that Campbell’s first book was essential
reading for any would-be scriptwriter. I was already a pretty
die-hard fan when Campbell's name came up during a discussion
at a film festival about five years ago. I'd foolishly suggested
that somebody ought to write a how-to book based on Campbell's
heroic model. That's when I discovered that somebody already
had. Vogler had written exactly what I needed to read. Even
more than, his professional credentials and the popularity
of the book among writers meant that Hollywood was already
moving in Campbell's direction. I immediately felt more at
home in the world. This discovery had a profound effect on
my dream life, which is not quite as strange or disconnected
as it might first seem. One of Campbell's pithy little sayings
is, "Myths are public dreams and dreams are private myths."
At that same festival, when myths and dreams were getting
a little mixed up in my head, I'd also suggested that it would
be great to see a film with an artist as its hero and asked
if there were any such figures in our mythologies. That's
when I discovered the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. I think
he's our man, our evolutionary hero. I think he's the one
we should resurrect.
This brings us back to THE MASKS OF GOD, the book recommended
at the end of LILA. Actually, its a series of books, a four-volume
set. The first is aptly titled PRIMITIVE MYTHOLOGY and deals
with our oldest stories, of course. The second and third books
cover the East and West. They're called ORIENTAL MYTHOLOGY
and OCCIDENTAL MYTHOLOGY. The reader is given a picture of
the history and evolution of the world's myths as they've
come down to us in these first three volumes. The fourth and
final book in THE MASKS OF GOD series is called CREATIVE MYTHOLOGY.
This one looks at the future of mythology and the artists
who will help to create it. It wouldn't be too much of an
exaggeration to say that Orpheus is pretty much the star of
this whole show, to say that he's the linchpin that holds
all four volumes together. It seems that some version of this
myth can be found in just about every place and time. In MOG
volume 4, page 203, Campbell says there is "an actual,
archaeologically documented, family relationship to be recognized
between the mythic harpists of the Celtic otherworld and those
of the Orphic and Gnostic mysteries." He says, "there
is evidence as well of a generic kinship of the classical
mystery cults not only with the grandiose Egyptian mythic
complex of that dying god Osiris and the Mesopotamian of Tammuz,
but also with those widely distributed primitive myths and
rites" and that the "same idea is expressed mythologically
in the Indian account quoted in ORIENTAL MYTHOLOGY".
Basically, Orpheus is everywhere. That's why he's our hero.
I figure there must be something true about this myth or it
wouldn't be so persistent, so perennial. But there are also
distortions and misinterpretations. As I understand it, the
classic versions that come down to us from the Romans, from
Ovid and Virgil, are actually parodies of the original. They
mock and ridicule Orpheus. Maybe its because Orpheus is a
poet, a musician and a vegetarian and the Romans preferred
more macho heroes. Maybe its because they admired tales of
conquest more than love stories. I don't know. In any case,
I'm pretty well convinced that its meaning and mystery were
lost by the time of the Romans. Fortunately there are so many
versions that we need not rely on them. The following quote
from Campbell gives us a sense of this myth in the pre-Socratic
Greek world, back in the days of the Sophists. I think this
is where we can find a much more suitable version of Orpheus,
although we can also see that things are beginning to go sour.
MOG volume 3, page 185:
Later on, in the period
of Greek urban life, detached from the earlier ground of the
tribal-bound secret men's rites, the so-called 'initiating
priests of Orpheus' revised their spiritual art to the new
spiritual needs. And their modes of presentation now were
divided into a lower, largely ritualistic category, and a
higher, purely spiritual, philosophic one, where the initiators
were indeed, philosophers: first the Pythagoreans, but then
others also; Empedocles and onward to our dear and well-known
Platonic banqueters. In the teachings of Pythagoras the philosophic
quest for the first cause and principle of all things was
carried to a consideration of the problem of the magic of
the Orphic lyre itself, by which the hearts of men are quelled,
purified, and restored to their part in God. His conclusion
was that the (principle) was number, which is audible in music,
and by a principle of resonance touches - and adjusts thereby
- the tuning of the soul. The idea is fundamental to the arts
of both India and the Far East and may go back to the age
of the Pyramids. However, as far as we know, it was Pythagoras
who first rendered it systematically, as a principle by which
art, psychology, philosophy, ritual, mathematics, and even
athletics were to be recognized as aspects of a single science
of harmony."
Just to add a little weight, should mention Peter Kingsley's
book ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY, MYSTERY AND MAGIC, which, like all
of his work, explores the roots of Western philosophy and
spirituality. (He grew up and was educated in England, but
presently lives in the US.) He's working with actual archaeological
evidence. The papyrus he refers to here is known as the Derveni
papyrus which was discovered in 1962. (On page 164-5) He said,...
"In highly vivid and critical terms the author of the
papyrus attacks wandering Orphic priests - the details of
the description show that these priests are indistinguishable
from the ones mocked at by Plato in the Republic - for going
about their business and earning money performing their rituals
without being able to explain either to themselves, or to
anyone else, what they are really doing."
It seems these priests, the ones that don't know what they're
doing, must be the same ones Campbell refers to as belonging
to that "lower, largely ritualistic category". And
it seems to me that here we are talking about the Sophists
discussed in ZMM. And I think they all agree that this period
not only represents the emergence of intellect and historic
time, but also represents the beginning of the end of mysticism
in the West. Religion and spirituality was not only dividing
into two static categories, but this is also where the West
starts to loose touch with Dynamic Quality, if you will. As
I understand it, the meaning of the myth of Orpheus, or rather
one of the more interesting and important meanings of this
myth, gets lost when we view it as just a love story.
In the standard version, Orpheus is dedicated to his music
and has no time for girlfriends until he meets Eurydice. Apparently
she's really something. His love for her is so deep that he's
willing to put his lyre aside long enough to marry her. But
tragically, on their wedding day, she is bitten by a snake
and dies. He can't accept this loss and decides to do what
no mortal had ever done; enter the land of the dead while
still alive and then bring her back. The gods of the underworld
are so impressed that they allow his rescue attempt to go
forward, on one condition, that he not look back. Just before
they reach the entrance back into the world of the living,
he does the one forbidden thing. He looks back and Eurydice
is lost again, this time forever.
Despite his failure to bring her back from the Underworld,
Orpheus is still transformed by the experience. But his transformation
goes deeper than Dorothy's entrance into adulthood. He goes
in as a musician, but comes out a great prophet. He is ripped
apart like a Dionysian sacrificial animal and is decapitated,
but his floating head defies this and continues to sing and
foretell the future. Finally he ascends to heaven and takes
up residence in the constellation Lyra, which includes Vega,
the harp star. Instead of a lover, he gets some kind of immortality,
becomes a god. And I like to think its enough to cross that
terrible threshold and come back again, even if he could not
make that crossing for another. Maybe one of the lessons is
that no one can do it for you, that this is necessarily a
journey we each have to take alone.
But don't forget that our would-be script writer needs to
make sure that this myth is rendered in a way that makes it
something more than just a tragic love story. Their marriage
is JUST ABOUT to take place when he loses her and they are
ALMOST BACK from the underworld when he looses her again,
so I get the distinct impression that she is a symbol for
that which is just out of reach, just beyond our grasp. Even
the music he plays has a mournful, yearning quality to it.
I know next to nothing about music, but I'm told that the
pentatonic scale he uses has a hole in it, so to speak. On
some level we can tell that a tone is missing and it has a
way of engaging us in the same way that a missing beat makes
us want to dance. The use of this scale produces a kind of
music that leaves something out and that this scale is still
widely used to produce a mournful, yearning quality. We can
hear it in the blues, in Celtic folk songs, Indian sitar music
or the high lonesome sound of American bluegrass. Its everywhere.
But our Orpheus was the kind who could be a key figure among
those more philosophical initiating priests and was associated
with the mystery cults, so our story is about spiritual yearning,
not just broken hearts or homesick blues. She's a metaphor
for something aesthetic rather than just emotional or intellectual.
She is that dim apprehension that leads us forward even when
we don't know what we're looking for. She's the feeling we
sometimes get upon waking from a particularly beautiful dream.
She's the feeling of something really amazing or important
slipping away back into that fading dreamworld. She's what
we desire the mysterious beauty we pursue. So I think we all
have the desire to rescue Eurydice and that she's metaphor
for that certain kind of spiritual yearning, the desire for
personal transformation. This is what makes Orpheus our mystical
hero, our agent of evolution. And this is where we can really
start to have some fun with blasphemy.
Pirsig in ZAMM p143:
"In all of the
Oriental religions great value is placed on the Sanskrit doctrine
of Tat tvam asi, "Thou art that," which asserts
that everything you think you are and everything you think
you perceive are undivided. To realize fully this lack of
division is to become enlightened."
From Campbell's THOU ART THAT: Transforming Religious Metaphor:
"Already in the
8th century B.C., in the Chandogya Upanisad, the key word
to such a meditation is announced; TAT TVAM ASI, "Thou
art That", or "You yourself are It!". The final
sense of a religion such as Hinduism or Buddhism is to bring
about in the individual an experience, one way or another,
of his own IDENTITY with that mystery that is the mystery
of all being. ...it is the mystery also of many of our own
Occidental mystics; and many of these have been burned for
having said as much. Westward of Iran, in all three of the
great traditions that have come to us from the Near Eastern
zone, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, such concepts
are unthinkable and sheer heresy. God created the world. Creator
and creature cannot be the same, since, as Aristotle tells
us, A is not-A. Our theology, therefore, begins from the point
of view of waking consciousness and Aristotelian logic; whereas,
on another level of consciousness - and this, the level to
which all religions must finally refer - the ultimate mystery
transcends the laws of dualistic logic, causality and space-time.
Anyone who says, as Jesus is reported to have said (John 10:30),
'I and the Father are One', is declared in our tradition to
have blasphemed. ...We in our tradition do not recognize the
possibility of such an experience of identity with the ground
of one's own being. What we accept, rather, is the achievement
and maintenance of a relationship to a personality conceived
to be our Creator. In other words, ours is a religion of RELATIONSHIP:
a, the creature, RELATED to X, the Creator (aRX). In the Orient,
on the other hand, the appropriate formula would be something
more like the simple equation, a=X."
I don't want to take up much more time so let me try to give
you the big idea here. If we wanted to write a screenplay
for everyone who might be a little sad that ZMM will probably
never be a movie, we'd probably have to do a little mythological
excavation project first. The best way to look for Western
heroes, ones who aren't gunslingers, is to go back to a time
before mysticism was buried and hidden under all our static
patterns. We have to create a hero who knows how to distinguish
between the lower, "largely ritualistic" order of
priests and the more philosophical, spiritual ones. The big
idea here is that its not just the metaphysics of substance
that killed mysticism in the West, our religions have too.
That's why I think our hero will need to say and do some very
blasphemous things, not least of all to proclaim be "one
with the Father", and to assert that our ritualistic
order of priests understand what they're talking about even
less than the ritualistic priests of Plato's day.
Of course there's no reason why our movie has to be set in
pre-Socratic Greece. In fact, I think he's the kind of hero
we very much need in the present - or maybe slightly in the
future. So let's say he plays a guitar instead of a lyre.
Let's say he's a rock star. That's really how my investigation
of Orpheus began. I was truly inspired by the bands I see
in the small venues around Denver. I was also inspired by
a couple of my bohemian friends, who are actually visual artists.
They both lived in such a way that anyone could see they loved
their art above all other things, sometimes to the exclusion
of all other things. But the world of live music is somehow
more suitable for our purposes, and I don't just mean cinematically.
The power that musicians seem to wield is some kind of magic.
I saw Iris DeMent sing
a song called NO TIME TO CRY, which is perhaps the saddest
song in the world, in front of three thousand people. Two
thousand of them cried. And it occurred to me at another show
that the whole aesthetic was kind of mythic. You get that
same sense of ritual when entering the darkened theater, whether
its a movie, a concert or a play. Maybe there's smoke and
fog, the musicians are wearing strangely exaggerated or otherworldy
outfits, and the lighting crew provides them with a theatrical
version of the dharmakaya light so that they all take on a
luminous quality. All this makes it easy for me to imagine
Orpheus as a rock star, as an urban bohemian mystic who has
the power make anyone cry and who thinks blasphemy is good
clean fun. But let's also say that he's NOT just a nihilistic
punk. Let's say that he lives by the CODE OF ART no matter
what instrument or genre we choose for him.
(The following quote from Campbell's MYTHS TO LIVE BY was
accidentally excluded from the original presentation on July
7th, in room #101 of the University of Liverpool's, Faculty
of Arts Building, 12 Abercromby Square.)
"Let me recall at this point Nietzsche's statements regarding
classic and romantic art. He identified two types or orders
of each. There is the romanticism of true power that shatters
contemporary forms to go beyond these to new forms; and there
is, on the other hand, the romanticism that is unable to achieve
form at all, and so smashes and disparages out of resentment.
And with respect to classicism likewise, there is the classicism
that finds an achievement of the recognized forms easy and
can play with them at will, expressing through them its own
creative aims in a rich and vital way; and there is the classicism
that clings to form desperately out of weakness, dry and hard,
authoritarian and cold. The POINT I WOULD MAKE - and which
I believe was also Nietzsche's - is that form is the medium,
the vehicle, through which life becomes manifest in its grand
style, articulate and grandiose, and that the mere shattering
of form is for human as well as for animal life a disaster,
ritual and decorum being the structuring forms of all civilization."
There's no reason why our new Orpheus has to be based on an
American artist. Someone like John Lennon would do quite nicely
for our purposes, so let's keep it local. We're talking about
a work of fiction so we can add whatever traits he may have
lacked in real life, but there's already quite a bit to work
with in his actual biography. I think its worth pointing out
that basically this is how our myths are born. Once in a while
somebody comes along who seems to live out a myth, whose personality
somehow resembles the archetype and they often become a celebrity
for playing that role. As time goes by, writers of fiction
and non-fiction both take certain liberties, things are added
and the legend begins to grow. I think that could happen to
John Lennon. Or maybe it already is happening. On top of everything
else that has already been done to celebrate his life and
work, tonight in New York City there is a special pre-view
performance of LENNON THE MUSICAL.
He was certainly blasphemous enough. You might remember that
he once said, "Christianity will go. It will vanish and
shrink. We're more popular than Jesus". And he sang,
"Christ you know it ain't easy. You know how hard it
can be. The way things are going, they're gonna crucify me."
And there was the reporter who asked him, "What's the
most enjoyable thing for you about this adulation, this almost
godhood on earth that you've achieved?." This is the
sort of thing that started riots in Japan and protests in
Alabama. The Klu Klux Klan threatened the band with physical
harm and burned their records. They were accused of corrupting
the young people. He and the band were practically at war
with the conservative forces in our culture. Sounds pretty
damn Orpheus to me. I think our hypothetical scriptwriter
could definitely work with all that. Maybe we could endow
John with all the best features of the other Beatles. We'll
give him Paul's boyish good looks and charm, George's mystical
tendencies and we'll give him Ringo's, um, incredible good
luck. His senseless death will definitely have to go. That's
too sad even for me. Instead we'll say that Mark Chapman was
a snake who worked for the bad guys and that he shot Yoko
Ono. Or maybe John is shot and killed, but as a direct response
to his blasphemy by his political enemies rather than by a
psychotic fan.
And finally, I think we have to make sure that our new Orpheus
is more a philosopher than a hippy. (Said the hack who hasn't
had a haircut in eight years.) If our new Orpheus is going
to resemble that pre-Socratic version, if he is going to be
the kind of Orpheus that was a central figure among the Pythagoreans
and other philosophical mystics, then he will have to be a
very worthy character, one capable of conducting a Chautauqua
even if he never does so on screen. We're resurrecting this
ancient Orpheus precisely because he didn't just sing love
songs or protest songs. Our hero follows the code of art** and
can create new forms without recklessly destroying the old
ones. We're digging him up because his songs were about the
origins and fate of the cosmos, they were about the genealogy
of the gods. His songs were about the oldest idea known to
man, he sang about the physical and moral order of the universe.
I'd like to hear that song and see that movie. I think it
would help. Because then 15 year old boys could see that kind
of Orpheus and say, "Wow. He's cool".
--------
**
Please notice the reference there to the MOQ's "code of art".
I think this concept gets at what good and bad about the "new
age". It gets at the distinction between the regressive,
reactionary aspects and the evolutionary and creative aspects.
Here's Joseph Campbell, in his MYTHS TO LIVE BY:
"Let me recall at this point Nietzsche's
statements regarding classic and romantic art. He identified two
types or orders of each. There is the romanticism of true power
that shatters contemporary forms to go beyond these to new
forms; and there is, on the other hand, the romanticism that is
unable to achieve form at all, and so smashes and disparages out
of resentment. And with respect to classicism likewise, there is
the classicism that finds an achievement of the recognized forms
easy and can play with them at will, expressing through them its
own creative aims in a rich and vital way; and there is the
classicism that clings to form desperately out of weakness, dry
and hard, authoritarian and cold. The POINT I WOULD MAKE - and
which I believe was also Nietzsche's - is that form is the
medium, the vehicle, through which life becomes manifest in its
grand style, articulate and grandiose, and that the mere
shattering of form is for human as well as for animal life a
disaster, ritual and decorum being the structuring forms of all
civilization."
"One cannot help remarking, however, that
since about the year 1914 there has been evident in our
progressive world an increasing disregard and even disdain for
those ritual forms that once brought forth, and up to now have
sustained, this infinitely rich and fruitfully developing
civilization. There is a ridiculous nature-boy sentimentalism
that with increasing force is taking over. Its beginnings date
back to the 18th century of Rousseau, with its artificial
back-to-nature movements and conceptions of the Noble Savage.
Americans abroad, from the time of Mark Twain onward, have been
notorious exemplars of the ideal, representing as conspicuously
as possible the innocent belief that Europeans and Asians,
living in older, stuffier environments, should be refreshed and
awakened to their own natural innocence by the unadulterated
boorishness of a product of God's Country, our sweet American
soil, and our Bill of Rights. In Germany, between the wars, the
Wandervogel, with their knapsacks and guitars, and the later
Hitler Youth, were representatives of the reactionary trend in
modern life. And now, right here in God's Country itself
(published in 1972) idyllic scenes of barefoot white and black
'Indians' camping on our sidewalks with their tom-toms,
bedrolls, and papooses are promising to turn entire sections of
our cities into fields for anthropological research. For, as in
all societies, so among these, there are distinguishing
costumes, rites of initiation, required beliefs and the rest.
They are here, however, explicitly reactionary and reductive, as
though in the line of biological evolution one were to regress
from the state of the chimpanzee to that of the starfish or even
amoeba. The complexity of social patterning is rejected and
reduced, and with that, life freedom and force have not been
gained but lost."
"The first requirement of any society is that
its adult membership should realize and represent the fact that
it is they who constitute its life and being. And the first
function of the rites of puberty, accordingly, must be to
establish in the individual a system of sentiments that will be
appropriate to the society in which he is to live, and on which
that society itself must depend for its existence. In the modern
Western world, moreover, there is an additional complication;
for we ask of the adult something still more than that he should
accept without personal criticism and judgement the habits and
inherited customs of his local social group. We ask and we are
expecting, rather, that he should develop what Sigmund Freud has
called his 'reality function'; that faculty of the independently
observant, freely thinking individual who can evaluate without
preconceptions the possibilities of his environment and of
himself within it, criticizing and creating, not simply
reproducing inherited patterns of thought and action, but
becoming himself an innovating center, an active, creative
center of the life process. Our ideal for a society, in other
words, is not that it should be a perfectly static organization,
founded in he age of the ancestors and to remain unchanging
through all time. It is rather a process moving toward a
fulfilment of as yet unrealized possibilities; and in this
living process each is to be an initiating yet cooperating
center. We have, consequently, the comparatively complex problem
in educating our young, of training them not simply to assume
uncritically the patterns of the past, but to recognize and
cultivate their own creative possibilities; not to remain on
some proven level of earlier biology and sociology, but to
represent a movement of the species forward."
I'd be happy to discuss this further, but
basically I think this is what the code of art means. I think
that the basic idea is that each of us needs to be "an
innovating center, an active, creative center of the life
process", to be an "agent of evolution", which begins "in your
own heart and hands". And I think Pirsig's critique of the hippy
movement, that it started out as a positive, evolutionary
movement but degenerated into hedonism, that it became opposed
to social and intellectual values and then confused the
biological with the Dynamic, can serve as a warning to the new
agers as well. Its the same problem of regression vs evolution.
And isn't it interesting that Campbell sees that "ridiculous
nature-boy sentimentality" in both the hippies and in Germany's
budding Hitler youth? Anyway, I think this is also the meaning
of Pirsig's complaints about the notion of the "noble savage"
and his idea that we should dust off those old forms and judge
them impartially, that we should be grateful for the job
civilization has done in taming the biological organism. And I
think the big idea here is simply that evolution shouldn't
entail destroying the forms that have come before, it should
build upon them. There is no pre-modern answer to our postmodern
problems, but alienation from our pre-modern self is part of the
problem. That's why we want to re-integrate myth, but not
regress to mythic thinking. That's why we want to get back in
touch with nature, but without abandoning our solar-powered
laptops or our sophisticated permacultural farming techniques.
We want a spirituality that stands up to intellectual scrutiny
so that we can have myth and science at the same time, in a
worldview without drawers and compartments.
David’s
"Clash of the Pragmatists"
paper can also be
found on this website
here and
his "Art & Morality paper" here.
Dave & Ant, July 2005
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