SAY THAT AGAIN?
“The trouble with Buddhism?–in order to free oneself of all desire, one has to desire to do so.”
Henry Miller, “Henry Miller on Writing,” 1964
MAY 30, 2011. Here is a slice attributed to Joseph Campbell, celebrated author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces:
“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”
Maybe he penned that on a slow Saturday afternoon. Maybe he had indigestion. Maybe he was sipping a few rum and Cokes.
It’s hard for me to think of a quote I’d disagree with more.
Hitch your imagination up to a few horses, and let’s take a ride into the heart of Nature, where we’ll do the Great Merge, and then, like Sampson, we’ll all have suitable haircuts and wear badges as citizens of the great Match.com.
No thanks. I’ll fold that hand.
The deck is being dealt from the bottom.
Give me the joker, the wild card—imagination—and you can keep on playing strip poker.
I’ll wait and watch everybody go broke.
Whatever else you want to say about it, Nature, universe, is one work of art among many, among a potential infinity of works of art.
The others are supplied by imagination.
The ancient Tibetans had it right. Become the tree if you want to. Go all the way inside the inside. Merge with the rhythms, the sap, the energy, the space and time of it, the mind and soul of it…go as deep as deep is…love it with all your might if you want to…and THEN, when you’ve hadenough, DIS-ATTACH. Ditto for rock, cloud, sky, star.
Do you really want to believe your goal is to merge PERMANENTLY with one work of art? Do you want to believe you’re not going to create your own?
Kandinsky is credited (sort of) with painting the first abstract painting, in 1911. A picture that didn’t refer to Nature. Then critics decided: well, OF COURSE Kandinsky was making reference to Nature. He had to. Where else can a painter go?
This sort of pundit-nonsense will always be with us. Just as hypnotism will always be with us.
I’d prefer the opposite extreme of commentary: “we’re no longer “bamboozled by Nature or the universe…”
The problem here? It’s RELIGION. The propaganda of devotion to universe/Nature. As if, in such humility, there is great pride.
Always a bad sign.
Just to make things clear–
Question: “If we’re not going to match ourselves to Nature, what’s left?”
Answer: “99.99999999999999999999 %.”
Prostrate ourselves before universe? It’s like saying all magic springs from wood sprites. If you buy that one, I have a an 18-wheeler on Bernard’s Star I’m unloading at a loss.
Like all religion, universe-worship is a confession of creative bankruptcy.
“This is all I can imagine—don’t bug me. I’m a nature guy.”
For some artists, Nature/Universe is like a pole pole vaulters use to get over the bar. Fine. No problem. Gauguin, Van Gogh, Cezanne. Go to it. But let’s not take this into the realm of ultra-psychology, as Campbell does in his quote, above. Wonder whether he really wrote it.
At any rate, the sentiment expressed is one that millions of people believe they believe. Until they don’t. Until they see, quietly, it’s a mask.
The other day I saw a guy hawking newspapers on the corner:
HEY, GETCHUR PAPE! UNIVERSE AND US ARE ONE BIG GOO! JOIN UP. BE A BLOCK CAPTAIN! SPREAD THE WORD! GOO GOO. WE MERGED! FOR GOOD! NO GOING BACK NOW! THE WEDDING’S OVER! FROM HERE ON OUT, IT’S ONE LONG HONEYMOON!
“Imagination was fun for a while. But then we got goo. Much, much better.” Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
The joker in the deck, as I said, is imagination. It’s the override. Of course, some people think of this as a felony.
Basically, poet/ philosopher Giordano Bruno was executed for it by the Church. On February 17, 1600, in the Campo de’ Fiori, after languishing in prison for seven years—the length of his trial for heresy—Bruno was burned at the stake.
Now, imagination is simply ignored, and little gods of nature jet set around the world spreading the holy message of devotion.
“I want meadows red in tone and trees painted in blue. Nature has no imagination.”
Charles Baudelaire
In America, the Indian spirit has been mythologized with gloss, by others, for a long, long time. As if their Oneness with Nature was so profound it was a constant hum. Think about it. Do you really believe that when food was short and winter on the plains was long, when the Buffalo went far away, when times were very, very tough, when people were sick, all the Indians all the time maintained a solid stance and inhabited the painting that is Nature? That some didn’t curse and wish for another kind of world? Separate the phony historians and the B movies from the truth. Do you think all Indians were the same—or were there differences between people as there are in any other group?
This myth and other similar tales are blown way out of proportion for self-serving reasons, by people who were never part of any functioning tribe, who never really “lived in Nature.”
I point this out, because Universe/Nature as religion is coming back strong again. Has been, for some time. It’s a facet of deemphasizing the individual—who is the one who has imagination. The only one.
JON RAPPOPORT
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