MYTH, MAGIC and METAOHOR, A Journey into the Heart of Creativity

1

Words

In the beginning was the Word;
and the Word was with God;
and the Word was God.

(The Gospel According to John)

The word is a sign or symbol of the impressions or affections of the soul.

Aristotle

Language contains everything from history, to sociology, economics, philosophy, religious thought, even stories. Think of the word ‘community’ as meaning ‘common unity’. Language has been used and abused throughout history but it still reflects human destiny and reveals all that is known of life itself. Language is ACTIVE; language USES us! Especially the English language. Listen to Richard Lederer on this score:

Let’s face it – English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on. English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn’t a race at all). That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

“The genius of democracies,” wrote Alex de Toqueville in 1840, “is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.” To which, in 1936, Willa Cather might be said to reply, “Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact.” Well, quite aside from Mr. Lederer’s funny, but sadly accurate insight on English, let us take a more serious look and explore the facts behind language as suggested by Miss Cather.

Words–so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

As Hawthorne points out, words, though seemingly benign, have power. While the spoken and written word can be used to create beauty and value, they can also have a negative effect on the world and humanity if not chosen wisely. One vile word can hurt a person. A sentence can do more damage. It can demean and devalue a person or group of people, induce embarrassment and even shame. Groups of words can be repeated orally or in art (advertising, film, music), and turned into propaganda in order to enforce an agenda. That propaganda can result in enormous danger as evidenced by the Nazi’s success in using propaganda to build anti-Semitism in Germany in order to accomplish their ultimate goal of genocide. Today, we have social media “memes” – the repeated use of words, both oral and written, that can spread quickly and become adopted as a general “truth” in society. With the internet, these memes can spread throughout the world extremely rapidly. In other words, communicated language causes others to think and, often, believe.

According to Webster’s Dictionary, ‘to think’ means “to have the mind occupied on some subject; to judge, to intend, to imagine, to consider.” It is a transitive verb which means that thinking requires an object. As Paul Brunton stated in The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga, “[W]e cannot see any object without thinking of it as being seen. If it is to exist for us at all, it must exist as something that is perceived.” And he takes his case a step further. “We perceive the object because we think it; we do not think the object because we perceive it.” First the thought, then the thing.

Intuitively I felt that the functions of language were of a duel nature – that of suggestion and that of communication, and I attributed to the poetic use of words a superiority over that of everyday communication.

Eugene Jolas, Man from Babel

In other words, search for the metaphysical essence of the word. (For an in-depth and fascinating discussion of language and the origin of language verses thought, read Thought and Language by Lev Vygotsky in the ‘newly revised’ edition by Alex Kozulin).

The conclusion of this mini-debate is this. Our very existence as a member of the human race is defined by thought. Whether thought or the object perceived comes first is for you to decide. (For the blind, "perception" can be the sensation of touching or smelling.) Nevertheless, both thought and perception underlie our ability to communicate, and communication is directly related to our humanity, which is essentially social. We co-exist on this planet, for better or worse and we communicate with words.

Man’s mind enables him to form concepts, use language, build societies and cultures; above all, it enables him to work in intellectual community (where) … the emotional and intellectual life of each man is sustained by his unity with others.

J. Bronowski’s review of Teilhard de Chardin’s
The Future of Man

Life is a journey. The base of the word ‘journey’, is jour meaning day (from the French). Language reveals the journey, the daily experiences which define life. To be more precise, language reveals our own or some other person’s observation. The testimony of the senses leads us to accept multiplicity and change; every moment we see or observe a new image or mental observation of what we call life. A smell, a sound, a touch, each sense stimulates an entire storehouse of memory. These moments are what Friedrich Nietzsche called the “creative truths.”

However, language is more than name-calling. Toni Morrison said in her acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, “The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imaged, and possible lives of its speakers, readers, and writers…. It arcs toward the place where meaning may lie.”

We will explore what the “meaning” or the “creative truths” are as the chapters progress, but let it be established here that history is not defined by dates and and names. History is someone’s personal perspective, someone’s experience in a particular time in the development (or decay) of the human race. It can be said that historical fiction is a combination of two nouns. The fiction being what is inside your or the protagonist’s mind at the time of an event and history the time and event. Since history is recorded by people, and since all people are prone to their own perspective on what they see, then it might be said that all history is fiction.

Novels arise out of the shortcomings of history.

F. von Hardenberg,
Later Novalis Fragmente und Studien, (1799–1800)

Let us return to another history, the history of words. Open a dictionary and explore. Mark Twain joked, “I have studied [a dictionary] often, but I never could dicover the plot.” Every word in the dictionary, however, has a plot of its own, its etymology. We understand that individual words, especially nouns, contain history, sociology, economics, politics, and/or drama, keeping in mind that they change and evolve with each generation and sometimes come and go and return in a new context. It can be like a complex maze to attempt to follow the historical trail of a word. But let us begin anyway and choose a word that depicts the essence of what is called ‘life’. It is a word which is not static. Instead this word reflects the flow which is life. The word is inspiration. The etymology of inspiration is the Latin word, inspiratus, past participle of inspirare meaning to blow or breathe upon. Thus, if we follow the evolutionary/etymological sequence through, creativity refers to the life-giving force: breath. When a baby comes out of the womb, he breathes for the first time on his own and begins life as we know it. Analogous to this birthing is the creative process represented by the writer, the painter, the musician or the dancer. Isadora Duncan, the great innovative interpreter of dance at the turn of the twentieth century, spoke of the “state of complete suspense” which proceeds the so-called spontaneous creative activity (dance or music or painting or writing). This non-verbal excitement, dreamlike, vague, ambiguous comes before the creative act or action. Stephen Spender, English poet and critic, expressed this time as “a dim cloud of an idea which I feel must be condensed into a shower of words.”

All writing requires at least some measure of trance-like state: the writer must summon out of nonexistence some character, some scene, and he must focus that imaginary scene in his mind until he sees it vividly as, in another state, he would see the typewriter or cluttered desk in front of him…. But at times something happens. A demon takes over … and the imagery becomes real.

John Gardner

Inspiration is the stimulus to creative thought or action. In theology, inspiritus is a divine influence upon human beings resulting in writing, as in the Scriptures, or in action, as with a Saint. There are steps to achieving inspiration according to the Buddha, inspiration being the state of Nirvana. However, the inspiration itself is “beyond words.”

Imagination and inspiration are two elements intrinsic to the concept of creativity. According to the Buddha, “as the mind returns to its natural state of integrity and non-duality, it ceases to clutch at experience with the symbols of discursive thought. It simply perceives without words or concepts.” Then, once it has perceived ‘the truth,’ the Buddha tells us, the mind reverts to discourse and the written word. (A note should be made here about the Buddha. To quote Joseph Campbell, “the reference to the life of the Buddha is quite secondary. The accent in Hinduism and Buddhism is the relevance of the symbolic forms to your own life. You understand these things inward to yourself.”) Following the Buddhist concept, you could say the ‘truth’ comes as a sudden flash of understanding. It is outside of time and space. It is beyond words. Once the mind has perceived this ‘truth’ (Nirvana), it reverts back to reality (as we know it) and to discourse and the written word.

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-conscious.

Aaron Copeland

Inspiration, we shall see as the chapters progress, can be said to be the alluring voice of creativity.

Be but thy inspiration given,
No matter though what danger sought,
I’ll fathom hell or climb to heaven,
And yet esteem that cheap which love has bought.
Fame cannot tempt the bard
Who’s famous with his God,
Nor laurel him reward
Who has his maker’s nod.

Henry David Thoreau, Inspiration

Be beguiled by your own unconscious mind. Allow the door to your unconscious to open, then watch what flows out on the paper before you and read the words in awe.

It is our idleness,
in our dreams,
that the submerged
truth sometimes

comes to the top.

Virginia Woolf

Take the word ‘idleness’ and respect it. Idleness does not connote laziness. It is our time to be silent and one with the world around us. The silence is golden when absorbed.

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

Albert Einstein

Let your imagination blossom and tap into your subconscious. What you did not know that you knew will suddenly come forth and you will begin to write and to write well. “A man never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going.” (Oliver Cromwell) Isabel Illende, when she wrote the poignant novel/diary to her daughter, Paula, explaining herself, her past, her present, and her life as a writer, counseled that the writer must “believe the unbelievable.”

Once again, to quote the first great philosopher born on American soil, Ralph Waldo Emerson: “We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.” First, believe in yourself. Second, as author Lucia St. Clair Robson wrote, make connections; always make connections. Be aware of what you see, what you feel, what you smell. Sink into the scene. Be ready for and allow “unscheduled flights of fancy!”

God guard me from those thoughts men think
In the mind alone,
He that sings a lasting song
Thinks in a marrow bone …
I pray—for fashion’s word is out
And Prayer comes round again –
That I may seem though I die old
A foolish, passionate man

William Butler Yeats

To create is to give birth, the act of bringing forth something new. All animals have the ability to give birth. But it is also man's unique ability to produce creative art. "Whether the instrument of the words she use, or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues" which "demands the service of a mind and heart." (Wordsworth)

As far as we know, we as humans are the only animals conscious of being conscious. Not satisfied with just accepting what happens to us, we naturally inspect and challenge every move, every thought. Philosophers from Heraclitus to Plato, from the Buddha to Nietzsche have catechized and questioned the creative process. Friedrich Nietzsche, in Composition on Thus Spoke Zarathustra, wrote about the notion of revelation or the creation of a new idea. A new idea, he said, is something “profoundly convulsive and disturbing” which “suddenly becomes visible and audible with indescribable definiteness and exactness … a thought flashes out like lightning, inevitably without hesitation – I have never had any choice about it.”

James Joyce spoke of an “aesthetic arrest” or “stasis.” It is the point where you are aware of the silence within the very center of activity both in this world and out of the universe. It is there, he says (marrying the East with the West in thought) that “the mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing” and “the world is recognized as a revelation sufficient in itself.” For Joyce, even (and most often) the most trivial things could be invested with “epiphanies.” In Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Man, the protagonist Stephen Dedalus says, the ‘soul’ or ‘whatness’ of an object or a gesture or a phrase “leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance.”

Plato, arguably one of the greatest of all Western philosophers, 470–399 BC, using the voice of Socrates (who, like the Buddha, never wrote anything down and could represent more than one philosopher or thinker), stated that for art (by this we encompass any of the art forms including creative writing) to be truly noble, it must reveal “something of that essence which is eternal….”

Whether understood from an Eastern perspective or a Western conviction, belief, or philosophy, it must be concluded there is something mysterious about the concept and the process of creativity. Isn’t it exciting to think that you, the writer, are actively involved in this, the very essence of life itself? To quote Nietzsche again, “For art to exist, or any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain psychological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.” [The italic emphasis is my enthusiasm being expressed visually.]

We have come a long way from the initial search into the source of creativity and even further from the search into the meaning and use of our medium: words. However, I hope my reader will consider the various arguments and opinions and continue to accept little and question all and everything. It is a healthy exercise and, at the very least, will prevent atrophy of the brain.