Postmodernists believe that truth is myth, and myth, truth. This equation has its roots in pop psychology. The same people also believe that emotions are a form of reality. There used to be another name for this state of mind. It used to be called ps...
I tend to think of a myth and then explore how it would play out if it were happening in the modern-day world. I modify all the myths I use, but I stick very closely to their structure - it is the hidden teacher in me.
In older myths, the dark road leads downward into the Underworld, where Persephone is carried off by Hades, much against her will, while Ishtar descends of her own accord to beat at the gates of Hell. This road of darkness lies to the West, according...
A stubborn refusal of the conditions of 20th Century 'reality', surrealism has denied intransigently and consistently that modern man can live without a sense of wonder at the world that was once embodied in myth. In approaching literature, it has ai...
We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming 'sub-creator' and inve...
A myth... is a metaphor for a mystery beyond human comprehension... A myth, in this way of thinking, is not an untruth but a way of reaching a profound truth.
Spokespeople sell women the Iron Maiden and name her "Health": if public discourse were really concerned with women's health, it would turn angrily upon this aspect of the beauty myth.
Without myth, however, every culture loses its healthy creative natural power: it is only a horizon encompassed with myth that rounds off to unity a social movement.
How was life before Pop-Tarts, Prozac and padded playgrounds? They ate strudel, took opium and played on the grass.
Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.
One of the only coherent philosophical positions is thus revolt. It is a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity.
The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. "Everything is permitted" does not mean that nothing is forbidden.
Creating is living doubly. The groping, anxious quest of a Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers, of wallpapers, and of anxieties, signifies nothing else.
Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one's consciousness, making of every image a privileged place.
Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.
The mind, when it reaches its limits, must make a judgment and choose its conclusions. This is where suicide and the reply stand.
Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started.
....and I'll know that this is what you live for - to hear someone say. "Let's go home," to hear someone you love call your name.
Artistic symbols and myths speak out of the primordial, preconscious realm of the mind which is powerful and chaotic. Both symbol and myth are ways of bringing order and form into this chaos.
Anyone who pretends to "understand" Latin America is a fool.
Music does propagate myths and people have tried to make that myth more than it was.
