https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=S5hTzorhQys
It’s also because I’ve been talking about this stuff for now, I guess, five, six years. And it’s like, now I also have to do it. Like, I have to show that it’s not just about interpreting stories. We got to write better stories. But here’s the thing. So let me ask you this, though, because this is fascinating. But the kind of skill it takes to interpret a story and the kind of skill it takes to write a story, I think of as very different skills. Because when you’re when you’re undertaking an analysis, a kind of careful structural analysis of a pattern of a story, as you do so well, you know, it’s a very, very conscious, very meticulous, very, very kind of. There’s a lot of conscious attention being brought to bear on breaking apart its components in order to put them back together again. There’s a real analytical frame of mind that you have to be in in order to do that. But when you’re creating something artistically, it seems to me, like at least in my own experience, it seems to me that you have to yield in order to actually produce something of artistic merit. You need to yield the process, a certain amount of that process to the unconscious. Like if it’s not spontaneous, if it’s too over determined by a conscious analytical process, I think it will fail. Some of it has to be very there has to be an unconscious movement toward the creation of something. And how so how do you like how does that work for you? How does that tension work for you? Yeah, it’s I think at least for me, it’s it’s just two different spaces. Right. But is it that it’s completely misapplied? But I think it’s still I think it’s the work. So the Christ says that the you know, that the right that the left hand should not know what the right hand is doing. Right. In some ways, there’s a sense in which you. Like I always tell people to it, like when people are writing stories, I always tell them, like, don’t think about symbolism. We’re writing a story. It’ll kill it. Like you can’t think about symbolic structures when you’re writing. You should never do that. We don’t know, because then you’ll fail them. Right. You totally fail. Like you fail in every way. Like you’ll just you’ll overthink it. You’ll try to fit things in that don’t fit in the in the thrust of the narrative. There’s all these things you’ll end up doing. I think what the way to do it is. It it has to be you have to ruminate, like you ruminate on on the patterns. You just kind of let them sit like almost like almost like, you know, they’re. Permanent in your in yourself. And then that becomes the the wine out of which the story can be told, but it’s not it now. It’s not it’s not a system, it’s not a structure, it’s none of that. It’s just just this intuition. And then what you can do the way that I do it, at least myself, is that like the intuition comes for the story. Then then then it’s like, oh, yeah, that story and those elements. And then once you put them down. Then you can come back with the symbolic mind and then you the symbolic mind is like an editor. Then you come back and you’re like, oh, you don’t first of all, you have to be careful with that editor. But you can shift if you think that you can change a few words and say, oh, if I tweak this word, then it’s actually kind of more in the direction of what I want. But the actual elements of the story come from a more immediate, you know, a more more immediate thing. Right. Right. So it’s almost like you. I mean, you have so you have all of this rumination that has taken place because of all of the deep ways in which you’ve been contemplating all of this over the course of time. But then in some sense, there’s a kind of divine forgetfulness that you have to have. It’s like I think I think of the way that really good performers, like really good actors or musicians kind of describe their process, which is that they state they are as studious as they can possibly be for as long as they can possibly be. And when then when the time comes to perform, they do their very best to throw everything out. Yeah. Forget they they they they find it in them to forget everything it is that they know in order for something a deeper form of recollection. To take place. Right. It’s a kind of a paradox. Right. You need to have a kind of forgetfulness in order for the anamnesis to actually happen. And that’s what I’m kind of hearing from you. It’s like you you’ve done all of this work. But then in some sense, you have to take it. I’m thinking of your I’m thinking of your left and right hands again. Right. That that that that the logos that the that the logos of judgment that takes has to yield itself to the eros of generosity that gives and that there has to be something a coordinated withdrawal in order for something to actually be brought forth. Yeah. I think I think you’ve got it right. And but I do think it is strange. I get it. Are you right? That usually it’s rare that you find usually you have critics and you have artists. Right. You don’t have both at the same time. You know, and so it’s a strange thing. I don’t know. I don’t totally understand it. It’s possible maybe that also my art suffers. Let’s say that this we’ll see. We’ll see when people will judge them. Like the story that I write might suffer for my for my overthinking. But, you know, at least for now, I’m really excited about them. Like, I’m excited about writing them. So I think if it’s happening, I think if it’s feels like it’s happening with a certain amount of spontaneous energy, then that to me is a sure sign that it’s that somehow the that that has the right bearing. Right. Because you kind of know the difference. Right. When you’re caught in a flow and something is writing itself through you. Right. When you have the sensation that you’re simply the vehicle for something to produce itself. I think that’s a testament to something that’s a more genuine artistic process. But when you’re trying to have this sort of overweening consciousness that’s trying to master. Yeah, it just. No, I think a way to explain it at least is that let’s say it’s like if I’m meditating on writing a story or making an image, the the the insight will present itself in this in story form. Right. It’ll present itself as elements of the story. It won’t present itself as a structure that I’m trying to impose on the story. So it’s the same with an image like I’m trying to figure out an image, then the insight will present itself as an element in the image. And so I think that also helps like just that, like to just remain within the world. I think that helps. So to not to not be in danger, to not be in danger of trying to just impose this symbolic structure almost arbitrarily over over a story. And you see it like there’s two Hollywood movies where, you know, they take the hero’s journey or whatever and they apply it so formulaically that it just it’s actually becomes unbearable to watch. Oh, yeah. So broad. It’s so it lacks the very specificity that is able to presence a symbolic pattern. Right. Because it’s only with absolute specificity that that can actually happen. Yeah. And there’s there’s a kind of. There’s also a kind of messiness, you know, because let’s say the hero’s journey, it never exists purely. It doesn’t exist. It’s like you can you look at these very complex and stories that have all these twists and turns and and strangeness to them. And then you’re like, oh, you look you look at 10, you know, you look at 50 of them and he’s like, oh, well, here’s this. Right. Here’s this like basic pattern. Right. It’s it’s real. It’s true. It’s there. But, you know, it that’s not the story like the story has a grittiness to it and has a body into it. So you can’t you can’t just now say, well, I’m going to apply this pattern back onto the world completely. And it just that’s what that yields really. No, no, it has to it has to come. It has to come from within the specific conditions. Right. It’s like it’s bottom up. It’s not down. Right. It has to it has to emerge as a consequence of your interaction with the fundamental conditions that are present. It’s the necessity. It’s that you need the finite necessary end of the dichotomy, the infinite end, the possible. And that’ll take care of itself. It’s the attention to the necessary details that create the finite enclosure of circumstance that actually allow for that to be accessed. Right. Which is part of the beauty of that paradox. I just finished one of my favorite pieces of television I just finished. It’s called Better Call Saul. And I think it’s a it’s an absolutely it’s an it’s like a it’s like an existential neoplatonic treatise when it’s all said and done. It’s just like incredible, mind boggling piece of symbolic finesse, the likes of which I’ve never seen before. And you would think and I and I started to listen to all of these sort of background details about the creative process, because I thought, like, who are these people that produce this? Like the amount of meticulousness they must have. And they do from a craftsmanship perspective. But when describing, it’s like they seem to somehow follow the logos such that every turn that the characters take is absolutely surprising, but absolutely necessary. And otherwise, it brings me back to this necessary co-identity between creation and discovery. Inventio, right, is a word John likes to use that captures both at once. Right. The poesis is such that it reveals what already was and in so doing makes it real. And the process, the artistic process, which is a dialogical process because it’s in a writer’s room, which is fascinating. Right. So it’s a dialogical process using a kind of a dialectic to catch a pattern between a group of people. And then in that group of people, it’s almost like a weird seance. It’s like they catch the pattern of the character from within the conditions that they’ve contrived. And yet there is this sort of top down pattern that is coming to meet it in the middle. And so I listen to an account of the creator of the show describing the process. And someone’s asking them, like, my God, did you guys have this all plotted out meticulously? And he laughed. He said, no, it’s like we were like in the dark with a lantern and we saw two feet in front of us. And every step we took, we went, oh, God, look at that. Right. It was like they were they weren’t contriving anything. Somehow they found it in them to discover what was necessary about the next phase of the story simply by tumbling over the perspective of the character. Right. I thought that was incredibly that was just a really beautiful to me, a beautiful testament to exactly this process that you’re describing. Yeah. And there’s probably like the level to which this comes is probably where this can go is probably very, very high. Because when you think like when I, for example, like when I read the the the comedian, when I read Dante, I have the same I have that problem. I’m like, there’s no way this guy could plan this whole thing out in advance. This is not possible. Did you have massive charts like that would take up entire walls with like connecting all these verses together and making this like giant spider web that is is is mad. It’s like I can’t imagine that that’s what it was. And maybe I who knows if he had such a mind. But I think it probably more has more to do with that capacity to attend and to and to just be sensitive to to reality. And so, like you said, it just kind of came together in almost like a mystical way. You know, I mean, I might be wrong. I might be. But but it’s like when you read the when you read something like you like, how can how can anybody write that? It doesn’t seem possible. I think I think the thing I mean, I agree with you. I think it’s as plausible a way of thinking about it as any other. And I’m inclined to agree. I’m inclined to think, no, he probably sat down. Maybe I mean, you know, when it came to refining the work, maybe it probably more of that top down. But I mean, I’ve had the experience myself, not in comparison to Dante, but I’ve had that experience myself of sitting down and writing something and finding that it was flowing out. And then, you know, after a couple of hours go by, it’s like I look at it and I reread it and the structure comes out. I go like that. Like I didn’t intend that. That just happened. Right. Or someone else will pick up on it. And I had no knowledge of it whatsoever. And to me, I mean, it’s like if I can experience that on this very, very modest scale, I have no trouble believing that someone with the artistic genius of Dante could sit down and write in such a way as to cede his own territory, to cede his consciousness to that muse, to the to the force of poesis that was working its way through him. And to let it have, right, because the structures already, I mean, it’s a prior, right? The unconscious structures are there. I mean, I take that kind of Jungian perspective on it, right? It’s like the structures already there. It’s just about developing the axis with it in order to actually cede territory to it when it’s most needful to do so. And I think that’s the difficult part is getting out of your own way, as it were. Right. Yeah. And then you can understand why, because you mentioned the muses, you can understand why it was formulated that way. Why in some ways it was, you know, it was almost like an invoking, right? It’s like I’m invoking this because it’s actually I know that it doesn’t totally come from my will. It’s like it can’t. It has to somehow, you know, land in me somehow. And then and then then obviously you’re part of it, like you’re part of the creation of it. But you need that vertical relationship. You know, yeah. Oh, yeah. And your participation in it, I think, has much more to do with allowing it to be to let the letting it be the surrendering. Right. There’s a kind of self-sacrifice, I think, that is implicit and necessary in that kind of exercise. And then that participates in the greater pattern of self-sacrifice that’s required in order to refocus. Right. That shift from being much more egocentric to putting yourself in service to a pattern who’s unfolding, you can participate in, but not be singularly responsible for, then becomes the purpose. Right. So that little in miniature, that little artistic humiliation of the ego, the giving up yourself so that whatever it needs to come out can. Can I think help to maybe inseminate the faith or the idea that on a greater scale, on a more existential level, that that’s something that’s required of us in other ways. And the artistic project, I think, is a wonderful, a wonderful symbolic container for that yielding up of, you know, what comes before us, but what ultimately comes through us as well. Right. Yeah. The midwifery of it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that’s a good, that’s a good way to, midwifery is a good way to think of it.