Landscape & Myth

Musing, it comes to me that the stories we know - the stories we live by - otherwise known as myth - are radically different based on where we live. The urban city is utterly different than any small town or farm, and the differences only begin there.

Last Friday morning, I was witness to an incredibly large sandhill crane southward migration, directly over the heart of the city of Chicago. In fact, they flew directly over where I live. Large flocks, by the hundreds, flew over for at least an hour. I understand now that this was only the tail end; even larger numbers flew over the same route last Thursday.

It came to me that this was a story I did not know, one that was not known deep inside me. If we don't experience something like this, we don't actually feel it. Bird migration was something that happened, elsewhere, high up in the sky; amazing in many ways, but a mental construct for me, not a living, honking sight. These large flocks of noisy cranes really have to be seen to understand the power in the action.

The city engages us with a completely different type of story, one of construct, man-made materials, neighborhoods, commerce. We can't get away from these in other places, but levels and space and materials are all different. City stories are not really nature stories. "Getting away" to nature for a while is not the same as day-to-day living in a place where, say, the sandhill cranes usually migrate over.

(An aside - I just read a research study that it is hugely more likely for those involved in serious hiking and backpacking to support conservation efforts than for those involved in nature tours - seems length of experience must be the tipping factor). The power of the natural world has to be lived in to be fully felt, just as the power of the urban must be lived in to be understood. I know of people who have been afraid to drive into Chicago, even living only an hour away in a suburb.

Where we are is a powerful indicator of the stories, the myths, we feel or know. These stories are neither wrong nor right, on a personal level. As a child, the fabric of the myths surrounding you creates your world. They make up what you know and how you know it.

But we do grow up, and have the opportunity to learn new stories, to experience ways we are not familiar with. Experiencing the sandhill cranes flying over my house can change me by allowing me to understand a powerful force that I thought I knew, but just didn't know deep enough.

Knowing possibilities allows us to question other stories being lived. I think of wolf hunts in Alaska from helicopters, one of many examples, and I question how that could possibly be a useful story to live in. But unless I am there, seeing and feeling the particulars, I cannot know, for sure, whether it is a story that needs to be told. It is a different story than those I am familiar with. I guess that I might end that story a different way. But can I make that call?

In the world today, and certainly in the United States, there really are no myths that everyone lives by. If different landscapes provide different myths, and so many other factors affect our stories as well, how could one story effect every person the same way? A colleague of mine suggests televison as one possible common denominator, and it works, but I don't think it works one hundred percent. Perhaps the medium works in similar ways for varied people, but the exact story told has its own way of working on us.

The same colleague also suggests The Wasteland as a common denominator, which also works to some degree. The degradation of land and responsibility and ability to care are all factors of The Wasteland, and it is not so hard to find evidence of this myth in reality. But again, it is not one hundred percent - there are those still hopeful, still happy, still building and able to keep themselves from being bogged down in the garbage. So I find it difficult to think of a widespread myths for all of us. Religions try, but "religions try" proves that is not the answer.


Perhaps this is why Joseph Campbell called out for each of us to find the personal myths we live by. This caused an explosion of interest in individuals seeking to recognize the mythic stories with true resonance for them.This happened because it is hard to find any connective story lines with others living their storioes.


Although ultimately it is our own stories that matter, it is obvious we need to understand that everyone's story is part of the same mythology. I want to listen and understand your story, as long as you don't tell me your story is the only one there is.

Peter and the Wolf

The 2008 Oscar for Best animated short went to Suzie Templeton for "Peter and the Wolf". Somehow this 32 minute gem slipped under my radar, but I found it by chance and am very glad I did.

It uses stop motion animation to tell a simple story of a lonely boy whose only friends are animals. These include a heartbreakingly ill-fated duck, an amazingly expressive crow and, eventually, the titled wolf. An Oscar well-deserved. It's on Netflix. Queue it up.

What I want to focus on is animation. Once again, the power of the imaginal is more expressive than reality. Jean Paul Sartre writes of the imagination, the story being told as more powerful than the actual events that occurred. Hearing a story, everyone can live the events in their own head, the power of revelations and experiences multiplying and exploding as if the events were taking place all over again. When a story is told, power is unleashed. That's a paraphrase of Sartre - he might be appalled! But this is how animation, and stop-motion animation in particular, works - we instantly know we are in a story and don't need to navigate the trappings of reality. We go with it, allowing it more freedom because of its form, and perhaps that allows us to feel on a different level. The events and the power behind them become more real. There is an intensity of feeling - perhaps the animated characters and places become archetypal, stand-ins for all the real characters and animals that might be in a story like that. When we fill that archetype with substance, that power is unleashed.

Often the events depicted through animation are somewhat impossible. Through the medium, though - and always through story telling - we feel them as if they were real. Disney's "A Christmas Carol" (see last post) did this with 3-D animation. But I must admit I rushed that post after lingering on it too long. I wanted to get to "Peter and the Wolf".

Stop-motion has always fascinated me, with Ray Harryhausen's multiple mergings of monsters and men and Willis O'Brien's King Kong still being the standard bearers for the form. I am confident we can add Tim Burton's work to the honor roll, "Nightmare Before Christmas" being a classic. But "Peter and the Wolf" really belongs in the same conversation.

The power of the film itself is evident enough, but also watch the documentary "Making of" feature. We understand why this film has such power when we see the sets for this film. They are huge, with amazing detail. There is a scene showing Peter in the city in which the buildings look so real, I really wondered how the effect was done. Well, the crew built rather large buildings. An archetypal city, it has more power than if the filmmakers had used "real" buildings.

On a personal note, seeing those sets pulled me back to thoughts from film school. If you have ever tried to make a real film, you realize that it is difficult. You need a group of people working in harmony. Right there is a problem often too big to overcome. You need a huge amount of money, in proportion, for even the smallest and most modest film. Then there is equipment - technology is bringing prices down and quality up, but the costs are still very large. What really surprised me though is the fact that there is also an extreme aversion by filmmakers to taking bold risks. You would think young filmmakers would try anything, but the rigors of school almost always force them to go real and to go straightforward. After forty years or so in business, my film school was just beginning a Production Design department.

While in school, I had tried to get a small film made based on a Japanese myth. It would have required one set that was elaborately created to show the Dry Bed of the River of Souls. It was to be live action, but the design was crucial. If anyone showed any interest in tackling that project, they suggested animation instead. So, when I see a project as big and bold and ultimately successful as this version of "Peter and the Wolf", I can only exult with joy. Really.

My film would have shot in one or two days. "Peter and the Wolf" took five years to make.

Christmas Ghosts

I have always been intrigued by the English tradition of ghost stories on Christmas. I understand that the day is not complete without the family settling in for a few tales of the lingering dead. There are some good guesses I could make about why this would be so, and why this is one tradition we don't normally associate with Christmas here in the U.S.A. I could probably google up the history of this, but I've always enjoyed just knowing this and left it that.

The famous ghost story of the season is one we actually do treasure here, Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". He wrote it to be a traditional Christmas ghost story. While we know the ghostly part of the story, the emphasis is usually on the conversion of Scrooge's heart from coal to love.

Disney's new 3-D version brings the ghosts back, and they are welcome. I have touted the latest 3-D process here before, and must do it again. The depth in the screen makes these movies like nothing else. The word "amazing" really fits.

"the hideous dropping off of the veil"

"I looked upon the scene before me - upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain - upon the bleak walls - upon the vacant eye-like windows - upon a few rank sedges - and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees - with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium - the bitter lapse into everyday life - the hideous dropping off of the veil." - E. A. Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher

When I started this blog, Beyond the Veil definitely referred to the veil being lifted from this side of reality, our concrete world of everyday life, in order to discover the rest of what matters. In re-reading the Poe story quoted above this weekend, it struck me how he described the lifting of the veil from the other side. "Utter depression" occurs when we are on the other side, revelling in presumed awe and wonder, and the veil drops to reveal that reality. Poe describes our everyday life here as bleak, vacant, rank and decayed. And of course, he crossed over the veil through the use of opium.

But this was a reminder of how it works both ways. There is a world of wonder alongside the common world. Mythical living, I think, works only when we can see both sides of that veil. If we are stuck in the wonder, it is easy to lose sight of what is around us. Yet - if we see no wonder in what surrounds us, surely we are just as stuck.

The veil is thin if we allow it to be.

Mythical Living Through - Shudder & Gasp! - Pop Culture

In the hallowed psychological halls of academia at the Institute where I eke out graduate level study of Mythology, and all that might mean, whispers circle at the edges. Furtive glances precede, sussing out those who might be listening, making sure only friendly voices are near when a certain topic is mentioned. This is not Depth Psychology, nor C. G. Jung. It is not ritual of which I speak, nor of the Eastern road to enlightenment. Jesus? No. Not religion at all. Barely mythological, if certain are listened to. Of what do I speak, true believer?

Pop culture. There - the heavens have rattled, the mind has felt tremors from deep within - but the skies and our bodies still stand. In the ongoing battle of high brow vs. low brow, art vs. - well what do They say is the opposite of art? - crap? Popular culture, the offering of these United States to the World.

Our entertainment is saturated with myth and psychological depth, but often ignored with the academic snort, a wave of the hand, a derisive comment, but mostly, with an ignorance claiming worthlessness to the whole part and parcel of the stories we live in. By focusing on religion, fine art and analysis, the actual mythical living this abundantly rich and mythical pop culture bathes us in - and sometimes cleanses us with - can be utterly ignored by the academy I am part of unless it can be linked to, as above, religion, fine art and analytical models that enable.... something. I don't quite know.

What I do believe though, is: read or embodied (embodied here meaning lived, because a story told that one finds enabling is often useful to then enact, somehow proving useful to one's lived life) - myth surrounds us. James Hillman - for all his output on patient analysis by relating our pathologies to Greek myths in order to see through and understand them, allowing ourselves to move beyond those pathologies - has a major idea that seems to be mostly ignored for what it implies, for what it imagines. He stresses that mythically living is the aim.

We need to see the stories that surround us at all times, the possibilities that those stories offer us. If we are in need, the stories that have gone before us can offer insights and ways to help us. But what of those who are relatively free of pathology? Myth still surrounds us. The idea of mythically living still offers us a rich, and deep, embodied way of life, a way to see the world and our world in more satisfying and meaningful ways.

To remain stuck in pathology turns the screws on ourselves, ferreting out deep insidious problems where there may only be a lack of ability to see the wonder and the awe. Why settle for problems when you can be awed? This is not to say there are not deep and disturbing problems that some of us have real troubles with. But without that, why not aim for awe?

And religion in our society has proven mostly incapable of providing awe. It seems harder and harder to maintain a story - a mythical life - that is capable of explaining everything in one system. The more stories we have, the more stories that provide that wonder and awe as example, the easier it is to mythically live. Thus, the American idea of the melting pot can be seen as that cauldron of story that Tolkien wrote about. And then, Enter - pop culture.

Our master mythologists today are our storytellers. The ideas run thick and deep in film, literature, comics, music and every other style and genre of art. Some is crap. Some provides wonder and awe; wonder and awe that provide stories to enable us to be in that rarefied space known as mythical living. Simple as that. Can pop culture do that for us? Surely no, the academy shouts loudly.

But of course, it can. This post was originally going to be a fun musing on paranormal investigators, an archetype that I was drawn to even as a child. Scooby Doo and his people investigated mysteries. One favorite show for me as a child was "Kolchak the Night Stalker", a Chicago newspaper reporter who found a new monster every week to investigate. A bit unbelievable that he was able to do that led to an early demise for that show. And recently - Hellboy, Mike Mignola's masterful empire of comics, animation and film about what seems to me to be the ultimate in paranormal investigation. All pop culture. All fun. But utterly mythical - providing stories that allow us to view the world through mythical eyes and re-see what is actually there.

I'll give only one example. In "Hellboy II - The Golden Army", after two viewings, I was still somewhat unsure of exactly why Hellboy and friends quit the B.P.R.D. at the end of the movie. Sure, it seemed wrong that the elf prince had to die. He was on the side against humans, but his cause seemed somehow just. And the princesses death certainly underscored how unfair it was. But this is what they do - fight the occult evils of the world. Why quit over this one?

And it now occured to me how powerful an earlier scene had been - a scene invoking landscape and a way to see mythical living in our world. It did not evoke pathology, but conveyed an actual way to see life anew. In that scene, Hellboy deafeats and kills a nature elemental, a giant flowerlike plant spirit that raged over the concrete streets and in its demise left a green paradise, plants and flowers, another world of beauty that could only be seen through after the nature spirit died.

This dreamlike scene, in which the human looking Liz meanders through a spray of falling seed and watches greenery sprout and spread instantaneously, is pop culture at its best. It offers images and narratives not only for the filmed story, but also for us and our lives. Here is pop culture myth powerful enough to hold its own with classical myths, showing us a possibility, one possible way, to live our lives. Hellboy quits because he sees through his life to the larger universal. Mythical living.

"Hey, that red devil is from a comic book!" They rant and rave.

I say - Throw back the curtains and open the doors. Emerge into the world and breathe. Deeply.

The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different. ~ Hippocrates

Disturbingly, I heard a bird's last death cry yesterday - a sparrow, presumably clipped, while flying, by a passing car . I heard it scream, while circling in the air once - before quickly expiring in the street.

Three hours later, almost in the same spot as when I witnessed the bird, I spotted a furry little thing laying alongside my building. Because of all the autumn yellow leaves scattered around it, I couldn't tell if it was some sort of women's accessory, or a mouse. I carefully touched it with the tip of my shoe - and a little pink mouth opened. It's fur was black, spotted with silvery white hairs - it was a bat. I don't know bats from beans, but I thought it was probably dying.

I left it alone, further disturbed on my corner of little deaths.

Hope lives on though - the bat had managed to crawl up the wall a few hours later. Was it just hibernating? Cold?

It was gone this morning.

Musing on Landscape

The striking aspect of the amazing "Where the Wild Things Are" film, for me, is the use of landscape, the seemingly inevitable focus on nature as the place we go to work things out, to level ourselves. So often art shows the ways in which that landscape mirrors our interior landscape.

There is no denying the power of the cinematograpy of this film, because there is no denying the power of the landscape that enfolds it at every turn.

In myth, we come up against history, religion, psychology. Greek myth is used as the base tool for depth psychology, relating our Western lives to urbane gods that influenced a rationalizing society. But other myths rise from elesewhere, including the lands they are part of. There are the Celtic myths, with their forests without which they would be impossible to imagine. There are Norse myths, from frozen lands where harsh actions, with and against the landscape, were necessary for survival. Then there is The Kalevala, the Finnish song cycle portraying the Finnish landscape of lake and snow, sled and ice, as it influences every nuanced turn of every tale.

In our concrete landscape, we are able to separate ourselves from the world. All peoples at all times dared to take what they needed from the landscape, striving to make life easier and more fulfilling. However, there used to be less people, less sweeping change, less destructive human activity. The planet is overrun with people now, and too many of us are too far away from any natural lands. Are we disciplined enough to pull back, to need less and to get closer to the rest of the planet? Can we halt the concrete and find the land we need to maintain our real humanity?

Max uses the land and the Wild Things to not only release wild frustrations, but also to rejuvenate, to slow his mind down to be able to think thoughts, rather than simply process and release reactions. No greater tools exist for us to consider and reconsider landscape than myth and fantasy.

I saw a production of Peter S. Beagle's "The Last Unicorn" this weekend. It was remarkable, and part of the credit goes to the amazing production design, the landscape of the play. In a small space, a simple wooden fence became the world of the entire drama, evoking every background and space needed. If you have read this book, you might agree that a live production would be difficult. But this show transported us to a world in which magic and possibility existed. Interesting that culture at its very best in our concrete cities often means escape to a created landscape in the darkness of a theater. Film, drama, music; whatever artistic venture we attend, we go to experience the creation of a new world, or a look back at an older world. It is often simpler, yet more nuanced than our own. we seek a world made up out of fantasy, a landscape we seek to inhabit when the landscape around us is not enough. Or is perhaps too much.

Simplicity is a key idea in our dramas and fictions. Even in film, that most real of arts, we really know everything is created, everything is simpler than in reality.

It seems time to reconsider how to make reality itself simpler.