[Dennis Slattery]

Such a rich series of responses, James. I especially loved your including the 6 minute interview with Michael Bennett and his film, Alive Inside on the power of music. I agree with what you say above. My concern is with how to make people who are partly conscious become more so and to create the ability to know their own story, to write, draw, play it and to become friendly with the deep story that lives within them.

From our perspective as mythologists we see that few, very few schools have myth as any part of their curriculum, even though the schools are the ones from whom the millions of audience members arise from that watch the large volume of mythically-inflected films, but then nothing happens to that experience, no relating in substantial to their own stories, to see the myth within them that is playing hooky from so much of the curriculum but would not play hooky from a class taught by some savvy Pacifica grad mythologist to help them make several relevant connections to themselves.

Part of me is delighted that so many of the trusted, and frozen institutions are melting down, shattering, coming apart at the seams as well as all their seems. I think we have, and you say it James, an opportunity to reinvent the social fabric where what has been at the top may be better off at the bottom and what has been at the bottom, marginalized or trashed, can rise to the top. A people or an individual that is unconscious of the myth that they negotiate life by is a people or an individual that cannot dream some new way of being, some “as-if” reality to tap into.

Much food to digest, James. I know that I will return to your initial insights above as others join us in where their own myths allow them to imagine. Life indeed frames each one of us if we do not choose the frames to live by. Many thanks for getting us started James.