[drewie]

Hello all and thank you Dennis for your wonderful essay.

I have been following this conversation for some days now trying to find the right questions. I guess what really resonated with me was this powerful statement.

Interpretation is a fundamental act in learning. As he creates a unique form of such meaning-making, Campbell uncovers “an implicit connotation through all its metaphorical imagery of a sense of identity of some kind, transcendent of appearances, which unites behind the scenes the opposed actors on the world stage” (81). Life itself is dramatic, but to miss the experience because of an obsession with meaning is to miss the action that is before us and within us.

Art in all of its guises becomes the delivery system by which myth, history and aesthetics congeal on the same stage. But as is his habitus of finding correlations between worlds, he suggests that “the mystic and the way of the proper artist are related” (111). I do not think it is too much to proclaim that all art is metaphorical to a large degree; Campbell’s own language is that the figural realities on the stage of artistic creation can succeed in opening us to “ a transformation of perspective”

I spend a lifetime beating my head against the wall with meaning… I would try to find solutions to questions like if there is some objective meaning and even if there is what is the meaning of it all since we all gonna stop to exist at some point. At a certain point I think my mind couldn’t take it anymore and then a series of events happened that made me change and a new reality was born in me, one that meaning was irrelevant and just being able to experience the wonder of life was enough, needless to say this propelled me into action of following my bliss more and listening to myself with more clarity.

I was wondering if you can expand a bit about the transition from meaning to experience and what does art and myth say about such transitions or experiences?

Also is it too much to say that all life is metaphorical? What are the implications of such a statement.

You know I don’t wanna go from one extreme to the other which seems to me is what doing right now. 😀

Thanks.