talks
on creativity and the mythic return to origins University of Dallas, September 2019
From log to lumber; the beginnings of creation
This squared up log came from the pin oak in our front yard. We have history with that pin oak. Soon after we moved in drought struck and that massive tree drew water from everywhere and the house sunk. That majestic force of nature, four times the height of the house and far older, is …
Reading Jung: Psychology as Art
I first read Jung in an introductory class taught by Robert Romanyshyn. His instruction for our reading was to take up Jung’s practice of hospitality toward psyche by noticing our reactions and journaling them. I now understand that the attitude of hospitality lives in Jung’s writing as an invitation to the same. Embracing the invitation, …
How music heals
Trees are constantly growing. When a limb is cut off the tree grows around the cut to seal the wound against disease. In nature, healing is an extension of the capacity for generativity or growth. Another angle: The psychologist D.W. Winnicott writes that when children play they are becoming who they are. Like a plant …
“Shrink!” The constriction of creative imagination
Slang for therapist, shrink is an intriguing word; rather it is a fascinating image. One story goes that it arose from phrenology, the study of head size and shape and its correlation to personality. You go to a shrink to have your head examined and undesirable qualities shrunk. That’s one way the image plays out. …
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Language embodies imagination
Language embodies imagination; its diastole and systole, its expansion and constriction. Our proclivity for constricting imagination by turning everything into literal noun-things lives in grammar. To see how this plays out, let’s track how the phrase ‘the unconscious’ can open to imagination or turn what began as an experience into a thing. Some emerging psychological …
What the body knows
A friend reported the following experience: “Being an empath can be an odd thing…I was introduced today to an art exhibit photo of two wall clocks hung side-side-side and synchronized.(1) I was asked what I thought it was about. I teared up and cried, with no idea as to why. I didn’t feel any emotion …
where does our creativity come from?
Let’s say you invest yourself in a task that calls for some resourcefulness. You run into an impasse. Working more and working harder get you nowhere. You concede the futility of more of the same and admit you lack some unknown something to move forward. You try to let it go for a while. You …
can we own a work of art?
…we no more own art by buying it than we own nature by buying land.
when a metaphor runs wild
Be aware: some metaphors are a force of nature. A metaphor, charged with numinous force can spread like wildfire until all is subsumed under it. Intoxicated, we may very well fall under its spell and, like lotus eaters, forget our home. Succumbing, we erect edifices in its name; forgetting, we fall into idol worship. Recovering …
creative by nature: the tree on a hill
There on a grassy hill stood a tree, old, vibrant, captivating in its beauty. People of all sorts traveled the country road that wrapped around the base of the hill. A carpenter walked by, looked up and looked long at the oak. Sizing up how it had grown, he surmised that, properly cut and dried, …
an example of being figured by the work
in the essay, “the dream-ego in the dream, the waking-ego in creativity,” i write of how we (in this case, composer, performers and audience) are figured by the creative work. Here is a stark example. Background for the Rouse composition from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odna_Zhizn Christopher Rouse’s 2009 composition Odna Zhizn (Russian for “a life”) is what …
the dream-ego in the dream, the waking-ego in creativity
JSSS Conference presentation Robert Sandford, M.A., June, 2018 In this talk, the dream-ego in the dream, the waking-ego in creativity, we will entertain the central image of a chapter of the same name from my upcoming book, A Jungian Approach to Engaging Our Creative Nature. Hillman writes in Healing Fiction (p.80), that Jung’s technique of …
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love, freedom and creation
What if we are so much of creation that the gift of free will, given in love, had consequences for all creation? “…for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption …
transformative ideas
“Perhaps ideas are the single most precious miracle in human existence. For ideas determine our goals of action, our styles of art, our values of character, our religious practices and even our ways of loving.” -James Hillman, Kinds of Power p. 16 The experience of a taking in a transformative idea Coming across an idea …
group mind V: connection to the audience
Related posts group mind I: like conversation group mind II: transcendence group mind III: the nature of music group mind IV: chemistry group mind V: connection to the audience Insight: For every ensemble, whether in rehearsal or in performance, there is always present, their audience. Always at issue in every rehearsal and every performance is …
group mind IV: chemistry
Related posts group mind I: like conversation group mind II: transcendence group mind III: the nature of music group mind IV: chemistry group mind V: connection to the audience Insight: When an ensemble really gels and their performance is organic and alive, you’ll hear “That band has great chemistry.” “Chemistry,” is so essential and is …
creativity and possibility
For a creative person, what could be is as tangible, if not more real than what is. A piece of music is not simply what it is but is a collection of moments of possibility. In each moment what happens next appears as both what actually happens and what could have happened. This is what …