talks

on creativity and the mythic return to origins University of Dallas, September 2019

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, …

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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 …

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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 …

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rhythm

Why does Music have such an effect on us? Where does it come from? In the beginning, there was rhythm. In our mother’s womb we hear the beating of her heart and the rhythm of her breath. We feel the stillness and movement and the sleeping and waking of her days. We are born into …

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why heaven is up

Of course we’re not talking literally “up.” That would lead to all sorts of absurdities. We’re speaking metaphorically, which is to say that we’re speaking psychologically. So how do we get at the meaning of the metaphor? – by playing with it until we begin to see through it as through a lens and by …

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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 …

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