It’s a book! I’d give out cigars to celebrate if I could, but instead I’ll content myself with welcoming this little bundle of essays into the world. May they sally forth to spread enchantment in the holiday season and beyond ✨
Isaac Newton sculpture by Eduardo Paolozzi, inspired by William Blake’s “Newton.” Also by Blake: “Now I a fourfold vision see And a fourfold vision is given to me Tis fourfold in my supreme delight And threefold in soft Beulahs night And twofold always. May God us keep From Single vision & Newtons sleep”
Sci-fi movie night at the SB courthouse, with meteor shower. Stars on the screen and in the sky. Thanks for the double feature, @artsandlectures and Perseids ✨
Last year I visited the beaches of Normandy which wound up feeling like a pilgrimage to a sacred site. History felt superimposed over the present, and I was shocked at how the experience deepened my love for France and the USA. It also reminded me how and—most importantly—why to deny fascists their murderous impulses. Here’s an excerpt from the blog post I wrote about it:
But Normandy also reminded me of those who stand up for humanity—the leaders, soldiers, and citizens with the courage to step forward to block the abuses of bullies and tyrants. “No,” the defenders say in words and deeds. “You may not treat people that way. Get your hands off our human family.” To stand up to bullies is to stand for freedom and equality. …
New MythBlast: The Divine Mayhem of What’s Up, Doc?
The Joseph Campbell Foundation‘s theme this year is The Power of Myth at the Movies, and my first MythBlast on that topic is now available. Here’s how it begins:
In 1972, a ridiculous comedy called What’s Up, Doc? burst into theaters like a pack of drunken puppies, leaving audiences across the country weak and wheezing from the film’s hilarity. I didn’t see What’s Up, Doc? until the 1980s, after video rentals became a thing, but the movie’s raucously impetuous brand of humor was precisely calibrated to my adolescent sensibilities…
Once a month I send an email to subscribers such as yourself with my recent recommendations for books and articles about myth, creativity, and creative inspiration, plus my upcoming courses, publications, and events. If that sounds like your cuppa tea (or coffee or other delightful beverage), please subscribe!
To subscribe, fill out this form:
For information about my privacy practices, visit this site’s privacy page.
Q: Really? A comic book movie? Haven’t you seen the news lately? I think we have more important matters to discuss.
A: It’s because of the news that we need to talk about this preview.
Q: Come on. Comics aren’t real. They’re imaginary.
A: You want to change what’s going on anywhere, ever? Or change anything about your life? First you’ll need to dream up new possibilities. That requires imagining them before putting them into action. Imagination is essential for creativity.
Q: But comics oversimplify everything. The real world is messier. There’s no such thing as a hero or villain.
A: There’s no such thing as a person who is always a hero or villain, and there are infinite ways and degrees of being heroic and villainous, but heroism and villainy both exist. Fiction’s technique of exaggeration makes it easier to recognize these realities.
Q: This is a two-minute movie preview. How could it possibly matter?
A: Because Superman is a metaphor for the United States. He’s a personification of the country, and so he gives us a way to imagine our collective self. Here, watch the preview, then we’ll talk more.
Q: Ok that was pretty good.
A: Pretty good? It was fantastic! But see how Superman represents the USA? He’s big, he’s strong, he wears red and blue. He’s dedicated to truth, justice, and the American way, meaning ever-expanding if imperfect democracy. He’s also white and male, two traits which have dominated the national culture since day one.
When the preview opens Superman plummets down onto a barren snowscape, grievously wounded. He’s paralyzed, bleeding, barely able to breathe. Lying helpless in the snow, he is our damage, our trauma. A mournful rendition of the John Williams Superman theme music from 1978 plays in what sounds like a minor key, giving voice to the nation’s failures, disappointments, dashed dreams.
Then the scene changes to Lois Lane and Clark Kent meeting for the first time in the offices of a newspaper called The Daily Planet. In other words, they are citizens of the world dedicated to telling the truth, exposing evil, and also selling newspapers. The first time he sees her, Clark looks up at Lois, which is a sign of respect, looking up to someone else. This is an image of a man seeing and honoring a woman for who she is: smart, capable, confident.
We cut back to Superman immobilized in the snow. He manages to whistle, and who comes running at super-speed but the utterly winsome Krypto the Superdog. Krypto is an image of the nation’s soul. He represents our capacity for many blessings: love, loyalty, connection. Happiness, strength, stamina. Courage, companionship, the ability to play. The soul responds to the slightest summons. And where does Superman need Krypto to take him? Home. Home to himself, or his deeper nature before everything went sideways. Krypto accepts this task with exuberance and good cheer, dragging Superman through the snow by his red cape.
The scene flashes to Superman saving a young girl from an explosion by shielding her with his own body. We can protect the vulnerable. We can value the feminine.
And then, Lex Luthor. The evil billionaire CEO on a self-obsessed crime spree against whom Superman—our strength, our democracy, our values—is our only hope. Luthor’s evil is a foil for Superman, showing that Superman not only represents the nation, but also the nation’s best self. Luthor is the antagonist who forces Superman—us—to level up our soul game.
Q: Come on, not all CEOs are evil.
A: Well this one is and at the moment he’s the one we have to deal with.
The preview’s images continue: Superman contained in a jail with clear walls, meaning the country’s best self is held back by invisible barriers. A little boy in a war-torn desert raising a battered yellow Superman flag, closing his eyes, and repeating, “Superman, Superman” as though praying—the call of the innocents to our better selves, our sacred nature. Then Superman breaks out of the jail—our best self exerts its strength to be free.
A mob of angry Americans turns on Superman like a tragic autoimmune disease. In their pain and frustration, they mistakenly direct their fury at the country—the collective forces that build roads, put out fires, and fund cancer research—instead of at the billionaire interests that bleed the people dry. The mob has clearly been misled and no longer recognizes reality, even as a fire-breathing Godzilla-like monster tries to destroy the city, i.e. the culture, exactly the way a fascist coup would do.
Other superheroes whose names I don’t know swoop in, clearly illustrating the benefits of coalition and vibrant diversity. Finally Superman and Lois Lane embrace. A simple human hug, no superpowers needed, just a heartfelt connection between two Earth dwellers who care for each other.
Q: But so what? What am I supposed to do with all these metaphors?
A: The USA has done heroic things. In the 1770s we fought for the right to make our own laws. In the 1860s we fought ourselves to end the scourge of slavery. In the 1940s we fought fascism to end World War II. But we’ve also done horrible things. We committed genocide against Indigenous nations, we enslaved generations of Black people, we caused mass suffering in pointless wars from Vietnam to Iraq, we never fully addressed the racism that gave rise to slavery in the first place. And now evil forces have invaded the government to dismantle the democracy our forebears worked so hard to create.
I hear a collective invitation in this preview to make like Superman and return home to our true selves in order to heal, build our strength, and get heroic once again. I think we have to reckon with our whole selves—our history and our potential—in order to summon up our best selves each in our own way, in our own communities, and all over the nation.
“If we begin to value our creative urges, we begin to value ourselves…. We can develop, too, a sense of faith in a higher creative power, as Henry Miller did, one that will generously provide everything we need to do this project.”
— Louise DeSalvo in Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives
Last fall I traveled from Normandy, France, to Paris in the back of a bus with a view out over the French countryside. The green fields and hedges looked peaceful in the quiet morning, but only eighty years earlier war raged over that land. The battle scenes were easy to imagine because I’d spent the previous days visiting beaches and towns where Allied forces began the fearsome work of liberating France from Hitler’s brutal, four-year occupation, in order to liberate survivors from Germany’s inconceivably brutal concentration camps.
Museum exhibits and cemeteries for fallen soldiers served as vivid reminders of the scale of Nazi cruelty and cowardice, and of the Allies’ courage and resolve. The numbers were mind-boggling: 90,000 French children lost in the German invasion of France, 1.4 million Jewish children in the Holocaust, 73,000 Americans swooping in on D-Day as part of the Allied force of 160,000.
I found one museum’s recreation of Hitler’s rise to power especially chilling—how he manipulated people with his charisma and narcissism, how he was such a damaged person, how his damage caused so much damage to so many other people.
Hitler rejected the proposition that we are all created equal. Instead, he maximized power for a self-absorbed few by restricting freedom and opportunity for everyone else. He committed physical and psychological violence to strip rights, well-being, and life away from people who were already marginalized: Jewish people, the LGBTQ+ community, people of color, and many others.
But Normandy also reminded me of those who stand up for humanity—the leaders, soldiers, and citizens with the courage to step forward to block the abuses of bullies and tyrants. “No,” the defenders say in words and deeds. “You may not treat people that way. Get your hands off our human family.” To stand up to bullies is to stand for freedom and equality.
Shrines of gratitude line the Normandy coast, honoring what our nation gave to push back the Nazis. France remains palpably thankful to us for sending thousands of our brave, beautiful young soldiers to storm the beaches then fight through German bullets and bunkers—beach by beach, town by town—bleeding and dying for the sake of French freedom. I felt grateful, too, and I gained a new sense of a uniquely American determination that arrived on French soil in 1944: playfulness rooted in liberty, courage born from caring, jaunty effervescence bubbling up from a spring of justice and equality. That’s the American spirit I envision rising up in the face of oppression, repudiating hatred and claiming power for the people.
The morning before my bus ride to Paris, I visited the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer on a bluff overlooking the English Channel where a fleet of warships once massed. In the center of the graves stood a round chapel with a carved inscription wrapping its wall:
THESE ENDURED ALL AND GAVE ALL THAT JUSTICE AMONG NATIONS MIGHT PREVAIL AND THAT MANKIND MIGHT ENJOY FREEDOM AND PEACE
Row upon perfect row of graves, the golden morning light, cool air with a hint of a breeze like a wink and a grin from a cheeky young ghost—it all gave me hope that enough of us have learned the lessons of the past to stand and defend when we need to. There are things worth fighting for, such as the self-evident truth that we are all created equal. We’re all different but we’re equal in value, and it matters how we show up for each other.
