Philosophers throughout history have asserted that “the fundamental nature of the world is aesthetic” (Alfred North Whitehead, Gregory Bateson,James Hillman, Martin Foss,Donald Winnicott to name a few.) The word aesthetics comes from the Greek word “aisthenesthai” which is the ability to perceive. James Hillman writes, “Aesthetics in this primordial sense involves sensing the things of [ Read more … ]
aesthetic space
The Enchanted Loom
I feel moved to post this email from an amazing woman who heard me on the radio last fall. Her metaphoric images are full of spirited life, and I love her image of the culture being in the “neti-neti” stage of childbirth: “We are ‘not here nor there’ but somewhere in-between. Neti-neti is a time [ Read more … ]
The Gate of Access . . .
In his novel Ulysses, James Joyce wrote: Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access . . . Joyce’s quote reminds me of something Herbert Marcuse once said about art: Art [functions to] break open a dimension inaccessible to other experience, a dimension in which human beings, nature, and things no longer stand [ Read more … ]
Notes on Art and Social Change
In the process of writing up some new course proposals, I discovered some old writing I’d never sent out. The ideas are still present for me, so I offer them to you. I think we can all feel it: the rumblings of change are happening all around us. Of course, change is part of life, [ Read more … ]
Create Space for Spirit to Speak
This coming winter I’m teaching Psychology of Metaphor at the Institute of Imaginal Studies. In December of 2006, I was interviewing with the Director of IIS and he asked me what I wanted to teach. I found myself blurting out, “Metaphor.” But the truth was, I didn’t know anything about metaphor as an academic subject, [ Read more … ]
