JM: The other day, we were talking and you mentioned something you had read about Chris Cornell in an interview where he said, “I used to create fiction around me and then write about that.” And then, you go from there because I can’t remember what else you said.

JP: Well, the point of it was—and actually, it was an interview from 1998 or something like that, right when he had broken away from Soundgarden and was getting back into the scene, that kind of stuff. And his whole thing was, “Yeah, you know, I use to write images shrouded in images and now I just kind of write where I’m at in the moment…” Which I agree with that stuff and I understand the dynamic of that and why that would be beneficial to someone. My problem is when people use an art forum to do that. It almost sounded like, and this may just be what I was projecting, but it sounded like he was saying that it was more appropriate to do this. You know, “Now, I’m not full of sh** like I used to be.” Well, fine but the art forum, like we used talk about all the time—a pure image is a pure image. And you can’t replace that with something that you can only identify with. I mean that, on the whole, you can’t just sort of float through the imagery and leave with your own interpretation.

JM: Right. It makes sense. And it’s funny you say that, because it leads us right into proper and improper art which we’ve talked about a time or two but I think we can take a couple of minutes to explain a little bit about. And of course this comes from James Joyce in his A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and was filtered to me through Joseph Campbell. And then you and I have discussed it at various times; your head had already been there and I kind of put the references to it so you had a reference point.

But basically he talks about two different types of art: proper and improper. And I remember having a discussion with these two moops down the hallway about pornography and whether pornography was art. And, of course, it was at a keg party we were all just drunk off our ass, but you know how those conversations go. I mean, these guys were burnouts, so it wasn’t too intellectually in-depth. But it basically came down to the point of one of them saying, “I think pornos are art because they make me want to get up and act.” But that’s a good point because most people think that is what art is.

He described it perfectly because improper art moves you. It moves you to go somewhere. It either moves you to move toward it or move away from it. Whereas proper art is, just like you said, a pure image. You can see right through it; you don’t get caught on the image.

JP: Right. It’s almost a hologram of sorts. It does exist, but you have to look at it from the corner of your eye.

JM: I gotcha. It’s like the Pink Floyd song where he said, “…out of the corner of my eye.”

JP: Exactly.

JP: I don’t know if I’m saying this correctly, but A.H. Almaas. Well, basically what I took away from him, is that he’s saying that to have a sense of self and to try to identify with anything, you’re sort of frozen in time if you do that so you’re not a self. A self moves forward, experiences new things, does the self-exploration and isn’t afraid to try new things and new relationships. Whereas the person that needs to identify with one aspect of themselves, they sort of get trapped and blocked and pigeon-holed into that. And when you do that with art, it’s the same thing with the images that you can’t see through them. You will be stopped and will be directed.

JM: But wouldn’t you say that’s 99% of art today? Well, what’s marketed in pop culture is that. The experience of moving someone is what most people consider to be art and I believe that it is detrimental to the soul.

JP: See, my take on that (and this is probably semantics), but when they say “move,” I sort of think of—that’s the goal. But the goal is not to move someone in any given direction; it’s just to move and cause a shift, period. It doesn’t have to be, like you said, you’re not moving them to “hate Bush”—so, “Love Bush.” So, it’s just, “Here it is. What do you think?”

JM: I was always enamored with the concept when Joseph Campbell talked about proper art and when it really holds you still in place in the moment. That’s not really standing still, it’s really moving in all directions at the same time, both inward and outward.

JP: Exactly.

JM: I mean, it is standing still, but it’s essentially cutting through time.

JP: You’re traversing through the experience instead of moving through it. There’s a difference.

JM: That is very true. If you look at Cosmology and Astronomy, you see that The Big Bang wasn’t an explosion of matter into space; it was actually an explosion of space itself. So you can’t think of as something exploding inside of a self-contained item; it was actually an explosion of space and time itself. And that is, in effect what happens when a human being, individually, sees a piece of proper art.

JP: Internally, they do that.

JM: Yeah, they lose themselves psychologically. They die. If only for a few minutes, for a few seconds even. They’re gone and something new comes into being. And Krishnamurti always called that “The Awakening of Intelligence.”

JP: Right.

JM: When that new universe explodes inside someone’s mind, when they step outside of the moment. And you don’t even need art for that. I mean, art’s just a tool to get there, just like religion is.

JP: It’s supposed to create that process.

JM: Exactly. But meditation, in Krishnamurti’s mind, was getting to that still point. So, I made an analogy between a birth of space and not a birth of the universe into space, but an actual birth of space itself that the universe exists within.

JP: It’s an expansion.

JM: And that expansion happens to the individual who has seen a piece of proper art or who has touched the source within themselves and has experience that kind of an explosion, in all directions at once both internally and externally. So you have the macro universe with the planets and the galaxies and such and you have the internal universe with the neurons and the quarks and all that shit.

JP: That’s very true, it’s a similar structure. They’re basically constellations.

JM: It’s a brain. The universe is a brain. Let’s just come out and say it.

JP: A.H. Almaas was talking about personality disorders and narcissism and all that type of stuff. He was basically saying that you’re not caught up with yourself until you can allow who you were in 1984 because you’re in there still, you’re still wired, you’re just a collection of your experiences.

JM: Right.

JP: And depending upon how integrated they are, sort of all melted together and you’re moving forward with this sort of “snow globe of self” instead of fragmented shards. I really think that, and this sounds like insanity and I don’t mean it to come out this way. But I really have been thinking about how I think there is a physical relationship between consciousness and what we perceive as external reality.

I think there is a lag time in thought. What I mean is, I think that what we see as reality is sort of a by-product of spent thought. So, whatever you’re viewing, no matter what it is, no matter how recent, it’s no more.

JM: Yes.

JP: So, I think if you could interrupt whatever we’re doing to perceive that; you could, in theory, alter it without tampering with it on the outside.

JM: That is an absolutely perfect segway back into Krishnamurti who says that every single image is composed of the past. It can never be in the present because the mind is of the past, it’s structure is of the past, and it can never know the present and from that it has projected the uknown future. And inside that projection of the future, all fears lie.

JP: And it doesn’t have anything to do with the real reality.

JM: That’s right. It’s actually a rejection of reality.

JP: Yeah it is.

JM: And by rejecting that reality, you’re embracing the fear present in the projection of the future.

JP: Keeping it alive.

JM: The loss. The loss of self. Death because ultimately that’s what it all comes down to. It’s the fear of death.

JP: Of annihilation.

JM: Total self-annihilation, but that’s exactly what has to happen in order for true freedom to be in place. And you can’t drag freedom from one moment to the next, right?

JP: Exactly. It’s like trying to bring an ice sculpture into a heated house to observe it. You have to be in the cold.

JM: That’s a great metaphor. Frosty the Snowman.

JP: Exactly. That’s a good analogy. Real quick, just with that, the space and time and consciousness—I think that, very similarly, we have a black hole of consciousness too. I think that trauma—oh, okay, it’s too much to contain.

Note:This audio on this part was bad but Jason made the analogy that psychological wounds are actually ruptures in the ego and Josh made the connection that black holes in space were punctures in the space-time continuum


JM: So a hole was poked in but it just went it, it wasn’t a shining hole; it was a dark black hole.

JP: Exactly. It’s a wound almost.

JM: Whereas, like a religious awakening or through artistic vision, there’s a light that comes on but it’s still a puncture.

JP: A black hole sun, yes.

JM: It’s like the brightest star that you could have whereas a black hole is the absence of that completely. But both make a puncture in the ego, right?

JP: Yes, they interrupt the flow. And what happens is, the brain, you know, the information comes in, the ones and zeroes—you’re three years old and you see your Dad hit your Mom or whatever people go through. And the brain goes, “Hmm. I know 101 and this is trigonometry and I’m not going to do this right now.”

JM: Think of that man, you know a planet warps space and time. So if you think of it as a sheet being held tight and you put a big ball in the middle, the sheet warps down to hold the planet [or ball]. What if those puncture wounds that you were talking about, those emotional puncture wounds act like, you know, super gravity modules…

JP: …and they do. They annihilate…

JM: And they suck all of your fears into them and that’s where your consciousness goes, that’s where your mental energy goes.

JP: And by the way, I think that’s the original archetype of Satan.

JM: Oh yeah, I could see that.

JP: No matter how cunning he sounds, no matter what, sort of the myth is that he can always get around what you think is reality and trauma does that because you can’t control how your brain is wired. And no matter what thoughts you have, until your brain shifts, it doesn’t matter because they black hole is going to suck it up and spit it out.

JM: Right. That’s brilliant, Dude, I love the merging of cosmology and psychology.

JP: I think they’re related. I really do.

JM: They’re the same thing.

JP: And I think humans have relationships that we don’t understand and I think that the whole one mind—I’ve been thinking about higher powers and higher selves and what that means. And I really that its’ like a bean stalk of mind and if you went to the very top, it’s one mind and we’re all tentacles of that one force. To get a healthy human being, you integrate the brain and move forward. I think that the idea maybe is the trauma and what we perceive as external reality is really internal reality projected outward. So, outer space is in our brain.

JM: There you go, bro. There you go.

JP: And that’s why we can’t explain what’s out there—because there is nothing. We haven’t done it yet.

JM: I actually wrote a paper, a year or so ago, called “Living Between the Points.” And my whole argument was, okay the black hole or the Big Bang quantum singularity is a point in outer space where time and physics and the laws of the universe as we know it break down completely. We don’t know what happens after that. Whereas, when we’re born, there’s a before that doesn’t mean anything to us because we have no frame of reference. And the same thing for after we die. It’s a big blank spot. That too, is a place where time breaks down and the laws of the universe. And I will argue that they are actually the same point. You know, while we’re living between the points in space and time, the two points are actually the same point and when you step out of it, either through a religious experience or proper art…

JP: …they come back together! A schism shift.

JM: Oh, that’s great, it’s a schism shift! That’s perfect! The Tool album Lateralus.

JP: I went through a personal experience like this. I’ve been seeing a therapist for like five and a half years now, once a week. And the shifts; it’s bizarre because when I walk in there, it hurts for no reason. And it’s because, oh, here you go! It’s because he doesn’t take an opinion of me either way and it’s a perfect image. No matter what I do, he’s the same. And so I am forced to change by definition.

JM: So, he’s like a mirror that you’re looking at your own psyche in?

JP: Yes, exactly. He basically just plays whatever role I project onto him but says what that part of me should say.

JM: Wow! Wow! What a novel view of, I guess that’s what psychology is all about.

JP: Yeah, it is. It’s a way of putting a Rubik’s cube back together from the outside without seeing inside.

JM: And think how complicated these egg heads have made it. And that’s with everything. These egg heads get a hold of it and they take a simple idea and they stretch it out into endless calculations and complications that nobody even gives a shit about anymore by the time they’re done with it, you know? They spend eight pages filled with all kinds of nomenclature about something that it really takes a sentence to write out, if they were thinking correctly.

TAGS:
Blogcast, Joshua Minton, Jason Patterson, Art, Psychology, Cosmology, Spirituality, Philosophy, Pink Floyd, Tool