The artist’s “authority comes out of a psychological experience, not a social ordination..”
- Joseph Campbell (learn about him here)
The greatest are does not come out of culture, it comes from that deeper source and pierces through culture.
The favorite books of mine (like Solaris by Stanislaw Lem or The Island by Aldous Huxley), the songs I am drawn to, the humans before me that I feel an indescribable connection with, they all live at different lengths of the same thread: they do not merely reflect back culture’s mirror, they offer underground tunnels through the confined corners of culture and into the infinite wonderment of being itself.
There are only two great voices: the voice of culture, and the voice of the soul. For most people who live out their lives in the construct of culture, they have heard only the call of the world and move according to the changing voice of culture. On the other hand it is the people who, through one experience or another, find themselves alone out on some unmarked trail deep beyond the undergrowth that live by the voice of the soul. Before the creation of culture, the voice of the soul rang the clearest. The dawn of civilized man, filled to the brim with his new heavy cinderblocks of logic and thought, came the setting of the soul. This is not to say logic and soul cannot co-exist, but that logic, the mind, has undeniably overshadowed the soul in our society for some time now. The ‘soul’, or ‘heart’ (or however you linguistically identify with such a representation) does not raise or lower its voice. It does not change tone or have an age. The voice of the soul is eternal, untouched by time, synonymous with the linguistic references of ‘truth’ and ‘sublime clarity’. The voice of the soul runs deep, she is the root of our entire being, of our entire universe, of all that exists and does not exist. The voice of the world is the opposite: evasive and rooted in the shallow grounds of the mind. No matter how much you nourish the shallow ground, it will never compare to the soul-nourishing depth of the voice that beckons, ever patient, ever present, ever loving. Her voice has never left. The soul has been here all the while, for she is timeless and knows that eventually the voice of culture will tremble, crumble and fall, and through the wreckage of culture will emerge the infinite wisdom of her eternal being. But she will not command your attention. To find her, you must quiet your mind and go far within beyond the reaches of culture, of the mind itself. While the voice of culture brought you outward into the clanging world, so the soul will call you to the deepest most silent source of your being.