…[R]ather than cre­at­ing immutable, unchang­ing spaces that define a par­tic­u­lar expe­ri­ence, they sug­gest inhab­i­tant and struc­ture can—and should—mutually influ­ence each other. -Ethan Mar­cotte

Such to the dead might appear the world of liv­ing — charged with infor­ma­tion, with mean­ing, yet some­how always just, ter­ri­bly, beyond that fate­ful limen where any lamp of com­pre­hen­sion might beam forth
–Thomas Pyn­chon, Against The Day

Cre­ativ­ity and Men­tal Ill­ness: Is There a Link?.

There is lim­ited sci­en­tific evi­dence to asso­ciate cre­ativ­ity with men­tal ill­ness. Despite this, many authors pro­moted a con­nec­tion. Expla­na­tions for this con­tra­dic­tion are explored, and social and research impli­ca­tions are discussed.

Also, the ven­er­a­ble Aldous Hux­ley: Aldous Hux­ley inter­viewed for The Paris Review (1960).

So maybe this isn’t the best topic for this moment– re-inaugurating the ‘blog so to speak– but I had this dream the other night about which I keep think­ing: it’s sim­ple, and it’s also per­haps indica­tive of my computer-addled brain, but I dreamt I was using this computer-drawing pro­gram that was some weird intu­itive merger of Pho­to­shop and some 3-D thing like Maya. The idea was that I could draw any­thing, and when I held the ctrl but­ton (to be hon­est, I can’t remem­ber if it was a Mac or PC), it imme­di­ately ren­dered the draw­ing in a sim­ple 3-D. But the best part is, when­ever I did that, it would turn my pen tool into a knife tool so I could carve off bits, and they would fall off with vir­tual grav­ity. Per­fect for draw­ing a ruined cas­tle, which– you can prob­a­bly guess– was exactly what I was drawing.

As a side note, doesn’t Sigur Ros sound like some­thing like the slow, majes­tic, time-lapse march of gold– and emerald-colored lichens?

Our deep­est fear is not that we are inad­e­quate. Our deep­est fear is that we are pow­er­ful beyond mea­sure. It is our light, not our dark­ness, that fright­ens us most. We ask our­selves, ‘Who am I to be bril­liant, gor­geous, tal­ented, and famous?’ Actu­ally, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your play­ing small does not serve the world. There is noth­ing enlight­ened about shrink­ing so that peo­ple won’t feel inse­cure around you. We were born to make man­i­fest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we uncon­sciously give other peo­ple per­mis­sion to do the same. As we are lib­er­ated from our own fear, our pres­ence auto­mat­i­cally lib­er­ates oth­ers.
~Nel­son Mandela

There is a vital­ity, a life force, a quick­en­ing that is trans­lated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expres­sion is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your busi­ness to deter­mine how good it is, not how it com­pares with other expres­sion. It is your busi­ness to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the chan­nel open. You do not even have to believe in your­self or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that moti­vate you. Keep the chan­nel open. No artist is pleased. There is no sat­is­fac­tion what­ever at any time. There is on a queer, divine dis­sat­is­fac­tion, a blessed unrest that keeps us march­ing and makes us more alive than the oth­ers. ~Martha Graham

Again, for test pur­poses:
“For a start, I think, we must stop treat­ing beauty as a thing or a qual­ity, and see it instead as a kind of com­mu­ni­ca­tion: Beauty is an unsta­ble prop­erty because it is not a prop­erty at all. It is the name of a par­tic­u­lar inter­ac­tion between two beings, a self and an Other; I find an Other beau­ti­ful. This act of dis­cov­ery, we shall see, has pro­found impli­ca­tions”. –Wendy Stiener, Venus in Exile

A few thoughts on a new-ish theme for an old, worked-over hero:

ori­gin mythos par­tially intact:
Frank Miller’s Bruce Wayne as a boy falls down the well; some­thing dark and sin­is­ter there imprints cer­tain psycho-spiritual tem­plate, brings about changes in char­ac­ter and the even­tual down­fall of the sys­tem of secu­ri­ties around him–> lead­ing to the death of his par­ents (seen much much later to be the work of the psy­chos­pir­i­tual agent within him), alien­ation of his world, and his jour­neys to Africa, the Mid­dle East, Rus­sia, Cen­tral Asia, China, then over to Cal­i­for­nia, even­u­ally back to Gotham City..

(each of these jour­neys a sub-story, pos­si­bly through flash­backs or inter-episode events… e.g. con­fronting night-demons in the Mid­dle East, psy­chotropic glad­i­a­to­r­ial com­bat in African jun­gle (** where the com­bat­ants drink some hal­lu­cino­genic root/tea and have a dream-scape com­bat in the ether between con­scious­nesses) etc. –> all the while pur­sued, haunted, and dri­ven by the psy­chos­pir­i­tual agent within him… accru­ing knowl­edge about life, magic, fight­ing styles, “con­trol­ling his mad­ness”, and more and more it dawns on him that he has another soul liv­ing within him)

Bruce Wayne, after a period of try­ing to sub­vert the internal-agent, begins to believe he must fight fire with fire. He embraces many of the dark arts he has learned, tak­ing for his famil­iar a lar­gish bat… con­se­crat­ing the moment with vows for blood… he decides to use the blood of crim­i­nals to pay his end of the power-bargain. Becomes a sem­b­lence of Bat­man… but Bat­man as wiz­ard. His fight­ing tech­nique is a blend of mar­tial arts and magic, some­times sim­ple spells to bol­ster a jump or apply mind-coercion… in the heat of bat­tle it is hard to cast large spells so he uses sim­pler aug­men­ta­tions… but has sev­eral vials, potions, pre­pared items– chang­ing the infa­mous “tool-belt” to a “reagent belt” or something.

Using spells and future-scrying, Bruce Wayne rebuilds his old for­tune, finds and re-hires Alfred (fam­ily but­ler), and has sev­eral run-ins with crim­i­nals– how­ever, oddly enough, many of the crim­i­nals start say­ing things, as if they were pos­sessed, momentary-“puppets” of what Bruce/Batman believes is the force/creature within him, and he believes his strange war with his ori­gins has been ele­vated to a new sur­real level.

As in the first Bob Kane series, the ini­tial clas­sic enemy is Clayface.

ROBIN: As the fight­ing esca­lates, and the ene­mies become more sur­real, pow­er­ful, and pow­ered by extra-human gifts (a thing not lost on Bruce Wayne), Bat­man is approached by a strange humanoid, offer­ing part­ner­ship: the Robin, who has a human-type side (Dick Grayson), but is really some hybrid like Bruce him­self– seems to be over­run by a psy­chotic, avian-like soul given to hys­ter­i­cal laugh­ter at times and a vicious cru­elty that belies his short wiry stature… out­fit more like a king­fisher, spiky hair, jewel-like body armor, fea­tures angu­lar, mis­chevi­ous evil faerie (Robin Good­fel­low, kind of Gaiman’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the Shake­speare crea­ture). It is an odd trust at first, but Robin proves him­self over and over again in help­ing and defend­ing Bat­man, though Bat­man is often forced to hold Robin back from utter cru­el­ties and tortures.

Later it becomes known that Batman’s arts have placed him firmly in the wiz­ard cat­e­gory, and he has entered into a new and dan­ger­ous vari­a­tion on the “familiar”-realm by adding Robin (with an ani­mal nature) to his exist­ing bat-familiar. Other wiz­ards arise to put down the upstart and his violation-of-magical-nature, adding a new level of con­flict to the ris­ing tide of supervillians.

A bit after some great adven­ture and action, the idea begins to occur to Batman/Bruce Wayne that he actu­ally is insane, and much of what he expe­ri­ences on a daily basis is a psy­chotic episode. Robin delights in this idea when Bat­man con­fesses it to him, and there is no end to the lengths Robin goes to per­form­ing prac­ti­cal jokes or mak­ing up nick­names for the Bat­man. “Batty” “the Dark Plight” etc