Gregg Echols, The Archaic Man and Depth Psychology

Let me muse for a moment…

The idea of ideas being autonomous entities in their own right—essential, full of vitality, with a natural movement towards interaction with human beings—has been a concept that has come alive for me through the teachings of archetypal psychology and the writing of James Hillman. This idea has been brought to my attention through numerous personal experiences and the practice of working to “see through”—or “psychologizing” as Hillman terms it (1975/1992, p. 116)—events and situations.

A recent event provided me with the gift of using this practice to see through, and to experience the archetypal presence of energies that go beyond what we generally think of being the normal human scope of awareness—an event that brought my attention to the presence of inspiration: inspir-ation, an act that in itself witnesses the presence of the Muses, of the invisible workings that go beyond our everyday senses and abilities; and, the vehicle that brought forward that inspiration came through the music performed by jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan.

I was not expecting to either receive inspiration nor a visit from this idea via the music of Stanley Jordan, nor to do so during a weeklong musical festival here in my city of residence, Austin, Texas. It was during this performance, however, that the idea of inspir-ation came to my attention, and in a beautiful and magnificent way through Jordan’s spellbinding music.

In my experience, during this particular night of music, it was as though the Muses themselves were present in Jordan’s performance through the sounds emanating from his guitar. To watch Stanley Jordan delicately pluck and strum his guitar and hear the piano-like sounds coming from his instrument—yes, an unusual sound of music originating from a guitar—this was amazingly emotional and warm; a sensation almost like a glove that fits snuggly on one’s hand. The melody darted around a wild assortment of notes that each fell into the ear in a texture that was flexible and changing. These sounds coming to me through Jordan and his music delivered themselves to me and carted about with them this idea to focus on ideas in this paper. One never knows when the Gods might make themselves known. “The Gods grab us, and we play out their stories,” writes Miller (1974, p. 59). It was as though the Muses visiting Stanley Jordan brought with them a little gift for me as well.

Gail Thomas brings to focus the possibility of going into dialogue with a thing—in her writing, a dialogue between a city and its voice—and she asks if in this dialogue with a thing “we ask it to speak to us, to reveal to us what it most wants us to know—its essence, its genius, its soul—what would cry out for our attention?” (Thomas, 1986, p. 63). I bring forward this idea of moving into a dialogue with this thing—this music of Jordan’s—and move it forward in relation to my sense of Jordan’s Dionysian-like ability to capture the souls of those in his audience and not only transport them through his sounds, but to transform them, too: and, therefore, I ask, too, why Jordan’s effort can be seen as almost Pan-like in this day of music generally produced for the masses.

What cries out for our attention in music that inspires us? What does this music want us to know? What is in its soul that seeks our attention? I ask these questions in honor and recognition of Jordan’s music coming through to me as if it were the Muses making love to its audience—as if one were making love, in a way, through the music, to the Muses themselves.

So I proceed in recognition of Hillman’s comments that “we do not hear music, touch sculpture, or read stories with meaning in mind, but for the sake of the imagination” (1975/1992, p. 39) and thus I move forward by “giving over to the images and cultivating them for their own sake” (p. 40). I can only feel the movement of my own emotions in relation to the sounds coming via the strumming of Jordan’s fingers on his guitar. I can only experience the images that seem to “fly up” from the music—as they did on this particular evening—and allow them to work me; these gentle, butterfly-like movements that add eroticism to an already present feeling of being enveloped by the sounds.

Russell Lockhart writes that Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses, “would give birth to spontaneous impulses toward speech, song, art, dance, poetry, and other manifestations rendering the numinous visible and experiential” (1978, 55). Her offspring certainly is met through creative acts of music. It takes an artist to touch the Muses in a way that allows their presence to be experienced by the audience. “All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws,” saxophonist and composer John Coltrane once remarked (Tucker, 1992, p. 229). Other cultures treat music as a way to reach soul and allow music to serve as a tool for the Gods—for, in Miller’s words, “the Gods are Powers. They are the potencies in each of us, in societies, and in nature” (1974, p. 60).

For instance, the Yoruba culture in Africa uses their musical rites and rituals as a means to embrace the Divine, especially in the participatory use of music and dance. The Sufis in the Muslim world understand this through their music—understanding, as Hillman writes, “the cooking vessel of the soul takes in everything, everything can become soul; and by taking into its imagination any and all events, psychic space grows” (1975/1992, p. 69).

Jordan, in his approach to modern jazz, uses an improvisatory, multiphonic approach to creating music. He incorporates the tradition of blues music into his songs, and his method of “tapping” the guitar’s frets sound as though he is playing two or three guitars at once. It is mesmerizing, to say the least. Technically, his process is described as “hammering of a single finger on the string at the frets to create vibrations in the string, rather than plucking or strumming with one hand” (Nationmaster, 2004). This could even be interpreted in modern culture as “shamanic.” This is what Tucker says about such an interpretation, and is one that fits the role played by Jordan:

The magic-working musicians are those who have applied themselves ceaselessly to their craft: such effort has not been directed towards technical perfection for its own sake, but rather towards a deeper understanding of the transformative pulse which lies at the heart of the labyrinth of suffering and aspiration” (1992, p. 222).

My experience of Jordan’s music is the experience of someone as a subject, and this is a reference to Hillman’s notion of the “interior experience…heart as inwardness” (1979/1981, p. 17). This is moving with the sounds of Jordan’s guitar and into the heart—a place “where the essences of reality are presented by the imaginal to the imagination” (p. 18). The soul reflects here in this realm, and I experience, as a result, meaning that becomes an event, and, therefore, a reflection upon the supposed inspir-ation that has brought this all about.

Jordan’s strumming of his electric guitar gives me a peak into what Hillman calls “that sense of taste in relation with things, that thrill or pain, disgust or expansion of breast, those primordial aesthetic reactions of the heart which are soul itself speaking” (p. 25). It is the sense of beauty here that is has erupted within me this sense of inspir-ation. This is the making love to the Muses. An aesthetic response: “the ahh of wonder, of recognition, or the Japanese shee-e through the teeth” (p. 32). In making love, I am being breathed, being inhaled; being moved by the music coming through me. I am, then, within the world soul, anima mundi; within the grace of the Muses coming forward through Jordan’s music. Hillman would say this “taking in” is actually “lovable not only to us and because of us, but because its loveliness increases” (p. 32).

Then there are, too, the ideas and emotions put into the performance by the artist himself—and the artists that influenced him. Lyle Novinski writes about a church in north Dallas, Texas, that built a new church out of the edifice that was its old home. He says that in the construction of a building are the feelings placed into the structure by those involved in its coming together—the fact that there are “unexorcized spirits abounding in all structures” (1986, p. 70). Just as the architect designing the building places his feelings and thoughts into the undeveloped structure, so, too, do the workers on the project “that make the building somehow theirs” (p. 70). Stanley Jordan has done this with his music in such a way that the audience, too, becomes a part of his composition and performance—much like the construction workers becoming a part of the building designed by an architect.

What Jordan is feeling is transcribed in a way through his music into the feelings I am experiencing with the piece. My emotions and experiences—the connectedness I have to the notes, to the other members of the crowd, to the building in which I am hearing this music; my connectedness to the texture of Jordan’s performance, to his feelings; perhaps, too, to the individuals or things or places that inspired tonight’s performance. All of these are part of this construction—and, unlike the building that is being sold and its “memory of things buried in all forms” that “are long dead before we inhabit the place” (p. 70), these beings of thought and emotion permeating the songs of Jordan are indeed released, given shelter, even new life in the very performance that this artist is bringing to his audience.

Indeed, through Jordan’s music, there is a move from the form that is the gathering of bodies in a concert hall or nightclub into another kind of form; maybe, a world something like a Chinese garden that is a “hatchery of dreams and reverie” (Morris, 1986, 92). It is in such a locale that magic occurs, as in the Chinese garden one goes to be refreshed “when you became tired of the fatigues of political living or the fatigues of family living” (p. 92). Jordan, therefore, could be looked at as one who were designing such a place; or, in Morris’ words, “a garden designer…‘half of heaven, half of man’” (p. 92).

And how would the sounds coming from this garden of Jordan’s announce themselves to a curious audience member such as me? As the twinkling of the nighttime stars offer a symphony of sounds that might not be perceptible to the human ear, so, too, is the music of Jordan perceptible in a different sort of way—perhaps a bodily feeling-tone might be the best way to describe such a proclamation. One would have a difficult time experiencing such a phenomena by reading the musical notes on sheet music, much as one would have trouble “hearing” the stars by looking at a map of the constellations. To feel Jordan’s music is truly to grasp the underlying qualities of the music coming via his on-stage performance. Dionysus-like energy certainly comes bounding over the hills in moments such as these—nothing is fixed, and as Ginette Paris describes it, “we still need Dionysos’s ferocity and chaos…to overturn in ourselves the rigidity of old habits” (1990, p. 51). We go behind our own mask to capture the sensuous parts of ourselves in music such as that offered by Jordan. There’s no false experience in such moments.

Perhaps, too, the realm of Hermes comes into play while being engaged by Jordan’s music. Jordan certainly communicates with his guitar—heals with it, too, if one were to embrace that potential, as “therapy is communication” (Paris, 1990, p. 95). Receiving the effects of this music incorporates the flighty path of Hermes. Jordan doesn’t sing or communicate verbally through his music; no, it is simply the strumming, “touching” of his guitar, that presents his voice. “We don’t know how music produces its effect on us,” writes Paris (p. 64), and movement through an archetypal psychology perspective in attempting to pinpoint Jordan’s magic makes him even more elusive, even more Hermes-like.

The fantasy erupting through Stanley Jordan’s music resonates within the sphere of what Hillman terms “archetypally conditioned.” In this sense, Jordan’s work is that of soul-making. I feel inspir-ation in Jordan’s on-stage music, as if the Muses were at work through his sounds. “The soul and its afflictions, its emotions, feelings, and varieties of love are all certainly essential to the human condition,” says Hillman (1975/1992, p. 189). As the music itself makes itself known, I am but a humble observer and receive the gift of Jordan’s sensuousness—the imaginal space offered by this music resonates in its truth as “metaphors and images made by the soul” (p. 209). The many parts of myself vanish within this imaginal space. My own autonomous psyche is silenced within the confines of this moment in Jordan’s music. I am truly, in that moment, experiencing what Hillman calls “soul-as-metaphor:”

Soul-as-metaphor also describes how the soul acts. It performs as does a metaphor, transposing meaning and releasing interior, buried significance. Whatever is heard with the ear of soul reverberates with under-and overtones (1981/1985, p. 21, quoting Moore).

“Arousal is caused by the image,” says Joseph Coppin (2004, March, personal lecture notes). What is more arousing than the feeling, the sensation, of beauty, love, and inspiration? I find in Jordan’s music the image of making love to the Muses, and it is within this experience that I am truly within the “vale of Soul-making,” (Hillman, 1975/1992, p. 110). Eros could even be in this region, as this son of our communicative Hermes and Aphrodite is “forever young…has no history, and even wipes out history, or creates its own, its ‘love story’” (Hillman, 1973, p. 102). My own response to the music of Jordan has created within me a union with Eros itself through the feeling-sensation I have of making love to the Muses. “Creative imagination that bespeaks the imaginal realm results from vitality and passion,” writes Hillman (1972, p. 85). He adds:

It is implied in Symposium 202E that Eros is needed for participation in the imaginal world through which man has intercourse with the Gods—whether awake, asleep, or in a trance, whether in visions, in prophecy, or in the mysteries (p. 86-87).

“Eros both teaches and heals,” Hillman writes (p. 78). The music of Jordan—based on the descriptions laid out throughout these reflections—serves Eros in both capacities. This is not classroom learning, for sure; but, instead, a re-education of the soul. To hear this music is awakening my soul to the qualities of itself—a bit of re-minding. It might even be the union of itself with the Other.

For learning implies a move to a higher stage of understanding, into a new relation with the world—a distancing of oneself from the personal and at the same time a union with the thing through which learning occurs (Cowan, 1986, p. 31).

That making love with the Muses—it, too, is incorporated within the form of learning. “Learning is seeing a form in matter and ennobling it in the soul,” writes Cowan (p. 31). Hillman adds: “Love proves its true nature when it educates” (1972, p. 78). In experiencing Jordan’s music, I am within the mode of learning, even as I am making love with the Muses. “When things are approached with care, their genius shines forth” (Sardello, 1986, p. 34).

The Muses have made their way through Jordan’s music, through the confines of the music hall in which this event is transpiring, through those gathered around me, into my soul. All of this is seen in this moment as the stage for the Muses. I am here; they are here, within me, within this entire scene. I am in the throes of their making love to me through the music of Stanley Jordan. My life is awake in this moment and I am absorbed in this waking moment.

We recognize psychologically creative eros in the moments of fullness in the opening flow of the erotic and in the movements toward the soul, phallic even in their sudden leaping, the intercourse that overcomes distance, the penetration toward engendering (Hillman, 1972, p. 79).

In the moments of finding myself mesmerized, tickled, fondled and embraced by Jordan’s performance and music, I couldn’t help but notice how my entire being was taking part in all of these sensations. It wasn’t just a cognitive act; nor was it simply a moment or two of listening to the music, seeing Jordan strum his guitar while I tapped my foot in rhythm. No, it was one continuous series of moments wrapped into one that embraced me and Jordan’s music as one entity—one soul, animated and enlivened by each other as we all celebrated that embrace. Here in this embrace are the golden sparkles of a radiance I can only define as outside of time when, in the words of Hillman, “direct action is impeded, becoming indirect and imaginative” 1972, p. 71). This is the realm of Eros. “Eros connects the personal to something beyond and brings the beyond into personal experience” (p. 70). Being whisked away in a moment or a series of moments into this realm of the Gods seems to me as not only an action resulting from my experience of Jordan’s music, but also from this music seeking a love-adventure—and finding it—within me. Hillman writes that such adventure is a result of “the mediate nature of erotic experience:”

Eros, as intermediary, creates his own psychic space, his own world between, by a peculiar sort of psychic interference or intervention—‘the inexplicable’—which interrupts, redirects, symbolizes behavior (p. 71).

In this sense, Eros has somehow found his way to me through the music and has found his way to the music through me. We are all helping out each other. The music is helping Stanley Jordan, Eros, and me; I am helping Jordan, Eros, and the music; Jordan is helping us all out while Eros paves the way throughout. We work together. Hillman best summarizes this in the following manner:

Eros alone calls out love. It is as if love had in its nature a mission to ignite, educate, and convert, spreading its mercurial fire in the soul, transferring itself from person to person. It is as if eros thrives in transference, demanding it for its creative work (p. 78).

This sharing between Stanley Jordan, his music, Eros, and myself, is reflected in this experience I have described. It is a moment that moves forward and despite its short-lived physical occurrence in Austin, Texas, it is with me on this airplane in this moment as I type this paper. Perhaps this is one of the true gifts resulting from an encounter with the Muses, Eros, and the Gods—that is, a timeless, sparkling, translucent moment trickling onward and backward as it captures everything resonating within it and them.

Who knows what might join us in this moment?

References

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Coppin, Joseph. (2004, Mar.). Archetypal Psychology. Unpublished lecture presented at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, CA.

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Hillman, James. (1973). Anima. In J. Hillman (Ed.). Spring 1973. (pp. 97-132). New York: Spring Publications.

Hillman, James. (1981). The thought of the heart. Dallas: Spring Publications. (Original work published 1979).

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Nationmaster.com Encyclopedia. Retrieved March 21, 2004 from http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/stanleyjordan.htm.

Novinski , Lyle. (1986). The integrity of place. In R. Sardello and G. Thomas (Eds.). Stirrings of culture: Essays from the Dallas Institute. (pp. 68-70). Dallas: The Dallas Institute Foundations.

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Sardello, Robert. (1986). The learning instinct. In R. Sardello and G. Thomas (Eds.). Stirrings of culture: Essays from the Dallas Institute. (pp. 33-36). Dallas: The Dallas Institute Foundations.

Stanley Jordan biography. Retrieved March 24, 2004 from http://www.stanleyjordan.com/Biography/biography.html.

Thomas, Gail. (1986). Architecture and design. In R. Sardello and G. Thomas (Eds.). Stirrings of culture: Essays from the Dallas Institute. (pp. 63-64). Dallas: The Dallas Institute Foundations.

Tucker, Michael. (1992). Dreaming with open eyes: The shamanic spirit in 20^th century art and culture. San Francisco: Aquarian/HarperSan Francisco.

Archetypal Psychology and the Image