As a child, I recall โtaking the measureโ of the little world (micro-cosmos) into which I had been planted like a plump, wriggling seed. By the time I was 13, I began to find this little Shreveport world โ with the parents, siblings, and companions I was awarded โ to be somewhat cramped, crude, tepid, and shabby (aesthetically). I felt awkward and out of place โ unable to work up much heartfelt enthusiasm for anyone or anything in my midst. This little world, however, was just comfortable and safe enough not to feel menacing and suffocating. I found some solace in nature โ and solitude โ in reading and in music.
I longed to find persons who would inspire or excite my admiration, but I seemed to be surrounded by decent but generally disappointing specimens of humanity. I had little more to show for myself, with my unearthly ideals, of course. Sometimes, this unfulfilled longing for the companionship or guiding example of exceptional human beings left me feeling ashamed โ as if I were a coldhearted snob whose expectations were outlandishly unrealistic. These mysterious, โloftyโ standards by which I judged or assessed the inoffensive ciphers and fragments in my midst seemed to be both a curse and a blessing. Because they were responsible to a great extent for a persistent sense of estrangement that I felt from my family and the other persons around me, these โelevatedโ (aesthetic, intellectual, โspiritual-soulfulโ) standards were a kind of curse. The standards were not acquired โ I had not consciously cultivated or constructed them. They were simply there, in nuce, in my cradle. They are still there and they continue, in a muted manner, to set me apart from others that I love.
I must, on the other hand, count them as a blessing in so far as everything of beauty, significance, and lasting value that has come through me owes itself to these mercilessly exacting standards that Iโm still learning how to serve. The felt need for altitude over โ or distance from โ most other persons and situations/obligations that demand things from me that are not mine to freely give has been with me for as long as I can remember. I openly confess that my ability to function โ and to feel โ like a โnormalโ human being is pitifully limited, but I have learned the great value and importance of โkeeping up appearancesโ in order to reduce the friction and hostility that my actual strangeness and ineptitude can elicit from those who worship at the altar of the normal.
Another name for the process or activity that is generated and sustained by these innate standards is โartistic creativity.โ The raw material of my experience is just that: raw ingredients which, by themselves, are of interest and value to me. Guided by my โinner lights,โ I sift through the welter of the available, raw material and I select a โchoiceโ portion to work with, just as a guitar-maker selects the wood he will use to make his guitar. Instead of wood or marble or cuts of beef, I select themes, questions, moods, impressions, problems, and conflicts to which I am called to work. It is not arbitrary or whimsical work, but an ongoing opus that is guided from a source within me that remains shrouded in mystery.
Thus, I experience myself as a kind of craftsmen who โproducesโ works, the originating sparks or seeds of which come from beyond me. I serve as โmotherโ or form-giver. As โtranslatorโ and โmediatorโ between source and world, I occupy a humble, subordinate, but functional role vis-ร -vis the mysterious creative source. I strongly believe this โarrangementโ holds good for all creative artists and thinkers, from the simplest (like myself) all the way up to Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Dante, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Nietzsche, and Jung.
How do I understand these โstandardsโ or criteria I seem to have been mysteriously equipped with from birth? Of course they were not โgivenโ to me in the form of clearly articulated rules or principles that I could follow and apply to my experienceโlike Descartesโ ๐ ๐ข๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐กโ๐ ๐ท๐๐๐๐๐ก๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐กโ๐ ๐๐๐๐ or Jordan Petersonโs 12 ๐ ๐ข๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐ฟ๐๐๐. For many years this internal guidance system remained vague and nebulous to me โ but, like a storm cloud, its electrical presence could be felt, always in the background. It provided me with a kind of โdivining rod,โ on the one hand, and a thermometer, on the other. As a divining rod or Geiger counter, it let me know when I was getting close to a โburied water sourceโ or โradioactiveโ ideas. Like a thermometer or set of scales, it enabled me to obtain a rough measurement of the โqualityโ level of the โinteresting materialโ that it spotted before me.
Really, what we are discussing here โ in using the idea of an innate set of standards โ is a more or less reliable touchstone or means of sensing and gauging qualitative differences. Implicit in all such sets of standards is a sense of where excellence lies โ and, also implicitly, what obstructs or obscures it. Excellence is a big, baggy word that can be applied to all manner of things. We may be concerned, primarily, with beauty and its natural enemies โ insensitivity, boorishness, vulgarity, crudeness, imperfections. Or, we may concern ourselves with reason and rational clarity โ and its adversaries: prejudice, irrational passions, bias, laziness, dogmatic rigidity, etc. We may be focused on efficiency and the million and one obstacles to a smoothly-running process. Some โqualitativeโ arenas are enormous and comprehensive (โWhat is the good life for the human, as such?โ), while others are compact and tidy (โHow can I make a really good chocolate mousse?โ).
One way of approaching James Hillmanโs โacornโ theory (borrowed from Platoโs myth of Er in the final book of the Republic) is to equate the daimon (or โfateโ chosen by the individual before birth) with what I am calling โinnate standards of qualityโ with reference to some arena of life or another. Most of my life and ongoing education has consisted in more or less successful attempts to embody the standards which inwardly guide and ground my conscious activity. When my writing, my music, my moral actions, my conversations, my conjugal life, my friendships, etc., approximate these unwritten (but inwardly decipherable) guidelines, I know and feel myself moving towards the ever-elusive carrot (or mirage) of excellence. It is chiefly up to me how closely I align my creaturely self with this divine or daimonic image that has always been there in the background, regardless of whether I hearkened to it or not.
Cooking is a useful metaphor for the ongoing creative process of embodying these โdaimonicโ standards (of quality) in the world of human experience. If we see the raw material of mundane experience as the available ingredients and the daimonic standards as our recipe, it is my job, as cook, to prepare the meal properly. As any practiced cook knows, there are several factors that, together, decide whether the dish will be successful or not: 1) The quality and the quantitative distribution of the ingredients, 2) the preliminary preparation and proper combination of the ingredients, 3) the method, temperature, and time duration of the cooking of the dish. Any sacrifice in quality, or significant deviation from the tested recipe, and excellence will be compromised.
A recipe, by itself, printed on the page of a cookbook, is โfoodโ for the imagination, while a pantry and fridge full of ingredients is a great meal waiting to happenโin the hands of a capable cook. Instead of eggs and flour, olive oil and chicken breasts, I have verbs and adjectives, metaphors and analogies, to cook with as I consult the recipes that pop up on the screen of my mind in the morning after Iโve had my French roast coffee. After all this time, I know a good recipe when I see one and I try to keep a well-stocked pantry and fridge. Part of my training as a word-chef involved learning how to weed out recipes โ and entire cuisines โ for which I have no enthusiasm or natural affinity. This has left me with a โroundedโ but manageable menu of solid themes to prepare and re-prepare, serving them up to those who are naturally drawn to this fare. I can only hope that it is as nourishing and tasty for those who come to my table as I insist upon it being for myself. It has to earn my stamp of approval before it can leave the kitchen.