The Saturday Writing Quote — why seek emotional experience?

 

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

— Joseph Campbell, American author and professor

 

The Saturday Writing Quote — Joseph Campbell

The weekly quote is back, after a summer vacation and some technical glitches. Alas, the glitches continue, but we shall persevere, right? Because above all, that’s what artists do.

Fall, as much as January, is the time for new projects, or new approaches to our work. And so I give you this quote from the master of insight.

“You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.”

—Joseph Campbell

The Saturday Writing Quote — Joseph Campbell

03_Flowers1_Watercolor_WEB“Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, the words of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted.”

— Joseph Campbell, American mythologist, teacher, writer (1904-1987)