TrueLife - Dr. David Salomon - The Rainbow

Episode Date: October 6, 2022

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Today we continue our journey into the mystic tradition with an incredible individual Dr. David Salomon. Mysticism is popularly known as any kind of ecstasy or altered states of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning, but may refer to becoming one with God or the Absolute. It also refers to the attainment of insight in ultimate or hidden truths, and to human transformation supported by various practices and experiences.http://www.davidasalomon.com/https://davidsalomonblog.wordpress.com/https://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A5537Chttps://www.amazon.com/Seven-Deadly-Sins-Influenced-Middle/dp/ One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark. fumbling, furious through ruins

maze, lights my war cry Born from the blaze The poem is Angels with Rifles The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Kodak Serafini Check out the entire song at the end of the cast It's Tuesday

And you know what that means That means the True Life podcast Is live with Dr. David Solomon And I keep You guys keep saying this stuff my feet is blowing up with more David Solomon. So, you know what? I'm so happier you're here.

And I'm just thankful to get to have a day to talk about some different things. And today we're going to be getting a little bit deeper into our good friend, DHL. So Dr. David Solomon, would you please be so kind as to maybe just tell people about you for the one or two people who may not be aware of our last show? Yeah, well, thanks for having me back. It's always nice to be here. It's like if it's Tuesday, it must be George. So, yeah, so I am David Solomon. I'm the director of undergraduate research and creative activity at Christopher Newport University in Newport, Newport, New York.

I've been a professor of medieval English literature, religion, and culture for 25 or so years. Written a few books. My most recent book is on The Seven Deadly Sins. And currently working on a new book on Angels and Demons in Pop Culture. And I do a lot of stuff, consulting and blog writing and podcasting and doing cool stuff like this with George from way across the country. Yeah, for those that are listening, you are getting to peer into the future and simultaneously look into the past. That's right. Because Dave is far on the East Coast, and I'm way over here in Hawaii.

So you're right in the middle depending on where you are. And I hope that this particular conversation will be just as timeless. So, you know, maybe before we start, we should talk a little bit about, maybe you could tell the people about the poem that you just talked to me about. About expostulation and reply? Yeah. The word of a poem. Yes.

So George had brought up this poem by William Wordsworth called expostulation and reply. Clearly it wasn't a poem that he read aloud a lot because that's hard to. say. And a lot of what Wordsworth does in his work is this kind of dialogue with the self, dialogue with nature, and looking at the ways in which the world reacts to us and we react to the world. Probably my favorite Wordsworth poem is Tintor and Abbey, which is a poem about memory. He revisits the spot in Wales five years after he was first there and really reflects on the power of memory and the power of nature. And so much of that also really dominates the work of D.H. Lawrence.

And so there's a kind of a natural link there because Lawrence is also very interested in the world of nature. Wordsworth and the romantic poets were reacting in many ways to the buildup of the city, urbanization, the rise of technology, and the fears about what that was doing to us. as human beings. And Lawrence, writing about 100 years after Wordsworth, is again reflecting on those same concerns.

You know, I hesitate to call them problems because that's a judgment call. I think to Wordsworth and to Lawrence as well, they were problems in some ways. I've been rereading some of Lawrence's essays as we've been doing this deep dive, George, the last couple of weeks and it's really just interesting to me the way that he approaches things, especially towards the end of his life. I mentioned last week in that that last book that he wrote called Apocalypse where he has that passage where he says, we've lost our son. And I always read that as being we've kind of lost our center. And he's got a short essay that I was looking at again and And there will me while I find it because my bookmark fell out of this.

He's got a piece called On Being Religious. And he talks about the fact that essentially God has disappeared. He's writing this. This is between the wars. And I'll just read you certain things he writes. He says he's had enough. The Almighty has vacated the throne, abdicated, climbed down. The Most High has gone out.

And then he asked, where is he now? Where is the great God now? We have lost him. And then he goes on to say that, as a matter of fact, never did God or Jesus say there was one straight way of salvation forever and ever. And he notes later on, he says, from time to time, God sends a new savior. He says, there have been other salvation. saviors in other lands at other times with other messages, and all of them were sons of God. And he says later on, God sends different saviors to different peoples at different times.

But he reflects then around, this is probably around 1922 that he's writing this. He says, now for the moment there is no savior, this feeling really that were kind of lost. And I think that that's just so incredibly insightful, not only for the time in which he was writing, but in my book on sin, I go to Lawrence a lot because I think a lot of what he said applies to us today, this sense that we're kind of lost. The rapidity of technology has caused us to almost kind of be derailed spiritually. We've lost that center. We've lost our son. And so I think a lot of what Lawrence has to say still is applicable today. He's just a brilliant writer.

And it's funny, we talked last week about Lady Chatterley's Lover a little bit. And I did not know until I think it was Sunday. There was an article in, I believe it was in New York Times, that there's a new film of Lady Chatterley's Lover coming out. It's apparently it's going to be in the theaters and then it's going to be, I believe, on Netflix. But it stars the woman who played Princess Diana in the most recent iteration of the crown, Emma Corwin, I think her name is. And it was interesting because the article talked about the controversies of the novel. And of course, you know, now today that seems tame compared to what we see usually. Sorry, going off on a tangent there.

No, not at all. I think it fits really well. And I'm curious if you, if we take the idea of we've lost our son and we look at the rainbow and we see Ursula as the, okay, we take together, we've lost our son and we take together the, the losing our way. And is it possible to see the rainbow as look at Ursula losing her way all the, like through the years of like this dinosaur. of farmers and then these destructive relationships and all of a sudden she finds herself all alone in an industrialized world with the promise of the savior coming. Is that how you read it? I mean, I guess I'm more or less. I mean, I also, I think it's so important that he stresses the just the fact that if we lose connections with each other, we've got nothing. And so he keeps coming back to that in the novel. And, you know, I brought my old battered copy in with me here. And I mean, there's just one section that I picked out that I wanted to read to you if you don't mind. Please, please. And out of context, yes, because if folks don't know

the novel, but I think it's still, the language still means something here. Lawrence writes, he was nothing, but with her, he would be real. If she were now walking across the frosty grass near the sheep shelter through the fretful bleeding of the ewes and lambs, she would bring him completeness and perfection. And if it should be so, that she should come to him. It should be so. It was ordained so. All these things there, all these things were only words to him, the fact of her superior birth, the fact that her husband had been a brilliant doctor, the fact that he himself was her inferior in almost every way of distinction. There was an inner reality, a logic of the soul, which connected her with him.

And it's just, it's language like that and an imagery like that, which keeps bringing me back to Lawrence, because he's very concerned with making us complete as human beings. And he saw one of the only ways to do that was by connecting to another human being. And most often in his work, that is in the guise of a physical relationship or a relationship. a romantic relationship, but it's more than that even. I mean, much has been made of some of the scenes in women in love of the men wrestling and how over-sexualized that is. And it's because he's interested in the physical and what it means to be human beings. And as we mentioned last week, here's a guy who himself, Lawrence, was physically pretty frail,

often ill and it's interesting that he's interested in you know our physical being considering that his was was sort of in such dire straits at so many points yet maybe that's exactly why he was able to have

such a deep perception of the flesh and the blood that his was waning you know that could be true yeah yeah yeah it's fascinating to see the way in which he he with okay with that language to the best of my capabilities that type of language is the

best case for bringing the absolute together with the relative the timeless and the temporal like he's like that kind of language is it's mind blowing how someone can just put that out there and like I can feel it like I can feel those words reach out to me and touch me and grab me and I think that that is one of the things that make him the genius that he is. No, I agree. I mean, I think I first read the rainbow. I must have been about 21. I was just really being introduced to reading literature. It was something that I read early on because I took a graduate course as an undergraduate

on Lawrence and Thomas Hardy. And when I read this book, and I'll hold my copy up here, when I read this book, this almost 600-page novel, and I normally do not like reading long books, I was just absolutely blown out of the water. I mean, that final paragraph, which you've alluded to, if you don't mind, I'm going to read. Please, absolutely.

This is after all the tumult of the novel and everything has gone on, and he finally says in the last paragraph, and the rainbow stood on the earth. She knew that the sordid people, who crept, hard-scaled, and separate on the face of the world's corruption, were living still, that the rainbow was arched in their blood and would quivered a life in their spirit, that they would cast off their horny covering of disintegration,

that new, clean, naked bodies would issue to a new germination, to a new growth, rising to the light and the wind and the clean rain of heaven. She saw in the earth the earth's new architecture, the old brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up a living fabric of truth, fitting to the overarching heaven. And when I read that originally, I mean, I underlined and the rainbow stood on the earth,

and it's, I think, the only book that I have read my entire life, and I wrote at the end of it, the end. Because it just, it was just, to me, it's just one of the most perfect novels. And it's not only because of the narrative and the content and what goes on in the book, but because of Lawrence's language and his imagery, which just to me, just, you know, that image of the rainbow, you know, which of course comes out of Genesis, right? God floods the world and his promises, I won't do that again. And as that promise, he says, I give you the rainbow. So when it rains, you'll see a rainbow. You'll know that it's not,

It's not the end that I'm keeping my promise. The rainbow is, in a sense, God's covenant with the people to say, you know, I'm not going to wipe things out again. Man, like, do you think that that particular paragraph, like that paragraph is a culmination of all the tumultuous things that have happened over three years? It's almost like Joe, it's almost like the story of Job in a way, but more passionate. Like in some ways, it's, it's like, why? would you want to read something that has so much heartache and so much like a fronting on like just meat like just but you want you have to read it so that you can understand the true message like it gives you the message of life like it's not easy it's not that's the thing right i mean that

image of the rainbow at the end of the book is that there's hope right there's hope that even when you go through all of this all of this strain and all this difficulty that there's hope that the and it's interesting to me because that hope is provided really by nature. I mean, in that last paragraph and the rainbow stood on the earth is a line that's out of Genesis, but there's nothing in that paragraph that has to do with God or religion. It's about nature. It's about the power of nature that nature can throw everything at us, but then we get a rainbow that says, you know what, there's hope for tomorrow.

Do you think it would be fair to say to, like in my mind that way, I kind of see it is like, regardless of what technology comes our way, regardless of what war man tries to bring upon the earth or on each other, like there's still nothing more beautiful than our spiritual nature than the rainbow. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's interesting. I mean, some of the, the pictures that showed up on online and also on TV right after the queen does. Now, the day the Queen died, it was pretty much raining throughout England. And then when they made that announcement, several photos showed up online. One, I believe, of London and one out at Windsor Castle, or it might have been at Balmoral, where the rain had stopped and there was a rainbow. And the rainbow is, it gives you hope that even if you've been through this hardship, we can make it.

And, you know, it ties in with, you know, faultless self-promotion. The piece that I wrote this week for the blog, which is on resilience, right? And we focus so much on that today in our culture, especially, I mean, in higher ed and education, resilience is one of these big things. We want students to be resilient. And one of the things that I note in the blog is, in many ways, that's a, it's kind of a myth. you know, I mean, saying someone, you know, oh, it's so great, you're resilient, doesn't always to me acknowledge that you've been through something. And so I actually finished the blog by saying, you know, yeah, I'm resilient,

but I've got the scars to show it. You know, we go through those things. And yes, it's great that we're resilient as human beings that we are able to bounce back. but it can't negate what we experience and what we go through positive and negative. Let's dig into that a little deeper. Like when you say the idea of resilient, do you mean that, do you mean that like resilience is all you have left? Like that's, you have to be, I mean, that's all there is. Like, so you have to be resilient.

Yeah, I mean, I think you do wonder, I mean, you know, if you, a lot of people will say, well, if you hit rock bottom, whatever that means, you know, at least you know where the bottom is. And I think that that may be a good point. But for me, it's always been kind of a frightening thing. And I'll speak about my own experience personally. I mean, I've experienced and struggled with depression for most of my adult life. and I had horrible panic attacks when I was in college, anxiety attacks that I dealt with and

it was before they had meds for it. And, you know, people will always say to me, oh, well, you must be so pleased them with where you are and how you've been able to, you know, how far you've come. And, you know, my reaction to that is usually the usual self-deprecation. And I say, no, you know, I should have always been doing this. But I've always felt that the interesting thing about having experience that is I know I've been to the edge of the cliff I've looked over the edge I know the way back there, right? I don't want to go back there, but I know the way back there now. I know how to get there. And so, you know, for my own emotional and psychological health, I have to be careful when I realize that, you know, I've taken a step

back in that direction. It's like, whoa, wait a minute. I don't want to go back down that road. I know, I know where that is. I know where it is. I know what it leads to and I don't want to go there. So how do I stop and turn around or prevent myself from continuing to move on? And it's not about necessarily throwing up an obstacle and saying, well, you know, put something in the way. That doesn't necessarily work, right? I mean, it's, it's interesting. the way our minds operate especially when it comes to things like depression and anxiety which I mean just so many people are struggling with these days and and probably have been for a long time and I think that the danger there is just if you're allowed to and and God I hate using this phrase

but if you're allowed to wallow in it and some people do That is not productive. And that is not to belittle anyone who's going through this because I've been there. I know what it's like. But I think that unless you have, you need people around, you know, we're back with Lawrence again. You need people around you. People are going to pull you out. You know, there are certain things that we experience which we just cannot fully control ourselves.

I mean, it's the reason why, you know, the 12-step programs appeal to a higher power, right? I'm unable to control this. I need help. And I think too often we're stubborn and independent and prideful. No, I'm going to do this myself. And, you know, there are a few of us, I think, who have that ability to do that ourselves. it's a serious a serious

affliction it really is an affliction when you're experiencing this that would be really weird tangent are you kidding that's beautiful like I don't know no no okay let's back it up from it like listen to the language you used

about I know my way back to the cliff and the way you shouldn't do it is by putting an obstacle there like what is an obstacle an obstacle is just something that you can get over if you wanted to so you're just lying to yourself if you put an obstacle in the way. Exactly. The fact that you can tie it to Lawrence and say like that's exactly what he was dealing with on so many levels, be it anxiety or depression or the idea of religion or war

or his own understanding of what relationships were like so much of what he has written was that same idea of the cliff calling back to you. Like look, George, I know how to get there. That's such a powerful statement to say like, yeah, I know where it is. I know how to to get there. But do you know how empowering that can be? Like, yeah, you do not to get there. And guess what? You haven't gone back. You could probably go back there and look if you wanted to. Like that's the real power is like, I know where that cliff is and I can walk back there and I can look over the edge and I can still see its beauty. And if I listen, I can hear the echo calling to me? But along that path, maybe you're maybe the mission is to walk back that path and find other people

that are walking that don't know about it. And you be the guy on the path that is like, hey, can I walk with you on this path for a little bit? Because I know where you're going. And I just want to tell you my story as we walked to this clip together. Yeah. No, that's a good point. That gives me goosebumps, you know? Like, I speak about this all the time, but I think that the purpose of tragedy, I think that the reason you've had such profound depression and got over it is because there's a force

bigger than you know that wanted you to experience it so that you can help other people get through it, right? Right. And that's why I'm so drawn, you know, intellectually to young, because that's a Jungian approach, right? that you know you you don't try to and this is how young differs from Freud on one level is you're not looking at repressing things it's about no bring it out in the open let's deal with it you know you're not going to discover the true self and who you are until you paddle through all the the the really unpleasant parts of yourself you can't bury those and you know for young it's one of the things you calls the shadow self, right? That part of us that that kind of houses all of those deep, dark aspects of our personality. And we've got to deal with those before we can move on. You know, and I think we've talked about, you know, one of my favorite illustrations of that is in the

Empire Strikes Back, right? When Luke has to go into the cave and confronts Darth Vader in the cave, his father, and although he doesn't yet know that at that point. And when he confronts him in the cave and chops off his head, the head rolls on the ground and the helmet dissolves and the face is actually Luke's. What we have to really confront in that cave is ourselves. You know, this brings us to the allegory of the cave. And I, you know, we always hear about like the first part where people, they go into the cave and the, one guy is able to leave the cave and he's like wow then he comes back to tell everybody you know i've always thought that maybe the the path forward might not be to to get everybody

to leave the cave but to have everybody go deeper into the cave you know because if they don't want to leave like maybe maybe there's something deeper in there maybe you're just seeing these shadows but you got you got stuck in this spot maybe the trick is to go further into the cave and explore even deeper. Maybe that's, I don't know. Maybe I'm getting a little bit too deep. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, because the problem with that, of course, is that in, in the, in the platonic

allegory of the cave, if you do that, you're getting further and further away from actual truth, right? I mean, the truth is the, is the light outside the cave. And it's the truth that, that the prisoners can't, can't deal with because they've been chained inside the cave and have only been living in a world of shadows. And so, you know, it's, it's. And it's, you know, again, we're like tangents are us today. But it also reminds me just of our relationship with light, right?

In the way that in the modern world, we deal so much with artificial light. I mean, here I am sitting in my office. I don't keep the overhead lights on because they give me a headache. So I have lamps on in the office. But I do have one of these handy-dandy gizmos that I bought from Amazon, which is supposed to make me look less like Dracula on a podcast. and give me a little bit more light. You know, it's all artificial light, though.

We don't have much of a relationship anymore with actual light. I actually brought some of my students over to the Chrysler Museum here in Norfolk last week. And we met with the conservator, and he was talking about the effects of light on paintings and how that really does damage paintings over time. And how you can see that he was showing us. the different ways that UV light really attacks a painting, and it has to be protected from that. It was very interesting, but it also shows you how, you know, and again, you know, talking Plato, with the painting and the light, it's like, well, we're moving further and further away from reality then, right?

The painting is already a reproduction of reality in some ways once removed. And now, you know, now we're going to take away the natural light on top of that. It's like, I mean, there we are going deeper into the cave. Yeah. That's so awesome. I love it. Yeah, I, on some level. We should rename our podcast, Dream of Consciousness Theater.

These are the best ones. I promise. These are the best ones. It's like, let's start off with this. And most things are just a starting ground, right? Like, we could take it right back to, to DH in that, like, if we tie together the idea of the three generations moving further and further, maybe that's DH going further into the cave by looking at Ursula's,

by seeing where she ends up. And on some level, it almost seems to me that it's the progression of religion being something that we look up to when you look at the dynasty of farmers who are on the land, and living off the land to God existing in Ursula and her seeing the world through her own personal idea of what she was thrust into in a way. Maybe that's the, maybe that's God leaving us. Now she's in this industrial society and there's nothing there for her but hope,

you know, in a weird sort of way. Yeah. Well, I think, and I think that's what a lot of people were experiencing in reality at the time that Lawrence is writing this, which is that shift from an agricultural.

cultural life to a more industrial one. And because these are people who had looked so close to the ground, literally, and so close to the earth and had such connections with it, that that movement is a really tough adjustment. You know, if you live your life according to an agricultural calendar, that's a certain kind of existence and you take that away and go and live in a city and i say this as a as a city boy never having lived in agricultural existence um it's very different you know the only the only experience i have with is when i taught in south dakota and i was told that um towards the end of september that a lot of kids were going to go home for a couple of weeks because it was calving season on the

ranches and here I am this this Bronx Jew I'm like what calving season what the hell are you talking about you know but they are linked with the calendar according to nature and it's not the artificial calendar that we have introduced in the industrialized world they're linked to the calendar the animals and and the vegetation the way it grows it's not necessarily following the calendar yeah and on some level, I think that that might be the emptiness that all of us feel is that we are no longer connected to the land in the way that we used to be. Now we have this new idea. There's people that work graveyard shifts. They don't have their circadian rhythm. You could make the argument that a woman's

cycle is tied to the moon so as the tides are. And the further we've tried to find artificial ways to fix that then, right? So now you see ads for drugs that you can get that will adjust your circadian rhythms because maybe you work third shift. It's like, what are we doing? Yeah, I, well, it's okay. It's, it's the artificial light. Like, we're lying to ourselves. The same way that like, okay, let's, let's move back towards depression and look at some of the kids. We've all know people who have been affected by either, you know, depression or anxiety. And a lot of the treatments for those particular ailments are SSRIs, these selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. And what that does, that doesn't solve any problem.

That gives you the mental feeling to face another day of dread, even though it's the day of dread. You're not getting yourself out of the situation. You're not figuring out what it is. It gives you the space to be able to potentially deal with it. I don't know. Does it? Do you think so? Yeah.

Because, I mean, you know, the misconception, and there's a big argument about this, of course, is, you know, whether depression is actually a chemical imbalance. in the brain or whether it's something else going on. I'm pretty much a believer that there is something chemical going on there, that it's something to do with chemistry. That isn't going to solve it, though. Right. Right.

So, but I think that if you're put on the meds, the meds will help you to at least survive so you can figure it out and get out of it. I mean, I know in the darkest hours of my depression, which now this goes back 30 years, I was having such terrible anxiety that I couldn't get out of my house. And, you know, I was finally, that was the point at which I was finally put on meds. And the meds allowed me at least to get to therapy to be able to start digging out of this. Right. So the two of them worked in conjunction.

I think you're right, though. I think of people who look at the meds and say, well, that's the panacea. Just give me a pill. You know, that's not going to work. Right. It's the same thing as we were talking about a couple weeks ago. people go for acupuncture and they said well do that work like well if you believe it works you know you got to go into it with the right attitude so you know you got to go into taking the meds

with the thought that this is going to allow me to do the work to get out of this that's well put doing doing the work finding a way to do the work because ultimately that's the one thing that's going to get you to where you need to be and it is very hard work yeah it really is is and and to be honest I think the only people who understand how difficult that work is is people who've been through it and can appreciate it because you know it's something that's just so alien to anybody else who hasn't experienced it it's it's it's kind of like saying you know well asking new armstrong what was it like walking on the moon you know we don't know he knows but you know if you've been through this you understand what the work is involved the work that is involved to get out of it. And it can be very, very hard work.

It can be painful. It can be incredibly rewarding. You know, when Luke goes into that cave and discovers that, you know, the person he just killed in the cave was really himself. That's painful as all hell. But he has to do that in order to get through. And, you know, and again, I'm prescribing to a very young. me an interpretation of all this.

But I fully believe that the way out is through. Yeah. Yeah. I always thought Uncle Ben probably beat up Luke a little bit. You know what I mean?

Like he had a pretty rough family life. You know, sisters gone. But that's doing the Freudian analysis of Hamlet, you know, when he was a little boy, like, we don't know what the hell. I mean, you know. Oh, that's beautiful. Let me ask you this.

Uncle Ben, as we're going down this world of tangents, do you, I've always thought that maybe we've got, we took a wrong turn in medicine when we stopped allowing doctors to experiment on themselves with whatever. I always think that the best therapist is someone who's gone through the thing they're trying to help people with, right? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, and I mean, that was always, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but that was always the training for psychoanalysis is you had to go through analysis yourself. That was part of the process. And so, you know, I mean, there may be some truth to that, although when you look back at the biographies

of some of those guys who did those experimentations with drugs, it's, you know, I mean, Freud with cocaine is, you know, I'm not sure I want to endorse that, but. You know, I do think, I mean, there is something to this because when you do go to see a physician who has not experienced what you're experiencing, there's, I do believe that, and I think this goes for human beings in general, you have a different understanding of the problem, right? I mean, it's the difference between empathy and sympathy, right? I can sympathize with you, you're in pain, but I don't know what you're going through because I've never been.

there. Whereas you can, if you can empathize, you can say, I know what you're going through. I've been there. I've had that happen to me. And so, you know, I've always, I'm always struck by the fact that you will see scenes in novels and films where, you know, someone will go to a doctor with some, you know, really grave ailment. And the doctor will attempt to essentially placate them. And then, you know, the patient will say, you know, what are you talking about? And finally, the patient will say, you know, have you ever experienced this? Do you know what this is like? And no, well, then you don't know.

And, you know, I'm speaking especially these days of people who are dealing with such horrible diseases and ailments such as, you know, cancer and the wide variety of other things that we're dealing with. But, you know, I mean, I see so many people now dealing with cancer. And it's just, it's horrible. And you think about the visualization of it. I think about the visualization. Whenever I think about cancer, because I think about Susan Sontag's book, Illnesses Metaphor, brilliant little book.

And thinking about, you know, and this is what a lot of therapy will do with people who are experiencing that kind of terrible disease is to visualize it and just use that visualization as not only a way of coping, but maybe even of possibly fighting the disease. I mean, that's what, you know, people like Norman cousins argued for an anatomy of illness back in the in the 1970s when he was so ill and claimed that he had basically cured himself by watching, you know, Old Three Stooges' videos in the hospital because he thought that really state of mind had such an important influence on physical health when you are fighting something.

And so again, you know, we're back to this kind of you know, do you wallow in it or do you try to to deal with it and fight it in some ways? And I don't mean to come off as somebody who is just being an ass and saying, you know, well, you know, pick up your bootstraps and get back to work. But I do think there is something about positive attitude and not, you know, I mean, there's a reason why. I mean, that image of wallowing, just, I think about pigs in a sty, right? Wallowing in mud. It's like, you're only going to get dirtier, right? No progress is going to be made there.

And so, you know, I think about the stages of dealing with death, the Kul-Rost thing, about, you know, denial and then acceptance and these various ways of experiencing these hardships. And I think what really is indicative of how we come out of it as humans, and whether we find the rainbow, is whether we are willing to do the work again to go through those steps and make it to that point. Because no one else is going to do it for us. No one else is going to bring us there. I mean, as Lawrence talks about in that piece of that essay that I wrote, I mean, as far as he's concerned, you know, God has abdicated the throne, as he said. you know, it's up to us. We've got to do the work. He does later on say that, you know, God is here

if we just will look for him. But this attitude that has really permeated the Western thought for so many centuries that will we pray to God to help us, whereas really what we should be doing is looking within and helping ourselves. Yeah, that sounds a little bit like the Gospel of Thomas to me in the doubting common. Well, it is, and it's also a much more Eastern percent. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. God is not external, God's internal.

His kingdom is all around us if you just look and see. Yeah, yeah. It also reminds me of George Bernard Shaw, who says, you should never wrestle with a pig because you get dirty and the pig likes it. But look at the hospitals people go to when you're sick, like those places, like you walk in there

and you can feel the doom sitting on your shoulder. running and jumping on your back and weighing you down. And how can you possibly get better in a place that is filled with death that surrounds you? Like it's just, it seems like it's not congruent to get better. And there's all this testing and the doctors, they're never fixing. They're just practicing. Like, why did you play this time?

Yeah, I think some of it's getting better. Sure. In some places, you know, and I think quite honestly, the solution to this. And as someone who taught nursing, students for so long is the nurses. Absolutely. The nurses are the, you know, the angels here, right? I mean, they're the, they're the ones that get you through it. Um, if you are in the hospital. And I'm sure, you know, anybody who has been in the hospital could probably speak to this that, you know, I don't remember the doctors. I remember the nurses. Um, it's the nurses that really are

the ones who are there to help you and, and get you through. Yeah. I, it's interesting. I, As we're going down this road, like, it seems that there is almost a miracle on the forefront when it comes to medicine. In a weird way, I see the decentralization of medicine happening. There's all these people that, and Hawaii is a big military. There's a lot of military people here. And I've been speaking with a lot of people who have been using the psychedelics as a way of figuring out what the actual problem they have in their life. like they're using psychedelics to remove the obstacle, you know, and it's fascinating to me to see this thing happening.

And in a weird way, you could argue that DH, that DH is reading his novels, reading his poetry or just reading his story as a psychedelic in nature to see the path that he goes down and to see the tumultuous things that happen. It's a lot like a psychedelic trip. Like you go into this world of like, oh, my God, I don't know what's happening.

And then you come out the other side with under. Well, that's the escape of good literature, right? But I mean, I mean, you know, you say, you know, using the psychedelics as a way to kind of break down a barrier. I mean, and there are lots of different ways to do that, right? I mean, one of the more popular therapeutic methods at the moment in cognitive behavioral therapy is EMDR, right? Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, right? And it's the idea that your eye movements back and forth, along with listening to alternating tones, will kind of break down the barrier to let you getting to talk about what it is that you really need to talk about. And I've done it.

And I mean, it worked for me. But again, you know, it's one of those things that if you're going to go into it and say, well, hell, that's never going to work. Then guess what? It's never going to work. But I think all of these methods, you know, whether it's psychedelics literature or EMDR, you know, take your pick, they all are ways of breaking down that obstacle. I mean, I think that, you know, for listeners who have read, you know, that great book, whatever that might be, you know, you say, well, why was it so great? Well, it allowed me to see XYZ, which I hadn't seen before. Like, well, there broke down the obstacle, right?

broke down the barrier. And I think, you know, for a lot of us, we've got either books, movies, TV shows, whatever the case. Oftentimes, it is art, isn't it? Yeah. You know, that allows us to do that. You know, we were talking to my class the other day about the varying reasons for why people go to museums. John Falk has a really good theory about this, about identity and museums, and he's got, I think it's five or six different types of people who go to a museum for different reasons.

Some are, he calls explorers, some are facilitators, they want to show somebody else something. And then the last one, I forget what the word is that he uses, and gosh, forgive me. But it's basically to rejuvenate, right? you go because it does something for you personally. And those are the folks that you, you know, you go to a museum and you see them sitting in the same gallery for hours on end, staring at the same painting. You know, what a fantastic experience that can be for some people if that is something

that really speaks to you. I mean, I've seen people do that with Starry Night, Van Gogh's painting in MoMA, just sit there in front of Starry Night for, you know, a couple hours. staring at it. And it's just it's a transcendent experience in some ways. Yeah. It's beautiful in so many ways to think about

what the museum can do for you. And maybe if more people went there and stood and saw something in a painting that they admire, who knows what it would do to help them get through some of the difficulties that they're going through in their life? Yeah. But, you know, in all fairness, that doesn't speak to everybody. Right.

And it may not speak to you if you are unprepared for it. I mean, I grew up going to Metropolitan Museum of Art. My father loved going to the Met. I think we went every Sunday. We were members. And so, but we would always go to the Impressionists. That's what he liked. And so I know a lot about the Impressionists.

I didn't know a lot about anything else. And so later on, I know growing up, once I got into college and then into graduate school, starting to gain a better appreciation for so-called modern art, contemporary art, that was a big stretch step, right? Because it was something that I just didn't have a good reference point for. I had to learn about that. But now I can appreciate it for what it is. So I think there, you know, some folks are too, hesitant, too quick to dismiss something, right? And I always tell my students, don't dismiss what you don't understand. It doesn't mean that it has no value, which just means you don't understand it.

And you can either choose to try to learn about it and understand it or you can just move on. But don't dismiss it just because you don't get it. What are some creative ways that you and your students are maybe helping museums and artwork transcend in this time of of of Zoom and this time of internet and like are there some creative things that you and your students are doing? I mean, we've been talking a lot about about the ways that we engage with museum visitors and re-engage with them now after COVID. And it really is kind of a whole new world. I mean, we were talking the other night about immersive exhibits where, you know, there's a lot. of hands-on and interactive exhibits. And, you know, something that comes up, which we wouldn't

have thought about before three years ago is, you know, you got to wipe that stuff off because people are touching it. And, you know, it's just, so it's interesting the way we have to rethink some of what we are, what we've always taken for granted. But by the same token, you know, museums, they're fantastic places. And obviously, I teach museum studies right now. And, I'm all in favor of it. But, you know, museums also have a lot of issues at the moment. And probably some listeners listen to watch John Oliver. His show Sunday night was all about museums.

And he talked about how, you know, it's not all roses and flourishes. A lot of what's in museums was stolen from people and should be returned. He talked about the antiquities market and the sketchiness of the, things. So there are problems there. But as far as ways in which students are re-engaging, it's really interesting because one of the things I think most of my students are interested in is the conservative, the conservator role, how you preserve materials and repair them. And so we looked at a painting when we went over to that museum last week, which had had some significant damage to it and the conservator was showing us how he was repairing it. And it was incredible

because it was really involved chemistry and science that, you know, my museum studies students who were mostly in the humanities were like, oh my gosh, you know. And then I had them step back at one point because I said, look at everything that is in, we were in the conservator's lab. So look at everything that's in the case there that he's using. He had all kinds of wacky stuff in there. There was, he had bowling alley wax, a tin of bowling alley wax. And I was like, what the hell? And he said, well, you know, we tried it on something that we were working on.

And it worked. And so, you know, now it's in the case. And so, you know, really interesting the way that that has been accomplished. But I do think that there's a bright future for, museums, but we're going through a tough time right now because we have to face facts, which is a lot of the stuff that's in these museums is not ours. I mean, the British Museum is most obviously guilty for it with things like the Elgin Marbles and the Benin Brazzas. But the Metropolitan Museum of Art is at the same problem, and they had to return a bunch of artifacts,

which were discovered to be stolen. John Oliver reported about that. And so many American museums deal with the issue of having native items in their collection, which have been taken. And it's an interesting issue. We want to see those things, but we also need to respect the people who made them and whose culture they belong to. Yeah. And in some ways, that's exciting to me, not because things were taken, or appropriated. And I'm happy to see things go back to the places where maybe the indigenous cultures can enjoy them or even use them in a way that their ancestors did. But I mean,

what's exciting to me is it sounds to me what's happening. If you just look at the world and the events as a bigger language, I think what the museums are telling us is it's time for us to present and make some new art. There's a new time coming in where there's going to be new monuments made, where there's new. types of artworks being built in the minds of the children who are ready to express them. And I'm wondering, like, I see it in my mind. Like, I see a bridge being formed by people like yourself and maybe some of your students and the youngest students going to art schools.

I think that there's programs that can be built, especially now where, you know, I was just recently talking to Abby Day, who is my child's art teacher. And we're talking about when a beautiful, piece of artwork for our children's future, be them graduating elementary school with a residual income. Like there's no reason that can't happen. And what if we could use art to do it? What if we could pair up children in elementary schools with art students and have them come together to build art that could be in a museum that people could go and see? Like I just think there's so many new programs coming out. Sure. That are building the artwork of tomorrow. And like, and this is where it

gets dark. Like the best, it was the best of times. It was the worst of times. But that's where the juices. That's where the beauty is going to be built. And I think that maybe this technology thing like you and I talk about, or if we can use D.H. Lawrence as a roadmap, we can kind of see that, yeah, we're headed for some dark times. But that is where some of the most beautiful things get born out of. Yeah, I mean, that certainly is true. I mean, even if you look historically, I mean, some of the greatest art has come out of incredible tragedy, whether it's depictions of it or whether it's actual tragedy that has come out of. I'm thinking about some of the art, which is finally starting, even after all this time, to surface after the Nazis took so much of it.

So, you know, and, you know, in some strange way, of course, if they hadn't taken it, it may not still exist. So, you know, kind of ironic. But I think, You're right. I mean, you know, and the Chrysler Museum here in Norfolk actually has a section which we were, we walked through where children come in and make art. And they put it up on the walls as museum art. One of my favorite things and listeners can Google it easily enough. There was a child, I think this was in England, I believe, but I may be wrong. And she went to and visited a museum.

and the next time she came in, she brought them her favorite rock. And she said she wanted them to have that. And they put it on display. They put it on display for her, you know, with a shelf tag, indicating that it was hers and telling the story of it. And it just,

it shows you that, you know, in a corny way, beauty is everywhere, right? And, and from a kid's perspective, especially, it's interesting what they see as beautiful. This rock was her favorite rock. See, that's what I'm talking about.

Like, okay, imagine this. Imagine 100 years from now. So people go to a museum and there's this picture of Dr. David Solomon. Hey, this was in 2002 where Dr. David Solomon created this class for children across the world to put in their best artwork. You know what I mean? Like I really think that there is an opportunity for like especially with children and imagination.

Like they can come in and look at a rock and hear a story and all of a sudden, boom, but things are exploding in their head where maybe some of us who were older like, yeah, I saw 20 of those rocks on the beach yesterday. Like we've had this calcification of imagination sometimes where a child can see that and build on that and build tomorrow. Well, and that's part of the argument, you know, that's been made in the law. last few, well, it's not just the last few years, about the dangers, the dangers of education, right, that our educational system actually drains people of imagination, that that's what it's

doing to them over the time of their young years, because adults aren't supposed to think that way, right? Adults aren't supposed to have a favorite rock. Why the hell not? You know, I mean, in fact, between now and when we talk next time, I'm going to look for my favorite rock out there. I'm going to try to find it. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah, there's an interesting book by John Taylor Gatto. And I think it's called Dumbing Us Down. And he talks about the idea of the Prussian school system and how there's these bells and whistles and Pavlovian dog science goes into this idea of just, we want you to be just smart enough to read the literature, but not smart enough to act upon it. Like it's pretty, it's pretty sad.

But, you know, I see that that is de King. Well, and the frightening thing is if you go back and read John Dewey, who would, he is responsible for in many ways our American education system, the way that it has been so distorted from what his vision was is just kind of frightening. I mean, it became institutionalized and it became politicized. And all of that is, it never seems to be a good thing, right? Yeah. When you introduce those elements to it.

Yeah. this in some ways it makes me think of just this it gets back to the idea of specialization how we've gotten smaller and smaller and smaller and in doing so we've gotten away from more and more and more of who we are yeah and how we're connected right back to dhl like we need each other in order to see who we are we need other people's shadows to to to sit in so that we can you know i've often heard the phrase well maybe you cast a big shadow maybe that's why they're upset or Some of us have big brothers and big sisters whom to this day we look up to, even though we may be taller than, or maybe we have accomplished some things, but we still look up to them. Or maybe it's your dad or your mom or your uncle or your aunt or the neighbor girl across the street.

But it's these other people that we wish we could be like that give us the opportunity to build ourselves up. Even though we may not be exactly like them, we need each other. We need the flesh and blood and this connectedness. Well, I mean, because I would argue that the individual who we are, are is is in some ways you know a sum of not only all of our choices and our actions which is what john paul sart said but also a sum and a and a and a result of all the people that we know right i mean i would i would argue that you know i'm a little bit different person today than i was i don't know six months ago before we met george and now you know that that i've gotten a little bit of you

It's almost like as most of us, you know. And I think we do. I think we get a little bit of each other when we do that interaction, which is why the fear is that without that interaction, and this is what Lawrence was warning us for, we become less human. Yeah, and it's cold and lonely. Yeah.

That leads to the soul of the dark night and walking to the cliff and having no one there. And depression. and depression. Yeah. You know, see, in some ways, like I look at great works of art, and I think that those are someone who stared over the cliff and is like, maybe they were thinking, like, I'm going to, this is it. But then they go, you know what?

How about I just draw this? And I can, you know, in some ways, that's what great artists do is they walk to the cliff. Yeah. They stare at it and then they draw it so other people can see it. And then it's like, oh, my God, it's beautiful that you wrote that. And then that can re-inspire them to continue to do things like that. And I think the part of it is that that walk to the cliff is a tough walk. It's a lonely walk.

It's a lonely walk. And that's why a lot of people don't want to do it. And so I think you're right. You know, the great artists, maybe are the ones who are willing to do that and take that chance and go through that strife in order to tell the rest of us what that's like. So if you just, if we just stay here for a minute, like, might that walk to the cliff be worthy of of the, that's the hero's journey. I mean,

you're like walking to that cliff. Being affected by depression. Like, if you just look at it like, yeah, it's, I could understand why you don't want to do it, but you're doing it and you did it.

So maybe that's a reason to not be depressed. Maybe if you can just see it from that angle, you know, maybe that's the, maybe that's the dark before the light. Like, Okay, yeah, all these things happen. Yes, yes, they did, and it sucks, and I'm sorry, but you did it.

And you know what? Most people can't do it. Like, that should be the, the end, the portal at the end of the cliff, maybe. Yeah, I mean, it's the only problem that I really have with Campbell's Heroes Journey motif, which is that it's circular. Because it is cyclical, excuse me. It implies that, you know, you're going to go through this an ongoing kind of way. And, you know, I don't want to do that.

you know, I've been there, been there, done that. You know, I don't want to go back to that miserable place. You know, now I understand, you know, it's more metaphorical that we're going through those stages of the journey and that they might occur in different ways, but I'm also thinking about, you know, the Jungian trip to individuation, which parallels that. Now, I don't want a linear existence because that's boring. But that cyclical one that Campbell gives us in that image of the hero's journey, I've always been a little troubled by the cyclical nature of that.

You know what? I would agree. And like I think, I think it is really good up to a point. I think it serves you really well until maybe 40. You know what I mean? Maybe 30. I don't know.

Whatever for me, it was probably 40. And then I found myself looking at like Nietzsche's camel to the, from camel to the child, which is it may not be circular, but it's helical, it seems to me. Like,

it's more moving up through. I think that that's a better narrative. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think you're right. I think you're right to look at it that way. And so it makes it more three-dimensional.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's an interesting image. That's an interesting image. And I, you know,

I, but I think that that is the precipice on which we stand. Like, okay, everybody, gather around. Like, it's not,

it's not a circle anymore. now we're moving up. And it seems like we're back where we started, but we're just, we're a level higher. Like, look down. Look and see how much further it is. I like that.

I like that a lot. That's a great way to look at it. Well, I think it's the only way, George. I'm recording it. It's the Dow of George. It's the Dow of David and George.

I would never come up with this if I wasn't talking to you. We're streaming consciousness. With that being said, David, I really love this. I really enjoy talking to you. It's like a little mind vacation. So thank you for this.

And I got to go handle some things. I know you've got some things to do. You've been gracious with your time. But one more time for people who are getting, who are on their keyboard right now saying more David Solomon. Like, where can they find you? David A. Solomon.com. S-A-O-M-O-M-N.

That's my books are listed there and links to buy them. And the blog and all my other. media appearances and my consulting work. I'm happy to talk to anybody and happy to sign books if people would like it. Just contact me through the website. Not a problem at all. I'd love to do that for anybody who was that interested in the work. So much of the most recent book, The Seven Deadly Sins, is kind of the stream of consciousness kind of approach that George and I take in our discussions.

Yeah. And like I said, I think that anybody who's taking the time to go through Joseph Campbell or getting into the Youngian archetypes or looking into some Nietzsche or Shakespeare for that matter, I really think you'll enjoy the books. And it's like I said, I was blown away by all the footnotes and all the research that you have done to get to the ideas that you got to in that book. And it's really, in some ways, it's like it's Youngian because it has so many footnotes in there. And it's got so much behind it. You know, I love it. that's what I got coming up. I got some other great guests coming up in the near couple weeks. And Dr. David Solomon and I will be back every Tuesday to satisfy your needs of walking down different tangents. So we'll be here. We'll be here. Yep. Thank you to everybody for her listening. And all the links will be in the show notes below. Aloha.