I named this blog for a phrase in the opening stanza of T.S. Eliot’s, The Four Quartets, in a passage about visiting the imaginal realms where memory and imagination meet: ”Through the first gate, into our first world, shall we follow the deception of the thrush?”
Later it became The First Gates, plural, as I discovered other related gates. The First Gate, is the name of the first of several passages you go through to reach a traditional Korean Buddhist temple. It’s a dangerous test for the young hero, Atreyu, in The Neverending Story in his effort save the realm of imagination from “The Nothing” – a parable for our times if there ever was one!
This blog is no longer About what it was in the beginning. My initial focus was fiction and the process of writing. Later I included spiritual topics, but from my current perspective, the thread animating all these posts is imagination. Not only artistic “creative imagination.” I use the word in the wider sense employed by psychologist, James Hillman, an influential post-Jungian thinker:
“By soul I mean the imaginative possibilities in our natures…that mode which recognizes all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical” – James Hillman, Revisioning Psychology, 1977.
That is my focus now – a ramble through many topics, linked by my curiosity to find, “the reality in our fantasies and the fantasy in our realities.”
Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you will do so again! - Morgan Mussell (pronounced, mew-SELL)
Thank you for visiting my blog today. I hope you enjoyed your stay.
Hiba<3
What a great title for your blog and equally great reason for doing so. I wonder if many bloggers give their titles such thought. I like that you will touch on spirituality in your blog. I will have to come back for a visit.
Thank you for stopping by, Margaret, and thanks for your comment. I hope you will return.
I’m wondering whether you read ebooks and would you review one. Finally how could one send it to you for review?
I do read ebooks and do book reviews. You can click the tabs on the home page to see what I’ve done and see if you like it. If you click my gravitar image you’ll see my email and you can send info on what you would like me to review. I’m not up on how to file transfer the various formats.
Really enjoyed my visit to your blog today, and look forward to reading more!
The Neverending Story was a childhood favorite of mine. It opened up the window to my imagination. Neat blog title.
It is a great story. I had a psychology professor who claimed the story was about “our culture’s war on imagination,” and I think there’s something to that. All ends well, however. Thanks for visiting my blog, and please stop by again.
Òla meu nome é Alcineide sou estudante de pedagogia estou conhecendo um novo mundo na qual não conhecia e estou adorando,gosto de aprender coisas novas.
The Neverending Story reference caught my attention. One of my favourite movies of all time….I actually reference it often
Cheers!
Love T.S. Eliot. A bit of a cynical, but who isn’t?
Great blog by the way
Loved it.
I loved reading those lines by T.S Elliot. Felt like meeting an old friend. I’ve never heard of the Neverending story before this – fascinating. What a curious challenge, not of courage or character – which is what so many fables, old and new, are about, but an understanding and appreciation of one’s own worth….
I like your blog. Nice dog-easy to walk.
Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you visit again.
What a great blog you have.
Thank you. Please stop by again!
I just wanted to let you know that I really love your blog, so I have nominated you for the Versatile Blogger Award. Please visit, http://livinginthenow.net/2012/04/01/versatile-blogger-nomination/#more-1062, if you would like to see a post I wrote regarding it.
Thank you for the time and effort that you put into this blog.
Take care,
Jason
Thanks for your kind words and the award, Jason.
And…. We have nominated you for the Beautiful Blogger Award.. yaaayyy!! Congrats
http://easyondeyes.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/were-beautiful-d/
Thanks very much, I appreciate the vote of confidence!
We sat across from each other at a recent CWC meeting. Congratulations on creating an imaginative and highly informative blog! I look forward to checking out all of your entries and links to other sites.
Hi Susan. Yes, I remember. Thanks for looking up the link scribbled on a napkin! I hope you’ll continue to tune in from time to time.
Love your blog, Morgan! My research at university was creativity, and I have always had a fascination with imagination and how people imagine things differently. I will definitely be back for more.
Thanks, David, and welcome. As a student of the subject, I’m sure you’re familiar with this, but one of the books I really enjoyed this year was Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer. There are truly no ends or limits. I’ll be interested to hear any other comments you have.
I haven’t read that book, but I’ve read other writings/research of Lehrer. Last week I talking with a psychologist/researcher based at my university, and one of his areas of focus is creative thinking. From the title of that Lehrer book, it sounds like it is about the cognitive processes associated with creativity, but even if it’s not you might enjoy reading some of the research of this psychologist. His name is Dr. Michael Mumford and he has a lot of work out there so I’m sure you can find him through Google or something. Great guy.
Thanks for the reference. Lehrer’s book was indeed about the elements of creativity behind certain things we might otherwise take for granted – how a sandpaper salesman for 3M developed masking tape and later, scotch tape. What aspects of corporate culture give 3M more patents than any other company. Lots of examples like that.
Nice to have a well written person viewing my humble site…that said I very much enjoyed going thru yours, you have a keen insight.
Hi Mr Morgan Mussell,
It seems that your very own blog has gone through many first gates, and the blog itself has the richness of “The Neverending Story”. It is heartening to see how you and your blog has continued to evolve and consolidate.
As for “The Nothing”, I feel that the pace of social change and the increasing human population have caused everything to be cramped out of existence and to recede into the past, into oblivion, into historical junkyards. It would seem that even authors have to build in obsolescence in their stories and characters.
“Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished, masterpiece”, according to Kush.
Thank you for citing T.S. Eliot and James Hillman. Your thoughts and philosophical ponderings are appreciated by SoundEagle. Indeed, the centrality of the quotes are on imagination (and fantasy), which is also the main theme of “The Neverending Story”.
I also love your avatar, which ostensibly depicts your fondness for Snoopy and Peanuts comic strips. So, please allow me to introduce my recent post at http://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/soundeagle-in-taming-soundbeagle/ for your pleasure.
May you have a pleasant and lovely weekend!
Thanks for your comments, Soundeagle. I enjoyed your post on Woodstock’s beginning very much. I’m sure that the pace of social change does feed The Nothing, but not in any simple manner. I don’t think it’s just pace/speed per se, since the 20th century greatly speeded up life, but at times, art kept up; works like Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase,” or Charlie Chaplin’s, “Modern Times.”
There’s probably a much easier case to be made that economic hardship stifles creativity.
Perhaps the pace of social change feeds The Nothing because collectively, we are telling ourselves and each other so many differing stories concerning what matters, what life is about, that it’s a bit like Tower of Babel 2.
Anyway, thanks, it’s something very interesting to ponder.
Hi Morgan,
Since you are a writer and a reviewer, SoundEagle thought that you might be interested in some useful tools on SoundEagle’s blog. Here’s a couple:
http://soundeagle.wordpress.com/writing/
http://soundeagle.wordpress.com/manuscript/
Whilst you are perusing the two pages, any comments and feedback from you will be highly appreciated there. Enjoy!
Thanks. You’ve created two pages of useful tips to writers.
Hi Morgan,
I did not realise that you have looked through either of my two pages until now, as I did not see your liking them (with the “Like” button) and/or your leaving comments there, not that they are mandatory.
PS: It would be nice to have some feedback from you right at my blog if possible. By the way, I have spent some time recently to make the blog faster (as it is laden with multimedia and multidisciplinarity) and also (much) more stylish with some surprises, and there is more coming in the pipeline!
I truly enjoyed reading about your progression of focus here. What a beautiful trove of thoughts you have collected and polished.
Thanks, and it looks like you’re doing the same thing on your blog with the daily posts.
Excellent work!
Thank you, and thanks for stopping by!