If John Lennon’s Imagine is one day can no longer be found on any disc or recording of any kind, and the lyrics cannot be found anywhere, does it cease to exist? What about when the last person who knows every word and note of the song dies, does it cease to exist then?
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5 responses to “When, if ever, does existence cease for creations?”
There might be a God guy and an afterlife in which John Lennon’s ghost performs it at the Dakota.
There’s always Vim Fuego’s Imogen.
There is an idea from various ancient cultures that creativity was “an aspect of the Divine” and as such, didn’t “belong” to any one people or peoples, but was timeless.
I’m familiar with a story from the Lipan Apache where a young lad had a particularly strong connection with the land. He was seen as most of the kids and adults as rather odd, the way he spent days by himself wandering the rugged dry hills by himself. But the elders encouraged it. And he had a peculiar habit of coming back with rare medicinal plants for specific ailments suffered by people of the tribe. He’d had no formal training. He said the plants “called to him”.
But he grew increasingly troubled because he kept hearing someone drumming and singing a song he’d never heard. He kept trying to find who it was but never could. By then he was an accomplished tracker, but could find no evidence of anyone.
The tribe started thinking he was becoming unhinged from so much time spent alone. He was in tears nobody believed him and didn’t know what else to do, so he started singing the song.
Nobody knew it and just saw it as evidence the poor boy was deranged. But one of the most ancient elders recognized the song. It was from the days of his youth, but had become lost over the years. It was part of a powerful ceremony that had also become lost over the years. Nobody had sung or heard that song for 3 generations. So where did this boy get it from?
While there’s Native explanations of “The Veil” and “Spirit-Talkers” . . . with my recent training I can see strong indication of Carl Jung’s concept of the common unconscious: the idea that we are in touch with a far greater pool of knowledge and wisdom reaching back through time, than we know.
Partly for the reason that those who are convinced such a thing cannot be there, never undertake the worthy quest that would lead to its discovery.
BTW, that young Apache lad went on to become a great Shaman who reached across cultures in his quest for Truth so deep it transcended peoples and times. He was arguably the last “free-range” Shaman, who wandered across the land as a man out-of-time and passed away in the 70’s. I heard his story through his apprentice, Tom Brown Jr.
@griz very neat! Yeah, I think Jung’s ideas have merit. There are similar stories throughout time. I wonder if everything is already out there and just waiting for someone to find it.
@Scarlett
Or rediscover it.
We like throwing away a lot of ancient wisdom on our march to prove ourselves wise. Things like ancient Egyptian philosophy or even the Bible.
Ancient peoples may not have been able to fully articulate their ideas, presenting them in story art or mythology.
But they knew about things we seem totally clueless about: things that we skeptically dismiss out of hand just because they are not presented in a manner conducive to Modern ego.
I don’t know if you are an Iron Man fan. There was one scene where Tony Stark fabricated a new element based on a 3D mock-up of a “World of Tomorrow” Pavilion his father had created.
His father conceptualized the problem and the solution decades earlier, but lacked the language to articulated and the tools to make it a reality.
Lennon died, and so did Elvis Presley. One of them got away, though. I don’t know which one.
That one, I think, their music, that won’t ever die.