Create with John Fanning podcast

Create with John Fanning podcast


11: Myths, Lies and Creativity

May 21, 2020

For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie–deliberate, contrived and dishonest–but the myth–persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

That’s a quote from John F. Kennedy’s Commencement Address at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut on the 11th of June 1962.

I’m John Fanning and this is the Create with John Fanning podcast.

How’s it goin out there? Hope yis are all well.

This is Episode 11 of my series of episodes on Imagination and creativity, based around my book Create.

Last time I talked about perfection and Shakespeare, and today I want to talk about myths and lies.

Myths can move us towards Imagination or they can move us away from it. So, it’s important to understand the difference between positive myths, and negative ones, because they work, whether it be understanding common universal stories or reinforcing common lies, Walls. A good example would be so called urban myths, which are basically falsehoods, masquerading as truths. There are many of these types of negative myths when it comes to Imagination.

If you read Clarissa Pinkola Estés or Joseph Campbell or Carl Jung, myths take on a positive role in society. We can also watch Campbell talking to Bill Moyers about “Star Wars”. Or George Lucas talking about Joseph Campbell. They’re fascinating readings of our historic stories, although many would say we’ve been creating some very different universal myths in the last decades what with Climate change and the Doomsday Clock prognosis.

It took me a long time to discover the truth of myth the way these people did. They helped me understand that we are surrounded by myths, of Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Celts, Upanishads. And that there are modern ones too.

All these mythic viewpoints look at faith from different parts of the same animal. It took me a long time to see this too, and to understand that many of the myths I was fed as a creator are simply incorrect. Like Roman Catholicism, I was indoctrinated up to a certain age. Then I found, or more created my own spiritual myth of reality. And of course when I realized this I understood how the myths we’re told could be negative, counteractive to creation.

One of the first myths I was told was: All artists are broke. After my grandfather had anxiously wheezed, “Oh no … not that,” to me when I told him I’m going to be a writer, I asked him why? He hissed, “Artists never make any money.” Well, I say bulls**t.

Shakespeare was minted. If he were alive today he’d be in Hollywood driving around in a flash car. Picasso and Dali were filthy rich. Look at any “successful” artist. Are they broke? An artist I know makes 50,000 Euros a painting. It wasn’t so long ago I remember him not having enough money to pay for the nappies for...