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0:50: A dream:

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“Big” [or significant] dreams are often remembered for a lifetime, and not infrequently prove to be the richest jewel in the treasure-house of psychic experience...They reveal their significance quite apart from the subjective impression they make by their plastic form, which often has a poetic force and beauty. Such dreams occur mostly during critical phases of life, in early youth, puberty, at the onset of middle age (36-40) and within sight of death." (C.G. Jung, The Nature of Dreams. CW8, par. 558)

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The dream depicted in the film occurred two weeks before I began my graduate studies during a period of momentous change in my life. I was 39 at the time.

 

2:02: Greenfire out of stone:

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The dream image of the mossy bonfire, the green fire out of stone, is one I have returned to again and again through art and active imagination. "We work on the dream, not to unravel as Freud said, to undo the dream work's undoing, but to respond to its work with the likeness of our work, all the while aiming to speak like the dream, imagine like the dream." (James Hillman, Dream and the Underworld, p. 130).

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2:27: Upon the great plains:

 

My Morse ancestors immigrated to the colony of Massachusetts in 1635 from the town of Dedham, Essex. Records indicate that the Morses have been farmers dating back at least to the 14th century, the time of the Black Death. My essay East of Eden: Wildness, Domestication, and the Psyche explores the historical impact of the advent of agriculture on humanity's psychological and spiritual orientation.

 

2:44: My father moved west:

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In 1959, my father moved from the small farming village of Odell, Illinois to Palo Alto, California to study electrical engineering at Stanford University. He spent his entire career at Acurex Environmental, which, in the 1970s, designed parabolic solar collectors.

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3:14: Years of draught:

 

“Droughts are a recurring feature of California’s climate, and the four-year period between fall 2011 and fall 2015 was the driest since record keeping began in 1895. High temperatures worsened its effects, with 2014 and 2015 being the two hottest years in the state’s recorded history.” (PPIC https://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-latest-drought)

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I worked as a farmer and educator at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur from 2012 - 2016 during this time of severe (and increasingly common) draught.

 

3:29: The edge of the edge:

 

Clinging to rocky cliffs between the Santa Lucia mountains and the Pacific Ocean, the Esalen Institute playfully refers to itself as being situated at "the edge of the edge". This comment points to California's complex nature; it is a land of polarities and extremes geographically, politically, socially, and psychologically, polarities that often rub up against one another and commingle (as in the case of the near simultaneous origination of the logos-oriented computer revolution Silicon Valley and the often Dionysian 1960s counterculture movement).

 

“Silicon Valley was formed as a milieu of innovation by the convergence on one site of new technological knowledge; a large pool of skilled engineers and scientists from major universities in the area; generous funding from an assured market with the Defence Department; the development of an efficient network of venture capital firms; and, in the very early stage, the institutional leadership of Stanford University.” (M. Castells, 1996)

 

3:43: The soil is desperate with thirst:

 

In a healthy soil, particles (clay, silt, and sand) hold together through adhesion. Adhesion is made possible by water’s properties of surface tension and meniscus tension. Healthy soil is characterized by a loose, crumblike structure of soil aggregates that prevents runoff of nutrients vital for plant life and creates the preconditions for a vibrant soil ecology. Parched soils are particularly vulnerable to erosion.

 

4:00: I sense that my inner landscape is parched, too:

 

Although in many ways I had never been happier with the external circumstances of my life, the draught seemed to mirror a gradual drying out of my inner life.

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"We must therefore realize that despite its undeniable successes the rational attitude of present-day consciousness is, in many respects, hostile to life. Life has grown desiccated and cramped, crying out for the rediscovery of the fountainhead. But the fountainhead can only be discovered if the conscious mind will suffer itself to be led back to the "children's land," there to receive guidance from the unconscious as before." (C.G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, par. 74)

 

4:42: Synchronicities:

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Jung's formulation of the concept of synchronicity is perhaps his most controversial and revolutionary idea because it calls into question Western modernities core beliefs concerning causality. Jung did not publish his ideas on synchronicity until after his friend, Nobel physicist Wolfgang Pauli, encouraged him to do so. Jung observed that with some of his clients, only a powerful synchronicity would allow them to soften their rationalistic orientation towards life.

 

"The causality principle asserts that the connection between cause and effect is a necessary one. The synchronicity principle asserts that the terms of a meaningful coincidence are connected by simultaneity and meaning... We must remember that the rationalistic attitude of the West is not the only possible one and is not all-embracing, but is in many ways a prejudice and a bias that ought perhaps to be corrected." (C.G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle)

 

5:35: To correspond:

 

The psychologist, artist, and educator Howard McConeghey viewed art as an important means of facilitating fruitful connection between what analyst Edward Edinger called the Ego-Self axis. “Those who are interested in the service of psyche--both the personal psyche and the anima mundi--see art as a correspondence with soul... Such nurturing of the image is necessary for gaining the sensitivity to adequately respond to the needs of the natural world and to the cultural needs of humanity." ( H. McConeghey, Art and Soul, p. 11)

 

4:49: Larme du pere:

 

The short film Zoe et l'homme de verre is just such a correspondence as articulated by McConeghey. Stunned by a synchronicity involving my friend's daughter Zoe and the music and imagery of the film Amelie, I began working on the film Zoe by "corresponding" with soul in the language it had approached me with: music. I wrote the song l'homme de verre using the same opening chords as the song from the film I was playing when the synchronicity occurred, Comptine d'un Autre Ètè. The lyrics of the section featured in Parched translate as:

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Tears of the Father

For the Mother

For the Earth

L'homme de verre (man of glass)

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All the world is broken,

L'homme de verre.

Let yourself be broken,

L'homme de verre.

 

5:40: Apollo, god of light:

 

This quote, from the introduction of Ursula Le Guin’s 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness, evokes C.G. Jung’s emphasis on the necessity of finding balance between psychological polarities and also James Hillman’s “pantheistic” archetypal psychology. Here, Le Guin playfully positions Apollo as an archetypal expression of logos and Dionysus as the countervailing energy of eros. (U. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness, p. 11)

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05:47: La vita nuova:

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Published in 1294, La Vita Nuova was a precursor to Dante Alighieri's masterpiece, Divina Commedia. In a break from the tradition of courtly love poetry from which it emerged, La Vita Nuova ("new life"), marked the emergence of il dolce stil nuovo, the "sweet new style" of nimble, symbolic, metaphorically rich verse that presaged the creative flowering of the Italian Renaissance.

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11:13: A voice, a call:

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The call marks the end of one phase of development and the beginning of another, whether it manifests as Joseph Campbell's "call to adventure", the impetus that draws the fledgling from the security of the nest, or the drive of the germinating seed to set forth roots and shoots.

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