Jeremy Bent

Category: Reflection

  • Moratorium: Invoking Reagan

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    Easily one of my least favorite subplot of the upcoming election is how frequently the Republican ticket, Sarah Palin especially, are referencing Reagan, as if he were some sort of political savior. Palin seems to think that the American people believe that had we all put our trust in Reagan, the country would be soaring…

  • More Quotations

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    I can’t stop quoting Joseph Campbell, but apparently he can’t stop being incredibly insightful. Mythology is defeated when the mind rests solemnly with its favorite or traditional images, defending them as though they themselves were the message that they communicate.

  • Three Years

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    That’s how long I’ve been in New York. I rolled in here on a Dominican shuttle bus three years ago today and had to take a cab 70 blocks to my friend Bob’s apartment because they didn’t go below 125th St. Blame my dad. The more I think about my move to New York, the…

  • More Excerpts

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    From Hero With A Thousand Faces: Whenever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history, mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret…

  • Late to the Party

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    I saw a couple of minutes of Dr. Horrible a few months ago, but I finally got around to watching the whole thing on Monday. Surprise! It’s great (as everyone besides me has known for months). It’s great in its execution, polish, and general sense of fun. I watched it on Hulu, which should be…

  • J. Campbell Wisdom

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    Instead of clearing his own heart, the zealot tries to clear the world. Awesome. The Hero with a Thousand Faces continues to be revelatory and brilliant.

  • Shakes-prov

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    Chris Scott saw the Improvised Shakespeare Co. on Monday at the Del Close Marathon. He urged me to see it on Tuesday after they had done an amazing show off of his suggestion of The Three Laws of Asimov. By Wednesday, during the Walsh workshop, I resolved to wait in the stand-by line for their…

  • Workin’ With Walsh

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    I took a four-hour improv workshop with UCB founder Matt Walsh last night. I didn’t really know what to expect, because you hear a lot of stories about the old-schoolers and what they’re like, but who knows whether the stories are true, or whether they’re still true about them now. I’m happy to say I…

  • The Myths Just Keep On Coming

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    More great stuff from The Power of Myth: Campbell: There are some teachers who decide they won’t teach at all because of what society will do with what they’ve found. Moyers: What if the hero returns from his ordeal, and the world doesn’t want what he brings back? Campbell: That, of course, is a normal…

  • Power of Myth

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    I’m reading Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, and it is blowing my mind. So much basic, simple stuff that feels so relevant. All these primitive cultures sharing the same stories despite being geographically isolated from each other because they’re trying to describe the same realities in their day to day existence.…