Kingdom Scum

Wednesday, 31 January 2007

My main interest is the mind, reality and the relation between these two. It seems obvious to me that as long we don’t fully understand how these primary things work, it is useless to try and solve secondary problems. But this is not obvious for everybody: our society has little interest in these primary questions. Most people hardly ever question their mind or their reality.
There is a lot to say about the mind, reality and their relation. I will not do that here. But a lot that is been said about these fundamental questions is lacking some essential insights. Among the people whose insights I highly value is Joseph Campbell. He specialisation was myths, and his basic message is that all myths are descriptions of the processes that go on in the mind. He uses a lot of words and illustrates his ideas with so many stories that he is sometimes hard to follow. But if you don’t know his works already, it is worth a try.
In the early 00’s the band Kingdom Scum made a CD that is about the fundamental questions of Life. The music reminds me of Jim Thorwell, Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits, with many samples, strange twists and little inside jokes. It is very well done and combined with the beautiful artwork, this CD is a highlight in my collection. One song is built around samples of Joseph Campbell, in which his messages is clearer than in most of his books. This song, The Science of Superstition, is not really representative for the 23 other songs on the CD, but I choose it anyway.