The Sacred Nothing

By: Jordan Tappis | Photography By Ulf Andersen | August 05, 2009 | Fiction In Print Lifestyle Profile

How can adults reconnect with their childhood imagination?
They can begin by slowing down, by concentrating more on living than making a living; by jettisoning their heavy accumulation of social, political and religious clichés; by paying attention to nature, by recognizing that consensual reality is significantly flawed, and by honoring the holiness of play.

How would you describe America’s relationship with sexuality?
Schizophrenic. On the one hand, we’re completely obsessed with sex; on the other, we’re fearful, prudish and repressed. Those are the contradictory hallmarks of a culture still deeply rooted in pathological Puritanism. The silly flap over Janet Jackson’s mammary moonrise is just one example of how simultaneously alienated and absorbed we are in even the most minor matters of the flesh.

What is the greatest lesson you’ve ever learned?
The necessity for ego reduction. I discovered long ago that virtually all discontent and depression is generated by the narcissistic ego. However, due to the unenlightened human animal’s hunger for grandiosity (doubtlessly a result of our unbreakable appointment with The Reaper), it’s a lesson many of us have to learn again and again.

What is the origin of mischief?
The gods invented mischief, probably because we bored them stiff. Our ancient ancestors picked it up from the gods and from tricksters, and it can still have a divine component — but only in the absence of malice.

How would you describe the difference between religion and spirituality?
Religion is an attempt to organize our innate spiritual impulses — which is to say our deep longing to interface with those mystical powers and forces we sense but can never fully identify or comprehend. Unfortunately, mysticism just doesn’t lend itself to organization. The more we attempt to contain, domesticate and codify it, the more we weaken it and foul its essence.

Walk us through a typical day in your life?
Since I try to avoid routines, I’m not sure I have a “typical” day. When I’m off the road and working on a book, however, I do go to my writing room rather faithfully at 10 each morning, remain there until mid-afternoon (whether or not the muse elects to join me), with a noonish break for a solitary lunch. Afterward, there’s frequently a three-mile-walk followed by reading, yoga, dinner and all manner of tomfoolery, both legal and forbidden, familiar and arcane.

What is your favorite/least favorite character trait?
Plato said the unexamined life is not worth living. Oedipus Rex and I are not so sure.

Name five books and/or authors we all need to read?
I would submit that it’s almost impossible to really understand the full scope of human existence without having read Joseph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces. The prologue alone is enough to open one’s eyes with an ecstatic bang. After that, I’d recommend Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna, Homo Ludens (it has nothing to do with gay cough drops) by Johan Huizinga, Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow and Poe Ballantine’s exquisitely funky 501 Minutes to Christ. Modesty forbids me (remember ego reduction?) from listing my own Skinny Legs And All.

Where do you go from here?
Not a problem. I’ve decided to take advantage of outsourcing. My next novel will be written by a couple of guys in Bangalore. n

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