As the mythologist Frederick Campbell pointed out, all the ethnicities on the planet have created leading-men stories, and several of the same identifiable motifs recur from one to the other and are built on beliefs. People have fought as well as died for their beliefs since time immemorial. What’s always fascinated me about these myths has been the psychology of the leading man. What spurs a person to go out beyond the actual proscribed boundaries of society to face the unknown?
One component that I’ve discovered time and again which might apply as much to a contemporary musician, which I might be intrigued by, as it does to the hero or myth of even antiquity, is that this type of individual is seriously disappointed with his encircling culture. Which lack of fulfillment provides the necessary inspiration for that leading man/woman to attempt the trip? To put it mildly, this is probably necessary due to basic individual complacency. When life is enjoyable, all of us tend to negotiate into happiness and routine. We don’t request or seek solutions about the deeper queries we may have regarding our human existence. It is only when we’re in discomfort that we’re motivated to begin questioning the greater organization and intelligence in life. This is why the “suffering artist” is really a repeating trend.
The folklore encircling the actual tribal shaman succinctly demonstrates the way in which the leading man/woman is set aside from normal society and then undertakes the journey to recover something that is missing and sorely required. Shamans generally weathered traumatic encounters at least twice in their life, once in early childhood and then again in adolescence. These traumas altered the actual trajectories of their life, so they were denied most of the pleasures and satisfaction enjoyed and loved by their own brethren. They were opened to measurements of experience that the typical man is sightless to. Basically, shamans needed to be injured before they could become healers.
The inspiration for that hero’s journey, then, is mainly the desire to recover a person’s Self. The actual healing from the tribe, culture, or even globe at large occurs later, and it is oftentimes a good afterthought as well as unintentional. The actual hero’s questions cannot be happy through the conventional beliefs and traditions surrounding her or him. Such a person must give up looking for individual thought. This thought, as soon as accomplished, is perceived as a “boon” towards the rest of society which shows that things as they appear to be are not as satisfying since it appears that it is the individual thought and desire for change that cause fear and discomfort.
A hero can be explained as an individual with an internal sense associated with actuality and reality that discovers absolutely no related echo associated with itself within the encircling tradition. Lacking that affirmation, they might possess feelings of not belonging, and the actual leading man/woman must venture on his/her own to find this. He/she may discover that which the remainder of mankind has been subconsciously longing for.