“And yet even then [Paleolithic Age] there was an allowance made for a certain type of deviant, the visionary, the shaman: the one who had died and come back to life, the one who had met and talked with spirit powers, the one whose great dreams and vivid hallucinations told effectively of forces deeper and more essential than the normally visible surface of things. And it was, in fact, from the insights of just these strangely gifted ones that the myths and rites of the primitive communities were in largest part derived.”—Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology

  Today societies have become immeasurably more complex than in those early days and the shamans have largely given way to artists, but their role remains the same. They are the ones who undergo the profound soul journey in order to connect with “forces deeper and more essential than the normally visible surface of things.” They are the ones who potentially bring back the boons of Life so that we can be energized, inspired with faith and meaning in this Life right here and now. 

  But artists need be nurtured, and it helps if there is a tradition, a generations long unbroken line of mentorship and apprenticeship. Without a tight little community fostering the inclinations and faculties in its younger members the tradition will be lost. And it is a loss deeply felt by both the potential artists as well as the community at large, for without the artist’s vision the inspiriting vitality, that which gives direction, meaning and purpose to the group dribbles away, leaving the community feeling empty and its members lost and alienated. 

  Here at the Cafe I sing the artist’s song I did not hear as a young man. There was no one in my formative years to take me aside and say: “listen, I know you are good at the sciences and all seems a rosy lark right now, but this path you and all your friends are being funnelled into is not the path for you. The sooner you realize it and begin hanging around with genuine artistic types, even if only in books, the happier you will turn out in the long run.” 

  Without a mentor in my younger days, my apprenticeship stretched over thirty years. 

  I’ve created the Cafe so your’s doesn’t.