Yesterday I was sharing my concern for the difficult and indeed perilous path Shaman-Types must navigate today in our secular liberal democratic society with its one-size-fits-all—including the sexes—educational system. 

  After posting I hit the road towards my favourite bookstore, The Word, on Milton near the McGill campus. I was looking to reacquire two novels on this very theme: W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage and Thomas Mann’s Dr. Faustus. They had both but as Faustus was a hardcover and cost $20 I figured I would hold off on Maugham. 

  The heat and the added humidity drove me indoors through the afternoon and I found a spot in the downstairs food court of Complex Desjardins to enjoy a coffee and crack open Mann once more. 

  It wasn’t long before I came upon this:

  “For though the artist may all his life remain closer…to his childhood than the man trained for practical life… yet his path out of his simple, unaffected beginnings to the undivined later stages of his course is endlessly farther, wilder, more shattering to watch than that of the ordinary citizen.”—Thomas Mann, Dr. Faustus. 

  Now I prefer the designation ‘Shaman-Type’ rather than merely ‘artist’ these days to describe the sort of overlooked oddball often skulking misfit I am speaking of. To me ‘artists’ and their ‘art’ have been overly popularized and consequently utterly degraded for quite some time now. Latterly I’ve been known to say “when everything and anything is art then nothing is art.” 

  And truth be known: without the overarching vision provided by a genuine Shaman-Type art flies off into meaningless atomized subjectivity.

  Just saying.

  Anyway, a few things in the Mann quote stand out for me. 

  First is the distinction he is clearly making between the Shaman-Type and ‘the man trained for practical life.’ And by the way, where does it leave the ST when we are ALL trained for ‘practical life’ today? 

  Also, I love the way he writes: “… his path out of his simple, unaffected beginnings to the undivined later stages of his course….”

  Undivined. Unexpected, unplanned for, unprepared for, even undesired, certainly unencouraged and untutored. And hence, often tragically, “endlessly farther, wilder, more shattering to watch than that of the ordinary citizen.” 

  That was written nearly eighty years ago.

  And still today looking around I see nowhere for the Shaman-Type to turn when the call comes.

  Except perhaps the Omphalos Cafe….