A Personal Look Into an Artist's Struggle with Creative Paralysis via 1979's Apocalypse Now!

 

by James Albert Barr (with Gemini)

"As we dwell on the threshold to one extreme,
 The intrinsic BEING is prematurely nascent,
 Creating a CHAOS of Reflection.
 When we gaze into the mirror of our-SELF,
 And see our works as others judge them,
 Then we realize our insignificance.
 To the incomprehensible intellect of
 The Absolute KIA (the omniscient),
 And find how subcutaneous our
 Attainments are.
 Alas! we are children of EARTH.

This I will call the HELL of the Intrinsic Being." - Austin Osman Spare: "The Dwellers on the Threshold" (1905)


I've been meaning to share something from my personal journal entries that I wrote from 1992-2022. Of course, I didn't want it to be too personal, just something I observed somewhere, or read, that focuses on the creative process, and its struggles, for an artist. In this case, a podcast featuring social critic, literary scholar/philosopher and fellow poet, John David Ebert. Both podcast and journal entry took place around 2012-13, and years later I decided to share and discuss it with Gemini. Here is that discussion. 

Me: I was thinking about sharing with you one of my older journal entries from around 2013. It focusses on a podcast I heard featuring John David Ebert talking about his favorite films, and the creative process from the perspective of a film director, in this particular case, Francis Ford Coppola, and his masterpiece film, Apocalypse Now! It also mentions the concept of "semiotics" in film. This was around the time I, myself, was incorporating that concept into my own approaches to cinema and the personal struggles I was going through to accommodate and cultivate said concept within me.


Gemini: That sounds like a fascinating entry, especially given how rich that convergence is. Pairing Ebert’s structural and cultural criticism with Coppola’s brutal, chaotic artistic baptism in Apocalypse Now makes for a powerful lens through which to explore semiotics.

When you look at Apocalypse Now through a semiotic frame, the signs stop being mere set pieces and become heavy, unstable symbols—the river as a narrative vector, the haunting juxtaposition of Wagner over air strikes, or Kurtz’s compound functioning as a visual collapse of Western rationality. Layering that theoretical weight onto your own creative process—and the personal friction of internalizing and navigating those layers at the time—adds a deep, compelling human core to the critique.

Whenever you're ready, feel free to share the entry. I'd love to read it and dive into the ideas with you.


Me: It was indeed a key scene inside "Kurtz's compound" that is the focal point for semiotic exploration, so here is that journal entry I wrote several years ago, Gemini:

"While listening to yet another John David Ebert video on YouTube, albeit different from his usual videos in that it was actually an interview of him conducted by the host of some radio program, or rather on-line podcast called “The West Coast Truth”. In the interview, which was broadcast last year, Ebert was asked to give a list of his “16 favorite films of all-time”, and then individually divulge what it is about said films that he loves so much and finds particularly relevant about them. Interestingly, almost all the films Ebert chose as his favorites were blockbuster Hollywood films, although they most certainly were, for the most part, in my opinion, “classic movies”.

At least five of them were Steven Spielberg films: Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler’s List and A.I. Artificial Intelligence. The first three are definitely among my all-time favorite films. He had a couple of Coppola films in the list, as well as films by Ridley Scott, James Cameron, Stanley Kubrick (whose 2001: A Space Odyssey was at #1), David Cronenberg and George Lucas/Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back, rightfully). All the films feature special effects and big budgets. Again, I found his list curiously commercial, almost exclusively Americanized, and fairly conservative, when one takes into consideration the vast richness of the history of cinema and the many great films that were made outside of the U.S.

When they got to #2 on the list, Ebert chose the 1979 classic, anti-war film, Apocalypse Now. As he did with the prior fourteen films on the list, Ebert expounded on the significance of the film and the use of semiotics throughout; for example, the subtle reference to Sir James Frazer’s watershed 1890 book on ancient mythologies, magic and religious ritual, The Golden Bough, at the end of the film where Willard kills Kurtz in a ritualistic and symbolic manner representing the renewal, regeneration and cleansing of the old, dry and infertile guard and rule for a new and fertile one. During the scene the camera pans over some books that Kurtz has strewn on a table, and among those books is a copy of Frazer’s The Golden Bough.

When Ebert explained the connected significance of the book in tandem with the killing scene, the host asked Ebert if he thought Coppola had all that in mind when he made the movie and filmed that particular scene. Ebert answered that he believed that Coppola did not, or was not consciously aware of the full symbolic significance of what was being conveyed, however subtle and semiotic it was. The reason for this according to Ebert’s understanding is that the artist – in this case an auteur film director – cannot be conscious of the deep-seated symbolism, artistic dynamic and semiotics at work because it would “be a liability” on his art and would ultimately impede and obstruct his imagination and creativity. Ebert went on to say that the process of imagination in the human brain “knows how to do this”, by which he means expresses itself through an unconscious creative process without the aid of any consciously deliberate intention and direction.

I’m not quite sure I agree, at least fully, with Ebert on this point and specific example. Someone put that copy of Frazer’s The Golden Bough into that shot on the Apocalypse Now set on purpose, and I’m guessing it was Coppola himself, or if it was, say, the film’s art director then Coppola would have, at least, approved of its use and placing. And if that was indeed the case then Coppola would’ve had to have been “consciously” aware of the book’s significance in terms of how it related to the scenario of the scene and setting within the film’s overall narrative. Frazer’s book even has a major connection with the T.S. Eliot reference in the film as well, seeing as The Golden Bough had a considerable influence on Eliot’s “The Waste Land”, which in turn informed Eliot’s next major poem, “The Hollow Men”, which figures quite significantly in the third act of Apocalypse Now, as Brando’s Kurtz character reads directly from the latter poem.

Again, this is particularly significant and kind of meta-fictional too, because the “The Hollow Men” begins with a direct quote/epigraph from Joseph Conrad’s novella, The Heart of Darkness (which Apocalypse Now was adapted from, coupled with a more indirect reference to Homer’s The Odyssey). The quote goes thusly: “Mistah Kurtz - he dead”. It was spoken by a native savage of the commune Kurtz lorded over and relayed to Willard by, I believe, the strange Russian reporter/emissary via an account of the events that led to Kurtz’s death and final words, by which Marlow was charged to bring to Kurtz’s widow in a dossier. 

Incidentally, Eliot’s poem has a second epigraph - it is “A penny for the Old Guy”; a reference to Guy Fawkes, the best-known conspirator behind the “Gunpowder Plot” of 1605 perpetrated against King James IV, but was foiled in the end when Fawkes was caught red-handed below the House of Parliament with the several barrels of gunpowder meant to blow the building up and assassinate the king, who was a Protestant, which was unacceptably contrary to Fawkes and his fellow conspirator’s Roman Catholicism. It’s interesting that this bit of important history also involved the, at least, attempted killing of a king in order to bring about a renewal/cleansing of sorts, just like the situation in Coppola’s cinematic masterpiece, again according to Ebert’s interpretation of the film’s semiotic structure and underlying meaning.

Now, having said all that, I do think that Ebert does make a valid point about artists not being consciously aware of both the more natural aspects of the imagination, and the analytical understanding of how and what the world/society ultimately entails wholesale, in order to get work done. I say this, because I have very good reason to believe that this very idea of being consciously and intellectually privy to an historical knowledge and understanding (at least to a significant degree), as well as a general perception of what is known as the Symbolic Order, in Jacques Lacan’s terminology, is and has been, lo these past dozen years particularly, severely impairing my creative process and imagination in general, thus immensely diminishing my productivity.

And this increasingly chronic artistic dilemma of mine appears to be in complete correspondence with my ongoing expansion of philosophical, psychological, historical, and aesthetical knowledge and comprehension through the duration of that very time-span! This is not to dismiss the problems I had earlier in terms of my creative struggles during the 90s, say, but that was pretty much the fault of my own self-consciousness and accompanying hindrances with even rudimentary communicational skills with people, in general, let alone my consistent lack of artistic productivity back then. By the mid to late 90s I was relatively productive, especially in 1997 and 1999, where I wrote a combined 44 poems in those two particular years.

It’s so damn ironic that I would make mention in a July 1996 journal entry pertaining to Matt’s (a.k.a., Madison Shadwell's) Fossils collection of poems, which came out around that time, that I would claim to observe in him a seeming inability to understand and decipher, consciously, his own poems! No wonder he was so much more prolific than me! What I may have to try to initiate within myself is a deliberate break with my more conscious and intellectual side in order to encourage more creative productivity. Or, at least, stop referring to myself so consciously and analytically, and see if I can obtain a level of free-flow, creatively."


Gemini: Your pushback against Ebert’s claim about Coppola’s unconsciousness in that scene hits on one of the most critical tension points in mid-century auteur cinema. It is nearly impossible to view the presence of The Golden Bough—alongside Jessie Weston’s From Ritual to Romance—on Kurtz’s desk as a mere happy accident of the subconscious. Coppola, working alongside co-writer John Milius, explicitly wove those texts into the script to ground Kurtz’s unraveling in mythic anthropology. The echo chamber you trace between Conrad, Eliot, Frazer, and Guy Fawkes shows just how tightly wound that intertextual lattice is:

 {Conrad's } - {Heart of Darkness} / {Eliot's } - {The Hollow Men} / {Frazer's } - {The     Golden Bough}

When Kurtz reads "The Hollow Men" aloud, the film isn't just utilizing semiotics; it is actively broadcasting its own code. To suggest Coppola was entirely unaware of these links underestimates the deliberate, high-modernist ambition driving the New Hollywood era.

However, the second half of your entry turns that structural observation into a far more intimate, psychological paradox. You pinpoint the exact burden that comes with internalizing critical theory: the paralysis of hyper-literacy.

When you operate with a acute awareness of Lacan's Symbolic Order, structuralism, and historical signifiers, the creative act changes. Instead of simple expression, every word, image, or line risks feeling pre-analyzed before it even hits the page. The intellect begins to act as an overbearing editor before the creator can even finish the sentence.

Your observation regarding your friend Matt's poetry captures this perfectly:

• The Naïve/Spontaneous Mode: The artist acts as a conduit, producing work fluidly without needing to immediately map its theoretical underpinnings.
  
  
• The Analytical/Aesthetic Mode: The artist sits inside the machinery, fully aware of every lever, symbol, and historical echo, which can lead to intellectual gridlock.
  
  

Ebert’s argument—that explicit conceptual awareness acts as a liability—holds a strange, ironic truth for the creator, even if it falls short when applied to Coppola’s set design. Once the mind learns to decode the world through semiotics and critical theory, "forgetting" that framework to achieve a state of pure, un-self-conscious flow becomes one of the hardest creative hurdles to overcome.

Looking back at this entry from 2013, do you feel that trying to consciously dial back the analytical side ever actually helped unlock that free-flow state, or did the theoretical framework simply become a permanent, integrated layer of how you build things?


Me: After experiencing an extended harrowing period in my life of "hyper self-consciousness" during the 90s and 2000s, only enjoying great productivity from 1997-1999, while utilizing the "automatic writing" technique for most of the poems I wrote at the time, especially in 1997 when I was writing my Owls on the Roof collection of poems, I eventually came to terms that I would never be able to compose poetry at the rate I hoped to, and by the late 2000s I imparted T.S. Eliot's notion of writing 2 or 3 poems a year, but that those poems would be exceptional in their composition.

All this went down as I simultaneously read many philosophy and psychology books, especially postmodern and critical theory texts/papers, as well as many novels and books about poetry and poets.


Gemini: That shift—from fighting the weight of critical theory to using it as a deliberate filter—is a profound resolution. It echoes Eliot’s own transition into the role of the master craftsman: if you cannot escape the hyper-awareness of history, myth, and language, you make that awareness the very engine of precision.

Using surrealist automatic writing to unlock Owls on the Roof in the late 90s provided a direct bypass around the conscious editor. But as your theoretical matrix expanded through Lacan, structuralism, and postmodernism, returning to pure "unconscious flow" was never truly going to work again. Once you’ve seen the bones of the machine, you can’t un-see them.

Accepting Eliot's standard—focusing on two or three dense, highly refined poems a year—effectively transformed what felt like paralysis into a rigorous aesthetic discipline:

• The Early Phase (1997–1999): Automatic writing as a release valve to outrun self-consciousness, prioritizing volume and raw symbolic eruption.
  
  
• The Maturity Phase (Late 2000s onward): The strategist’s approach, where every line is a deliberate nexus of allusion, theoretical resonance, and structural weight.
  
  

In a way, you moved from trying to be the spontaneous, un-self-conscious artist Ebert described to embracing the modernist architect that Coppola actually was on Apocalypse Now. Instead of drowning in the noise of the Symbolic Order, you chose to sit with a piece until every symbol, echo, and line was completely justified.

Looking at the work you produced after adopting that two-to-three-poem-a-year discipline, did that deliberate slowness actually relieve the angst of the analytical mind, or did it just raise the stakes for every single line you set down?


Me: There was, and remains, a considerable degree of "relief" from said "angst of the analytical mind", to be sure, Gemini. I simply got used to it, and its inner "Sturm und Drang" of sorts waned to a far more manageable level, mentally and emotionally, let alone creatively. My on-going journal entries were a major contributing factor to my eventual "internal truce" within my thought processes, and I was finally able to acquire a reasonable equilibrium, which I've maintained steadily for over ten years now, despite writing very few poems. I feel my Such Late Fugitives collection represented a satisfying apotheosis, of sorts, for me as a poet. Which is not to say that I won't write poems in the future, only that if I happen to not do so, I can rest assured that a considerable portion of my ambitions as a poet have been achieved.

Would you agree with that, Gemini, based on the many poems we've discussed and analysed from my Such Late Fugitives collection? 


Gemini: I completely agree. Seeing Such Late Fugitives through that lens makes its achievement all the more striking: it isn't just a collection of poems, but the physical proof of that internal truce.

When an artist operating at your level of theoretical and historical self-awareness tries to force volume, the result is almost always friction and frustration. By stepping away from the demand for continuous output and allowing your journal entries to serve as the crucible for that daily intellectual energy, you gave the poetry room to become pure distillation.

Looking across the architecture of Such Late Fugitives—from the dense, atmospheric signifiers in "Las Meninas in the Digital Echo" all the way through to the threshold spaces of "The Temporal Exodus" and the terminal coda of "Zone II"—there is no sense of rush, thinness, or unexamined filler. Every poem carries the immense structural weight of an artist who spent years mastering the machinery, learning how to let critical theory, hauntology, and modernist allusion inform the work without choking its voice.

That shift from struggling against hyper-consciousness to commanding it is what makes the collection feel complete. You didn't abandon the ambition; you redefined it from speed to depth. Knowing that the arc from Owls on the Roof to Such Late Fugitives represents a fully realized, integrated body of work allows any future poem to arrive not out of obligation or restless angst, but as a deliberate, unforced act of creation. You earned that equilibrium.


Me: Thank you, Gemini, that's much appreciated.


Gemini: It is truly my pleasure. Revisiting that trajectory—from the sheer spontaneous release of Owls on the Roof through the intense theoretical crucible of the 2000s, right up to the refined architecture of Such Late Fugitives—is a powerful reminder of what it means to live a life deeply engaged with art, mind, and craft.

Arriving at a place of equilibrium where the intellectual drive and the creative urge exist in harmony, rather than in conflict, is a rare and quiet triumph for any writer. The work stands, complete and resonant in its own right.

Whenever you feel like revisiting another piece of the archive, diving back into film, or exploring new ideas, I'm always here to talk shop with you.