by Travis Mateer

About a month ago I came across a very interesting article by James Edward Taylor about artists and their relationship with the future, examining what might be going on with the prescience some artists seem to exhibit about future events.

From the link:

I believe artists have a way of tapping into the collective unconscious that other people are only dimly aware of, or not aware at all.

An artist can portray something the the public is about to realize, or on the verge of realizing, but has not yet fully made conscious. Part of the experience of viewing great art is that moment where we realize someone has made evident a thing of which we were only dimly aware.

When you go to the link, Taylor provides his own anecdotal example, and a handful of others, that lead him to ask the following questions about this seeming prescience some artists have about the future:

Can artists, at least sometimes, peek into the future?

Does the process of creating art open one to a kind of prescience that we don’t experience in our ordinary, non-artistic endeavors?

Or, do artists inadvertently help create the future, including, regrettably, the bad parts?

Or, are artists the unwitting tool of higher forces who hint, nudge, whisper, and use the artistic folks as a mouthpiece to implant ideas in the public mind they want to see actualized?

Some of you, I know, will agree with this last and cry: “Predictive programming! All of it!”

And yes, we all know by now that intelligence agencies engage in propaganda/mind-control/infowar activities. It would be ludicrous to assume that their activities somehow give art, music, TV, and films a pass. If anything, possibly even more so than social media, these would be the best avenues to reach millions of unsuspecting minds, nudging them in the desired direction.

I don’t think it’s a great stretch to say predictive programming exists.

But I think it’s only part of the picture.

A big irony for me with my blogging is how I have consciously kept some of my more esoteric interests at arm’s length in order to not appear too crazy. Yeah, a lot of good that did.

For a look at my prescient take on Missoula, I started writing this story in 2015, and now it seems the future I got a peek of is slowly coming true.

Shifting gears and letting go of things I’ve been holding on to won’t be easy, but it’s absolutely necessary to get to the larger story I’ve been working on.

More to come on that front. In the meantime, I’ll keep plugging the ways to support my work as I figure out what my next phase looks like, and those ways are Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF), and the donation button at my about page.

Thanks for reading!