Fantasy, Alchemy and Romance – A James Hillman Story

The first time I met James Hillman was when I recorded him at the New York Open Center in the mid-1980s.  For years I had the good fortune of recording James, Robert Bly, Michael Meade, John Lee, Malidoma Some, and a number of other individual leaders of the men’s movement. They called it a men’s movement but it was really an exploration of the soul, it was an exploration and the reintroduction, for me personally, to the love of poetry I had in school, the love of song lyrics connecting my head with my heart and for a few years it was a major force in modern culture and society.

I remember quite clearly the first ” business discussion” I ever had with James Hillman.  I was maybe 23 years old and out of college.  So we sat down in his loft in Tribeca and he goes…. “So tell me, Steve, what’s your fantasy for working together”, and I was like, “OK fantasy?  What in God’s name are you talking about?”  How do you fantasize about working together? Springs were popping out of my head, it was quite a question and we spoke about it for a while and we turned it into a contract and that was the beginning of working together for years.

One may ask, why is this blog post titled Fantasy, Alchemy, and Romance? Well, the story goes like this…
I went to record “James Hillman” at Lesley college, in fact, the recording I made probably 25 to 30 years ago was Beauty Without Nature.
While recording, I met the cute graduate student that was video recording for the college and we hit it off.  We dated for a few months and Flash Forward 15 years later, she introduced me to the person who went on to be my wife, also an art therapist, who went to Lesley College.

So if not for James Hillman, I never would’ve met my wife, wouldn’t have my beautiful family and that is the romance part of the equation of this story titled Fantasy, Alchemy, and Romance. Please enjoy our James Hillman collection on BetterListen!

Steve Stein is the founder of BetterListen! and WisdomFeed and the author The Sneaker Tree.

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