Q. Wordplay, you recently had a photo of what looked like a blue marble on your Facebook page and jokes about the “Lost Marble of Wordplay,” or something like that. Could you tell me what that was about? Was it supposed to be funny?
A. Sure, I can answer that. The lost marble of wordplay is a small blue marble about a quarter-inch in diameter that escaped from my “Lost Marbles” jar one night when I was trying to move something in the car.
Q. You mean, it’s an actual marble?
A. Yes. A blue one. It has some friends, too, and they all live in the Lost Marbles jar when they aren’t escaping and rolling inconveniently under seats and into inaccessible corners. I probably said a few bad words the night it happened.
Q. You actually have a “Lost Marbles” jar, or is that a joke, too?
A. Well, it may be a joke, but it’s an actual jar, too.
Q. Can’t you explain it any better than that? I don’t see why you’d waste time and space on something like that. It’s not even really that funny.
A. Well, it may not be that funny, but it was more just a matter of seeing a photo of something very unlike the marble and then just making a joke out of the size disparity.
Q. But why is it funny?
A. Well, think of it this way. Wallace Stevens wrote a poem called “Anecdote of the Jar”: “I placed a jar in Tennessee/And round it was, upon a hill.” It’s an object that’s somewhat out of place, insignificant, and slightly ridiculous in a way, but everything in the landscape seems to rearrange itself around it so that it assumes an outsized importance. It’s sort of like someone just saying, “OK, everybody look at this,” and all of a sudden, that jar is the center of the universe. It’s kind of like that.
Q. Who’s Wallace Stevens?
A. Well, now, did you pay tuition to Wordplay so that we are now responsible for teaching you about modern poetry? The check must have gotten lost in the mail.
Q. Geez, it was a civil question.
A. And a civil answer, considering. Just type “Anecdote of the Jar” into Google.
Q. So it was a literal jar?
A. Probably metaphorical, actually. Unlike my “Lost Marbles” jar.
Q. So, how exactly did you lose the marbles again?
A. A unicorn jumped on the hood of the car, dislodging a sleeping and entirely innocent bison, and in the ensuing fray (which I failed to get a photo of), the jar fell over.
Q. But . . . Were the unicorn and bison in the car with you, or were they on the hood? I thought you said . . .
A. I’ll tell it to you straight: there’s no room in my car for either a unicorn or a bison. But don’t you think the sudden appearance of a unicorn would startle you enough to make you drop something?
Q. There’s no such thing as unicorns; you’re making that up.
A. Well, yes, but they did somehow become the national animal of Scotland.
Q. So you were in Scotland when it happened? How did you get your car over there?
A. It grew the wings of Pegasus and flew over the Atlantic at breakneck speed, landing in a patch of heather.
Q. But what caused it to grow wings? Cars can’t grow wings.
A. Not under normal circumstances.
Sunday, September 8, 2019
Monday, September 2, 2019
The Wordplay One-Room Schoolhouse
With school being back in session here and in other places around the country, Wordplay is feeling its teacher-y side coming out. You may be of the opinion that one college degree (or two if you really must) should be enough for anyone. Here on this blog, we realize that not everyone has our propensity for running around studying everything that interests us. If we were going to design a curriculum for a basic understanding of Western Culture that would be accessible to anyone without the time or money to sink into four years on a well-appointed campus, we’d base it on what’s essentially a twelve-course curriculum.
You should realize that, while we’re in general agreement with the basic outlines of a humanities education, Wordplay might lend more weight to certain subjects than others would do. This is based on our own experience of what’s useful, and by the way, we mean practically useful as well as just sort of “good for you in a general sort of way.” It’s practically useful because knowledge in certain areas helps you understand references that pop up over and over again in conversation, the sciences, the arts, and the media. Never again would you have to wonder, for instance, why in the hell someone would name a moon Chiron or what the Oracle of Delphi was if you had had a course in Greek mythology.
When I look back over my education, I realize that even in elementary school, I had some very formative experiences. I’m not even going into the old-fashioned way I learned how to spell through phonics class (and it’s nice to not have to worry about spelling and punctuation: it frees your mind for other things). There was the teacher who often read to us from a world folktales book after lunch, and the geography class that made me realize what an interesting place the world, with all its varied cultures, really is. There was the Shakespeare class in high school. (Everyone needs one. I’m sorry to tell you this if you don’t like Shakespeare, but maybe you’ll thank me for it some day.) There was the World History class that opened a window to the past, and the many English classes that gave me a wide introduction to reading in what is called the “Western Canon.”
I don’t think I regret a single literature class I ever took, but aside from that, here are the courses I would recommend.
1. Greek and Roman mythology. Not surprisingly.
2. Renaissance Art.
3. Introduction to Shakespeare.
4. Music Appreciation. (You can also get a long way just by listening to a lot of music. I once had a crush on a violinist, and you wouldn’t believe how helpful that was in introducing me to a lot of classical music I wouldn’t have heard otherwise.)
5. Middle English. (This means any course in which you study the literature in Middle English, not in translation. The day you start to hear the music that underlies the English language—which is most apparent when you start to separate the rhythms from the meaning—is the day you’ll agree with me about this, and not a minute sooner, I predict.)
6. Introduction to Poetry. You really ought to have a separate class on the English Romantic poets, I think. Understanding why female English majors tend to develop crushes on Keats probably doesn’t hurt the boys that are interested in the female English majors—but make responsible use of your knowledge.
7. Any course that combines literature and depth psychology.
8. Introduction to Philosophy. (And Logic, too, if you can get it.)
9. Introduction to Film.
10. World Religions.
11. A foreign language of your choice. Or more than one, if possible. Then you’ll know just enough to be dangerous, like I am.
12. World History.
Of course, everyone needs to understand science and mathematics, too; they should be part of a good education. I personally disliked Algebra II and Trigonometry and went no further than that in math, and I have trouble wrapping my mind around certain concepts in Physics, but I recommend going as far as you can. My list is more for an understanding of culture than of science—but of course, science is a part of culture, too. I really don’t believe you have to cover everything; sometimes an introduction to a subject is all you need to open up not only that topic but to lead you into connections between various areas of knowledge. That’s when things really start to get fun.
You should realize that, while we’re in general agreement with the basic outlines of a humanities education, Wordplay might lend more weight to certain subjects than others would do. This is based on our own experience of what’s useful, and by the way, we mean practically useful as well as just sort of “good for you in a general sort of way.” It’s practically useful because knowledge in certain areas helps you understand references that pop up over and over again in conversation, the sciences, the arts, and the media. Never again would you have to wonder, for instance, why in the hell someone would name a moon Chiron or what the Oracle of Delphi was if you had had a course in Greek mythology.
When I look back over my education, I realize that even in elementary school, I had some very formative experiences. I’m not even going into the old-fashioned way I learned how to spell through phonics class (and it’s nice to not have to worry about spelling and punctuation: it frees your mind for other things). There was the teacher who often read to us from a world folktales book after lunch, and the geography class that made me realize what an interesting place the world, with all its varied cultures, really is. There was the Shakespeare class in high school. (Everyone needs one. I’m sorry to tell you this if you don’t like Shakespeare, but maybe you’ll thank me for it some day.) There was the World History class that opened a window to the past, and the many English classes that gave me a wide introduction to reading in what is called the “Western Canon.”
I don’t think I regret a single literature class I ever took, but aside from that, here are the courses I would recommend.
1. Greek and Roman mythology. Not surprisingly.
2. Renaissance Art.
3. Introduction to Shakespeare.
4. Music Appreciation. (You can also get a long way just by listening to a lot of music. I once had a crush on a violinist, and you wouldn’t believe how helpful that was in introducing me to a lot of classical music I wouldn’t have heard otherwise.)
5. Middle English. (This means any course in which you study the literature in Middle English, not in translation. The day you start to hear the music that underlies the English language—which is most apparent when you start to separate the rhythms from the meaning—is the day you’ll agree with me about this, and not a minute sooner, I predict.)
6. Introduction to Poetry. You really ought to have a separate class on the English Romantic poets, I think. Understanding why female English majors tend to develop crushes on Keats probably doesn’t hurt the boys that are interested in the female English majors—but make responsible use of your knowledge.
7. Any course that combines literature and depth psychology.
8. Introduction to Philosophy. (And Logic, too, if you can get it.)
9. Introduction to Film.
10. World Religions.
11. A foreign language of your choice. Or more than one, if possible. Then you’ll know just enough to be dangerous, like I am.
12. World History.
Of course, everyone needs to understand science and mathematics, too; they should be part of a good education. I personally disliked Algebra II and Trigonometry and went no further than that in math, and I have trouble wrapping my mind around certain concepts in Physics, but I recommend going as far as you can. My list is more for an understanding of culture than of science—but of course, science is a part of culture, too. I really don’t believe you have to cover everything; sometimes an introduction to a subject is all you need to open up not only that topic but to lead you into connections between various areas of knowledge. That’s when things really start to get fun.
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Dragons Above and Other Wonders
There are certain things in life that really can’t be explained. I’m sure you could give a few examples of your own, but here’s one of mine—and I admit that I was reticent, actually reticent, about posting this when it happened because it seemed too fantastic to be believed, and I thought people might think I was making it up. I didn’t get a photo, you see, and thought I might be accused of exaggerating. I was having trouble believing it, and I was there.
However, as you know, Wordplay strives ever to tell the truth, and if we left this out, it would be a dereliction of duty, I think. What happened was this: I’d spent some time one afternoon putting together a photo essay about dragons trending in the culture. As I recall, it was right after that, as I was leaving the coffeehouse, that I walked out into a brewing storm. I drove over to the grocery store, marveling at the big mess of clouds swirling overhead.
While I was on the way over there, I started to notice that one cloud in particular had a shape to it. It was a long, black coil, like a snake, or, actually, a dragon, with a dragon head, a long, long body stretching and twisting across half the sky, and a mouth open as if ready to spew fire. I have never seen a cloud shaped like that and am sure it has something to do with one big air mass meeting another along a fairly uniform line. I know there had to be a scientific reason for that gigantic, rolled-up carpet shape, but it was still jaw-dropping, like other sights in nature you come across once in a great while. I wish I had taken a photograph, but lightning was striking in both the far and middle distance, and for safety’s sake, I stayed in the car until it all passed.
Besides thinking people wouldn’t believe me, I admit that I was so amazed by the appearance and timing of this cloud dragon that I started to wonder if it was some kind of a trick. Now, I know I once posted a blog about wild weather events I’d been caught up in and my speculations about whether someone (AKA the government) might be experimenting with cloud-seeding, etc. Even if someone is working on that, in some obscure bureau or other, I can’t imagine that anyone’s weather experiments have advanced to the level of cloud-sculpting on that scale, even if they know how to make precipitation fall.
I suppose I was trying to put the whole thing out of my mind, but I saw a program on The Weather Channel about “The World’s Wildest Weather Events” in which various phenomena like this were documented and discussed. One of the meteorologists was discussing the very rare phenomenon of straight-edge clouds, something she herself had witnessed, and she said that she had a difficult time believing the evidence of her own eyes even though she could explain the science behind it. It was, truly, an incredible sight, but no more so than what I had seen. I have to thank the meteorologist for sharing her story, which gave me the impetus to think over what I had seen and decide that, no matter how fantastic the event, not sharing it because it seemed unbelievable was precisely the wrong tack. After all, this blog exists as a forum for exploring the presence of mythology in everyday life, and if a cloud dragon appearing over your head is not an irruption of mythology into everyday life, I don’t know what would be.
When something like this happens, I’m tempted, as possibly you are, to try to come up with an explanation. I’m not sure there is one. Of course, Jung called this type of thing synchronicity and believed that it was evidence of a sort of dialogue between the human psyche and nature. Even if this is true, how it all works is still a mystery. I consider myself a capable writer, but I’m not at the level of conjuring up castles and dragons in the air, no matter how in tune my brain waves may be with the atmospheric vibe on a given day. Maybe it’s just a matter of having your eyes open and noticing things. The more active your imagination is, the more there is to see. And then, of course, you have to remember to look up.
However, as you know, Wordplay strives ever to tell the truth, and if we left this out, it would be a dereliction of duty, I think. What happened was this: I’d spent some time one afternoon putting together a photo essay about dragons trending in the culture. As I recall, it was right after that, as I was leaving the coffeehouse, that I walked out into a brewing storm. I drove over to the grocery store, marveling at the big mess of clouds swirling overhead.
While I was on the way over there, I started to notice that one cloud in particular had a shape to it. It was a long, black coil, like a snake, or, actually, a dragon, with a dragon head, a long, long body stretching and twisting across half the sky, and a mouth open as if ready to spew fire. I have never seen a cloud shaped like that and am sure it has something to do with one big air mass meeting another along a fairly uniform line. I know there had to be a scientific reason for that gigantic, rolled-up carpet shape, but it was still jaw-dropping, like other sights in nature you come across once in a great while. I wish I had taken a photograph, but lightning was striking in both the far and middle distance, and for safety’s sake, I stayed in the car until it all passed.
Besides thinking people wouldn’t believe me, I admit that I was so amazed by the appearance and timing of this cloud dragon that I started to wonder if it was some kind of a trick. Now, I know I once posted a blog about wild weather events I’d been caught up in and my speculations about whether someone (AKA the government) might be experimenting with cloud-seeding, etc. Even if someone is working on that, in some obscure bureau or other, I can’t imagine that anyone’s weather experiments have advanced to the level of cloud-sculpting on that scale, even if they know how to make precipitation fall.
I suppose I was trying to put the whole thing out of my mind, but I saw a program on The Weather Channel about “The World’s Wildest Weather Events” in which various phenomena like this were documented and discussed. One of the meteorologists was discussing the very rare phenomenon of straight-edge clouds, something she herself had witnessed, and she said that she had a difficult time believing the evidence of her own eyes even though she could explain the science behind it. It was, truly, an incredible sight, but no more so than what I had seen. I have to thank the meteorologist for sharing her story, which gave me the impetus to think over what I had seen and decide that, no matter how fantastic the event, not sharing it because it seemed unbelievable was precisely the wrong tack. After all, this blog exists as a forum for exploring the presence of mythology in everyday life, and if a cloud dragon appearing over your head is not an irruption of mythology into everyday life, I don’t know what would be.
When something like this happens, I’m tempted, as possibly you are, to try to come up with an explanation. I’m not sure there is one. Of course, Jung called this type of thing synchronicity and believed that it was evidence of a sort of dialogue between the human psyche and nature. Even if this is true, how it all works is still a mystery. I consider myself a capable writer, but I’m not at the level of conjuring up castles and dragons in the air, no matter how in tune my brain waves may be with the atmospheric vibe on a given day. Maybe it’s just a matter of having your eyes open and noticing things. The more active your imagination is, the more there is to see. And then, of course, you have to remember to look up.
Sunday, August 18, 2019
Ballad for Summer’s End
Well, it happened again. I heard a song on the Starbucks playlist whose artist I didn’t know. This time, I was fast enough to ask the barista while the song was still playing, but the app wouldn’t open. Another pleasant baritone, another catchy melody, but the names of both elude me, and all due to a computer slowdown. I’m not sure if it’s the same slowdown we’ve been having at work, but it’s really no matter—the point is, if I don’t like a song, it will probably play ad nauseam. If I do like it, and ask someone about it, I’m just a little too late to find out what it is, and they won’t play it again for another three months at least.
You’re probably thinking, “Wordplay, can’t you find anything else to write about?” And the answer is, “Not really.” There’s a real end of the summer feeling here: it’s hot, but very still; students have started to appear here and there, but at the same time, there’s a feeling of absence, as if quite a few people are out of town on vacation. It’s neither here nor there, just that typical August feeling of vacancy. If you’re in a university town and are neither a student nor a professor, you sense the pause in the academic calendar, but since it doesn’t affect you, you have neither anxiety about getting everything done in time nor the anticipation of a brand-new academic year. It’s just a hot, drowsy lull. It still looks like summer, there’s no hint of fall yet (some years the nights have started to cool a bit by now, but not this year), and if you work in retail, you’re probably unpacking things for a Labor Day sale. You’re still thinking ice cream; apple cider hasn’t yet entered your thoughts; and winter is still as a distant dream.
This is not going to be the lyrical “changing of the seasons” post I did a couple of times in the past. Not really feeling that elegiac Wordsworth melancholy right now; it’s more of a heat-induced stupefaction. If I could encapsulate what I am feeling, it would be more along the lines of, “If only I had my own front porch, and my own pitcher of iced tea, so I could sit and sip and listen to the crickets in peace and look up at the stars once in a while.” I’ve never had that in my entire adult life, which seems like a shame, but the next place I live will have at least a balcony, if not a porch, if there’s any justice in the world. I lived in Lexington for many years with barely a glimpse of fireflies and certainly no place to sit outside and enjoy the long summer evenings that are one of the best things about Kentucky, but maybe that will change some time.
With nothing else going on, this seems like a good time to entertain idle questions, in lieu of falling asleep in the heat and ending up down some rabbit hole. So here’s one: if you were in the same predicament as the people in the movie Groundhog Day but actually got to pick the day that keeps repeating, what day would it be? For me, it would probably be a day in early summer, a day of bright blue skies and puffy clouds. I don’t think it would be August—although if I ever get that porch swing and glass of iced tea, I might change my mind about that. Spring is gorgeous here, but it’s not quite summer. Fall is also quite nice much of the time, but it means summer is over with for another year. And although winter has its own beauty, it’s possibly enjoyed best of all in small doses—at least, that’s my opinion.
So this is my end-of-summer post, and we’ll dispense with all the Persephone and Demeter references and Keatsian ode-to-autumn rhapsodies this time around because I’m afraid I was starting to repeat myself a little bit. I will report to you with a hint of disapproval that since I work in retail, I’ve already spotted the presence of “seasonal merchandise” and am dreading the moment, which will probably be next week, when I walk to the front of the store and see Halloween yard decor and animatronic ghouls. Not because I’m scared of those goobers, but because it interferes with my seasonal clock. Werewolves in August? Sheesh, whose idea was that?
You’re probably thinking, “Wordplay, can’t you find anything else to write about?” And the answer is, “Not really.” There’s a real end of the summer feeling here: it’s hot, but very still; students have started to appear here and there, but at the same time, there’s a feeling of absence, as if quite a few people are out of town on vacation. It’s neither here nor there, just that typical August feeling of vacancy. If you’re in a university town and are neither a student nor a professor, you sense the pause in the academic calendar, but since it doesn’t affect you, you have neither anxiety about getting everything done in time nor the anticipation of a brand-new academic year. It’s just a hot, drowsy lull. It still looks like summer, there’s no hint of fall yet (some years the nights have started to cool a bit by now, but not this year), and if you work in retail, you’re probably unpacking things for a Labor Day sale. You’re still thinking ice cream; apple cider hasn’t yet entered your thoughts; and winter is still as a distant dream.
This is not going to be the lyrical “changing of the seasons” post I did a couple of times in the past. Not really feeling that elegiac Wordsworth melancholy right now; it’s more of a heat-induced stupefaction. If I could encapsulate what I am feeling, it would be more along the lines of, “If only I had my own front porch, and my own pitcher of iced tea, so I could sit and sip and listen to the crickets in peace and look up at the stars once in a while.” I’ve never had that in my entire adult life, which seems like a shame, but the next place I live will have at least a balcony, if not a porch, if there’s any justice in the world. I lived in Lexington for many years with barely a glimpse of fireflies and certainly no place to sit outside and enjoy the long summer evenings that are one of the best things about Kentucky, but maybe that will change some time.
With nothing else going on, this seems like a good time to entertain idle questions, in lieu of falling asleep in the heat and ending up down some rabbit hole. So here’s one: if you were in the same predicament as the people in the movie Groundhog Day but actually got to pick the day that keeps repeating, what day would it be? For me, it would probably be a day in early summer, a day of bright blue skies and puffy clouds. I don’t think it would be August—although if I ever get that porch swing and glass of iced tea, I might change my mind about that. Spring is gorgeous here, but it’s not quite summer. Fall is also quite nice much of the time, but it means summer is over with for another year. And although winter has its own beauty, it’s possibly enjoyed best of all in small doses—at least, that’s my opinion.
So this is my end-of-summer post, and we’ll dispense with all the Persephone and Demeter references and Keatsian ode-to-autumn rhapsodies this time around because I’m afraid I was starting to repeat myself a little bit. I will report to you with a hint of disapproval that since I work in retail, I’ve already spotted the presence of “seasonal merchandise” and am dreading the moment, which will probably be next week, when I walk to the front of the store and see Halloween yard decor and animatronic ghouls. Not because I’m scared of those goobers, but because it interferes with my seasonal clock. Werewolves in August? Sheesh, whose idea was that?
Sunday, August 11, 2019
Extra Limbs and Other Burning Issues
The other day, I posted an item I’d seen in The Atlantic’s “Photos of the Week” of a little girl in a city crosswalk being followed by a dinosaur from the Australian theater company, Erth. Erth was performing at Underbelly’s Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, when the photo was taken, and until you notice the pair of very human legs underneath the puppet, the illusion is quite enchanting, like something from a children’s picture book.
By coincidence, I was looking at a picture of Drogon, one of the dragons from “Game of Thrones,” the other day, trying to figure out why there seemed to be an extra pair of legs underneath it. We seem to have a minor trend of extra pairs of legs under large reptilian creatures, extinct and/or fantastic; Wordplay is unaware of the origin of this trend, but now that we have seen it in the culture, we feel obliged to point it out. If we don’t address it, someone might become alarmed and wonder, “What can it mean?”, unleashing a tsunami of unintended effects in his or her efforts to find out. Besides, I’ve been casting about for a topic this week, and this will do just as well as anything else.
While my former opinion on mythology in the culture was that everyone should try to be knowing observers, I’ve come to believe that this isn’t a pastime everyone excels at. In fact, some people are downright disasters when it come to “seeing through” and should probably be placed under house arrest for their efforts—but that’s someone else’s department. I’ve got my hands full with dragons and dinosaurs, am an observer only, and hope to be nowhere within a hundred miles of any round-ups that take place. Of course, I make no claim to always being right either, and my observations are strictly my own.
What about these extra pairs of extra-large reptilian legs, though?
It’s kind of weird. In the photo from the Underbelly Fringe program, you can clearly see the legs once you know they’re there. I didn’t notice them at first, probably because my eye was so charmed by the illusion—in other words, I wanted to see a dinosaur in the crosswalk, so my brain edited out the extra pair of legs. I was seeing what I wished to see, falling in with the illusion, which is exactly what you do when you go to the theater. The photo is an example of what happens when theater spills out of the theater house and into everyday life. It’s something unexpected, a little bit of magic in the midst of mundane reality. If you were on your way to work or running an errand and saw that scene, it would probably make your whole day.
Now, the image of Drogon is a bit more problematic. The more I look at it, the less I can figure it out. One of the legs doesn’t even look like a leg, because it doesn’t seem to have a foot: it’s more like an enormous paddle. And are there three legs on the dragon’s right side, including that claw hanging down? What’s become of all the legs on the left side, because all I see are one leg and a wing. Of course, we’re talking about a creature of fantasy here, but it’s a dragon, not an amoeba, so is a symmetrical arrangement of arms and legs too much to ask?
Maybe, after all, it’s just the angle. Wordplay does not wish to manufacture a crisis. Because no other explanation comes to mind, other than the possibility that this camera angle is meant to imply that there’s something freakish about this creature, we will take it that this is simply not Drogon’s best side. Since a dragon is already kind of a freakish thing, we see no reason to double down on this idea . . . But we were not writers or special effects crew for “Game of Thrones” and have no particular insights into their reasons for crafting this scene as they did.
I guess what this really demonstrates is that there isn’t always a clear answer to everything. Where things are unclear, the mind will often try to provide clarity by manufacturing a credible explanation, but it’s often little more than projection. Entertaining perhaps, revealing certainly, but at the end of the day . . . something you made up. If you’re good enough at it, sometimes you get paid for it.
By coincidence, I was looking at a picture of Drogon, one of the dragons from “Game of Thrones,” the other day, trying to figure out why there seemed to be an extra pair of legs underneath it. We seem to have a minor trend of extra pairs of legs under large reptilian creatures, extinct and/or fantastic; Wordplay is unaware of the origin of this trend, but now that we have seen it in the culture, we feel obliged to point it out. If we don’t address it, someone might become alarmed and wonder, “What can it mean?”, unleashing a tsunami of unintended effects in his or her efforts to find out. Besides, I’ve been casting about for a topic this week, and this will do just as well as anything else.
While my former opinion on mythology in the culture was that everyone should try to be knowing observers, I’ve come to believe that this isn’t a pastime everyone excels at. In fact, some people are downright disasters when it come to “seeing through” and should probably be placed under house arrest for their efforts—but that’s someone else’s department. I’ve got my hands full with dragons and dinosaurs, am an observer only, and hope to be nowhere within a hundred miles of any round-ups that take place. Of course, I make no claim to always being right either, and my observations are strictly my own.
What about these extra pairs of extra-large reptilian legs, though?
It’s kind of weird. In the photo from the Underbelly Fringe program, you can clearly see the legs once you know they’re there. I didn’t notice them at first, probably because my eye was so charmed by the illusion—in other words, I wanted to see a dinosaur in the crosswalk, so my brain edited out the extra pair of legs. I was seeing what I wished to see, falling in with the illusion, which is exactly what you do when you go to the theater. The photo is an example of what happens when theater spills out of the theater house and into everyday life. It’s something unexpected, a little bit of magic in the midst of mundane reality. If you were on your way to work or running an errand and saw that scene, it would probably make your whole day.
Now, the image of Drogon is a bit more problematic. The more I look at it, the less I can figure it out. One of the legs doesn’t even look like a leg, because it doesn’t seem to have a foot: it’s more like an enormous paddle. And are there three legs on the dragon’s right side, including that claw hanging down? What’s become of all the legs on the left side, because all I see are one leg and a wing. Of course, we’re talking about a creature of fantasy here, but it’s a dragon, not an amoeba, so is a symmetrical arrangement of arms and legs too much to ask?
Maybe, after all, it’s just the angle. Wordplay does not wish to manufacture a crisis. Because no other explanation comes to mind, other than the possibility that this camera angle is meant to imply that there’s something freakish about this creature, we will take it that this is simply not Drogon’s best side. Since a dragon is already kind of a freakish thing, we see no reason to double down on this idea . . . But we were not writers or special effects crew for “Game of Thrones” and have no particular insights into their reasons for crafting this scene as they did.
I guess what this really demonstrates is that there isn’t always a clear answer to everything. Where things are unclear, the mind will often try to provide clarity by manufacturing a credible explanation, but it’s often little more than projection. Entertaining perhaps, revealing certainly, but at the end of the day . . . something you made up. If you’re good enough at it, sometimes you get paid for it.
Monday, August 5, 2019
Music as Soul-Stirring and Music as Wallpaper
Speaking of music (as we were last week), Wordplay has had plenty of interesting listening experiences with playlists in public places, including Starbucks. Our official stance on music in public places is that, if it isn’t really, really good, it should at least be unobtrusive. Many places today play whatever they’ve got at such earsplitting volume that whether or not it’s to your taste, it forces itself on your attention. Since people are usually in coffeehouses to read or talk, this doesn’t seem designed for the customer’s comfort, but whatever. Customers only keep Starbucks, Panera, Kroger, and other places in business—no need to worry about what they like and don’t like.
However, it’s not all bad news. Starbucks, in particular, can apparently switch from one playlist to another with ease and occasionally does a good job of mixing it up. It’s been a while since I got really discouraged with one of their playlists, but it did happen recently when they decided to play all Elton John 16 hours a day. It’s not a slam at him to say any playlist does better with variety, and a steady diet of anything can get old quickly. My understanding is that they were commemorating the release of the film biopic of his life, but I would have done this by throwing a few extra songs of his into the mix along with some of those of his contemporaries—just enough to give a flavor of the era.
It’s quite possible, though, for me to hear the same songs many times without really hearing them, because for me, they’re just the background to whatever else I’m doing. Once in a while, I’ll realize that I like a song that I don’t know the name of, or I’ll wonder who the artist is. If you want to identify the song or artist you’re listening to in Starbucks, you can do so with the Starbucks app and Spotify. If you don’t have that, you have to do it the way I do, by typing into Google whatever you can decipher of the lyrics. Most of the time, you’ll find it on the first try, but not always. There is one recent indie pop song by an unknown artist whose plangent melody I really like, but since I only know one partial line, I haven’t been able to track it down. The chorus is either “All I heard was silence” or possibly “All I had were filings,” and the only thing I can come up with is a very different song that isn’t the one I’m looking for.
The other day, I heard a song that’s drifted through Starbucks several times recently, Noel Coward’s “Mad About the Boy,” which is, of course, a classic from the Great American Songbook* (actually, the Great British Songbook; see the note below). This version has a particularly powerful and expressive vocalist, and I became curious to know who it was. I was too late to ask the barista, who could have looked it up while it was playing, and the suggestion I got to check the playlists on Spotify didn’t work because there is apparently a new (and entirely different) song by a newer artist that pops up on playlists in its stead. I spent an hour that morning listening to various versions of the song—not a bad way to while away an hour—before coming across Lena Horne’s version. I’m not certain the one I heard is the same as hers, but the vocal is similarly powerful and almost, one might say, life-changing.
Starbucks is hit and miss with its music, but sometimes they strike gold. Although there is a tremendous variety of music on the playlists, it manages to sound corporate about 75 percent of the time, at least to me. There are exceptions that make you sit up and listen, but otherwise, it’s music as decor—which I guess is exactly what they have in mind. If I wanted to hear opera one minute and “The Streets of Laredo” the next, I guess I’d have to move to San Francisco and hang out at Caffe Trieste, if indeed it’s still there. Many things that once were seem to be fading with the times.
*Although Lena Horne was American, Noel Coward was British. Wordplay regrets the error.
However, it’s not all bad news. Starbucks, in particular, can apparently switch from one playlist to another with ease and occasionally does a good job of mixing it up. It’s been a while since I got really discouraged with one of their playlists, but it did happen recently when they decided to play all Elton John 16 hours a day. It’s not a slam at him to say any playlist does better with variety, and a steady diet of anything can get old quickly. My understanding is that they were commemorating the release of the film biopic of his life, but I would have done this by throwing a few extra songs of his into the mix along with some of those of his contemporaries—just enough to give a flavor of the era.
It’s quite possible, though, for me to hear the same songs many times without really hearing them, because for me, they’re just the background to whatever else I’m doing. Once in a while, I’ll realize that I like a song that I don’t know the name of, or I’ll wonder who the artist is. If you want to identify the song or artist you’re listening to in Starbucks, you can do so with the Starbucks app and Spotify. If you don’t have that, you have to do it the way I do, by typing into Google whatever you can decipher of the lyrics. Most of the time, you’ll find it on the first try, but not always. There is one recent indie pop song by an unknown artist whose plangent melody I really like, but since I only know one partial line, I haven’t been able to track it down. The chorus is either “All I heard was silence” or possibly “All I had were filings,” and the only thing I can come up with is a very different song that isn’t the one I’m looking for.
The other day, I heard a song that’s drifted through Starbucks several times recently, Noel Coward’s “Mad About the Boy,” which is, of course, a classic from the Great American Songbook* (actually, the Great British Songbook; see the note below). This version has a particularly powerful and expressive vocalist, and I became curious to know who it was. I was too late to ask the barista, who could have looked it up while it was playing, and the suggestion I got to check the playlists on Spotify didn’t work because there is apparently a new (and entirely different) song by a newer artist that pops up on playlists in its stead. I spent an hour that morning listening to various versions of the song—not a bad way to while away an hour—before coming across Lena Horne’s version. I’m not certain the one I heard is the same as hers, but the vocal is similarly powerful and almost, one might say, life-changing.
Starbucks is hit and miss with its music, but sometimes they strike gold. Although there is a tremendous variety of music on the playlists, it manages to sound corporate about 75 percent of the time, at least to me. There are exceptions that make you sit up and listen, but otherwise, it’s music as decor—which I guess is exactly what they have in mind. If I wanted to hear opera one minute and “The Streets of Laredo” the next, I guess I’d have to move to San Francisco and hang out at Caffe Trieste, if indeed it’s still there. Many things that once were seem to be fading with the times.
*Although Lena Horne was American, Noel Coward was British. Wordplay regrets the error.
Sunday, July 28, 2019
Thus Spake George Jones
After last week’s post, a tribute to Greek tragedy as seen by a bot, I started thinking about some of the Greek tragedies that I myself have read. Last week’s brief sampling of a play written by a graduate student’s bot featured so many familiar motifs that I started thinking about the genre’s essential plot elements. I can tell you this: in plays by Aeschylus and Sophocles, family strife plays a major role. If it’s not a wife killing a husband, it’s a parent killing a child. There are grand passions, grand betrayals, clashes between affairs of state and private duty, reunions after long separations, acts of revenge, occasional acts of loyalty (which seemingly never go unpunished), matricides, filicides, parricides. In short, Greek tragedies can be gloomy affairs, no matter how great the themes they are exploring.
I’ve concluded that Greek tragedy was the country music of 5th-century Athens. You know it’s true. If there’s any species of high art more calculated to have you crying in your beer by the jukebox at intermission, it’s the works of the ancient tragedians. Some of you Generation X and Yers may be scratching your heads doubtfully, and in a way I don’t blame you, because regardless of your familiarity with the ancients, you may never actually have experienced country music the way I did while growing up. While the plays of Classical Greece may be frozen in time, coming to us across an immense expanse of time and distance, country music has changed since my youth. Back then, in the heyday of Conway Twitty, Buck Owens, Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Porter Wagoner, and others, many of the songs I heard on country radio were painful to listen to. I don’t mean sad, I mean painful.
Those were the days of what I would call hard country as opposed to the soft country of today. I’m not an expert on country music but did grow up surrounded by it, as it was favored by both my parents. I often wondered why, because it seemed to me that if you were feeling OK to start with, listening to it would depress you, and if you were already depressed when you heard it, you’d soon feel infinitely worse. It was a mirror of things only half-understood that seemed to be happening around me, and why on earth would I want to listen to reality amplified as a form of entertainment? Not for me the ballads of unfaithfulness and Carroll County accidents—I gravitated as a moth toward a flame to the melodious soft rock of The Carpenters, Bread, Don McLean, and other gentle troubadours of the day.
I may have been absorbed in a romantic haze, but given the choice between that and the utterly too literal realities of the “Harper Valley PTA” variety, I feel sure I would make the same choice again. Nothing wrong with a little escapism in the midst of ugly realities, if escapism is your only choice. I think people do this as adults, too.
Nowadays, of course, a lot of country music is indistinguishable from pop music. Several times, while alone in my car on long trips, I have tuned into country music stations in places like Missouri and Ohio and been wrapped in a cocoon of love by various male baritones all singing of faithfulness and understanding in a way that would have made George Jones cringe. (I believe it was Mr. Jones who lamented the change in country music away from the adultery/murder/prison/drunkenness end of the county toward the kinder, gentler side of the district aspired to today. At least, he once did so in an interview.)
I will admit that some of today’s songs can be sappy (as opposed to starkly depressive as in the old days). Nonetheless, if I’m trying to get somewhere on the road, I’d rather by accompanied by a sympathetic chorus of we’ve-had-our-consciousness-raised good old boys, with an occasional renegade thrown in—mostly alluding to the nobler aspects of romance and human nature—than by a Conway Twitty dirge that might force me off the road into a ditch. It would probably take a listen to both sides of the first two Carpenters albums and a goodly dose of The Little River Band to set me right after that (and that still might not be enough).
Without a doubt, there are high culture advocates out there who see no connection at all between Greek tragedy and Johnny Cash and would sooner drink hemlock than admit they might be accessing the same dark strain of human experience. Personally, I wonder if the distinction between “high” and “low” art is a defense mechanism more than a valid division, but in any case, allow me just to say that Clytemnestra murdering both her husband and Cassandra had nothing on Johnny Cash singing “Delia’s Gone.” If you were in the bar at the intermission of Agamemnon and they started playing that song, you’d be out of the theater in a flash, Chardonnay unfinished, slamming your car door, spinning out, and searching desperately on the dial for a latter-day country music lullaby of the blandest variety to soothe your disordered senses. You might even be desperate enough for disco.
I’ve concluded that Greek tragedy was the country music of 5th-century Athens. You know it’s true. If there’s any species of high art more calculated to have you crying in your beer by the jukebox at intermission, it’s the works of the ancient tragedians. Some of you Generation X and Yers may be scratching your heads doubtfully, and in a way I don’t blame you, because regardless of your familiarity with the ancients, you may never actually have experienced country music the way I did while growing up. While the plays of Classical Greece may be frozen in time, coming to us across an immense expanse of time and distance, country music has changed since my youth. Back then, in the heyday of Conway Twitty, Buck Owens, Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Porter Wagoner, and others, many of the songs I heard on country radio were painful to listen to. I don’t mean sad, I mean painful.
Those were the days of what I would call hard country as opposed to the soft country of today. I’m not an expert on country music but did grow up surrounded by it, as it was favored by both my parents. I often wondered why, because it seemed to me that if you were feeling OK to start with, listening to it would depress you, and if you were already depressed when you heard it, you’d soon feel infinitely worse. It was a mirror of things only half-understood that seemed to be happening around me, and why on earth would I want to listen to reality amplified as a form of entertainment? Not for me the ballads of unfaithfulness and Carroll County accidents—I gravitated as a moth toward a flame to the melodious soft rock of The Carpenters, Bread, Don McLean, and other gentle troubadours of the day.
I may have been absorbed in a romantic haze, but given the choice between that and the utterly too literal realities of the “Harper Valley PTA” variety, I feel sure I would make the same choice again. Nothing wrong with a little escapism in the midst of ugly realities, if escapism is your only choice. I think people do this as adults, too.
Nowadays, of course, a lot of country music is indistinguishable from pop music. Several times, while alone in my car on long trips, I have tuned into country music stations in places like Missouri and Ohio and been wrapped in a cocoon of love by various male baritones all singing of faithfulness and understanding in a way that would have made George Jones cringe. (I believe it was Mr. Jones who lamented the change in country music away from the adultery/murder/prison/drunkenness end of the county toward the kinder, gentler side of the district aspired to today. At least, he once did so in an interview.)
I will admit that some of today’s songs can be sappy (as opposed to starkly depressive as in the old days). Nonetheless, if I’m trying to get somewhere on the road, I’d rather by accompanied by a sympathetic chorus of we’ve-had-our-consciousness-raised good old boys, with an occasional renegade thrown in—mostly alluding to the nobler aspects of romance and human nature—than by a Conway Twitty dirge that might force me off the road into a ditch. It would probably take a listen to both sides of the first two Carpenters albums and a goodly dose of The Little River Band to set me right after that (and that still might not be enough).
Without a doubt, there are high culture advocates out there who see no connection at all between Greek tragedy and Johnny Cash and would sooner drink hemlock than admit they might be accessing the same dark strain of human experience. Personally, I wonder if the distinction between “high” and “low” art is a defense mechanism more than a valid division, but in any case, allow me just to say that Clytemnestra murdering both her husband and Cassandra had nothing on Johnny Cash singing “Delia’s Gone.” If you were in the bar at the intermission of Agamemnon and they started playing that song, you’d be out of the theater in a flash, Chardonnay unfinished, slamming your car door, spinning out, and searching desperately on the dial for a latter-day country music lullaby of the blandest variety to soothe your disordered senses. You might even be desperate enough for disco.
Monday, July 22, 2019
You Are Now Cereal
Phi Beta Kappa featured a post on its Facebook page the other day from Mr. Spencer Klavan, a graduate student who trained a bot to write a Greek play by having it watch many hours of tragedies. He stated that the excerpt in the post was only the first page, but to me, everything that needed to be said was right there on that page, rendering the rest entirely superfluous (though it was all excellent, I’m sure).
With a stage direction indicating that the setting is the exterior of a “Cursed Dynastic Palace,” you know you’re in the hands of a straightforward playwright who’s going to let you know exactly where you stand. And the rest of this one-page mini-play is just as carefully observed, with characters such as long-suffering wife Dyspepsia and chief god Stankrocles (in charge of mathematics and ancestral guilt, that double whammy of random but somehow meaningful jurisdictions) and an authentic Chorus that really knows its stuff: “Welcome home, Great King ! Watch out ! Everything is normal !”
The action is crisp and the verbs active. Dyspepsia carries a big knife, Stankrocles eats a sandwich, the Chorus dances, and Dundertron laughs. There are greetings, warnings, forebodings, dancing, and dead lions. And the climax, in which Stankrocles turns everyone into barley, is as satisfying as you could wish. What else is there to be said after that? You are now cereal. Deal with it. If you’ve been waiting for someone to tell it like it is, no holds barred (someone besides Wordplay), your search is at an end with Mr. Klavan’s bot. The sheer audacity of its storytelling and bold willingness to take risks in delivering a Greek tragedy attuned to our gainful (that is, grainful) times will dazzle you, make you laugh, and take your breath away.
As a drama that captures not only the spirit of an earlier age, but the nihilist zeitgeist of ours, this play cannot be beat. And besides . . . What? What are you asking? Catharsis? Well, what do you want that for? Are you feeling bad? All Wordplay can tell you is, if you don’t get catharsis from barley right now, you likely never will. It’s barley or nothing. And that’s some good fiber, too.
With a stage direction indicating that the setting is the exterior of a “Cursed Dynastic Palace,” you know you’re in the hands of a straightforward playwright who’s going to let you know exactly where you stand. And the rest of this one-page mini-play is just as carefully observed, with characters such as long-suffering wife Dyspepsia and chief god Stankrocles (in charge of mathematics and ancestral guilt, that double whammy of random but somehow meaningful jurisdictions) and an authentic Chorus that really knows its stuff: “Welcome home, Great King ! Watch out ! Everything is normal !”
The action is crisp and the verbs active. Dyspepsia carries a big knife, Stankrocles eats a sandwich, the Chorus dances, and Dundertron laughs. There are greetings, warnings, forebodings, dancing, and dead lions. And the climax, in which Stankrocles turns everyone into barley, is as satisfying as you could wish. What else is there to be said after that? You are now cereal. Deal with it. If you’ve been waiting for someone to tell it like it is, no holds barred (someone besides Wordplay), your search is at an end with Mr. Klavan’s bot. The sheer audacity of its storytelling and bold willingness to take risks in delivering a Greek tragedy attuned to our gainful (that is, grainful) times will dazzle you, make you laugh, and take your breath away.
As a drama that captures not only the spirit of an earlier age, but the nihilist zeitgeist of ours, this play cannot be beat. And besides . . . What? What are you asking? Catharsis? Well, what do you want that for? Are you feeling bad? All Wordplay can tell you is, if you don’t get catharsis from barley right now, you likely never will. It’s barley or nothing. And that’s some good fiber, too.
Sunday, July 14, 2019
Sunrise With Parking Lot
This week’s post was inspired by a photo I took two days ago and posted to the Wordplay Facebook page. Here is the photo:
When I captioned the picture, I explained that I just happened to see the crepuscular rays when I was walking across the parking lot at the grocery store early that morning. I had never tried to photograph crepuscular rays with the sunrise and wasn’t sure I could capture the effect, but the photo turned out pretty well. What I like about it is the depiction of the ordinary in juxtaposition to something verging on extraordinary. When I was little, I thought that God looked like the rays of the sun streaming down (or in this case, up) from behind a cloud. What I see here is a schematic of what the universe may really look like if there is some immanent spiritual reality existing within it.
As I understand transcendentalism, that system posits the existence of God and a spiritual realm “out there” somewhere, beyond the physical world. I’m not sure I know where that might be, since I’m kind of a material girl myself, but we’ll put that aside. I don’t see a division between “spiritual” and “material,” believing that if God is anywhere, he is all around us. I admit that there is a certain beauty in imagining special realms set apart—over the rainbow, in the heavens, in fairyland, or wherever you may imagine it to be. But I look at it this way: It’s possible that spiritual reality co-exists with or intersects everyday reality in countless places but is only glimpsed at certain moments when a slight “separation” occurs, such as the one depicted above. I wasn’t even in a good mood when it happened—I was just there, which proves you don’t necessarily need to get in the right frame of mind to see it.
Now you may say, “But it’s only a sunrise,” and that’s true, of course. It is a sunrise, but I don’t know what’s “only” about it. I do know that now and then something wondrous seems to arise in the midst of an otherwise ordinary moment, something that inspires awe. I’m merely speaking for myself, but I think other people have felt the same thing. In “The Prophet,” Kahlil Gibran said, “Could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; and you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.” Now, it is a very tall order to suppose that one must accept everything just as it is, but I take his point. There is always beauty to be experienced, if you can bring yourself to see it.
I mentioned Hinduism last week, which reminds me that there’s a scene in the Bhagavad Gita (which you were supposed to read LAST YEAR and report back to me on, REMEMBER?) in which Krishna, who is talking to Arjuna about his doubts and fears just before a big battle, opens his mouth to show Arjuna what eternity looks like. Krishna, Arjuna’s friend, is really the god Vishnu in human form, an appearance he takes on in order to keep his divinity from overwhelming the ordinary humans he comes in contact with. It is awe-inspiring and chilling to think of eternity being that close to one, as if at any moment you might tumble into a black hole without even knowing it’s there. Many traditions, though, have stories of people doing just that.
One minute, you’re in Kansas, the next you’re in Oz. You’re on the way to the village to buy some bread, you come across a fairy ring, and you’re whisked away to Fairyland, where you may spend a hundred years before anyone realizes you’re gone. Or you’re a Grail knight and wake up one morning on the ground after spending the night in a castle that is now nowhere to be seen. Or you chase a rabbit down a hole and end up in a rather peculiar place with mad hatters and Cheshire cats.
I take these as metaphors for spiritual realities that, rather than being somewhere else, are really intertwined with everyday reality but can only be accessed via imagination, inspiration, or possibly some precipitating event. Some people are suspicious of the word “spiritual,” so allow me also to say that for me, talking about spirituality is akin to talking about a richness of experience that recognizes interconnections among all things and some kind of underlying order while also recognizing that we may not quite understand everything. I prefer to leave room for a little bit of mystery—which is probably only proper from a scientific point of view. Hubris can be dangerous—as the stories also tell us.
When I captioned the picture, I explained that I just happened to see the crepuscular rays when I was walking across the parking lot at the grocery store early that morning. I had never tried to photograph crepuscular rays with the sunrise and wasn’t sure I could capture the effect, but the photo turned out pretty well. What I like about it is the depiction of the ordinary in juxtaposition to something verging on extraordinary. When I was little, I thought that God looked like the rays of the sun streaming down (or in this case, up) from behind a cloud. What I see here is a schematic of what the universe may really look like if there is some immanent spiritual reality existing within it.
As I understand transcendentalism, that system posits the existence of God and a spiritual realm “out there” somewhere, beyond the physical world. I’m not sure I know where that might be, since I’m kind of a material girl myself, but we’ll put that aside. I don’t see a division between “spiritual” and “material,” believing that if God is anywhere, he is all around us. I admit that there is a certain beauty in imagining special realms set apart—over the rainbow, in the heavens, in fairyland, or wherever you may imagine it to be. But I look at it this way: It’s possible that spiritual reality co-exists with or intersects everyday reality in countless places but is only glimpsed at certain moments when a slight “separation” occurs, such as the one depicted above. I wasn’t even in a good mood when it happened—I was just there, which proves you don’t necessarily need to get in the right frame of mind to see it.
Now you may say, “But it’s only a sunrise,” and that’s true, of course. It is a sunrise, but I don’t know what’s “only” about it. I do know that now and then something wondrous seems to arise in the midst of an otherwise ordinary moment, something that inspires awe. I’m merely speaking for myself, but I think other people have felt the same thing. In “The Prophet,” Kahlil Gibran said, “Could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; and you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.” Now, it is a very tall order to suppose that one must accept everything just as it is, but I take his point. There is always beauty to be experienced, if you can bring yourself to see it.
I mentioned Hinduism last week, which reminds me that there’s a scene in the Bhagavad Gita (which you were supposed to read LAST YEAR and report back to me on, REMEMBER?) in which Krishna, who is talking to Arjuna about his doubts and fears just before a big battle, opens his mouth to show Arjuna what eternity looks like. Krishna, Arjuna’s friend, is really the god Vishnu in human form, an appearance he takes on in order to keep his divinity from overwhelming the ordinary humans he comes in contact with. It is awe-inspiring and chilling to think of eternity being that close to one, as if at any moment you might tumble into a black hole without even knowing it’s there. Many traditions, though, have stories of people doing just that.
One minute, you’re in Kansas, the next you’re in Oz. You’re on the way to the village to buy some bread, you come across a fairy ring, and you’re whisked away to Fairyland, where you may spend a hundred years before anyone realizes you’re gone. Or you’re a Grail knight and wake up one morning on the ground after spending the night in a castle that is now nowhere to be seen. Or you chase a rabbit down a hole and end up in a rather peculiar place with mad hatters and Cheshire cats.
I take these as metaphors for spiritual realities that, rather than being somewhere else, are really intertwined with everyday reality but can only be accessed via imagination, inspiration, or possibly some precipitating event. Some people are suspicious of the word “spiritual,” so allow me also to say that for me, talking about spirituality is akin to talking about a richness of experience that recognizes interconnections among all things and some kind of underlying order while also recognizing that we may not quite understand everything. I prefer to leave room for a little bit of mystery—which is probably only proper from a scientific point of view. Hubris can be dangerous—as the stories also tell us.
Sunday, July 7, 2019
Germane to the Discussion
It’s true: we are living in a synchronistic universe. I wrote about similarities between art and life recently, and I was only using the language of art (Impressionism, Cubism) to describe my own experience. Really, though, it seems that other people may be caught up in the same slipstream (to dip into physics for a moment). How else to explain the phenomena of “doubling”?
It’s one thing for me to take a photo and then remark on how much it reminds me of a certain work of art. It’s another to come across a news service photo of an entire group of people in another country who have somehow managed, in their innocence, to re-create the scene in yet another famous work of art. The similarity of this group of German sunbathers to the people depicted in Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884” also reinforces my point about current reality being definitively Post-Impressionist. Not that I was thinking Pointillism exactly, but, sure, that works. We are out of the garden, but the colors are still there.
If the universe is truly—as the Hindus tell us—a dream issuing as a giant bubble from the mind of the sleeping Vishnu, lounging there on his cosmic ocean, perhaps we are currently living in the Art 101 bubble. Maybe from your wave, it looks Pointillist; from mine, it looks Cubist; and from someone else’s, it looks Surreal, but in any case—it’s all art, so don’t sweat it. We’re all living in a giant museum, and while you may be able to do little more than shuffle from one room to another, there’s always another masterpiece right around the corner. Think what you have to look forward to!
Now, I have heard of planned events in which people deliberately set out to re-create a famous work of art with living and breathing participants. That’s been done with Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” in the Netherlands, and in Laguna Beach, California, they have an annual festival of “Living Pictures” in which masterworks are brought to life in a Pageant of the Masters. (By coincidence, and I swear I didn’t know this until two minutes ago, this year’s festival begins today and runs through August 31st. No fooling—here’s the link.)
Now if you don’t happen to live in a trendy place like the left or right coast of the United States, or Amsterdam, you can still get your share of arts and recreation. For example, I happen to know that just north of here, in Columbus, Ohio, there is a park in which “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” has been reproduced using plants—so, no human actors, but the resemblance is still remarkable, as I can tell you myself, having seen it with my own eyes on a long-ago trip. Should your plans take you in that direction, check it out! I have photos that I took myself on my own Sunday morning visit, and while some of the hedges may have needed a bit of trimming, the overall effect was quite impressive.
Wordplay would like to be able to take credit for being prescient in all of this, but all we can truly say is that, given a surf board, we will ride a wave on Vishnu’s ocean as long as the next person. Longer, even.
It’s one thing for me to take a photo and then remark on how much it reminds me of a certain work of art. It’s another to come across a news service photo of an entire group of people in another country who have somehow managed, in their innocence, to re-create the scene in yet another famous work of art. The similarity of this group of German sunbathers to the people depicted in Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884” also reinforces my point about current reality being definitively Post-Impressionist. Not that I was thinking Pointillism exactly, but, sure, that works. We are out of the garden, but the colors are still there.
If the universe is truly—as the Hindus tell us—a dream issuing as a giant bubble from the mind of the sleeping Vishnu, lounging there on his cosmic ocean, perhaps we are currently living in the Art 101 bubble. Maybe from your wave, it looks Pointillist; from mine, it looks Cubist; and from someone else’s, it looks Surreal, but in any case—it’s all art, so don’t sweat it. We’re all living in a giant museum, and while you may be able to do little more than shuffle from one room to another, there’s always another masterpiece right around the corner. Think what you have to look forward to!
Now, I have heard of planned events in which people deliberately set out to re-create a famous work of art with living and breathing participants. That’s been done with Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” in the Netherlands, and in Laguna Beach, California, they have an annual festival of “Living Pictures” in which masterworks are brought to life in a Pageant of the Masters. (By coincidence, and I swear I didn’t know this until two minutes ago, this year’s festival begins today and runs through August 31st. No fooling—here’s the link.)
Now if you don’t happen to live in a trendy place like the left or right coast of the United States, or Amsterdam, you can still get your share of arts and recreation. For example, I happen to know that just north of here, in Columbus, Ohio, there is a park in which “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” has been reproduced using plants—so, no human actors, but the resemblance is still remarkable, as I can tell you myself, having seen it with my own eyes on a long-ago trip. Should your plans take you in that direction, check it out! I have photos that I took myself on my own Sunday morning visit, and while some of the hedges may have needed a bit of trimming, the overall effect was quite impressive.
Wordplay would like to be able to take credit for being prescient in all of this, but all we can truly say is that, given a surf board, we will ride a wave on Vishnu’s ocean as long as the next person. Longer, even.
Sunday, June 30, 2019
Meme Able Me
One thing I may have neglected to tell you is that Wordplay now has its own Facebook page, and you can visit us there any time you feel you just can’t make it another day without us. (I’m really not being facetious, or not totally so. These things happen.) I thought about doing this several years ago when I was trying to promote my book and came across some writerly advice about starting a Facebook page. I don’t actually remember the reason I didn’t do it; in any case, the page is more an adjunct to the blog than it is to the book. As you know, Wordplay ranges over many interests since its underlying theme is mythology and everyday life. It has a structure but a very open one due to the subject matter.
Recently someone asked me for input on some labyrinth-building projects here, and while I was glad to give my opinion, I had to explain that my interest in the topic was not from the standpoint of building or using labyrinths but more from a literary stance. I think that the book, while timely, actually has a long shelf life and could be read by anyone with an interest in literary criticism or epistemology, at any time. I also ventured into social criticism with follow-up work that explored some of the social and political reasons why labyrinths may have started trending in the first place. While these topics remain an interest, I felt several years ago that I’d done as much as I wanted to with them and was ready to go in other directions.
It’s challenging to write a blog concerned with cultural mythology. I see a lot of things on the Internet and elsewhere that I don’t feel are worth commenting on or wasting anyone else’s time with. I’ve taken to posting links and images on the Facebook page that catch my eye, and if you’ve seen it, you know that I usually take a light-hearted approach. My voice is the same there as it is here, but the Facebook page is more conducive to sharing links and graphics and creating memes. I sometimes laugh when I’m working on it.
A couple of days ago, I came across a video in my Facebook newsfeed from Mom Versus. The heroine of this Facebook page often posts videos of herself trying out recipes and is in a decidedly humorous vein. After posting a video of her making an American Flag Cake, I was playing around with the idea of “Southern belles” and kept thinking of the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones, which was, as you may remember, entitled “The Bells.” I ended up branching off from my original idea but still managed to create a meme in which I brought together two very disparate things, Mom Versus and Game of Thrones. (If anyone can find similarities in completely unrelated things, it’s Wordplay. Remember Say Yes to the Dress?)
I plan to continue the Facebook page along with the blog; the page has more than once served as a point of inspiration for that week’s blog post. Sometimes it’s as simple as a photo I took myself and posted; other times, the inspiration comes from something in the culture. I’m often hesitant to “buy into” trends I see or to comment on the news (holds head in hands), but with humor, a lot of things are possible. You can make a serious point without seeming to, or you can just be silly.
Please check us out on Facebook if you feel moved to do so. You’ll recognize that both “feet” and “cups” (two very everyday things) have played a somewhat outsized role in some of our doings so far. I’m not really sure I can explain why this has happened, just that it has.
Recently someone asked me for input on some labyrinth-building projects here, and while I was glad to give my opinion, I had to explain that my interest in the topic was not from the standpoint of building or using labyrinths but more from a literary stance. I think that the book, while timely, actually has a long shelf life and could be read by anyone with an interest in literary criticism or epistemology, at any time. I also ventured into social criticism with follow-up work that explored some of the social and political reasons why labyrinths may have started trending in the first place. While these topics remain an interest, I felt several years ago that I’d done as much as I wanted to with them and was ready to go in other directions.
It’s challenging to write a blog concerned with cultural mythology. I see a lot of things on the Internet and elsewhere that I don’t feel are worth commenting on or wasting anyone else’s time with. I’ve taken to posting links and images on the Facebook page that catch my eye, and if you’ve seen it, you know that I usually take a light-hearted approach. My voice is the same there as it is here, but the Facebook page is more conducive to sharing links and graphics and creating memes. I sometimes laugh when I’m working on it.
A couple of days ago, I came across a video in my Facebook newsfeed from Mom Versus. The heroine of this Facebook page often posts videos of herself trying out recipes and is in a decidedly humorous vein. After posting a video of her making an American Flag Cake, I was playing around with the idea of “Southern belles” and kept thinking of the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones, which was, as you may remember, entitled “The Bells.” I ended up branching off from my original idea but still managed to create a meme in which I brought together two very disparate things, Mom Versus and Game of Thrones. (If anyone can find similarities in completely unrelated things, it’s Wordplay. Remember Say Yes to the Dress?)
I plan to continue the Facebook page along with the blog; the page has more than once served as a point of inspiration for that week’s blog post. Sometimes it’s as simple as a photo I took myself and posted; other times, the inspiration comes from something in the culture. I’m often hesitant to “buy into” trends I see or to comment on the news (holds head in hands), but with humor, a lot of things are possible. You can make a serious point without seeming to, or you can just be silly.
Please check us out on Facebook if you feel moved to do so. You’ll recognize that both “feet” and “cups” (two very everyday things) have played a somewhat outsized role in some of our doings so far. I’m not really sure I can explain why this has happened, just that it has.
Sunday, June 23, 2019
Wordplay Feels You on Fake News
Today was a nice enough summer day, I guess, but nothing like as simple as some of the lazy summer days I remember from the past. Modern life is constantly throwing complications at you. If reading the news makes you cry, forget the news and just find a good book, right? Sounds good in concept, so you head over to the library and wait for it to open, getting bitten by mosquitoes and sweating in the humidity, because the building opens late on Sundays. Finally, the hour arrives, and you go in with the other patrons, looking forward to getting a new book in your hands, although experience has taught you not to get too excited these days about anything.
You plug in, pull up NoveList, and start browsing titles. You know, because you’ve done this before, that some of them will sound amazing but prove to be disappointing, but still, facts are facts: English majors are ever hopeful about books. After looking for a while, taking the time to check your account to make sure that newfangled “Book History” is still turned off (because, a little too Big-Brotherish, even if seemingly harmless for someone with mild tastes), you home in on a couple of books. One sounds Edwardian and mildly interesting, and the other catches your eye because you saw it at the bookstore’s checkout counter recently and noted that it was a retelling of a Shakespeare play.
You check out both and settle in for a little reading in a refreshingly quiet back section of the library (relatively speaking: all libraries are noisier than they once were, especially this one). You’re a few pages into the first book when that familiar sinking feeling sets in, because, alas, the story is not what you thought it would be at all. You’re not losing yourself in the pages, you’re getting annoyed, whether because the story is not what you were hoping for or because the author’s mannerisms draw attention away from the story, you’re not sure which.
Fine, put that one down and pick up the other one, the one based on Shakespeare. This is an author whom, despite his having lost you completely on his last outing, you have decided to gift with another chance. At one time, he seemed unobjectionable and even distinguished, but now . . . Did you even get off the first page or were you all the way to the second page before you began to quoth, “Nevermore!” and slam that book shut, too.
Many artists seem preoccupied these days with “peacocking.” What else do you call it when a capable and even remarkable writer good enough to write a bestseller and/or literary prize winner starts preening, winking, talking to you from the back of his/her hand, and spouting nonsense. They might as well title the book, The Only Book You Need to Read, and in substitution for other content, drop in the words, “I know everything, I’m so important, and even if I don’t know what I’m talking about, I need your undivided attention.” Someone has gotten hold of these people and ruined them.
In complete fairness, let me say that the day may come when I will have to retract some of my opinions, too. I’ve considered opposite points of view too many times for all of the ideas I’ve expressed to be true—some of them have to be wrong. You do the best you can with what you know, and when people seem determined to spread disinformation, it’s difficult to know where the truth is. In that case, you consider alternate possibilities and try not to get overly attached to a single point of view. Rather than “wishy-washy,” I prefer the Keatsian term “negative capability”—the capacity to move among different points of view without settling too firmly into one entrenched position. Yes, confusion and doubt are the hazards of this type of thinking, but I’ve never been able to understand how some people can be so sure of everything anyway. How do you know that? Don’t you think it might be better to hold off on trumpeting something until you know more about it? I feel on firm ground with very few things besides the Golden Rule as a good (though not perfect) starting point.
When I write non-fiction, I try to be accurate and without malice. When I write fiction, I just try to capture the story out of my head (no small task) and tell it as well as I can. Artistic integrity, to me, is keeping the crafting of the story as your single aim. Name-dropping, scoring points on enemies (yes, I know Dante did it, thanks for bringing that to my attention), and spreading propaganda are artistic sins that we hope most people try to avoid.
If you’re wondering, I did end up leaving the library with a book, a collection of the short novels of John Steinbeck. When I’m in doubt, I go back to the classics. I’m sure Mr. Steinbeck had his faults, too, but at least he can’t alienate me by trying too hard to be in-the-know.
You plug in, pull up NoveList, and start browsing titles. You know, because you’ve done this before, that some of them will sound amazing but prove to be disappointing, but still, facts are facts: English majors are ever hopeful about books. After looking for a while, taking the time to check your account to make sure that newfangled “Book History” is still turned off (because, a little too Big-Brotherish, even if seemingly harmless for someone with mild tastes), you home in on a couple of books. One sounds Edwardian and mildly interesting, and the other catches your eye because you saw it at the bookstore’s checkout counter recently and noted that it was a retelling of a Shakespeare play.
You check out both and settle in for a little reading in a refreshingly quiet back section of the library (relatively speaking: all libraries are noisier than they once were, especially this one). You’re a few pages into the first book when that familiar sinking feeling sets in, because, alas, the story is not what you thought it would be at all. You’re not losing yourself in the pages, you’re getting annoyed, whether because the story is not what you were hoping for or because the author’s mannerisms draw attention away from the story, you’re not sure which.
Fine, put that one down and pick up the other one, the one based on Shakespeare. This is an author whom, despite his having lost you completely on his last outing, you have decided to gift with another chance. At one time, he seemed unobjectionable and even distinguished, but now . . . Did you even get off the first page or were you all the way to the second page before you began to quoth, “Nevermore!” and slam that book shut, too.
Many artists seem preoccupied these days with “peacocking.” What else do you call it when a capable and even remarkable writer good enough to write a bestseller and/or literary prize winner starts preening, winking, talking to you from the back of his/her hand, and spouting nonsense. They might as well title the book, The Only Book You Need to Read, and in substitution for other content, drop in the words, “I know everything, I’m so important, and even if I don’t know what I’m talking about, I need your undivided attention.” Someone has gotten hold of these people and ruined them.
In complete fairness, let me say that the day may come when I will have to retract some of my opinions, too. I’ve considered opposite points of view too many times for all of the ideas I’ve expressed to be true—some of them have to be wrong. You do the best you can with what you know, and when people seem determined to spread disinformation, it’s difficult to know where the truth is. In that case, you consider alternate possibilities and try not to get overly attached to a single point of view. Rather than “wishy-washy,” I prefer the Keatsian term “negative capability”—the capacity to move among different points of view without settling too firmly into one entrenched position. Yes, confusion and doubt are the hazards of this type of thinking, but I’ve never been able to understand how some people can be so sure of everything anyway. How do you know that? Don’t you think it might be better to hold off on trumpeting something until you know more about it? I feel on firm ground with very few things besides the Golden Rule as a good (though not perfect) starting point.
When I write non-fiction, I try to be accurate and without malice. When I write fiction, I just try to capture the story out of my head (no small task) and tell it as well as I can. Artistic integrity, to me, is keeping the crafting of the story as your single aim. Name-dropping, scoring points on enemies (yes, I know Dante did it, thanks for bringing that to my attention), and spreading propaganda are artistic sins that we hope most people try to avoid.
If you’re wondering, I did end up leaving the library with a book, a collection of the short novels of John Steinbeck. When I’m in doubt, I go back to the classics. I’m sure Mr. Steinbeck had his faults, too, but at least he can’t alienate me by trying too hard to be in-the-know.
Sunday, June 16, 2019
Urania Explains How Life Became Cubist
I’ve only had two art history classes in my life, but they obviously exercised a huge influence on my imagination. I sometimes think in terms of images I’ve seen; maybe another way to say this is that the study of art history primed me to notice moments when art imitates life. Great paintings wouldn’t have the power to enchant us if they didn’t contain archetypal material, and that sometimes creates a feeling of recognition when you least expect it.
I’ve written about this before. I had lived in my last apartment for many years before I realized that the view of the roof lines on the opposite side of the street reminded me very much of René Magritte’s The Dominion of Light, especially at certain times of the day. Peach-colored sunsets have more than once made me think of Maxfield Parrish’s extravagant and billowing clouds. I was looking out my back window one summer day late in the afternoon when the quality of light on the opposite wall reminded me of Winslow Homer. I wasn’t even sure what I had in mind when this happened—possibly the light on the sail in Homer’s Breezing Up (A Fair Wind)—but that wall definitely looked like Homer.
Recently, I was on a downtown street near the courthouse when I was stopped in my tracks by a view of mixed architectural styles and roof lines visible from where I was standing. It instantly brought Thomas Cole’s The Architect’s Dream to mind, and although the elements in the real-life view didn’t match those in the painting point for point, there was enough similarity to make it seem that the painting had, in a manner, sprung to life before my eyes. A long, horizontal, arcade-like building, a pediment, pyramid shapes, a massy square building with rounded arches, a Gothic steeple—all were there in a jumble, just as in the painting.
A similar art-related experience I’ve had more than once is to see a painting that creates a feeling of déjà vu that I can’t explain. Sometimes I feel that I may only have encountered the place in my imagination and not in reality at all. A Pre-Raphaelite painting of a solitary knight pausing in a forest may remind me of reading King Arthur for the first time, just as a moonlit scene of an Italian bridge may bring to mind a place encountered in one of Mary Stewart’s novels.
I once took an online quiz that was supposed to tell me “which famous painting I was.” Whatever the result, was I was flattered by it—I believe it may have been something by one of the Impressionists. But if you asked me a different question—“Which artist could best paint life as you are now living it?”—I would have to say Picasso, and it would be the style of painting in which the same face is depicted from several angles at once. Of course, a Hillmanian would have a perspective like this, but more than that, I think modern life (as I experience it, at least) creates a feeling of time speeding up in some places and slowing down in others that often leaves things a little out of joint. I experience myself much as I always have, but I seem to be caught in a crosswind of dimensional planes that leaves me goggling at the unlikelihood of it all. I’m ahead of myself in some areas and lagging behind in others; my elbow may be in one place, my foot in another, and my shoulder in another plane entirely.
I never particularly identified with Cubism before, but life and art have some surprising corners. I just saw an article that mentioned some sort of a hole on the edge of the Milky Way that’s been identified by a Harvard scientist. It’s far too vast to be caused by a star, she says, and the culprit may possibly be “dark matter.” Don’t you just know it! Dark matter interfering not only with the galaxy but with my nice Impressionist life and skewing the whole thing Cubist! Just wait till I get hold of the sucker . . . There won’t be a wormhole small enough for it to hide in.
I’ve written about this before. I had lived in my last apartment for many years before I realized that the view of the roof lines on the opposite side of the street reminded me very much of René Magritte’s The Dominion of Light, especially at certain times of the day. Peach-colored sunsets have more than once made me think of Maxfield Parrish’s extravagant and billowing clouds. I was looking out my back window one summer day late in the afternoon when the quality of light on the opposite wall reminded me of Winslow Homer. I wasn’t even sure what I had in mind when this happened—possibly the light on the sail in Homer’s Breezing Up (A Fair Wind)—but that wall definitely looked like Homer.
Recently, I was on a downtown street near the courthouse when I was stopped in my tracks by a view of mixed architectural styles and roof lines visible from where I was standing. It instantly brought Thomas Cole’s The Architect’s Dream to mind, and although the elements in the real-life view didn’t match those in the painting point for point, there was enough similarity to make it seem that the painting had, in a manner, sprung to life before my eyes. A long, horizontal, arcade-like building, a pediment, pyramid shapes, a massy square building with rounded arches, a Gothic steeple—all were there in a jumble, just as in the painting.
A similar art-related experience I’ve had more than once is to see a painting that creates a feeling of déjà vu that I can’t explain. Sometimes I feel that I may only have encountered the place in my imagination and not in reality at all. A Pre-Raphaelite painting of a solitary knight pausing in a forest may remind me of reading King Arthur for the first time, just as a moonlit scene of an Italian bridge may bring to mind a place encountered in one of Mary Stewart’s novels.
I once took an online quiz that was supposed to tell me “which famous painting I was.” Whatever the result, was I was flattered by it—I believe it may have been something by one of the Impressionists. But if you asked me a different question—“Which artist could best paint life as you are now living it?”—I would have to say Picasso, and it would be the style of painting in which the same face is depicted from several angles at once. Of course, a Hillmanian would have a perspective like this, but more than that, I think modern life (as I experience it, at least) creates a feeling of time speeding up in some places and slowing down in others that often leaves things a little out of joint. I experience myself much as I always have, but I seem to be caught in a crosswind of dimensional planes that leaves me goggling at the unlikelihood of it all. I’m ahead of myself in some areas and lagging behind in others; my elbow may be in one place, my foot in another, and my shoulder in another plane entirely.
I never particularly identified with Cubism before, but life and art have some surprising corners. I just saw an article that mentioned some sort of a hole on the edge of the Milky Way that’s been identified by a Harvard scientist. It’s far too vast to be caused by a star, she says, and the culprit may possibly be “dark matter.” Don’t you just know it! Dark matter interfering not only with the galaxy but with my nice Impressionist life and skewing the whole thing Cubist! Just wait till I get hold of the sucker . . . There won’t be a wormhole small enough for it to hide in.
Sunday, June 9, 2019
Storm to the South
A little while ago I watching a storm cloud move across the sky south of me. I thought I could almost see a funnel cloud in the middle of it and imagined having to hide behind the counter in the cafe if it veered in this direction. The sky got darker, there were rumbles in the distance, and then it rained, but that was all. It’s been a rainy spring here but nothing very far out of the ordinary so far.
I like thunderstorms, but they’re usually milder here than the ones I remember from growing up in Florida. There, the rain assumed a tropical intensity, and lightning seemed to split the sky wide open. Some years ago, I was riding Amtrak through Iowa, and I clearly remember the thunderstorm that blew up as we were sitting down to dinner that night. With the flatness of the land and lack of buildings it was possible to see a long way, and we had an unobstructed view of the storm, which seemed notable for the intensity and frequency of the lightning but was after all probably nothing unusual for the northern plains.
I remember thinking that I hadn’t seen a storm like that since Florida. I don’t know if the spring storms are more intense over Iowa than they are over Kentucky or whether it’s the wide-angle views that make storms seem bigger. It was fun to watch the storm from the safety of the dining car, just as it’s always enjoyable to sit in a dry room, preferably in a cozy chair with a book in hand, and watch rain fall.
Not so fun to be caught out in a storm in a place like Texas or Oklahoma, though. It’s safe to say that a career as a storm chaser is out of the question for me, since my instinct is to go away from a storm, not toward it. A couple of years ago, I was on my way to visit a friend in the Dallas area, and just south of the city, I ran into the blackest, most ominous cloud I’ve ever seen, really downright Dante-esque if you can picture what a storm cloud rolling out of Inferno itself would look like. I was alarmed but noted that no one else was pulling off the road, so, like them, I just kept going until I drove out of it some twenty minutes later. There was no thunder with this storm, but driving into it was like running into a solid wall of water, and it stayed that way until I drove out from under the cloud, back into normal reality, twelve miles from my friend’s house.
Why is this mythic? Well, all natural phenomena are part of the fabric of myths and have their own gods and goddesses (we were just talking about Iris, the Greek goddess of rainbows, last week). In modern life, we talk about weather in scientific terms, and even if you watch The Weather Channel for hours at a time, as I’ve been known to do, you’ll hear hardly a mention of Thor, Aeolus, Zeus, or any other weather god from the old stories, though Old Man Winter may sometimes be mentioned in a whimsical way.
Some people like the idea of reverting to the old nature religions that tend to personify natural events and give them human qualities. My enjoyment of nature isn’t diminished by hearing it spoken of scientifically. The science of weather is complex and fascinating, and the forms and characteristics of the old myths play around the edges of my imagination when I watch weather programs or look at a storm through a window. Is there some reason a scientific approach has to clash with having an imaginative relationship to the world? Not that I can see. I can listen with interest while someone describes the dynamics of a tornado and still find that the archetypal twister in my mind is the one that carried Dorothy to Oz.
I like thunderstorms, but they’re usually milder here than the ones I remember from growing up in Florida. There, the rain assumed a tropical intensity, and lightning seemed to split the sky wide open. Some years ago, I was riding Amtrak through Iowa, and I clearly remember the thunderstorm that blew up as we were sitting down to dinner that night. With the flatness of the land and lack of buildings it was possible to see a long way, and we had an unobstructed view of the storm, which seemed notable for the intensity and frequency of the lightning but was after all probably nothing unusual for the northern plains.
I remember thinking that I hadn’t seen a storm like that since Florida. I don’t know if the spring storms are more intense over Iowa than they are over Kentucky or whether it’s the wide-angle views that make storms seem bigger. It was fun to watch the storm from the safety of the dining car, just as it’s always enjoyable to sit in a dry room, preferably in a cozy chair with a book in hand, and watch rain fall.
Not so fun to be caught out in a storm in a place like Texas or Oklahoma, though. It’s safe to say that a career as a storm chaser is out of the question for me, since my instinct is to go away from a storm, not toward it. A couple of years ago, I was on my way to visit a friend in the Dallas area, and just south of the city, I ran into the blackest, most ominous cloud I’ve ever seen, really downright Dante-esque if you can picture what a storm cloud rolling out of Inferno itself would look like. I was alarmed but noted that no one else was pulling off the road, so, like them, I just kept going until I drove out of it some twenty minutes later. There was no thunder with this storm, but driving into it was like running into a solid wall of water, and it stayed that way until I drove out from under the cloud, back into normal reality, twelve miles from my friend’s house.
Why is this mythic? Well, all natural phenomena are part of the fabric of myths and have their own gods and goddesses (we were just talking about Iris, the Greek goddess of rainbows, last week). In modern life, we talk about weather in scientific terms, and even if you watch The Weather Channel for hours at a time, as I’ve been known to do, you’ll hear hardly a mention of Thor, Aeolus, Zeus, or any other weather god from the old stories, though Old Man Winter may sometimes be mentioned in a whimsical way.
Some people like the idea of reverting to the old nature religions that tend to personify natural events and give them human qualities. My enjoyment of nature isn’t diminished by hearing it spoken of scientifically. The science of weather is complex and fascinating, and the forms and characteristics of the old myths play around the edges of my imagination when I watch weather programs or look at a storm through a window. Is there some reason a scientific approach has to clash with having an imaginative relationship to the world? Not that I can see. I can listen with interest while someone describes the dynamics of a tornado and still find that the archetypal twister in my mind is the one that carried Dorothy to Oz.
Sunday, June 2, 2019
The Knight of Cups Has a Message for You
Often I feel that I’m reacting to things I see in the culture, just playing with repetitions and coming up with associations. I rarely see myself as someone who “starts things”—for instance, I didn’t start the phenomena of modern beverage cups and bottles in scenes of medieval settings on famous TV shows—but I did have fun taking pictures of my own coffee and tea cups and putting together little montages with them (see Wordplay’s Facebook page for the photo essay). That’s how I got from a water cup at breakfast to an image of the Knight of Cups from the Tarot, a symbolic progression that may or may not mean anything but was fun to do.
Cups have a symbolism of their own, and I was playing in my montage with the idea of being “offered something.” The tricky thing with symbols is that they often contain more than one meaning, and even opposite meanings. A cup can represent refreshment, potential, receptivity, and a number of other things, but it can equally represent the opposite of any of those—it might contain poison, for instance, instead of refreshment. A closed container could represent “keeping the lid on something” rather than an offering.
Now, I will plead guilty to starting a word association game with the word “iris,” but I was only doing it on my Facebook page for fun, so if you start seeing it everywhere suddenly, don’t blame me. It was the montage of the cups that actually morphed, more or less organically, into the iris montage. I paired an image of my iced tea cup at McDonald’s with a photo of a partial rainbow that I took a couple of weeks ago because they had a similar “arch” (or “arc,” I guess, if we were still talking about Game of Thrones). Naturally, being a myth person, I then started thinking about who was the goddess of rainbows in Greek mythology, and she, of course, was Iris.
So I found a painting of Iris that looked old enough to be in the public domain (and honestly, that was my main criterion): this was Guy Head’s Iris Carrying the Water of the River Styx to Olympus for the Gods to Swear By. Iris happens to be holding a pitcher, which is not a cup, but close enough, and although she appears to be having a major wardrobe malfunction, she seems to know exactly where she’s going and to be heading there with all possible speed. The treatment is suitably dramatic and even includes several repetitions of curved arches in the rainbow itself, the stone, the reflection, the drapery, etc., so the painting is all over the arches theme in just about every way conceivable.
After that, I started thinking about other meanings and associations of the word “iris,” which is, of course, more than a goddess’s name. It’s the part of your eye that surrounds the pupil, and it’s the name of a flower. It was also the name of a show by the Cirque du Soleil that I saw in Los Angeles some years ago, my one and only time of seeing that famous troupe, and quite an experience it was. The theme of cameras, lenses, and “seeing” was evident in the show, which had a Hollywood theme, though I really don’t remember the details, just the overall impression of the spectacle. One of my favorite moments occurred before the curtain went up, when I was idling in my seat, and a performer opened a hidden, circular window at the top of the stage (I was in an upper balcony) and looked out at me momentarily before snapping it smartly shut. I had the impression of having been “winked at.”
So I put together Iris of the rainbow and pitcher with a photo of my own eye and added in a logo from Cirque du Soleil’s Iris (though the one I chose is a stark black and white and hardly does justice to the jumble of color and motion I remember). Lastly, I added an image of Vincent van Gogh’s Irises, which probably needs no introduction to anyone, as famous and beautiful as it is. I have sat or stood in front of that painting at the Getty Museum for many minutes at a time on more than one occasion—seeing it was one of the highlights of the first weekend I ever spent in Los Angeles. Curiously, I had somehow gotten the impression that irises are a symbol of healing but when I did some cursory research to confirm that before posting the image to Facebook, I found plenty of other symbolic meanings for the flower but nothing related to healing. I’m now curious about where the healing idea came from and feel that it may have been from something I saw in the museum, though it was so long ago that I’m not sure.
So we now have a rainbow goddess with trailing drapery, a highly acrobatic circus spectacle, a structure of the eye, and a flower, and if you thought I was going somewhere specific with all that, the answer is “not really.” It was all in play, in keeping with the theme of this blog. But if “the eye is (indeed) the window to the soul”—watch out. It could be yourself you see reflected in that photo essay. Maybe Wordplay itself is all just a gigantic Rorschach test—you never know.
Cups have a symbolism of their own, and I was playing in my montage with the idea of being “offered something.” The tricky thing with symbols is that they often contain more than one meaning, and even opposite meanings. A cup can represent refreshment, potential, receptivity, and a number of other things, but it can equally represent the opposite of any of those—it might contain poison, for instance, instead of refreshment. A closed container could represent “keeping the lid on something” rather than an offering.
Now, I will plead guilty to starting a word association game with the word “iris,” but I was only doing it on my Facebook page for fun, so if you start seeing it everywhere suddenly, don’t blame me. It was the montage of the cups that actually morphed, more or less organically, into the iris montage. I paired an image of my iced tea cup at McDonald’s with a photo of a partial rainbow that I took a couple of weeks ago because they had a similar “arch” (or “arc,” I guess, if we were still talking about Game of Thrones). Naturally, being a myth person, I then started thinking about who was the goddess of rainbows in Greek mythology, and she, of course, was Iris.
So I found a painting of Iris that looked old enough to be in the public domain (and honestly, that was my main criterion): this was Guy Head’s Iris Carrying the Water of the River Styx to Olympus for the Gods to Swear By. Iris happens to be holding a pitcher, which is not a cup, but close enough, and although she appears to be having a major wardrobe malfunction, she seems to know exactly where she’s going and to be heading there with all possible speed. The treatment is suitably dramatic and even includes several repetitions of curved arches in the rainbow itself, the stone, the reflection, the drapery, etc., so the painting is all over the arches theme in just about every way conceivable.
After that, I started thinking about other meanings and associations of the word “iris,” which is, of course, more than a goddess’s name. It’s the part of your eye that surrounds the pupil, and it’s the name of a flower. It was also the name of a show by the Cirque du Soleil that I saw in Los Angeles some years ago, my one and only time of seeing that famous troupe, and quite an experience it was. The theme of cameras, lenses, and “seeing” was evident in the show, which had a Hollywood theme, though I really don’t remember the details, just the overall impression of the spectacle. One of my favorite moments occurred before the curtain went up, when I was idling in my seat, and a performer opened a hidden, circular window at the top of the stage (I was in an upper balcony) and looked out at me momentarily before snapping it smartly shut. I had the impression of having been “winked at.”
So I put together Iris of the rainbow and pitcher with a photo of my own eye and added in a logo from Cirque du Soleil’s Iris (though the one I chose is a stark black and white and hardly does justice to the jumble of color and motion I remember). Lastly, I added an image of Vincent van Gogh’s Irises, which probably needs no introduction to anyone, as famous and beautiful as it is. I have sat or stood in front of that painting at the Getty Museum for many minutes at a time on more than one occasion—seeing it was one of the highlights of the first weekend I ever spent in Los Angeles. Curiously, I had somehow gotten the impression that irises are a symbol of healing but when I did some cursory research to confirm that before posting the image to Facebook, I found plenty of other symbolic meanings for the flower but nothing related to healing. I’m now curious about where the healing idea came from and feel that it may have been from something I saw in the museum, though it was so long ago that I’m not sure.
So we now have a rainbow goddess with trailing drapery, a highly acrobatic circus spectacle, a structure of the eye, and a flower, and if you thought I was going somewhere specific with all that, the answer is “not really.” It was all in play, in keeping with the theme of this blog. But if “the eye is (indeed) the window to the soul”—watch out. It could be yourself you see reflected in that photo essay. Maybe Wordplay itself is all just a gigantic Rorschach test—you never know.
Sunday, May 26, 2019
You Know Nothing, Word Play
I heard that Game of Thrones fans have a petition on Change.org asking for a re-write of the final episode, now that the juggernaut that is GOT has, at least for now, come to an end. I had a chance to watch the episode twice, and while I was prepared not to like it, honesty compels me to say that—know-nothing though I am—I thought it was rather impressive. Elegiac, tragic, bleak, shocking, solemn—all of those things, with happy endings few and far between. From my understanding of the show, events were leading rather inexorably toward something very much like what happened, though I was sorry that one of my favorite characters was among the casualties. Hasn’t GOT been doing this type of thing from the beginning, getting you to like people and then doing them in? When ruthless people jockey for power, people die—I believe it was Cersei who pointed that out.
However, the people calling for a rewrite could be on to something. As I understand it, people feel that some of the characters veered into unexpected directions that weren’t consistent with previous actions and that destruction of the Night King in Episode 3 this season threw a wrench into the logical unfolding of later events. I liked an article in which someone explained the problem in terms of the standard exposition/rising action/climax/denouement structure we all remember from school. The basic argument is that the climactic action came too early in the season and forced the last few episodes to produce a second climax when one should have been enough. Though I’m recalling that in The Lord of the Rings, there were several big battles before the final climax, I can’t argue with people who know GOT better than I do and say that all the big buildup was toward a confrontation with the Night King.
While this is purportedly the end of this iteration of the series, we all know of cases in which characters were killed and shows ended only to be resurrected later. I think I feel what a lot of viewers are feeling, which is how big a hole the killing off of so many major characters left in the program. It was as if half the oxygen had been sucked out of Westeros, leaving a huge vacuum. Grief feels that way, and I think a lot of viewers are likely in mourning over the loss of characters they’ve come to know over eight seasons. I was surprised at how sad the scene in which Tyrion finds Cersei and Jaime in the rubble of the Red Keep made me; I had never even seen GOT before the end of Season 7.
I disagree, however, with people who feel that Jaime’s actions in returning to his sister were inconsistent with the direction he’d been going in. I admired him for returning to King’s Landing and not abandoning his sister. As strange as their relationship was, it seemed to be a central fact in both of their lives. While he had been moving away from her (and might have continued to do so if he had lived), in the final push, blood was still thicker than water. From what I understand of Ser Jaime’s character, he never would have been able to live with himself afterward if he hadn’t been with his twin in the final crisis. I thought he behaved very honorably.
I also disagree with those who think that Brienne of Tarth acted out of character by crying when she and Jaime parted and then writing down his story in the final episode. What, can’t a girl be a knight and have feelings, too? Don’t you suppose she suspected it might be the last time she’d ever see him? Was there anyone in a better position to fill in his page after his death in the annals of the realm? Brienne had moved into a position of power on the Council by the end of the episode and was obviously going to be a key player in the future of Westeros — is she any less a knight for looking off into the distance occasionally and thinking about someone who isn’t there?
Having said all that, I confess, if I had written the final episode, I would have done it differently. I find the whole Daenerys/Jon Snow finale too thorny a problem and would leave that for someone else to rewrite if they could (to me, Daenerys did seem, if not mad, then increasingly ruthless and unlikely to change direction). I would have had someone come along after Tyrion left the ruins of the keep, find Jaime barely breathing, and then spirit him away to some secret place for healing. Well, what of it—wasn’t Jon Snow brought back from actual death? These things can be managed—it’s show business, after all. I would have had Jaime find his way back to Brienne in time for GOT II, and they would spend the rest of their lives trying to figure out how to be together, which might not be as simple as settling down together in a castle somewhere. Both seemed to me to be very independent, complicated people. There’s enough material there to fill a number of seasons just in that subplot alone.
Well, there you have it, and if anyone calls me, I’ll be glad to undertake that re-write—for a small fee. And by the way, three cheers for the survival of Tyrion, one of my other favorite characters. Watching him moving those chairs around so noisily in the Council Room gave me hope for the future. A little compulsiveness never hurt anybody.
I also disagree with those who think that Brienne of Tarth acted out of character by crying when she and Jaime parted and then writing down his story in the final episode. What, can’t a girl be a knight and have feelings, too? Don’t you suppose she suspected it might be the last time she’d ever see him? Was there anyone in a better position to fill in his page after his death in the annals of the realm? Brienne had moved into a position of power on the Council by the end of the episode and was obviously going to be a key player in the future of Westeros — is she any less a knight for looking off into the distance occasionally and thinking about someone who isn’t there?
Having said all that, I confess, if I had written the final episode, I would have done it differently. I find the whole Daenerys/Jon Snow finale too thorny a problem and would leave that for someone else to rewrite if they could (to me, Daenerys did seem, if not mad, then increasingly ruthless and unlikely to change direction). I would have had someone come along after Tyrion left the ruins of the keep, find Jaime barely breathing, and then spirit him away to some secret place for healing. Well, what of it—wasn’t Jon Snow brought back from actual death? These things can be managed—it’s show business, after all. I would have had Jaime find his way back to Brienne in time for GOT II, and they would spend the rest of their lives trying to figure out how to be together, which might not be as simple as settling down together in a castle somewhere. Both seemed to me to be very independent, complicated people. There’s enough material there to fill a number of seasons just in that subplot alone.
Well, there you have it, and if anyone calls me, I’ll be glad to undertake that re-write—for a small fee. And by the way, three cheers for the survival of Tyrion, one of my other favorite characters. Watching him moving those chairs around so noisily in the Council Room gave me hope for the future. A little compulsiveness never hurt anybody.
Sunday, May 19, 2019
Elegy for Lost Items
The big adventure I had this week was having my cell phone taken from my locker at work. This is a $10 phone, folks, not an expensive iPhone, but it did cause me the aggravation of having to deactivate my service, buy a new phone, set it up, reactivate my service, find out how to get a list of any phone calls that may have been placed to or from my phone while it was out of my hands, and stop by the police station at midnight to report the theft (a police report is required if you want to request your own phone records—not sure if this is a requirement if someone tries to get them through FISA).
It wasn’t the first time I missed something that I thought I’d left in my locker and will hopefully be the last—but you never know. I liked the other phone better, even though all it really did was make and accept phone calls, but they don’t produce it any more, so I had to accept an upgrade, which I did, more or less ungraciously. It does have several pleasant-sounding alarm tones to choose from; lets you turn Wi-Fi definitively off, so you don’t connect to the Internet without meaning to (admittedly a drawback on the other phone); and caused me to stroll through Target, where I fell in love with some decorative pitchers that I don’t need but enjoyed looking at.
I don’t know about you, but it strikes me as odd that someone would take a $10 phone. It reminds me of the time I was staying at Extended Stay in SoCal two years ago and someone stole my cell phone charger (a $7 item) out of a zipped compartment. I remember racing over to the closest Walmart to where I was working and buying one on my lunch hour, the one and only time I’ve seen Knott’s Berry Farm (which was in the vicinity). When I made a police report in that case, the officer seemed not to understand the fact that it wasn’t the value of the item that mattered but the fact that someone at the hotel had gone into my room and stolen it. This time, I did at least get the feeling that the officer frowned on the whole lack of security around the lockers—he asked if the store had security cameras.
Naturally, things like this put you in a bad mood. I don’t ever recall giving anyone permission to disrespect my personal space or the sanctity of my possessions, but people seem to have peculiar ideas about what they can get away with these days. We do still live in a country of laws, but you would never know it by either reading the news or listening to me recount the things that have happened to me in recent years. Prosecution is always an option, of course, but—gosh, what a drag. Still, you can’t let people get away with things because otherwise they have no incentive to stop.
I guess this post is about the unwanted and overweening presence of Hermes, the trickster, who has appeared and reappeared in various forms in my life and is one of the reasons why Hestia has such an appeal for me right now—Hestia being somewhat the opposite of Hermes. That’s probably why the sight of a simple pitcher could stop me in my tracks: an object purporting to be nothing but itself and hearkening to be filled with iced tea or lemonade and placed on a summer table with a vase of flowers. If I were a good Buddhist, I suppose I’d be thinking along the lines of, “The pitcher is already broken/Nothing is permanent,” but heck, I don’t even have the pitcher yet, so let me at least enjoy the idea of it whole and perfect and sitting on my table in my nonexistent house. I guess I’ll go ahead and post the picture, so you can see what I’m going on about (I have no place to put a pitcher right now, even if I bought it).
Enjoy the pitcher/picture, and if you happen to see the person who took either my charger or my cell phone, tell them I haven’t forgotten them. To everything there is a season (to quote both the Bible and the Byrds).
It wasn’t the first time I missed something that I thought I’d left in my locker and will hopefully be the last—but you never know. I liked the other phone better, even though all it really did was make and accept phone calls, but they don’t produce it any more, so I had to accept an upgrade, which I did, more or less ungraciously. It does have several pleasant-sounding alarm tones to choose from; lets you turn Wi-Fi definitively off, so you don’t connect to the Internet without meaning to (admittedly a drawback on the other phone); and caused me to stroll through Target, where I fell in love with some decorative pitchers that I don’t need but enjoyed looking at.
I don’t know about you, but it strikes me as odd that someone would take a $10 phone. It reminds me of the time I was staying at Extended Stay in SoCal two years ago and someone stole my cell phone charger (a $7 item) out of a zipped compartment. I remember racing over to the closest Walmart to where I was working and buying one on my lunch hour, the one and only time I’ve seen Knott’s Berry Farm (which was in the vicinity). When I made a police report in that case, the officer seemed not to understand the fact that it wasn’t the value of the item that mattered but the fact that someone at the hotel had gone into my room and stolen it. This time, I did at least get the feeling that the officer frowned on the whole lack of security around the lockers—he asked if the store had security cameras.
Naturally, things like this put you in a bad mood. I don’t ever recall giving anyone permission to disrespect my personal space or the sanctity of my possessions, but people seem to have peculiar ideas about what they can get away with these days. We do still live in a country of laws, but you would never know it by either reading the news or listening to me recount the things that have happened to me in recent years. Prosecution is always an option, of course, but—gosh, what a drag. Still, you can’t let people get away with things because otherwise they have no incentive to stop.
I guess this post is about the unwanted and overweening presence of Hermes, the trickster, who has appeared and reappeared in various forms in my life and is one of the reasons why Hestia has such an appeal for me right now—Hestia being somewhat the opposite of Hermes. That’s probably why the sight of a simple pitcher could stop me in my tracks: an object purporting to be nothing but itself and hearkening to be filled with iced tea or lemonade and placed on a summer table with a vase of flowers. If I were a good Buddhist, I suppose I’d be thinking along the lines of, “The pitcher is already broken/Nothing is permanent,” but heck, I don’t even have the pitcher yet, so let me at least enjoy the idea of it whole and perfect and sitting on my table in my nonexistent house. I guess I’ll go ahead and post the picture, so you can see what I’m going on about (I have no place to put a pitcher right now, even if I bought it).
Enjoy the pitcher/picture, and if you happen to see the person who took either my charger or my cell phone, tell them I haven’t forgotten them. To everything there is a season (to quote both the Bible and the Byrds).
Sunday, May 12, 2019
Worlds Collide
I know I’ve talked before about my love of HGTV but am not sure I mentioned how much I enjoy looking at not only regular homes but also tiny homes. While I suppose I’d rather live in a regular house in the long term, I can also imagine being happy in a tiny home, at least for a while. I know ya’ll have heard all about this movement, which has been fed by a widespread wish to downsize and simplify, and although some of those tiny homes can be quite pricey, living in one would certainly cut down on cleaning and maintenance. Dusting the furniture is infinitely more manageable in an oversized dollhouse than in a mansion, and washing the dishes is a breeze when you can’t have more than two plates on the table.
I have some experience with living in small spaces—from dorm rooms to a sleeping bag—and while I was horrified a few years ago at the thought of living in less than 200 square feet, I now find that laughable. Living in your car will definitely adjust your ideas of space, but even before that, I was intrigued by the idea of tiny houses purely from a design perspective. It’s the spatial equivalent of haiku: how do you get the most out of a small amount of space? How do you put in everything essential and nothing that isn’t and do it with style? You have to think through every square inch and carefully consider what you need and what you don’t. If you can make items do double duty or fold away when you’re not using them, so much the better. And you will almost certainly have to think creatively about how to accommodate ordinary tasks.
Because I work with appliances, I know that there are tiny washers and dryers that would remind you of the play kitchens you had as a child except that they actually work; you can even get a combo washer/dryer that does the work of both in a single machine. In fact, a lot of the tiny home kitchens, with their miniature sinks, quarter-size fridges, and built-in ovens, remind me of the exact toy kitchen that fascinated me as a child (I had one with a tiny sink that actually worked if you put water in the tray in back). You can also place a fully functioning bathroom in a space the size of a small shower stall, albeit what you have is basically a bathroom inside a shower. There is something about the idea of miniaturizing things that is intriguing in and of itself. (Ever noticed how difficult it is to walk by an elaborately furnished dollhouse without looking inside? It’s ourselves, writ small. Why is that so interesting?)
Beyond all that, I just find the thought of living in a tiny home cozy—I’ve never been one for big, drafty houses. Of course, I’m imagining doing all of this by myself. If you were to try to share a tiny home with a partner or a family, I’m sure the lack of space could become an irritation very, very quickly. I understand that many people who’ve attempted the tiny house experiment have found it didn’t work for them and ended up going back to more conventional housing. I imagine it’s usually the lack of privacy and personal space that does it.
All of this shows what a preoccupation with Hestia concerns I have right now, which is not at all surprising given the circumstances. I fantasize about houses all the time, how I would furnish them, what colors I would use, where I would plant the flowers. With all of the Game of Thrones ruckus going on, I thought it might be a good idea to turn my attention to something else for this week’s post, scaling down, as it were, from the big picture to the small, from the epic to the domestic. Sometimes these things get mixed up with each other: early this morning, I dreamed I had moved into a compact, modern apartment that had lofted sleeping spaces and then realized Jaime Lannister was my roommate. We were looking out the window together when I woke up, still in my car.
Yes, folks, there are times when morning comes a little too soon. The only thing to do then is to head over to the coffeehouse for hot tea, banana bread, and blogging. Which I have done.
I have some experience with living in small spaces—from dorm rooms to a sleeping bag—and while I was horrified a few years ago at the thought of living in less than 200 square feet, I now find that laughable. Living in your car will definitely adjust your ideas of space, but even before that, I was intrigued by the idea of tiny houses purely from a design perspective. It’s the spatial equivalent of haiku: how do you get the most out of a small amount of space? How do you put in everything essential and nothing that isn’t and do it with style? You have to think through every square inch and carefully consider what you need and what you don’t. If you can make items do double duty or fold away when you’re not using them, so much the better. And you will almost certainly have to think creatively about how to accommodate ordinary tasks.
Because I work with appliances, I know that there are tiny washers and dryers that would remind you of the play kitchens you had as a child except that they actually work; you can even get a combo washer/dryer that does the work of both in a single machine. In fact, a lot of the tiny home kitchens, with their miniature sinks, quarter-size fridges, and built-in ovens, remind me of the exact toy kitchen that fascinated me as a child (I had one with a tiny sink that actually worked if you put water in the tray in back). You can also place a fully functioning bathroom in a space the size of a small shower stall, albeit what you have is basically a bathroom inside a shower. There is something about the idea of miniaturizing things that is intriguing in and of itself. (Ever noticed how difficult it is to walk by an elaborately furnished dollhouse without looking inside? It’s ourselves, writ small. Why is that so interesting?)
Beyond all that, I just find the thought of living in a tiny home cozy—I’ve never been one for big, drafty houses. Of course, I’m imagining doing all of this by myself. If you were to try to share a tiny home with a partner or a family, I’m sure the lack of space could become an irritation very, very quickly. I understand that many people who’ve attempted the tiny house experiment have found it didn’t work for them and ended up going back to more conventional housing. I imagine it’s usually the lack of privacy and personal space that does it.
All of this shows what a preoccupation with Hestia concerns I have right now, which is not at all surprising given the circumstances. I fantasize about houses all the time, how I would furnish them, what colors I would use, where I would plant the flowers. With all of the Game of Thrones ruckus going on, I thought it might be a good idea to turn my attention to something else for this week’s post, scaling down, as it were, from the big picture to the small, from the epic to the domestic. Sometimes these things get mixed up with each other: early this morning, I dreamed I had moved into a compact, modern apartment that had lofted sleeping spaces and then realized Jaime Lannister was my roommate. We were looking out the window together when I woke up, still in my car.
Yes, folks, there are times when morning comes a little too soon. The only thing to do then is to head over to the coffeehouse for hot tea, banana bread, and blogging. Which I have done.
Sunday, May 5, 2019
Celebrating the Derby with Wordplay
Q. Wordplay, have you ever been to the Kentucky Derby?
A. Yes, once, a long time ago. It’s something like a right of passage in Kentucky to attend the Derby infield festivities, and I did it back in 1981. I haven’t felt the need to do it again.
Q. Why not?
A. Lots of mud, long lines to the bathrooms, long lines to get in, heavily inebriated people everywhere, not much to do except play cards and sit around. You have to go out of your way to get over to the fence and see the horses go by. That is pretty spectacular, but it doesn’t last long. Don’t get me wrong, everyone should do it once—it’s one of those “once in a lifetime” things. It’s nothing against horses (what beautiful creatures!)—I just didn’t like the infield experience.
Q. How does one act at the Derby?
A. Not sure there are many rules in the infield. However, most people try to be creative in their hat-wearing, whether they’re in the infield or the seats. Millinery creations span the full range from comical to haute couture and can be quite stunning, in several senses of the word. I believe people tend to plan their outfits around their hats, rather than the other way around. At least, that’s my perception. As far as the rules for the gentry (the folks sitting in the boxes and reserved seats), you’ll have to ask someone else.
Q. What does one eat on Derby Day?
A. There are certain Kentucky specialties you can expect to see on most tables—ham and biscuits, May Day pie, grits casseroles. A Kentucky specialty that originated at the Brown Hotel in Louisville is the Hot Brown, an open-faced sandwich with a Mornay sauce. There are many variations on making it, but as far as I know, the original recipe uses turkey and not ham, bacon, and some of the other things that are sometimes added. It’s delicious and has about a million calories.
Q. What’s a May Day pie?
A. There is controversy about the name “Derby Pie,” which is copyrighted by Kern’s Bakery. It’s often used as a generic reference to the pie that has become associated with the Kentucky Derby, so they had to find another name for it, and the one I’ve heard most often is May Day pie.
Q. What’s in it?
A. It’s like a transparent pie (a chess pie) with nuts and chocolate chips.
Q. What does one drink on Derby Day?
A. Mint juleps, no question. These are made with bourbon, ice, sugar, and mint. Ideally, you sip them from a julep cup sporting a sprig of mint; your goal is to sip in a sophisticated enough manner to keep the mint sprig from getting tangled up in your millinery couture.
Q. Do you personally like juleps?
A. No, I confess I don’t. I had one at the Derby that year and thought it tasted like something you’d put on your lawn to kill weeds. I don’t like the combination of mint and bourbon and would propose something that tastes better for an official drink if asked, something like a Kentucky Mule. But that’s never going to happen.
Q. Why not?
A. Tradition.
Q. “F@&#!* tradition.”
A. Have you been watching Game of Thrones?
Q. Yes.
A. Have you noticed how similar the GOT logo looks to this year’s Kentucky Derby logo?
Q. No, I admit that escaped my attention.
A. And (speaking as a mythologist) they both resemble the lyre of Orpheus. I just noticed this myself. See?
Q. Yes, I do see.
Q. How do you pick a horse to bet on?
A. I’m not the best person to ask, but I’ll tell you my system. I pick a name I like and then check the odds. If it looks like a decent payoff if the horse wins, great. If it doesn’t, I might pick another name. This is especially true if no single name jumps out at me. Sometimes, I just fall in love with a name, like Smarty Jones, and go for it despite the odds. Of course, the last time I even went to a race was about 17 years ago, and the most I ever won was about $7. Usually, when I pick a horse, it’s just for the fun of it—I have no money on it.
Q. If I get invited to a Derby Party, what would an appropriate hostess gift be?
A. Well, I’ve been told I give good gifts, so I may be able to help you here. Useful gifts are always welcome, so why not take a hint from an official Kentucky Derby gifts website and consider something like these little hand soaps made with actual frankincense and myrrh? A Biblical theme will get you points with many hostesses here in the Bible Belt, but if your host or hostess doesn’t roll in that direction, you could take them a bottle of their favorite wine or perhaps an inexpensive kitchen gadget, like a cheese knife or a set of kitchen towels. By the way, here’s a picture of the soap.
Q. Oh, wow, you weren’t kidding.
Q. Is there any mythological reference connected to the Derby that I should be able to drop if I get invited to a cocktail party or someplace like that?
A. Well, there is the traditional Pegasus Parade in Louisville as part of the Derby festivities, and as you know, Pegasus was a winged horse in Greek mythology. A very nice image for the power of the horse.
Q. Pegasus, wow, that’s so cool! A horse with wings—like an angel, right?
A. Just remember: horses are real. Winged horses are not. Some people get confused about this.
Q. You mean . . . There aren’t any winged horses?
A. No. Sorry. But that hostess soap is real.
A. Yes, once, a long time ago. It’s something like a right of passage in Kentucky to attend the Derby infield festivities, and I did it back in 1981. I haven’t felt the need to do it again.
Q. Why not?
A. Lots of mud, long lines to the bathrooms, long lines to get in, heavily inebriated people everywhere, not much to do except play cards and sit around. You have to go out of your way to get over to the fence and see the horses go by. That is pretty spectacular, but it doesn’t last long. Don’t get me wrong, everyone should do it once—it’s one of those “once in a lifetime” things. It’s nothing against horses (what beautiful creatures!)—I just didn’t like the infield experience.
Q. How does one act at the Derby?
A. Not sure there are many rules in the infield. However, most people try to be creative in their hat-wearing, whether they’re in the infield or the seats. Millinery creations span the full range from comical to haute couture and can be quite stunning, in several senses of the word. I believe people tend to plan their outfits around their hats, rather than the other way around. At least, that’s my perception. As far as the rules for the gentry (the folks sitting in the boxes and reserved seats), you’ll have to ask someone else.
Q. What does one eat on Derby Day?
A. There are certain Kentucky specialties you can expect to see on most tables—ham and biscuits, May Day pie, grits casseroles. A Kentucky specialty that originated at the Brown Hotel in Louisville is the Hot Brown, an open-faced sandwich with a Mornay sauce. There are many variations on making it, but as far as I know, the original recipe uses turkey and not ham, bacon, and some of the other things that are sometimes added. It’s delicious and has about a million calories.
Q. What’s a May Day pie?
A. There is controversy about the name “Derby Pie,” which is copyrighted by Kern’s Bakery. It’s often used as a generic reference to the pie that has become associated with the Kentucky Derby, so they had to find another name for it, and the one I’ve heard most often is May Day pie.
Q. What’s in it?
A. It’s like a transparent pie (a chess pie) with nuts and chocolate chips.
Q. What does one drink on Derby Day?
A. Mint juleps, no question. These are made with bourbon, ice, sugar, and mint. Ideally, you sip them from a julep cup sporting a sprig of mint; your goal is to sip in a sophisticated enough manner to keep the mint sprig from getting tangled up in your millinery couture.
Q. Do you personally like juleps?
A. No, I confess I don’t. I had one at the Derby that year and thought it tasted like something you’d put on your lawn to kill weeds. I don’t like the combination of mint and bourbon and would propose something that tastes better for an official drink if asked, something like a Kentucky Mule. But that’s never going to happen.
Q. Why not?
A. Tradition.
Q. “F@&#!* tradition.”
A. Have you been watching Game of Thrones?
Q. Yes.
A. Have you noticed how similar the GOT logo looks to this year’s Kentucky Derby logo?
Q. No, I admit that escaped my attention.
A. And (speaking as a mythologist) they both resemble the lyre of Orpheus. I just noticed this myself. See?
Q. Yes, I do see.
Q. How do you pick a horse to bet on?
A. I’m not the best person to ask, but I’ll tell you my system. I pick a name I like and then check the odds. If it looks like a decent payoff if the horse wins, great. If it doesn’t, I might pick another name. This is especially true if no single name jumps out at me. Sometimes, I just fall in love with a name, like Smarty Jones, and go for it despite the odds. Of course, the last time I even went to a race was about 17 years ago, and the most I ever won was about $7. Usually, when I pick a horse, it’s just for the fun of it—I have no money on it.
Q. If I get invited to a Derby Party, what would an appropriate hostess gift be?
A. Well, I’ve been told I give good gifts, so I may be able to help you here. Useful gifts are always welcome, so why not take a hint from an official Kentucky Derby gifts website and consider something like these little hand soaps made with actual frankincense and myrrh? A Biblical theme will get you points with many hostesses here in the Bible Belt, but if your host or hostess doesn’t roll in that direction, you could take them a bottle of their favorite wine or perhaps an inexpensive kitchen gadget, like a cheese knife or a set of kitchen towels. By the way, here’s a picture of the soap.
Q. Oh, wow, you weren’t kidding.
Q. Is there any mythological reference connected to the Derby that I should be able to drop if I get invited to a cocktail party or someplace like that?
A. Well, there is the traditional Pegasus Parade in Louisville as part of the Derby festivities, and as you know, Pegasus was a winged horse in Greek mythology. A very nice image for the power of the horse.
Q. Pegasus, wow, that’s so cool! A horse with wings—like an angel, right?
A. Just remember: horses are real. Winged horses are not. Some people get confused about this.
Q. You mean . . . There aren’t any winged horses?
A. No. Sorry. But that hostess soap is real.
Sunday, April 28, 2019
Dude Looks Like a Lady (Sorry, Aerosmith)
Did I hear somebody out there say, “Come on, Wordplay, show us some cultural mythological relevance by taking on Game of Thrones. No fair just sneaking by with a passing reference like you did last week. What’s your stand on the next ruler of Westeros?” I probably just imagined this, since it’s so rare for me to feel someone really wants to know what I think—but I’ll take you up on it anyway. It might interest you to know that I’ve been caught up in Game of Thrones myself lately, watching old clips and trying to figure out what happened in previous seasons when I wasn’t looking. Let me start out by disappointing you: I have no prediction vis-Ã -vis the Iron Throne. I have a few observations, though.
First, I’ll start with my lack of qualifications for doing this: I had never laid eyes on GOT before 2017, when I watched a few episodes and noticed how well done the show is. I hold to that: they should win awards for the opening credits alone, which are stunning. I missed all of the earlier seasons when precipitating events were happening and characters were maneuvering into place. Gotta say, not sorry I missed Joffrey Baratheon, Ramsay Bolton, and all the gory events of earlier seasons. As far as I know, the only episodes I saw were from Season Seven.
To wit: People were struggling across a frozen wasteland; there were battles with an unprepossessing fellow called the Night King; a queen named Daenerys killed a couple of fellows who refused to bend the knee by means of dragon’s breath; this same Daenerys got it on with a handsome fellow named Jon Snow; a dragon was killed; there was a good bit of screen time given to a family called Lannister, in which one guy was bonking his sister, and another family called Stark, which featured a scary little girl named Arya who assassinates people; and there was a spectacular breaching of a wall by means of what I believe was the dead dragon brought back to life by, I think, the Night King. Is that about right?
I got to see the opening episode of Season Eight but didn’t see last week’s episode. I could tell I’d gotten hooked by the fact that I spent so much time this week reading recaps of what happened on Episode 2 and watching retrospectives of previous seasons. GOT has a sprawling cast of personalities: there are many characters dead and gone from previous seasons who played a vital role in events that followed. I do not know the relationships of all these people to one another; I do not know the geography of Westeros, though I do know that Winterfell doesn’t look like a place where I’d want to hang my hat. Rather chilly, if you ask me, inhabitants and all. Oh, and there’s a good-looking guy named Rhaegar Targaryen who is Jon Snow’s real father (which everybody knows by now). But was he ever on the show or just seen in someone’s vision? Just one of many things I have no idea about.
I was occasionally struck by how much a character reminded me of someone I know, but that’s no big deal. It happens all the time. I’m not sure if the GOT creators are into drawing pointed parallels between events and characters on their show and events and people in real life—I believe that happens sometimes on television and in movies, but I’m not sure they’re doing it on GOT. I do find it amusing to entertain the possibility, though, and, of course, in the spirit of archetypal analysis, there are always parallels to be drawn, regardless of any premeditated intent on anyone’s part whatsoever. I’ve also become aware of the phenomenon of “fan theories,” in which the show’s fans propose explanations and outcomes that they believe fit the story’s arc to date. In that spirit, I am prepared to propose one of my own, which is this: Brienne of Tarth is really Donald Trump [and I have the photographic evidence to prove it].
I don’t really remember Ser Brienne from Season Seven: the Starks, Lannisters, and Targaryens were taking up too much oxygen, I guess, so if she was in there, she slipped past me. Brienne of Tarth was just knighted in the last episode by Jaime Lannister (the guy that bonks his sister), and based on what I’ve seen, I’m surprised no one thought of doing it before (knighting her, that is). This is a woman who is entirely credible as a warrior and is apparently well thought of by most people. She was once in a bathtub with Jaime, and I think the show is trying to imply there might be something between them, though as far as I know, there hasn’t been anything verifiable yet. (It was a big bathtub, so get your mind out the gutter, you weirdos.)
As to the Donald Trump connection, just look at this picture:
I took it from a satirical news piece by CNN’s Jeanne Moos on past presidential visits to Great Britain and was struck by the physical resemblance between President Trump and Ser Brienne. I might not have brought this up, except for the fact that I was reading some of the reactions from British officials about the president’s impending visit to their country and was actually, I must say, offended by the tone of some of their remarks. I told you a long time ago that I hoped President Trump meant to do good by running for office, despite appearances, and I am still hoping that might be true, despite having lost faith several times along the way. I’ve always believed he is smarter than many people think he is, and regardless of whether you like him or not, he is our president—the fact that this privileged son of wealth can talk to unemployed factory workers, good old boys and girls, and others outside the sanctioned arena of political correctness and People Like Us and gain their confidence ought, perhaps, to tell you something. If it doesn’t, it’s not my fault.
Back to those comments, though—I guess it was just the tone of indignant horror, the blaming of the president for all bad things that are happening in our country, that very British attitude of superiority from the Undisputed Arbiters of All Things Proper that got my American back up. How dare you talk about our president that way, you lily-livered pustules on the back of a rotten whoreson bag of wind. (Is that Shakespearean enough, do you think?) I mean, God Bless English Literature, but if that’s all you have to stand on, it has, after all, been a long time since Shakespeare. Hell, it’s even been a long time since Keats. It’s been a long time since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Been a long time since Agatha Christie.
I suspect our president is up to anything the British might want to throw at him, so I’ll be looking forward to his visit with interest. I guess the accompanying question is, what will happen to the noble Ser Brienne of Tarth on GOT? Some of the fan theories have it that she will not survive the impending battle, so I guess the thing to do is to keep your eyes on her. I confess I hope to see her survive and thrive, though not, perhaps, to end up on the throne. That’s not a burden I would wish on anybody.
Now that I’ve totally upset the apple cart, I guess the next thing you’ll want to know is whether I personally identify with any of the characters on GOT. I will say that I’ve seen myself in several different characters and situations (remember, we’re good Hillmanians here, so we strive to be mindful that all of us play a variety of different roles day in and day out). However, there is one character I relate to more than the rest. Don’t worry, adoring public, I can hear you saying, “OK, smarty-pants writer, who is it?” Well, I’d rather not tell you—and I don’t think you’re going to be able to guess. And that’s all for this week.
First, I’ll start with my lack of qualifications for doing this: I had never laid eyes on GOT before 2017, when I watched a few episodes and noticed how well done the show is. I hold to that: they should win awards for the opening credits alone, which are stunning. I missed all of the earlier seasons when precipitating events were happening and characters were maneuvering into place. Gotta say, not sorry I missed Joffrey Baratheon, Ramsay Bolton, and all the gory events of earlier seasons. As far as I know, the only episodes I saw were from Season Seven.
To wit: People were struggling across a frozen wasteland; there were battles with an unprepossessing fellow called the Night King; a queen named Daenerys killed a couple of fellows who refused to bend the knee by means of dragon’s breath; this same Daenerys got it on with a handsome fellow named Jon Snow; a dragon was killed; there was a good bit of screen time given to a family called Lannister, in which one guy was bonking his sister, and another family called Stark, which featured a scary little girl named Arya who assassinates people; and there was a spectacular breaching of a wall by means of what I believe was the dead dragon brought back to life by, I think, the Night King. Is that about right?
I got to see the opening episode of Season Eight but didn’t see last week’s episode. I could tell I’d gotten hooked by the fact that I spent so much time this week reading recaps of what happened on Episode 2 and watching retrospectives of previous seasons. GOT has a sprawling cast of personalities: there are many characters dead and gone from previous seasons who played a vital role in events that followed. I do not know the relationships of all these people to one another; I do not know the geography of Westeros, though I do know that Winterfell doesn’t look like a place where I’d want to hang my hat. Rather chilly, if you ask me, inhabitants and all. Oh, and there’s a good-looking guy named Rhaegar Targaryen who is Jon Snow’s real father (which everybody knows by now). But was he ever on the show or just seen in someone’s vision? Just one of many things I have no idea about.
I was occasionally struck by how much a character reminded me of someone I know, but that’s no big deal. It happens all the time. I’m not sure if the GOT creators are into drawing pointed parallels between events and characters on their show and events and people in real life—I believe that happens sometimes on television and in movies, but I’m not sure they’re doing it on GOT. I do find it amusing to entertain the possibility, though, and, of course, in the spirit of archetypal analysis, there are always parallels to be drawn, regardless of any premeditated intent on anyone’s part whatsoever. I’ve also become aware of the phenomenon of “fan theories,” in which the show’s fans propose explanations and outcomes that they believe fit the story’s arc to date. In that spirit, I am prepared to propose one of my own, which is this: Brienne of Tarth is really Donald Trump [and I have the photographic evidence to prove it].
I don’t really remember Ser Brienne from Season Seven: the Starks, Lannisters, and Targaryens were taking up too much oxygen, I guess, so if she was in there, she slipped past me. Brienne of Tarth was just knighted in the last episode by Jaime Lannister (the guy that bonks his sister), and based on what I’ve seen, I’m surprised no one thought of doing it before (knighting her, that is). This is a woman who is entirely credible as a warrior and is apparently well thought of by most people. She was once in a bathtub with Jaime, and I think the show is trying to imply there might be something between them, though as far as I know, there hasn’t been anything verifiable yet. (It was a big bathtub, so get your mind out the gutter, you weirdos.)
As to the Donald Trump connection, just look at this picture:
I took it from a satirical news piece by CNN’s Jeanne Moos on past presidential visits to Great Britain and was struck by the physical resemblance between President Trump and Ser Brienne. I might not have brought this up, except for the fact that I was reading some of the reactions from British officials about the president’s impending visit to their country and was actually, I must say, offended by the tone of some of their remarks. I told you a long time ago that I hoped President Trump meant to do good by running for office, despite appearances, and I am still hoping that might be true, despite having lost faith several times along the way. I’ve always believed he is smarter than many people think he is, and regardless of whether you like him or not, he is our president—the fact that this privileged son of wealth can talk to unemployed factory workers, good old boys and girls, and others outside the sanctioned arena of political correctness and People Like Us and gain their confidence ought, perhaps, to tell you something. If it doesn’t, it’s not my fault.
Back to those comments, though—I guess it was just the tone of indignant horror, the blaming of the president for all bad things that are happening in our country, that very British attitude of superiority from the Undisputed Arbiters of All Things Proper that got my American back up. How dare you talk about our president that way, you lily-livered pustules on the back of a rotten whoreson bag of wind. (Is that Shakespearean enough, do you think?) I mean, God Bless English Literature, but if that’s all you have to stand on, it has, after all, been a long time since Shakespeare. Hell, it’s even been a long time since Keats. It’s been a long time since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Been a long time since Agatha Christie.
I suspect our president is up to anything the British might want to throw at him, so I’ll be looking forward to his visit with interest. I guess the accompanying question is, what will happen to the noble Ser Brienne of Tarth on GOT? Some of the fan theories have it that she will not survive the impending battle, so I guess the thing to do is to keep your eyes on her. I confess I hope to see her survive and thrive, though not, perhaps, to end up on the throne. That’s not a burden I would wish on anybody.
Now that I’ve totally upset the apple cart, I guess the next thing you’ll want to know is whether I personally identify with any of the characters on GOT. I will say that I’ve seen myself in several different characters and situations (remember, we’re good Hillmanians here, so we strive to be mindful that all of us play a variety of different roles day in and day out). However, there is one character I relate to more than the rest. Don’t worry, adoring public, I can hear you saying, “OK, smarty-pants writer, who is it?” Well, I’d rather not tell you—and I don’t think you’re going to be able to guess. And that’s all for this week.
Sunday, April 21, 2019
Happy Easter
Happy Easter to all. This is an abbreviated post due to the fact that I worked all day and am a bit tired. Also, I don’t really have a topic. Everyone is talking about Game of Thrones, and by a fluke, I caught the Season Eight premiere last Sunday. I previously blogged about my impressions after catching a few episodes of Season Seven, but I didn’t even realize the show was on hiatus last year, so that shows you how much I know about Game of Thrones. I do like the dragons, though.
Sunday, April 14, 2019
Equal Time for Apollo
After I read my post from last week, something occurred to me: I didn’t bring Apollo into my archetypal discussion of Sherlock Holmes. For some people, he might seem like more of a natural match for the archetype of the Great Detective, with his devotion to science, music, and other pursuits. He didn’t even occur to me while I was writing the post, though I admit Mr. Holmes has attributes in common with him. I should at least have brought him up and said why Mr. Holmes seemed to me more like Athena than Apollo, so I’ll do that now. There are really several reasons.
First, I think of Apollo as trailing clouds of glory, making grand entrances, and otherwise creating a grand spectacle. He’s good at a number of different things and rather a proud god, sure of his appeal to nymphs and mortals alike. As the god of light, he’s always shining, and I can’t help but think of him in his most natural guise as possessing enviable golden curls that are constantly glinting and gleaming. In other words, you really can’t miss him—a room is almost too big to contain him. Mr. Holmes, on the other hand, is more of an indoor person, most at home talking things over with Watson in his rooms in Baker Street. Although you could say that he “sheds light” on the facts of his cases, it is more as if he points out to people things that they have seen for themselves but failed to understand. He does have a large store of knowledge about chemistry and other sciences, but aside from that, he’s uncannily observant.
I think of Mr. Holmes as more professor-like than the grandiose Apollo, as someone who uses his brain to the full. For that reason, he seems closer to Athena, who sprang from her father’s head and whose attribute is the owl. (Apollo seems more eagle-like.) Besides that, Mr. Holmes is no skirt-chaser, being very abstemious in that regard—more like Athena, Apollo’s chaste sister. In many ways, he seems not to care that much for his body and physical well-being. There is a darkness that clings to his character, a kind of counterbalance to his logical brilliance and devotion to scientific methods. He has an opium addiction that sometimes sinks him very deep into darkness, giving him more in common with Morpheus, the god of sleep and dreams, than with shining Apollo.
And yes, I know that both Apollo and Sherlock Holmes play stringed instruments, but Orpheus also played the lyre, and his melancholy seems much more in synch with Mr. Holmes than Apollo’s blazing virtuosity (I don’t object to blazing virtuosity; I’m only trying to draw a distinction between styles). I assume Apollo rarely does anything without the accompaniment of crescendos and thundering chords, those Fabio locks all a-tumble, as he overwhelms some poor Greek on the battlefield or chases a fleeing girl who couldn’t care less about his perfect pitch. His is more the grand style of Bach or Handel than the lyricism of Orpheus. I think of Mr. Holmes, generally, as playing for himself rather than with intent to impress.
Lastly, I was thinking about Mr. Holmes’s faculty with disguises, which reveals a tricksterish quality that he occasionally employs to good effect on cases. This sly, shape-shifting ability to change his coloration is at odds with Apollo’s proud, clear lines. In another context, I compared Apollo with an airline pilot, a role in which you expect clear-headedness, precision, and perhaps a certain amount of bravado, but most of all, decisiveness—you don’t want your pilot playing tricks on you or doing something unexpected. Many of the gods (including Apollo) had the ability to disguise themselves and play tricks when they wanted to, but Hermes is known for his quicksilver quality. Mr. Holmes, like Hermes, seems not only to make use of disguises for his own purposes but also to enjoy tricking people.
All of this is really to say that Mr. Holmes, like all of us, is an amalgam of different qualities, with perhaps one or two dominating. He’s not above showing off. And for those of you who think I’m being too hard on Apollo—who does, after all, have gifts of his own and sometimes plays an important, positive role in human affairs—I admit that there is something in what you say. My blog, however, is currently represented by an image of Apollo chasing a distressed nymph, so it’s probably a good idea to point out that all the gods have both light and dark aspects. I do think other qualities predominate in the character of Sherlock Holmes, though he takes much of his scientific brilliance from dazzling Apollo. But not the curly hair.
First, I think of Apollo as trailing clouds of glory, making grand entrances, and otherwise creating a grand spectacle. He’s good at a number of different things and rather a proud god, sure of his appeal to nymphs and mortals alike. As the god of light, he’s always shining, and I can’t help but think of him in his most natural guise as possessing enviable golden curls that are constantly glinting and gleaming. In other words, you really can’t miss him—a room is almost too big to contain him. Mr. Holmes, on the other hand, is more of an indoor person, most at home talking things over with Watson in his rooms in Baker Street. Although you could say that he “sheds light” on the facts of his cases, it is more as if he points out to people things that they have seen for themselves but failed to understand. He does have a large store of knowledge about chemistry and other sciences, but aside from that, he’s uncannily observant.
I think of Mr. Holmes as more professor-like than the grandiose Apollo, as someone who uses his brain to the full. For that reason, he seems closer to Athena, who sprang from her father’s head and whose attribute is the owl. (Apollo seems more eagle-like.) Besides that, Mr. Holmes is no skirt-chaser, being very abstemious in that regard—more like Athena, Apollo’s chaste sister. In many ways, he seems not to care that much for his body and physical well-being. There is a darkness that clings to his character, a kind of counterbalance to his logical brilliance and devotion to scientific methods. He has an opium addiction that sometimes sinks him very deep into darkness, giving him more in common with Morpheus, the god of sleep and dreams, than with shining Apollo.
And yes, I know that both Apollo and Sherlock Holmes play stringed instruments, but Orpheus also played the lyre, and his melancholy seems much more in synch with Mr. Holmes than Apollo’s blazing virtuosity (I don’t object to blazing virtuosity; I’m only trying to draw a distinction between styles). I assume Apollo rarely does anything without the accompaniment of crescendos and thundering chords, those Fabio locks all a-tumble, as he overwhelms some poor Greek on the battlefield or chases a fleeing girl who couldn’t care less about his perfect pitch. His is more the grand style of Bach or Handel than the lyricism of Orpheus. I think of Mr. Holmes, generally, as playing for himself rather than with intent to impress.
Lastly, I was thinking about Mr. Holmes’s faculty with disguises, which reveals a tricksterish quality that he occasionally employs to good effect on cases. This sly, shape-shifting ability to change his coloration is at odds with Apollo’s proud, clear lines. In another context, I compared Apollo with an airline pilot, a role in which you expect clear-headedness, precision, and perhaps a certain amount of bravado, but most of all, decisiveness—you don’t want your pilot playing tricks on you or doing something unexpected. Many of the gods (including Apollo) had the ability to disguise themselves and play tricks when they wanted to, but Hermes is known for his quicksilver quality. Mr. Holmes, like Hermes, seems not only to make use of disguises for his own purposes but also to enjoy tricking people.
All of this is really to say that Mr. Holmes, like all of us, is an amalgam of different qualities, with perhaps one or two dominating. He’s not above showing off. And for those of you who think I’m being too hard on Apollo—who does, after all, have gifts of his own and sometimes plays an important, positive role in human affairs—I admit that there is something in what you say. My blog, however, is currently represented by an image of Apollo chasing a distressed nymph, so it’s probably a good idea to point out that all the gods have both light and dark aspects. I do think other qualities predominate in the character of Sherlock Holmes, though he takes much of his scientific brilliance from dazzling Apollo. But not the curly hair.
Sunday, April 7, 2019
Essay on Panache
Last week, I wrote about the plethora of Sherlock Holmes stories currently flooding the bookshelves (and there are many others besides the ones I wrote about). I didn’t get to say everything I wanted to, though, about the appeal of the detective’s character. Although Mr. Holmes does represent an archetype, it’s not enough just to say that. I wonder, in fact, if he doesn’t represent the appearance of a new archetype that arose with the development of science, technology, and other aspects of modernity. I remember having a conversation with someone about whether new archetypes ever appear. I believe they do, in response to changing conditions. Maybe Sherlock Holmes is an instance of an archetypal character that appeared in response to the times and couldn’t have appeared sooner.
I was taught that the multiplicity of gods in the Greek and Roman pantheons represents various conditions and forces that affect all aspects of human life. In other words, there should be a god for every occasion. Sherlock Holmes probably has the most in common with Athena (or Minerva), but it’s not an exact match. Athena, who sprang from the head of her father, is the goddess of wisdom, but she is also a warrior goddess and often appears in the capacity of aiding or advising her favorites in matters of war and strategy. Holmes is a logician who combines finely honed powers of observation with an ability to draw conclusions from the evidence, which is perhaps not quite the same thing as wisdom, Athena-style. He solves puzzles and unravels mysteries, something the Greek gods were not necessarily wont to do, being more expert at creating mysteries and expecting mortals to accept things as they were.
There’s a chapter in my book on the nature of the labyrinth in the literature of the 19th century, and I discuss the detective novels that appeared at that period. I wrote at length about Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White and about the way the plot of that novel resembles a labyrinth in which the characters are caught and out of which they escape only by following the threads that have ensnared them. They get very little assistance from anyone else and have to be their own detectives. The mood of the novel is somber, and although they succeed in rescuing a loved one, they prevail in spite of a largely uncaring world. Their triumph, however, is very real. Unlike the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice, The Woman in White features a return from the underworld. The protagonists barely escape the labyrinth, but escape they do—their determination and detective work carry the day.
Sherlock Holmes is the professional embodiment of these characteristics. Doing what comes naturally to him, he makes a science of solving mysteries for other people. In his time, scientific inventiveness and technological advances were rapidly changing ways of life that had been settled, in some cases, for centuries. Much was gained, but much that had seemed certain, like Christianity and man’s place in the universe, didn’t seem as rock solid as it had been. I always think of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” as the expression of this sense of the loss of certitude: one lover exhorts the other to remain true in the face of a growing feeling that nothing—not the institutions of society nor the universe itself—offers security in an atmosphere of gathering darkness.
Behold, then, the entrance of Sherlock Holmes upon this somewhat chilling scene. While it may be true that the modern world really has “neither joy, nor love, nor light/nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain,” damn it, Sherlock Holmes is on the case, and you can bet he’ll give satisfaction, let the forces of darkness do what they will. He represents the triumph of mind over matter, and while I would agree that it’s quite possible to take the ascent of thought too far (in separating ourselves from nature, for instance, when we are always and ever a part of it, merely), Mr. Holmes does something the Greek heroes were rarely able to do, and that is to snatch people back from the edge of a precipice the Fates have prepared for them, and to do it without turning a whisker. Not only is he preternaturally effective, he also has style. I think style is vastly underrated.
By the way, I am not arguing that God is dead, or never lived, or that life has no meaning. I never said that. (Personally, I believe in God, by whatever name you call him/her.) I’m only describing the conditions in the 19th century in which people had reason to question a lot of what had been accepted as gospel for a long time. It’s necessary, in my opinion, to do this, to question things you’ve been told, but it can be quite uncomfortable. I don’t think the appearance of the archetype of the Great Detective means that man is in charge of all he surveys; it is more, perhaps, that he is taking his destiny into his own hands and fighting back against the joylessness, darkness, and pain that have, after all, been with humankind from the beginning and that religions were designed, in some measure, to deal with. Rather than opposing or replacing God, Sherlock Holmes rises to meet him, you might say, which is perhaps what God intended all along.
I was taught that the multiplicity of gods in the Greek and Roman pantheons represents various conditions and forces that affect all aspects of human life. In other words, there should be a god for every occasion. Sherlock Holmes probably has the most in common with Athena (or Minerva), but it’s not an exact match. Athena, who sprang from the head of her father, is the goddess of wisdom, but she is also a warrior goddess and often appears in the capacity of aiding or advising her favorites in matters of war and strategy. Holmes is a logician who combines finely honed powers of observation with an ability to draw conclusions from the evidence, which is perhaps not quite the same thing as wisdom, Athena-style. He solves puzzles and unravels mysteries, something the Greek gods were not necessarily wont to do, being more expert at creating mysteries and expecting mortals to accept things as they were.
There’s a chapter in my book on the nature of the labyrinth in the literature of the 19th century, and I discuss the detective novels that appeared at that period. I wrote at length about Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White and about the way the plot of that novel resembles a labyrinth in which the characters are caught and out of which they escape only by following the threads that have ensnared them. They get very little assistance from anyone else and have to be their own detectives. The mood of the novel is somber, and although they succeed in rescuing a loved one, they prevail in spite of a largely uncaring world. Their triumph, however, is very real. Unlike the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice, The Woman in White features a return from the underworld. The protagonists barely escape the labyrinth, but escape they do—their determination and detective work carry the day.
Sherlock Holmes is the professional embodiment of these characteristics. Doing what comes naturally to him, he makes a science of solving mysteries for other people. In his time, scientific inventiveness and technological advances were rapidly changing ways of life that had been settled, in some cases, for centuries. Much was gained, but much that had seemed certain, like Christianity and man’s place in the universe, didn’t seem as rock solid as it had been. I always think of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” as the expression of this sense of the loss of certitude: one lover exhorts the other to remain true in the face of a growing feeling that nothing—not the institutions of society nor the universe itself—offers security in an atmosphere of gathering darkness.
Behold, then, the entrance of Sherlock Holmes upon this somewhat chilling scene. While it may be true that the modern world really has “neither joy, nor love, nor light/nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain,” damn it, Sherlock Holmes is on the case, and you can bet he’ll give satisfaction, let the forces of darkness do what they will. He represents the triumph of mind over matter, and while I would agree that it’s quite possible to take the ascent of thought too far (in separating ourselves from nature, for instance, when we are always and ever a part of it, merely), Mr. Holmes does something the Greek heroes were rarely able to do, and that is to snatch people back from the edge of a precipice the Fates have prepared for them, and to do it without turning a whisker. Not only is he preternaturally effective, he also has style. I think style is vastly underrated.
By the way, I am not arguing that God is dead, or never lived, or that life has no meaning. I never said that. (Personally, I believe in God, by whatever name you call him/her.) I’m only describing the conditions in the 19th century in which people had reason to question a lot of what had been accepted as gospel for a long time. It’s necessary, in my opinion, to do this, to question things you’ve been told, but it can be quite uncomfortable. I don’t think the appearance of the archetype of the Great Detective means that man is in charge of all he surveys; it is more, perhaps, that he is taking his destiny into his own hands and fighting back against the joylessness, darkness, and pain that have, after all, been with humankind from the beginning and that religions were designed, in some measure, to deal with. Rather than opposing or replacing God, Sherlock Holmes rises to meet him, you might say, which is perhaps what God intended all along.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
