On Wednesday, Prof. Sexson asked us to think about the greatest musical moment in "history". Well I thought about it. A lot. And there are simply too many to say for certain one moment outshines them all. Perhaps the first moment the first instrument was played for the first time is the greatest....for in that moment, all those to come is contained. What of Mozart? And Beethoven? Playing for their first concertos at six or seven. This is the stuff of myth! How about the jazz musicians in Harlem playing their smooth rhythmns before an ever increasing, astounded audience? And of course, we cannot forget the ever immortal Elvis Presley. But before Presley, there were others, like him, bravely setting out and making their music despite all the naysayers, against all the criticism. How about when Johnny Cash, musical superstar, finally married the love of his life, the also musical June Carter? So much myth is contained in their story to be sure. There are the Beatles who took the world by storm; they must be mentioned too. How can we choose a single moment to sum up the entire course of musical "history"?
And what of all the anonymous music makers around the world? Those sweaty jungle beats of the Serengeti, the hypnotic strum of an Indian sitar, the sweet, piercing melancholy of a Japanese trill... What of the lives behind the music we never hear? The young thug who finds music remakes him. The mother softly humming to her child. A new band's very first gig. How can we measure and equate all such mysteries in a single span of time?
We cannot. Or at least we shouldn't. For each experience, each singular moment in time, is part of a great and incomprehensible legend...or myth.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Death in Love.
"Love is what drives and sustains us!' I translate: we don't know what drives and sustains us, only that we are most miserably driven and, imperfectly, sustained. Love is how we call our ignorance of what whips us."
[. . .]
"I am not deceived. This new emotion is Her doing; the desire that possesses me is Her bewitchment. Lucidity passes from me; in a moment I'll cry 'Love!' bury myself in Her side, and be 'transfigured.' Which is to say, I die already; this fellow transported by passion is not I; I am he who abjures and rejects the night-sea journey! I....
"I am all love. 'Come!' She whispers, and I have no will."
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After class today, I thought I'd do a little more research on Sexson's reference to "Night Sea Journey" by John Barth which I found in its entirety in what I think is a Japanese blog of some sort. Still, the story is in English. At first, I was a little skeptical as to the literary genius behind a story told from the perspective of a sperm, but I was proven wrong within the first few paragraphs. What an odd perspective to find myself listening to! I thought it an absurdity at the very least, yet...this is a very literate sperm who uses words like "beset", "abhorrent", and "tautological" and who theorizes over the goal and nature of his very existence. His nameless character becomes a synecdoche for mankind as a whole. He struggles "Onward, Upward", as he says, with only the vaguest notion as to his ultimat epurpose in the tormenting darkness which he finds himself. At the end of his tortured journey, he can only hope that he leaves a legacy, something we, ourselves, strive to achieve every day of our lives. The difference between his story and our own is that we supposedly end in death, the sperm ends in love. The very last line of the story itself is an esctatic, horrified, "Love! Love! Love!" which can only echo Kurtz's last words in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness: "The horror, the horror."
This character fears love because it represents the ending of self. He knows not what he will be, if anything, after he becomes a part of something, someone, else....after he loses any concrete definition as he plunges into the unknown. He fears the death of himself as as separate entity. Could that be what is proposed in one aspect by the Homeric Hymn of Demeter? Persephone plunges into the Underworld, into death itself by her marriage to Aidoneus. Perhaps the fear we often associate with marriage is but the deathly fear of the extermination of our preconditioned, circumstantially bound definitions of who we are. After all, what are we...really...when we cease to be completely disconnected from another...when we become something more than our individual selves? Do we still exist? Or are we lost within that single living organism existing in two seperate entities?
Though the entire short story presents some interesting concepts, the lines quoted above struck me most of all. Ignoring for a moment the fact that they are written almost as poetry itself, the word choice compells further analysis. The sperm uses the word "bewitchment" to describe his driving need to be "in" love. He says he has already died, for he has lost all reason. "I am all love" he says. A simple whisper converts his most ardent analysis, his antagonistic convictions; all of it is lost, destroyed, in a single word. this power of the female race to compel and liquefy defies definition just as the mother-daughter connection remains a mystery or "mustes" to the entire male race. There is a power in that silent communication, in love as well, something that cannot be combated through physical or mental force, that is terrifying. Our greatest fears stem from a fear of the unknown, for we know not how to face something we cannot begin to comprehend rationally. How then do we arm ourselves for the battlefield? What defences are left to us when we know not what we face or when we'll face it? Without question, death is one inarguable truth of life... inescapable. Love is another. And we have no will to fight it.
[. . .]
"I am not deceived. This new emotion is Her doing; the desire that possesses me is Her bewitchment. Lucidity passes from me; in a moment I'll cry 'Love!' bury myself in Her side, and be 'transfigured.' Which is to say, I die already; this fellow transported by passion is not I; I am he who abjures and rejects the night-sea journey! I....
"I am all love. 'Come!' She whispers, and I have no will."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After class today, I thought I'd do a little more research on Sexson's reference to "Night Sea Journey" by John Barth which I found in its entirety in what I think is a Japanese blog of some sort. Still, the story is in English. At first, I was a little skeptical as to the literary genius behind a story told from the perspective of a sperm, but I was proven wrong within the first few paragraphs. What an odd perspective to find myself listening to! I thought it an absurdity at the very least, yet...this is a very literate sperm who uses words like "beset", "abhorrent", and "tautological" and who theorizes over the goal and nature of his very existence. His nameless character becomes a synecdoche for mankind as a whole. He struggles "Onward, Upward", as he says, with only the vaguest notion as to his ultimat epurpose in the tormenting darkness which he finds himself. At the end of his tortured journey, he can only hope that he leaves a legacy, something we, ourselves, strive to achieve every day of our lives. The difference between his story and our own is that we supposedly end in death, the sperm ends in love. The very last line of the story itself is an esctatic, horrified, "Love! Love! Love!" which can only echo Kurtz's last words in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness: "The horror, the horror."
This character fears love because it represents the ending of self. He knows not what he will be, if anything, after he becomes a part of something, someone, else....after he loses any concrete definition as he plunges into the unknown. He fears the death of himself as as separate entity. Could that be what is proposed in one aspect by the Homeric Hymn of Demeter? Persephone plunges into the Underworld, into death itself by her marriage to Aidoneus. Perhaps the fear we often associate with marriage is but the deathly fear of the extermination of our preconditioned, circumstantially bound definitions of who we are. After all, what are we...really...when we cease to be completely disconnected from another...when we become something more than our individual selves? Do we still exist? Or are we lost within that single living organism existing in two seperate entities?
Though the entire short story presents some interesting concepts, the lines quoted above struck me most of all. Ignoring for a moment the fact that they are written almost as poetry itself, the word choice compells further analysis. The sperm uses the word "bewitchment" to describe his driving need to be "in" love. He says he has already died, for he has lost all reason. "I am all love" he says. A simple whisper converts his most ardent analysis, his antagonistic convictions; all of it is lost, destroyed, in a single word. this power of the female race to compel and liquefy defies definition just as the mother-daughter connection remains a mystery or "mustes" to the entire male race. There is a power in that silent communication, in love as well, something that cannot be combated through physical or mental force, that is terrifying. Our greatest fears stem from a fear of the unknown, for we know not how to face something we cannot begin to comprehend rationally. How then do we arm ourselves for the battlefield? What defences are left to us when we know not what we face or when we'll face it? Without question, death is one inarguable truth of life... inescapable. Love is another. And we have no will to fight it.
"We like to wait until kids are a little older to talk to them about things like...condoms and ritualistic human sacrifice for harvest"
When Prof. Sexson mentioned "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson in class today, a lightbulb went off right above my head......figuratively. =D I don't really watch South Park, but in one of the episodes I have seen, they parody this very short story! In the South Park episode, the entire world is making Britney Spears' life a living hell so that she'll kill herself and the farmers will have a good corn harvest. In the end, they have to kill her with their cameras. If you watch the full episode, the last scene is the most eerie...the townspeople turn to a running newscast of Miley Cyrus...their next victim. I couldn't believe how accurate their storyline was in relation to the original text! They even threw in a line about "little Davy", a character from the short story. Anyway, check out the story if you're interested and then watch this clip I found.
Monday, January 26, 2009
I thought I'd set up a few links to the myth Prof. Sexson related in class about the abduction of Helen of Troy by Theseus years before. When he mentioned Castor and Pollux, her brothers who come to her rescue, I couldn't help being overwhelmed by the sheer irony, the "an eye for an eye and the world goes blind" of it all. Theseus kidnaps Helen, Pirithous tries to kidnap Persephone, Heracles kidnaps Theseus from the underworld, Castor and Pollux kidnap their sister (from her abductor), and eventually Castor and Pollux kidnap the daughters of Leucippus for their own. The sheer irony of it all is just downright ridiculous. (The above painting is The Rape of the Daughters Leucippus by Rubens).
All that is past...(you know the rest)
Today in class, Prof. Sexson related the story of Zeus and Semele to the class. After reading Shoni's blog on the topic, I remembered this song by Russell Crowe that follows the same major themes. The most recurrent line is quite fitting to the story of Zeus and Semele: "Are you ready to take the weight of a man?" Semele was not, and it begs the question "why?" Why do we only want to deal with a diminished, restricted version of who a person is rather than the fullness of passion and fear, virtue and vice that make us human? Why can we not "handle the truth"?
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