In-Class Writing Exercise, 9/25

Favorite myths or fairy tales at the moment:

I don't know why, but I'm finding that the two stories which resonate so closely with me are Icarus and Daedalus and Faust.  Don't know what that says about me, other than I'm obviously in a cheery place.

The notion of knowledge with a price, or knowledge gained too easy, without also acquiring the wisdom to use it.

Then there's this interpretation, which seems to let ol' Icarus off the hook:

He didn't fly too close to the sun out of youthful arrogance - he was pushed!

Faust is also a story which intrigues me.

The Deal with the Devil.  The triumph of short-term thinking.

In-Class Writing Exercise, 9/18

"Myths provide seeds of recognition to our collective DNA"

Myth as touchstone, cultural benchmark, shared joke.  A heterogeneous culture finds its common elements in the stories it tells about the universe.

In the United States, the Myth of the Individual touches each of us in our own way.  Rugged individualism, self-sufficiency, go-it-aloneness, I-Am-A-Rockness appeals to us, although it is quite patently as much myth as it is Myth.  It informs our sense of self while reinforcing our cultural stereotypes (of those who, you know, actually need other people).

Human experience is by its nature universal.  Myth is how we find our place in that story, the common elements that are the foundations of our different experiences. 

I was here.  And so were you.

Wisdom and Knowledge Shall be the Stability of Thy Times

Joseph Campbell, George Lucas, and the fine line between inspiration and ripoff.

Having watched the opening of STAR WARS in class this week (the perfect opportunity to drag out my DVD when I got home), and reading the Campbell, I'm reminded of my own personal history with the two.

This isn't the first time I've read Campbell - when I was a kid I had a battered paperback copy with a STAR WARS cover, and at the time I was one of those who would have read the phone book had Ma Bell put a stormtrooper on the front.

When I first saw STAR WARS, I was amazed at how complete the film seemed.  The entire universe just seems to work, not the internal physics of spaceships and lightsabers, but on a thematic and structural level.  It touches us in a primal way, in no small part because it is so strongly rooted in the monomyth. Beyond that, STAR WARS is in many ways a wholesale copy-and-paste of Campbell's formula. A reading of the section titles - The Call to Adventure, Refusal of the Call, Supernatural Aid, The Belly of the Whale, Atonement with the Father, The Master of Two Worlds, et al. - could double as a plot synopsis.

As kids, we immediately appropriated this myth, shaping our neighborhood play around it. Before STAR WARS hit screens, the kids on my block played - gods help us - LOGAN'S RUN. Some would be Sandmen, some would be Runners, and we would chase each other around the various houses looking for 29-year-olds. STAR WARS changed all that, and all of a sudden the playground clubhouse became the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon and every swing an X-Wing fighter.

STAR WARS even had its own apocrypha. Those who had read the Marvel Comics tie-in (with its deleted scenes) brought the image of Jabba the Hutt as a skinny green alien with whiskers into our game.



In those days before instantly-accessible films, our memories blended and played tricks on us. Most of the scenes with Luke's old friend Biggs Darklighter ended up on the cutting room floor, but thanks to production photos in the tie-in book our memories were altered to include him:



I remembered that scene clearly, though I never saw it. And man, I always wanted a spiffy cape like that.

Start of Class

This blog is being kept as part of my Hero(ine)s class with Kathleen Sweeney at the New School.

As part of the assignment, and in keeping with today's date, we discussed images of 9/11 in class and were instructed by Kathleen to take photos of the 9/11 "Tribute in Light" memorial. I walked along the Hudson River Park, trying to get a good shot. From my perspective looking southeast at Ground Zero, the two lights were fused into one lance of light (the second light in the sky is the moon, which aligned almost perfectly).









Really amazing stuff. The memorial, not my photography.