More things are myth than you think!
I've been meaning to type this for a year.
No, seriously! Exactly one year! Weird! It's been in the diary since December 1st 2009
On my way home from the shop, walking down the railroad tracks in late autumn's semi-lightness, I found myself clarifying a thought--an idea--I've been working on for a while.
Around the time that I started watching The Phantom Reviewer on YouTube (and toying with a silly idea for a farce-parody Phantom comic of my own...) I peered briefly into the depths of Phan Fiction to be had.
I was astounded. Not only at how much there is but also at how varied AND--most importantly--how well-received.
I mean, the people who are into this stuff are into it!
And I feel like I stumbled on a reason why...
ALL of these artists/storytellers and readers know the same information about these characters! They all KNOW the same people! A storyteller spins a tale about Edward Cullen or Long John Silver (or better yet: a crossoer where they run into Mr. Sulu from Star Trek) and the readers GET IT.
The same as how a tribal storyteller or Shaman might tell a new story (or alter the old) about characters he and his audience knows. This is to keep them amused, and to keep them LISTENING. He might tell a story... instead of how Raven Stole The Sun--somehting everyone would have known already-- he might get everyone excited about a brand ew story about how Raven Got in Big TimeTrouble When He Slept With the Wife of.....well, whoever.
Fan Fiction.
Same. Fucking. THING.
I had this idea (which lasted about 2 and 1/2 days) that I might return to school as a Sociology Major and my thesis would be about Fanfiction filling the role that was once filled by storytelling myth is society!
(Mary Sues are Shamans! ZOMG!)
(Something like that)
Likewise, people in history, and even living celebrities have been drawn into this pantheon. That's nothing new: the Romans and Egyptians made their own, living leaders deities all the time. Nowadays, there's fanfiction--both realistic and silly-- about the likes of Benjamin Franklin, Queen Victoria, Mozart and Leonardo DaVinci. There are fanfictions about people who are *alive*... Elijah Wood or President Obama!
And--in truth-- whenever you imagine (or, for that matter, dream) about a famous person that you know something of but you are not personal with... you are creating a little myth about them. Your imagination fills in all the details that that you cannot possibly know.
Now! Suppose you were to actually *meet* Johnny Depp on a regular basis and get to know him as a regular guy: talk about your kids or the fellow at work that annoys you or whatever. He would cease to be a myth. This I hypothesize: As the pockets and blank spaces that your imagination had to fill become filled with facts, memories or realities about that other person, that person changes status from being a myth.
In Julie and Julia, the author talks a length about the Julia Childs that lives in her head--whom she met through the cookbooks-- AND how she's (specifically!) different from the Real Julia Childs that was barely alive by the time Julie wrote her blog.
The Mythic Julia--the combined effort of Julia herself and the imaginations of the pubic that loved or hated her--was the one Julie had connected with. The mythic Julia was much more useful to her, AND --I would argue-- every bit as real.
So!
I got this idea that its pretty much impossible to ever know history as a reality and its always a myth because (!) youre always getting someone's re-telling of events that (for the most part) they weren't around for.
If there's one thing I take from my Myth Class at PCC, it will be the that in the section on Creation Myths, my instructor--in her wisdom!-- included the Big Bang Theory.
When questioned, she explained that the definition about an origins myth is, A Story that a people tells to itself about where it came from based on the best evidence that it has on hand... even though no one from that society was there!
which includes the Big Bang Theory.
Which. Is. AWESOME.
But after thinking about it, all history is like this. Ancient history is written based on scavenged paragraphs from one or two individuals. One or two perspectives on an ENTIRE civilization can't possibly approach the truth.
But then one gets to thinking about the later histories..... the settlers and the natives or the Catholic Church and the villagers in the hillsides (Your Pagan Ancestors!!) or anytime there is one force that comes in to prey on another... They're all incomplete! As many historians have bewailed in the past, It's only the winners of the battle who write the books!
History is MYTH!
Relative myth, I would assume for the conveniences of living on Planet Earth... but a myth none-the-less!
So. I'm walking and thinking on the train tracks by the crossroads and am thinking of this when I briefly remember one of the vignettes from Waking Life. One that always bothered me because I felt like they never got a chance to explain the whole thing and it was poorly edited. anyway. the scene.
(Which... I can't find on YouTube..... Lame)
Um, its these two women having coffee and one of them says:
"You know that thing Benedict Anderson says about identity? Well, he's talking about like, say, a baby picture.
So you pick up this picture, this two-dimensional image, and you say, 'That's me'. Well, to connect this baby in this weird little image... with yourself living and breathing in the present, you have to make up a story like, 'This was me when I was a year old, "and later I had long hair, and then we moved to Riverdale, and now here I am.'"
"So it takes a story that's actually a fiction... to make you and the baby in the picture identical to create your identity."
I always thought they rushed through that part, but I kinda feel like i got it now.
Fist off, I *realize* that I'm speaking as someone who has a (ahem!) "special" memory... But. Even for people who remember normally, memory cannot be as true as what we LIVE and EXPERIENCE in the present! If this is not so, then how about when memories fail us? How does pain fade over time? How do we forget?
Our imaginations fill in the details (for some of us more than others, I will admit) and --in effect!-- our memories fill a mythic role!
Because OUR memories cannot be right
NOW
NOW
*NOW!*
And *Now*--within yourself-- is the only certain truth.
No, seriously! Exactly one year! Weird! It's been in the diary since December 1st 2009
On my way home from the shop, walking down the railroad tracks in late autumn's semi-lightness, I found myself clarifying a thought--an idea--I've been working on for a while.
Around the time that I started watching The Phantom Reviewer on YouTube (and toying with a silly idea for a farce-parody Phantom comic of my own...) I peered briefly into the depths of Phan Fiction to be had.
I was astounded. Not only at how much there is but also at how varied AND--most importantly--how well-received.
I mean, the people who are into this stuff are into it!
And I feel like I stumbled on a reason why...
ALL of these artists/storytellers and readers know the same information about these characters! They all KNOW the same people! A storyteller spins a tale about Edward Cullen or Long John Silver (or better yet: a crossoer where they run into Mr. Sulu from Star Trek) and the readers GET IT.
The same as how a tribal storyteller or Shaman might tell a new story (or alter the old) about characters he and his audience knows. This is to keep them amused, and to keep them LISTENING. He might tell a story... instead of how Raven Stole The Sun--somehting everyone would have known already-- he might get everyone excited about a brand ew story about how Raven Got in Big TimeTrouble When He Slept With the Wife of.....well, whoever.
Fan Fiction.
Same. Fucking. THING.
I had this idea (which lasted about 2 and 1/2 days) that I might return to school as a Sociology Major and my thesis would be about Fanfiction filling the role that was once filled by storytelling myth is society!
(Mary Sues are Shamans! ZOMG!)
(Something like that)
Likewise, people in history, and even living celebrities have been drawn into this pantheon. That's nothing new: the Romans and Egyptians made their own, living leaders deities all the time. Nowadays, there's fanfiction--both realistic and silly-- about the likes of Benjamin Franklin, Queen Victoria, Mozart and Leonardo DaVinci. There are fanfictions about people who are *alive*... Elijah Wood or President Obama!
And--in truth-- whenever you imagine (or, for that matter, dream) about a famous person that you know something of but you are not personal with... you are creating a little myth about them. Your imagination fills in all the details that that you cannot possibly know.
Now! Suppose you were to actually *meet* Johnny Depp on a regular basis and get to know him as a regular guy: talk about your kids or the fellow at work that annoys you or whatever. He would cease to be a myth. This I hypothesize: As the pockets and blank spaces that your imagination had to fill become filled with facts, memories or realities about that other person, that person changes status from being a myth.
In Julie and Julia, the author talks a length about the Julia Childs that lives in her head--whom she met through the cookbooks-- AND how she's (specifically!) different from the Real Julia Childs that was barely alive by the time Julie wrote her blog.
The Mythic Julia--the combined effort of Julia herself and the imaginations of the pubic that loved or hated her--was the one Julie had connected with. The mythic Julia was much more useful to her, AND --I would argue-- every bit as real.
So!
I got this idea that its pretty much impossible to ever know history as a reality and its always a myth because (!) youre always getting someone's re-telling of events that (for the most part) they weren't around for.
If there's one thing I take from my Myth Class at PCC, it will be the that in the section on Creation Myths, my instructor--in her wisdom!-- included the Big Bang Theory.
When questioned, she explained that the definition about an origins myth is, A Story that a people tells to itself about where it came from based on the best evidence that it has on hand... even though no one from that society was there!
which includes the Big Bang Theory.
Which. Is. AWESOME.
But after thinking about it, all history is like this. Ancient history is written based on scavenged paragraphs from one or two individuals. One or two perspectives on an ENTIRE civilization can't possibly approach the truth.
But then one gets to thinking about the later histories..... the settlers and the natives or the Catholic Church and the villagers in the hillsides (Your Pagan Ancestors!!) or anytime there is one force that comes in to prey on another... They're all incomplete! As many historians have bewailed in the past, It's only the winners of the battle who write the books!
History is MYTH!
Relative myth, I would assume for the conveniences of living on Planet Earth... but a myth none-the-less!
So. I'm walking and thinking on the train tracks by the crossroads and am thinking of this when I briefly remember one of the vignettes from Waking Life. One that always bothered me because I felt like they never got a chance to explain the whole thing and it was poorly edited. anyway. the scene.
(Which... I can't find on YouTube..... Lame)
Um, its these two women having coffee and one of them says:
"You know that thing Benedict Anderson says about identity? Well, he's talking about like, say, a baby picture.
So you pick up this picture, this two-dimensional image, and you say, 'That's me'. Well, to connect this baby in this weird little image... with yourself living and breathing in the present, you have to make up a story like, 'This was me when I was a year old, "and later I had long hair, and then we moved to Riverdale, and now here I am.'"
"So it takes a story that's actually a fiction... to make you and the baby in the picture identical to create your identity."
I always thought they rushed through that part, but I kinda feel like i got it now.
Fist off, I *realize* that I'm speaking as someone who has a (ahem!) "special" memory... But. Even for people who remember normally, memory cannot be as true as what we LIVE and EXPERIENCE in the present! If this is not so, then how about when memories fail us? How does pain fade over time? How do we forget?
Our imaginations fill in the details (for some of us more than others, I will admit) and --in effect!-- our memories fill a mythic role!
Because OUR memories cannot be right
NOW
NOW
*NOW!*
And *Now*--within yourself-- is the only certain truth.