Some Micro Ideas

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 31 July 2014.

Here are some micro ideas.

T.S. Eliot

Remember that our original scheme was push marketing: the story was a way to create self-perpetuating marketing. Then we added a Catholic message. Then the thing became a gigantic epic devouring everything in its path!  It has become like a T.S. Eliot piece in that it absorbs everything that came before it, but it is postmodern in the sense of the instability of the narrative. Mimesis and diegesis both make sense.

Really, the story has absorbed us as well.

I initially didn't dream very far beyond a simple morality play told through 5-10 performances, some records, and a comeback documentary originally. Really, when you came to my house to jam for the first time, I thought we were going to do some rap!

Regarding "An Evening with Arthur White," it wasn't intended to be a closed piece. The idea was that the whole would lead to moral education and spiritual catharsis--not that one night.

Fr. Walter Ong

I do feel, however, like we've lost a grip, though not completely or irrevocably, on the moral and spiritual thrust of the story.

I don't think that a such a thrust is anathema to postmodern story telling, though. I'd hold up several of Don DeLillo's books or the philosophy of McLuhan or Ong as road maps. It will be a challenge to lead people to a moving resolution that educates without being cliché.  Postmodernism tends to be better at pointing snarky fingers at endings. The Power and the Glory has a satisfying ending that verges on the postmodern.