I read this article, which makes me wonder if our method of "caressing" the content of this project could be Snapchat.
If you have a chance to read this, it kind of clarifies why Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even the blog are not appropriate. Implicit in "Return" is "Disappearance." In other words, whenever Arthur's world returns, it means that it has previously disappeared. If we believe Hegel that "no man can surpass his own time, for the spirit of his time is also his own spirit," then we need to understand why youngsters seem to prefer things that disappear like they do on Snapchat.
Why do youngsters increasingly NOT care to make themselves look good and eternal when they arguably have all the necessary tools to do so? Instead, they are increasingly okay with being authentic and transient (and authentically transient?). Liza's recent set of "unfinished" illuminated texts partake of a similar impulse.
Why is summer the only time that I can muster the time and effort necessary to caress, shape, and pattern my existence sufficiently for Instagram and Facebook? Why should it take time to share reality with one another?
With Snapchat, we are more in touch with the "do it for the Fat Lady" ethos. But at that point, are we even "a thing"?
Perhaps this discussion is too abstract, too remote from the reality of being a band. Everyone needs to compete, to assert themselves in that arena, right? But the effort required strikes me as very linear, rationalizing, Gutenbergian, insincere. It's so wearisome this effort to become universal, definitive, infinite, immortal—seeking tîmê and kleos like we still live in an age of heroes.
As Herodotus pointed out, Zeus put an end to all that with Helen. That thematic decline of heroes continues through Odysseus and Oedipus until it is finally transformed in Christ. We are no better than the chorus. We are the chorus.
Actually, inasmuch as we don't have Christ's hypostasis, the thematic decline of heroes is transformed in Mary. Her Magnificat is now the model and pattern for all other utterances of transcendence.
So there's the negative: that kind of heroism is no longer possible. On the positive side, think of the French onomatopoeic, Gutenbergian word, cliché, "the sound of a mold striking molten metal." Do we want to be molded or remain molten? I have a hunch that the two are mutually exclusive.
But perhaps this line of thinking is unnecessarily absolute.
Certain things persist. As we've mentioned before, people still buy CDs and records and books. But Arthur at least seems further along this path. He has remained molten in spite of Will's attempts to mold him.
Will, I know that this doesn't really respond to your recent email, but I feel like we have a different definition of tribal. I feel like Arthur is tribal. Like McLuhan, I consider the return to tribalism to be a positive development, one that will result in our being more in tune with the rest of humanity, as in his "global village" concept. In your email, you seem to see it as a negative development, presided over by the lodestone. I point to Gutenberg and the Reformation as evidence that widespread alphabetic literacy has resulted in widespread militarism, specialization, individualism, malaise, alienation, schizophrenia.
This is the opposite of the tribe, and yet, it is what has caused the fragmentation.
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