Farthington's Voicemail: chilean way of thinking about art

A treasure trove of Carlton Farthington's voicemails has been made available to the blog.  At the request of researchers, enthusiasts, law enforcement agencies, and other followers of the project, voice-to-text transcriptions have been published as-is rather than edited for sense.  We hope that this will better capture the texture of the spoken word, rendering it more accessible and/or flexible for the diverse purposes of our audience.

11/20/15 4:49 PM 3 months ago (910-541-3466)

So I think I'm interested in this I need we away is that 10 verse engineered, and that are this is one of the maybe the main ask the trip to him first so is that you know there is no insurance day the ality and then bases in a petition off and everything chilean way of thinking about art is that the the our defense that actually comes first the and and that the reality hallows. Alright the hybrid reality falls, and you know there's been some instances the system or example what I'm doing right now. It's recording a message on to presents, and see if it's there isn't enough itself, but we've got a lot of interesting things that God be here just checking in God help me Eric night. I think next time you got that I that whole idea we got is is what the which was Justin. It's transcription was something that I said I have no idea what I said originally, but the Google voice transcription sad is is what being and so that is sent speak of them kind of the central Mantra Central slogan of knology. Is is what's being? And so that seems to be a pretty interesting idea and and I'm I'm seeing this by having to get on the phone like this is personally because I haven't had any sort of time to philly right to the extent that I thank you and of like to and I feel bad about that but that's one of the aspects of this project is that some of the more interesting things have come out of really intent based on. Reality something other than reality reality in terms of other sounds coming out of my mouth right now, but they're being misunderstood and then we'll stories are being based on those misunderstanding seems to be seems to me to be a nother. Manifestation of this not on

A Terrible Beauty

The following is an excerpt of a 28 October 2015 email exchange between Will and Art.

Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller at the April in Paris Ball 1957

Will:

I guess another way of putting my concern is that I want the story to be beautiful and uplifting.

Art:

I understand that, but this probably goes along with my Aristotelian/Millerian preference for tragedy. I find works with a clear moral valence—or, worse, an "inspirational" intent—NOT beautiful. Isn't the human being endeavoring against the black backdrop, against impossible odds, beautiful enough? Isn't it the case that the black backdrop provides the occasion for his beauty to shine forth? Isn't this the most inspiring of all pictures, the one that calls us forth out from complacency, blinking in the cold wind of the world? 

I see you as the protagonist, trying to assert your story, to build your foundationless castle. It's like what King Arthur tried to do. But we've found that it only exists as "once" and "future." It only exists in the telling or, better yet, the singing of it. I'm the one who provides that black backdrop most of the time, the chorus roaring moira. You're the hero who needs to keep building, believing, setting things aright, even as you sink down into the morass.

Will:

In your version of Miller, I think Biff has cancer from smoking without his shirt on, got raped in jail, and had his leg ripped off by a vengeful cow and is ashamed of his homemade robotic prosthesis.

Art:

That's so much better than Death of a Salesman. Hold the presses!

Will:

Another way of putting it—Yeats called tragedy a terrible beauty, not terror. The struggle against the black backdrop unites the hero to truth, hopefully...not terror. Good comes from the hero's fall, a messenger survives to tell the tale, and order is restored to the kingdom. If people just get stabbed in the neck no matter what they do, the message is that the universe is blind terror, and Aristotle denounces the art. The movie O comes to mind, in which the writer and director messed with Othello a little too much, undermined the tragic conventions, and created nihilism instead of tragedy.

Yah Mo Be There

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 27 July 2015.



I have a few more questions that I feel are somewhat final or definitive.

One of the main questions that I've had with the project is whether it is acceptable to introduce yet another rigidly white male tragic hero/philosophical subject to the stage? And, if so, under what conditions is that acceptable or appropriate?

The old struggle against the black backdrop, whether that blackness be oblivion or an actual nonwhite, nonmale cast of thousands. And the recent gambit of "humiliated thought" is a poor excuse for letting another one up on stage. Sartre and Camus were able to get a lot of mileage out of that one (not to mention hooking up with a lot of women way more attractive than they--which may, after all, be the whole point, cf. the whole history of rock and roll).

Is it not rather the case that he should vacate the stage?

He who has supposedly always known his own name and patrilineage, yet has strangely needed to appropriate everyone else's identity as his backdrop and basis.

Have we unconsciously reincarnated this wandering mongrel?

Is this just the old Aristotelian formula that requires the hero to be of a noble or illustrious family, the reason being that it "universalizes" the horror?

Or is this just another aspect of the turbulent reversals? That it isn't appropriate for a hero with no background or basis to be up on stage. In music we've talked about this at length: from Michael McDonald to Justin Timberlake, we've agreed that this is at the very least problematic. We don't need another Oedipus, even if he, like Camus, is able to bear the horror rather than blind himself. We don't need another Hamlet, another Kurtz, another Willy, another Meursault. Screw all of them, myself included.

By seeking to become everything, these figures have become nothing.

I guess a related question would be, do we need to formalize his departure toward Avalon, his disappearance, his entrance into oblivion?

My knee jerk answer is no, he should just leave.

This figure has not built his "castle in the air;" he has built it on the subjugation and objectification of others, on the appropriation of riches--first material, then cultural. Ironically, and as Liza has pointed out somewhere, this has caused him to diminish, to dwindle away to nothing like Kurtz. I would argue that it has paradoxically strengthened the identities of those who have had their cultures subjugated, devalued, usurped, appropriated, and suppressed, such that we are on the cusp of a massive reversal, one which McLuhan (white male--sorry) feared might be violently and overtly suppressed.

We have to look at what we're doing here. Will, you've said you want us to sharpen the clichés and I think it's safe to say that we've not only sharpened them, but also narrowed the field of clichés down to the most essential ones. That's why we're arriving at King Arthur, at Detroit and Iceland, at Dan Gilbert and the Savage Sisters, at the Underachieving Detroit Hipster Guy. That's why our gaze has been drawn inexorably toward black holes, lodestones, hearts of whiteness.

We are brewing up something that should soon be recognizably apocalyptic. We're slouching toward Bethlehem, straining toward Armageddon.

Straining to be worthy of some summit or summative statement: Is is what's being? But is that straining toward summation, that need to unify and universalize all the data of existence, itself the weapon with which Western man has used to subjugate the whole world?

Or is this all just, as Baudrillard might say, the final strategy, that of effacing oneself before the other in order to resuscitate and universalize one's own moribund, degenerate principles (in this case, those of liberalism)?

The Happy Heart is True

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 20 May 2015.

The Virgin Mary from the Ghent Altarpiece, 1432 by Jan van Eyck

Brief, bright new thread...

You're going to like this, you've been waiting for this. With all of that compellingly creepy stuff, how can God possibly win out? How can Christ possibly win out? How can the Blessed Virgin Mary possibly win out?

O, so definitively... So definitive is their victory.

Not going to fully flesh any of this out, but this thought has invigorated me.

We've had this conversation before: surely Christian art will never again have relevance, in part because its reliance on the deus ex machina.

First of all, how non-postmodern to say "never"!

Second of all, our this God isn't in a machine. Our God is the CREATOR OF EVERYTHING. Our God is CREATOR.

Aristotle said the poet should always "seek what is necessary or probable"

so that it is either necessary or probable that a person of such-and-such a sort say or do things of the same sort, and it is either necessary or probable that this incident happen after that one. It is obvious that the solutions of plots too should come about as a result of the plot itself, and not from a contrivance, as in the Medea and in the passage about sailing home in the Iliad. A contrivance must be used for matters outside the drama — either previous events which are beyond human knowledge, or later ones that need to be foretold or announced. For we grant that the gods can see everything. There should be nothing improbable in the incidents; otherwise, it should be outside the tragedy, e.g., that in Sophocles' Oedipus.

And yes, on the human plane that makes sense to a certain degree. But here's the rub: our God is different than the gods of Euripides. And one of the places we see that most clearly is in the gratuitous designation of Mary as Mediatrix.

Check out this section from Lumen Gentium:

III. On the Blessed Virgin and the Church

60. There is but one Mediator as we know from the words of the apostle, "for there is one God and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a redemption for all".(298) The maternal duty of Mary toward men in no wise obscures or diminishes this unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows His power. For all the salvific influence of the Blessed Virgin on men originates, not from some inner necessity, but from the divine pleasure. It flows forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rests on His mediation, depends entirely on it and draws all its power from it. In no way does it impede, but rather does it foster the immediate union of the faithful with Christ.

The italicized portion is mainly what I wanted you all to see, but it's all so beautiful and good I can't bring myself to excerpt. God as CREATOR can't be constrained by "what is necessary or probable"! That italicized phrase, if you can momentarily step outside your cradle Catholic mind, is utterly MIND BLOWING. I think we often think of God as operating from necessity: God would necessarily be one, would necessarily be omnipotent, would necessarily be good, etc. But we sometimes don't realize that there is this peerless CREATOR who moves things, who makes things, who speaks things into being. Not some Plotinian god who helplessly radiates, but a Being who possesses a degree of creative agency utterly unimaginable to us.

And so we go beyond the Sabbath to the Lord's Day
And so we go beyond death and Purgatory and Halloween to All Saints' Day

New wine in new wine skins, son!

And you can see why saints like St. Brigid have been inebriated by this riotous superfluity:

I should like a great lake of beer to give to God.
I should like the angels of Heaven to be tippling there for all eternity.
I should like the men of Heaven to live with me, to dance and sing.
If they wanted I’d put at their disposal vats of suffering
White cups of love I’d give them with a heart and a half.
Sweet pitchers of mercy I’d offer to every man.
I’d make heaven a cheerful spot,
Because the happy heart is true.
I’d make men happy for their own sakes.
I should like Jesus to be there too.
I’d like the people of heaven to gather from all the parishes around.
I’d give a special welcome to the women,
the three Marys of great renown.
I’d sit with the men, the women of God,
There by the great lake of beer
We’d be drinking good health forever,
And every drop would be a prayer.

And God can do creepypasta too. Just read about the Three Secrets of Fatima. Let Slender Man wave his octopus arms around the playground.

Because the happy heart is true.

Mimesis Not Diegesis Effecting Catharsis!

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

Apollo and Socrates (at the Academy of Athens)

I am also interested in bringing up a new topic, that of mimesis vs. diegesis. I began thinking along these lines when you brought up Drunk History, which is a pretty unalloyed modern example of diegesis, although the actors, of course, engage in (deliberately pitiful) mimesis. It must be first admitted that the writers of Drunk History would--without the slightest doubt--be forcibly and immediately expelled from the Republic, because their narration does absolutely nothing to promote values and virtues of youth.

That said, the only poets who would be allowed to remain in the Republic were the diegetical ones; mimesis is considered unacceptable because, among other things, "human nature is not twofold or manifold, for one man plays one part only" (The Republic, Book III). I don't have a fully formed idea here, but there seems to be an intersection between this and the idea of multiple identities that occur after the turbulent reversals. Actually, it seems to intersect in a lot of ways, but I haven't figured them all out.

Socrates would reject what we are doing in imitating our characters. And it doesn't help matters that most of the characters we imitate in this drama are not ones of a praiseworthy sort. Also, some of our characters do the same thing as we do, usurping the identity of others. Finally, we have the more overarching sense in which we all--to a greater or lesser extent--fashion multiple identities for ourselves in this age of avatars.

This same Book III talks about the importance of engendering courage in youth. And the blame is placed on even the poet Socrates revered--Homer--for perpetuating ideas of the afterlife that were contrary to nurturing this all-important virture. The main issue is making it look like everyone--with the exception of maybe Teiresias--has a shitty afterlife, and thus that death is to be avoided at all costs. They've got a point about that one passage in The Odyssey in which the fearless demigod Achilles says he would rather be alive as the basest slave than king of the dead. It's almost as if he regrets the valor that put him constantly in harm's way.

This aspect seems to have a connection to our focus on the underworld and Hell. In some ways, Farthington is doing what Socrates would have him do, that is, make that realm more desireable or palatable, and make life as we know it a thing of lesser value and passing worth, thus engendering courage in his followers. But the followers of Farthington are well on their way to becoming shades, to entering into the anonymous and ignominious part of Hell. More and more, they live the life of a disembodied shade, seeking only to drink blood on the rare occasion it becomes available. Perhaps Farthington thinks that, by leading them into the underworld willingly and while still alive, he is making them kings of that world, himself being the high king.

There is also the issue of exile, the fate which all mimetic poets would suffer in Plato's Republic. Is Arthur and Farthington's trip to Iceland an experience of exile? It sure bears a distinct resemblance to St. John's exile on the island of Patmos and capitalizes on that visionary tradition. I think it is an exile in the sense that neither of them have any place in modern civilization. They have been expelled by Nietzsche's hated Socratic man, who sees rationality, science, and mechanistic thinking as perfectly capable of fathoming the depths of reality.

Apollo and Marsyas

Arthur and Farthington turn this all its head by enacting their modern mythmaking, co-opting the symbols and concepts of empiricism/positivism (think dinosaurs), and allowing the Dionysian to regain superiority.

Arthur is likely from the upstart musical tradition of Marsyas, not Apollo, and is, in some sense flayed alive (or is just among those musicians and poets expelled in The Republic).

Your idea about podcasting also brings up the whole diegesis/mimesis idea. As long as it's just us talking about the characters and the story, we might last longer in a republic ruled by the Socratic man. Of course, I guess that's sort of what we've been doing with the blog as well.

Now with all this hating on Socrates in our story, it's interesting that, in some ways, he also gives voice to its happy ending:

our guardians, setting aside every other business, are to dedicate themselves wholly to the maintenance of freedom in the State, making this their craft, and engaging in no work which does not bear on this end, they ought not to practise or imitate anything else; if they imitate at all, they should imitate from youth upward only those characters which are suitable to their profession--the courageous, temperate, holy, free, and the like; but they should not depict or be skilful at imitating any kind of illiberality or baseness, lest from imitation they should come to be what they imitate. Did you never observe how imitations, beginning in early youth and continuing far into life, at length grow into habits and become a second nature, affecting body, voice, and mind? 

This seems to be an apt ending for any divine comedy, if we replace "freedom" with "virtue" and "State" with "Church."

A major criticism of our approach is that we delve so deeply into baseness--to an extent that can our work even be considered Christian? Did anyone who attended "An Evening with Arthur White" feel strengthened in their faith? Did anyone feel "encouraged" or "equipped"? And if so, what is the mechanism that allows someone to profit from this? Obviously, Socrates sees no benefit in this approach; I think a whole lot of Christians see no benefit in this approach either--they too have roundly expelled these kinds of poets (just keep that dial locked on Family Life Radio!).

Or is it, as Aristotle says, "an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude...in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions"?

In other words, mimesis not diegesis effecting catharsis!

How Screwed We Are in the Face of Polytheism

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 1 July 2014.

I was probably too liberal with my use of the term "ancient Greeks."

Obviously, if it weren't for the Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, Paul never would have been able to say, "You know that unnamed God above all gods you built that statue for?  I know Him!" and we wouldn't be having this conversation today.

I'm mainly picking on the ancient art, and not even that, really, since I love it. It's polytheism. Sophocles is amazing in his articulation of how screwed we are in the face of polytheism, and how beautifully heroic and tragic a person can be in the face of that being screwed. Sophocles is not far from Heaven in his understanding of the irrational and the idea that part of existence is to be at war against the whole world (paraphrasing Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday). But he doesn't have Christianity to help with his answers.

Antigone leading Oedipus out of Thebes

You're right about the pinned feet and the swaddled existence--in a way, they point to a primordial understanding of Christ as the Logos. In the religious festival, you have a man who is sacrificed so that others may live. To me, that's the highest value of the traditional tragic hero: that his fall can prevent the falls of others, and it takes a sort of greatness to rise to such heights of failure and bear that fall. The first shall be last! Still, Oedipus wouldn't voluntarily choose that fall, and he still has a type of pride in his fall, running around Thebes saying how he is the greatest of sinners, the most accurst, etc.

The heart of my view, really, is that the story of existence--as I believe Catholics correctly see it--is comic. I have no problem with the idea that you see the Deus ex Machina as a crappy plot device in human art; I'm completely fine with the idea that we make better tragedies than comedies. I still believe reality as God has sculpted it for us is comic in nature, and I take no issue with His art. His plot is infinitely superior to any we can create.

I agree with your assessment that Christ is not an easy answer: it's the "mystery of our faith," not the philosophy of our faith. One of the most challenging concepts of describing Christianity to non-Christians (or even Christians, for that matter) is that the Truth is a person, not a set of doctrines! Yikes! It's that idea that we are called into a relationship with God, not adherence to a rule book, that continuously baffles us. In that regard, Homer was onto something with Odysseus, although I'm grasping at straws here. He's just more about a relationship with Olympus than he is about personal virtue or true humility, which I think is too Christian of a concept for Odysseus' world, anyway.

I also see the hamartia as being the source of the hero's greatness. I just believe it's a false, b.s. greatness: a big lie that needs to be stripped away, either voluntarily in small doses, which seems to me the preferable way, or in one fell swoop, as is the fate of most tragic heroes. In tragedy of the Christian era, the stripping away is an act of mercy that reunites the hero with Truth not of the hero's own making (I think Willy Loman and Macbeth are exceptions: both are too hardened to see reality before they die). I differ from Aristotle in that I view the hamartia as a vice. I understand it and marvel at it and sympathize with it and see the beauty in it even if it is toxic, but sorry...I'm German. I'm also far more prideful than you are, so probably far more afraid of pride.

I see the tragic hero as someone who views himself as a self-made man but who really is in his own way. In a sense, this makes him a very foolish or comic figure. He senses his own weakness and compensates with self-aggrandizement. He senses his own lack of wisdom and doubles down on a bad plan, compensating with confidence. He simultaneously is everything the secular world trains us to be and a walking billboard for the dangers of defense mechanisms. Why is he foolish? He's basically missing the point of his existence: to be an object of God's love and a reflector of God's light. Basically, he tries to be God. That is charming up to a point. I think we disagree on where that point is. As you say, my view doesn't fit perfectly with classical tragedy, although it's not completely incompatible.

Also, I think the American Dream is like crack to the tragic hero. And yes, the story of a Willy Loman who works in construction, teaches his boys good values, treats his wife really well, pays his bills on time, doesn't cheat at cards, takes help when he needs it and gives help when others need it, and takes the family to church on Sundays would make for crappy art, but that's still the guy I wish Willy could be. If I didn't, the tragedy would fail.

So, my words still stink, but hopefully they are a little more clear, even if the views still evince a simpleton's understanding of tragedy. I'm not trying to convert you to my view; I just want you to understand mine, and I'm my own worst enemy in that department.

Why even waste time and effort on clarifying it? It's a pretty central concept to my view of Will.

That's Not a Flaw! The Other One is a Flaw!

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 1 July 2014.

We are somewhat far apart in that I see the Greeks as having gotten extremely close to many things (in a "You are not far from the Kingdom of God" kind of way). The main philosophers were all monotheists, and later Platonists--especially Plotinus, one of Augustine's favorites--actually got darn close to hitting on the Trinity.

The Birth of Jesus by Barna da Siena

And on the literary side, you probably know by now that I think Tragedy approaches the heroism of the cross a lot more than do the other genres. Oedipus' pinned ankles are so reminiscent of the swaddled/crucified existence, discovering the limits of human freedom and yet achieving a kind of mastery, a kind of victory in that moment of greatest ignomy and defeat.

Perhaps they were asking the question, how can one be a hero when the age of heroes is over?

And Kierkegaard's Abraham (or just Abraham, really) gets very close to this quandary as well. The whole episode leaves us with far more questions than answers. Definitely no "pat" answers, and the Deus ex Machina, if you will, is not definitive or satisfying. The problem I have with the solution being, as you say, "alignment with God's will" is that it doesn't answer the fundamental questions posed by this episode in Abraham's walk with God--or, for that matter, any of the questions implicitly posed by the tragic figures of pagan times.

So what is the answer? Jesus Christ. But he is--and I say this with the utmost reverence--an answer that is irrational and irreducible. In other words, he cannot be reduced even to a complicated code of ethics or philosophy. Yes, he said things like "It is not everyone that says to me, 'My Lord, my Lord'', who enters the Kingdom of Heaven, but whoever does the will of my Father who is in Heaven" (Mt 7:21), but that's not all he did and said. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a manger! He was baptised by a human being! He was crucified, died, and was buried! He comprehends everything that has happened before and since. He doesn't stand dumbfounded before the fate that Oedipus or Abraham suffered. And as inarticulate as those questions might have been (and I have a hard time calling Sophocles inarticulate), he comprehends all contradiction, paradox, ambiguity, irrationality and provides the answer in who he is. Note that I didn't say he just tells all those things to shut the f--- up (although he does that with the wind and waters sometimes). He comprehends them within his person.

I disagree with the phrasing that "from Marlowe onward, we've got tragic heroes who aren't marked by Olympus to suffer, but who bring about their own suffering, although there are always extenuating circumstances."

I think it's close to, but not as accurate as the Aristotelian characterization: "a man who is not eminently good and just--yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty" (Chapter 13). That's a very nuanced emphasis--the difference between tragic flaw and hamartia--but, as a professor I once heard explained, "His error is inextricably tied up with his human greatness." His greatness, that which places him above his fellows, is his willingness and ability to face his fate directly.

Neither did Arthur Miller believe in the traditional conception of a tragic flaw:

In the sense of having been initiated by the hero himself, the tale always reveals what has been called his "tragic flaw," a failing that is not peculiar to grand or elevated characters. Nor is it necessarily a weakness. The flaw, or crack in the characters, is really nothing--and need be nothing, but his inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status. Only the passive, only those who accept their lot without active retaliation, are "flawless." Most of us are in that category.

For Miller, the flaw sounds like a good thing! Kind of like how people answer that question that they ask in job interviews: What is one shortcoming that you have?

Answer: Oh, I guess I have this unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what I conceive to be a challenge to my dignity. I guess I don't just accept my lot without active retaliation.

Come on, that's not a flaw! The other one is a flaw!

Sit Back and Watch the Felix Culpa

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 30 June 2014.

"...like a Kierkegaardian Abraham"

I love Aristotle and I think it's remarkable that Poetics holds up so well after the whole rise and fall of Western Culture.

His method in all things, though, was to study every example of the subject that interested him and seek the patterns. I love this method: pattern recognition. McLuhan says it's the key to our ability to fabricate a survival strategy. But Aristotle only got to look at the art of his day, all of which was governed by the absurdities of polytheism. The pagans gave us tragedies of fate and epics of action; Christianity gives us tragedies of action and epics of...well, fate isn't the right word, but humility, maybe alignment with God's will.

I think the spirit of Poetics holds up, but I think the letter would be different if he had had the advantage of looking back from our point in time and space. So, yeah, I take liberties with Poetics because I see Shakespeare, Miller, and all sorts of other artists and philosophers continuing the work of the original text.

The question of Odysseus' virtue is impossible to reconcile since the gods don't have a unified will: none of them stay even personally consistent.

It's the problem of Plato's Euthyphro: polytheism just can't deal well with virtue, which is crazy considering how much the ancient Greeks prized it. I don't see Odysseus as having humility in the Christian sense. He doesn't become more devout, he doesn't say Zeus must increase and I must decrease. He is still a man who strives with gods, to steal from Tennyson. He's humble in the same sense I'm humble when I drive: I'm better at not getting caught when I speed than I used to be, I'm less reckless, and I could probably handle a conversation with the cops better. I even have a sticker in my window that shows I donate to law enforcement. I'm about as humble in the face of speed limits as Odysseus is in the face of "the gods." And if Officer Athena counseled me on how to beat the system, the analogy would be even better, not that it's that good.

The Greek epic hero has to figure out how to assert his humanity to its fullest extent, something approaching "god"liness. The Greek tragic hero in some ways just doesn't have as many resources available to prevail.

I see Oedipus as a supremely screwed character. I read him like a Kierkegaardian Abraham, put in a position in which serving the heavens means doing the opposite of what a moral person would expect of a divine request.

Humility means accepting his lot and killing his dad and marrying his mom, or at least resigning himself to that future. Morality means protecting his family. So he can't be moral and humble. And he doesn't earn his curse, really; it's like he's the living punishment of his parents' transgression. But even then, what makes their attempt to defy fate immoral, if morality comes from the gods and Kronos and Zeus are both child killers, not to mention father killers? Again we hit Euthyphro: morality must come from a source higher than the gods.

I've probably mentioned this before, but I think Zeus was probably Satan.

Anyway, from Marlowe onward, we've got tragic heroes who aren't marked by Olympus to suffer, but who bring about their own suffering, although there are always extenuating circumstances. And we get the Christian approach to comedy and the epic, plus the morality play about finding one's proper place within God's perfect plan. I wonder to what extent Milton set out to mock the pagan epic by having Satan more or less get smashed by the God's providence, and not by a set of death-defying scampers (if you cut out the pre-story of the war in Heaven).

God just spells it all out in Book 3, and we sit back and watch the felix culpa.

We Aren't Dogs, Either

The following is an excerpt of a 30 June 2014 email exchange between Will and Art.

Will:

Comedy would be the lower art form if it weren't the higher truth. 

That the Deus ex Machinas in art tend to be cheesy doesn't have any real bearing on the majesty of Christ's intervention in the story of humanity's tragic reversal. 

Most tragedy certainly feels more compelling than most comedy because the message isn't that everything will work out just fine, and probably the first thing we need to recognize if we're going to ever find salvation is that we're not gods, which is the message of tragedy. 

After we accept that, we can accept the comic message that the resurrection teaches us: we aren't dogs, either. 

The more I look at the forms, though, the more I think my vision of the comic and epic overlap.

Art:

Odysseus and Argos

What would prevent that from being Epic, as defined by Aristotle? Unlike Tragedy, which Aristotle calls "single threaded" (goes from prosperity to adversity), Epic is "double threaded" (goes from prosperity to adversity back to prosperity). And indeed, Odysseus undergoes something very similar before he can return, following Teiresias' counsel: he threads the strait of Scylla and Charybdis, and follows several other dictates to demonstrate his humility and to propitiate Poseidon.  

When he returns to Ithaca and Telemachus sees him transformed from the old beggar to a much younger man, Telemachus exclaims, "You are a god!" And Odysseus, having been humbled by his journey, says “No god. Why take me for a god? No, no. I am that father whom your boyhood lacked." Sounds like something Arthur could say, maybe in a rare moment of clarity to one or more of his children. 

But then again, I think you may have a more Elizabethan view of comedy, which seems much more informed by Christian understandings. The idea of a lowly fool gaining superiority over the overweening ones (such as the "Lord of Misrule" figure during Christmastide) is a pagan idea that found a lot of traction within the Christian worldview for obvious reasons. Consider 1 Corinthians 25-27: 

Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong… 

And this may be significant: Odysseus, to my knowledge, is the only major hero to survive the Trojan War and its aftermath. Following Hesiod's telling, Helen and the Trojan War was Zeus' plan to bring to end the age of demigods and heroes. Odysseus is the only one who transitioned over from the former to the latter age alive. 

Was his willingness to be brought low the reason he survived?

Drunken Phallic Processions

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 29 June 2014.

Agreed on the differences between ancient and modern tragedy. But I'm not sure I agree that "tragedy should scare us all into the higher reality of the comic."

Attic komasts

I tend to agree with Aristotle that, between tragedy, epic, and comedy, tragedy is the highest and comedy is the lowest, with epic a close second to tragedy. As he writes, "Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life." In other words, comedy holds humanity in low esteem, tragedy in high esteem. Tragedy grew out of religious, dithyrambic dances probably involving the sacrifice of a goat; comedy grew out of drunken phallic processions.

I think we're better than comic characters and I think God thinks so too.

A morality play would be considered a poorly done tragedy. Seeing the downfall of a sinful character in a morality play does not produce catharsis:

A plot of this kind would, doubtless, satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither pity nor fear; for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves. Such an event, therefore, will be neither pitiful nor terrible. (Poetics, Chapter 13)

I like to think that morality plays fail because we just make a resolution not to do what the fallen character did. But how are we going to get out of Oedipus' plight???

The ultimate tragic character he describes as

a man who is not eminently good and just--yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty. He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous,—a personage like Oedipus, Thyestes, or other illustrious men of such families. (Chapter 13)

As for the  Deus ex Machina, it should be avoided:

The 'Deus ex Machina' should be employed only for events external to the drama,—for antecedent or subsequent events, which lie beyond the range of human knowledge, and which require to be reported or foretold; for to the gods we ascribe the power of seeing all things. Within the action there must be nothing irrational. If the irrational cannot be excluded, it should be outside the scope of the tragedy. Such is the irrational element in the Oedipus of Sophocles. (Chapter 15)

And happily, I don't think that's what God does for us in his crucifixion, death, and resurrection. Otherwise, why did he become human? Otherwise, why would he involve us? If we're just some maiden being saved from the dragon, carried away by our knight in shining armor... Something about resolution that doesn't satisfy some important aesthetic, ethical, moral, and/or religious criteria we have hardwired into ourselves.

And this is one area where I have an axe to grind. I think the Deus ex Machina is precisely the reason why we people of faith have been rightfully denied access into postmodernism (actually into art, period). A long time ago, I read an article in First Things about the poetry of John Paul II. As much as I love the guy, I was not surprised to learn that the major criticism of his poetry is that he gets down to some deep dark areas of personal emotion and crisis and then swoops in with the pat, predictable answer: God will take care of it. Tolkein with his big eagles who just happen to overhear the ruckus of the wargs and goblins is another example. I love Tolkien too, but he relies on this sort of forced plot device a lot as well.

I've already explained some of the ways I think postmodernism and a religious worldview could coexist, so I'm not going to get into it again. But that criterion of avoiding Deus ex Machina goes back to 350 B.C.! And Jesus brought about a happy ending that I think would blow even Aristotle's mind--but that means that he didn't use any of the cop outs enumerated by Aristotle.

He did something entirely surprising and NEW!

A Good Disclipline to Impose

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 25 June 2014.

As we have loosely used Aristotle's Poetics as a guide in our decision making, I'm beginning to think we should keep as many irrational elements outside the scope of the play as possible.

Obviously, this goes against much of what I've described in the "Epic Finale." Ideally--as with the jawless ghost and the subterranean beast--we shouldn't have to rely on big bucks from Hollywood to make our vision a reality; we should convey it through other means such as speech, like how Teiresias comes back to the square and explains how crazy the birds were acting as he was sitting on the seat of augury.

Showing the birds tearing each other apart would amount to something Aristotle would describe as being "beyond the scope of human understanding" and therefore not proper to drama. Euripides, by having a god (Dionysus) explain a few things at the beginning of The Bacchae, violates this principle.

To the greatest extent possible, I'd like deaths and all irrational elements occur either hidden from view or outside the scope of the drama. I think imagining our story as a play (musical would be fine too!) would be a good discipline to impose. Obviously, we are writing an epic or saga just as much as a drama, but, for both practical and artistic reasons, I think we should attempt to consciously limit ourselves in the special effects department.

Odysseus at the court of Alcinous by Francesco Hayez.

Having a frame story with someone telling those irrational/beyond-the-scope-of-human-understanding parts of the story--as Odysseus did in the court of King Alcinous--would be one way to accomplish this straddling of epic and tragic poetry. Blurring the lines between hallucination and reality--as in Death of a Salesman--would be yet another way.

Despite the story's expansiveness, I think we should come up with a way of unifying the plot and perhaps even condensing the amount of time that will have actually passed. Is there a 12-step program in which these stories are being told? Is it all happening in Arthur's mind while strapped to the stretcher headed down to the ECT room? Is it a series of letters that are read by Josie Lazarus, perhaps while we focus on her more down-to-earth drama (whatever that is)?

Bottom line, could we accomplish the scripting of this story observing the unities and using a minimum of what Aristotle would term "spectacle"?

Again, for both practical and artistic reasons, I think our pilot--even for a TV program--should be highly doable on stage.

Questions for Will

The following is excerpted from a December 2012 email exchange between Will and Art.

What role does Agniesczka play?  

I don't foresee getting an actress to play her.  At most, we might need some old photographs, but even those could be of her and the kids.   

In the old days, Arthur wasn't around much or there wasn't any reason for her to end up in the band footage, so she is mostly just alluded to in the narrative.  In the present day, she is dead or otherwise gone.   

I do hope for a day when we turn the whole story into a musical; at that point, neither of us will play our roles, so we can develop her role more fully then--and that of Will's girlfriend Linda--when there's no need for us to do the acting.  Will spends most of his life in the future and Arthur has a really tenuous relationship with chronological time, so I don't see either of them as big picture takers.

Why would Will use marriage to control Arthur?  

Will is torn between his Polish roots and his New World roots.   

His New World roots can only think in terms of being a swinging single: initially, he tempts Arthur into forming The Sweet World through women.   

He feels guilty about that when he sees how that path nearly destroyed him, so he turns to the Old World alternative: marriage. Will can't think in terms of celibacy, which is what Arthur really needs.  But if Arthur becomes a monk or hermit, he can't be a rock star.  Plus, celibacy just seems to weird and unnatural to a modern man like Will.   

So Will wants to make amends (here again is how we keep Will from wearing a black top hat and twirling his mustache).  Will took a vow that he would make his brother a star. His approach in the Sweet World failed, so he tries another approach, grounded in a very Polish vision of stability (marriage and church) as well as a 70's vision (psychology, counseling, support groups, settling down).   

I think Will feels that if Arthur has stability at home, he can compartmentalize and be a husband and father by day and a rock star by night.  Initially, Arthur sings about domestic bliss, but soon he feels called to subjects like confessing his guilt and the state of America's soul.   

As Arthur comes closer to singing about the things he feels called to sing about, his marriage, band, and relationship with his brother deteriorate.  Will sees everything that he tried to build for Arthur falling apart and resents him for it.  Will can only think in terms of real-world responsibilities, and here's Arthur chasing ghosts while the woods are burning.  

The ECT is a combination of revenge, resentment, a quest for control, love for his brother, and fear that his brother may be right and that everything Will has pursued is wrong. 

Will's hamartia is a type of misguided nobility.  If you want to go as far as a lobotomy, we can; I think he does need to be permanently scarred from his institutionalization, but ECT might be enough.  The treatment severs his ability to easily distinguish between past, present, and future, real and mystical, word and deed.  His capacity to distinguish what is reality the way other people perceive it and what is his own mystical connection to God was never strong to begin with, but it's gone now.   

Will is too salt of the earth to get that, and he just sees crazy.  Joe will figure it out, though, and help Arthur reenter the world.

An Austere Cult

The following is an excerpt of a 26 December 2012 email sent from Art to Will.

I still see an austere cult as fitting the story/songs, for several reasons.

It's more in keeping with the meaning/process of apotheosis

I'm thinking very much of Ovid's (my paesan, who lived and wrote just 20 miles north of where my family originates!) telling of Heracles poisoning and subsequent apotheosis.  Apotheosis usually (to my knowledge, always) involves a burning away of the human so that the only divine is left.  It's a pagan concept, co-opted probably by the Manichaeans, but it is also not a far cry from John of the Cross or Catherine of Genoa.

So apotheosis would not likely happen after or during a period of self-indulgence, but rather after a period of self-abnegation and mortification.  I think it's perfect that Heracles' apotheosis occurs shortly after his new wife is almost kidnapped by a centaur, and that, upon realizing that he has been poisoned, he initiates his apotheosis himself (building and igniting his own funeral pyre!).  Likewise, Arthur's initiates his own imagined apotheosis during or shortly after his divorce.

It's more in keeping with the normative rock/r&b star phenomenon

I see the spirituality of chastened hubris as the more common phenomenon when it comes to rock star types (cf. George Harrison and the Beatles generally, John MacLaughlin/Mahavishnu, Carlos Santana, Robert Alpert/Ram Dass, Stevie Wonder, etc., etc.).

You can also lump in Al Green and Marvin Gaye, who, when burned by the fires of human love, would retreat into spirituality (the Rev. Al Green did this for a couple decades after his then girlfriend assaulted him with a pan of hot grits and then committed suicide).

I am less impressed by the more modern phenomenon of Scientology and Kabbala (and by the types of people who tend fall into it).  I think  it's a distinctly different phenomenon and one reserved for people who don't have the rich spiritual background (such as Catholics or blacks have).

It more clearly parallels the normative path as laid out by the mystical doctors of the Church

I really see this as key to the plot line of this story.

It's borrowed loosely from the Household Saints character Teresa Santangelo, played by Lili Taylor. By the end of the movie, it's clear that, in spite of getting knocked off the traditional saintly path by modernity, she nonetheless became the saint God intended her to be.

In short, it seems that God used the spiritual desolation of modern life as her road of trials.

Arthur goes through a similar process.  His divorce is a distorted version of the dark night of the senses. The cult represents a distorted version of the dark night of the spirit.  Electroshock represents the final threshold after which Arthur arrives at a distorted version of "the soul in a state of perfection" from which it is unlikely to fall again (in his case, a pure spiritual state that many ascribe to cognitively disabled people).

In other words, all these stages have their normative counterpart in mysticism.

But, since modern American life provides none of the traditional guides or guideposts (once widely available to anyone desiring to embark on the journey toward God), God intervenes and sanctifies Arthur through these counterfeit, unintended trials.

It illustrates something that I believe generally about an unbelieving age: that many modern saints (though probably not the canonized ones) will be sanctified almost entirely within God's consequent (as opposed to antecedent) will.  The irony is that someone who departs from God's will can't fully free himself from God's will; God's will asserts itself even in an evil and unbelieving age.

Yes, Jonah returns to the right path and preaches repentance to the Ninevites, but the famed "sign of Jonah" is his time spent in the belly of the whale!

A sudden loss of musical inspiration wouldn't seem rational

One of the ideas implicit in the distorted spiritual path concept is that something pure persists in spite of being dragged through the muck.  It's a very incarnational idea.

In the case of Arthur White, that something is music.

Whether he is at the height of his hubris/bravado, in the abyss of his involvement with a cult, or even the catatonia of his post-electroshock life, the music persists.  In fact, it is paradoxically strengthened by each debasement.  Grace flourishes further.

I know that a cult could be considered an "irrational element" that brings about an abrupt change (such as an abrupt loss of musical taste/talent), but, like Aristotle, I believe that irrational elements (another one would be deus ex machina) should be kept to a minimum.  It seems more likely that his inspiration would remain with him through this period as well.