Farthington's Voicemail: through April 1st processed

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 4:44 PM 3 months ago (910-541-3466)

Hey, so we say that this is one step beyond love lily it's variance. You know maybe the the the Madman the the person is Insane was the prophet of this coming arrow where we are the image of the symbol or the sign would become more real than reality It's Ralph and that the reality which day. So that's the world and let's show Lazarus junior fine since so and then it's it's I mean potentially. Even more just tripping when something. Get out that really shouldn't exist. Cakes for and I'm reminded of the whole creepypasta Slenderman Phenomenon where by you know someone kind of makes this off makes it up, and then I'll just you know it and then kind of through April 1st processed. That that Artist becomes reality and maybe even maybe even a greater kind of reality Tell you know and and I think this is I'm feeling ideal this place and I think a lot of people feel this bye. Just driving around right now and being a flag at half past seems like every single day flag fan, and you we get into wondering. What is the flag at half-mast? And ever since 9:05. I think thank you x x I have finance class started flying at half past all the time or you know fairly often where you don't even know what it is that we just point help of points does flag buying it have passed actually drive whatever the cast your teams and so the black find a half mast and knows why it was. You know lowered. But you know it creates if you pastor free. And so I think that one of the things is dramatize Bye Joe Lazarus junior Confronting his clone Joseph flat surface the 3rd.

sexy congress

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 4:40 PM 3 months ago (910-541-3466)

So that's why I see that you will last between your has the in the water for greg. And this predict pen is that's repeated wasn't fact. Dad there are 3rd since there's that he has to deal with that is 10. It's not that is time sensitive perfect clone of his father genetic prospectus. Bye very much give me. And really has no I'll just face reality that was his father. Attack ads you don't even greater chance, Please Joseph last 15 years his primary class in Delhi center reconciliation bye bye 8 King and basically fine good bother you hungry for it's sexy congress. And finish what day does signs at the hotel project that phoning? Please press the current conditions in till back if that's okay until. It's it's very difficult to have this and connor. And serve really truly encounter something I guess what what well he's paying is the reality is very strong, but in part That's because he he's very susceptible to these pigments it is imagination and to finish to eat and Joe lazar Sooners case he actually needs up with a reality he actually confront something hyper real typer real, and that has corper alley the corporate the corporate reality. And substance and being here and and and so he has to deal with that. And so we don't need Joel's asura's junior golf in vain like Willy does in order to accomplish this meeting in this experience at the Hype B. L II actually experiencing.

Farthington's Voicemail: Dad Mesa center

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 4:36 PM 3 months ago (910-541-3466)

So I'm thinking about this connection with Willie and connection of lily and chill lazarus, Jr. In that able to call our haunted by the senior like rotten their father what they believed to have been there father the image of their father you know. What's the symbol or sign up their closet which is Android based on much reality and all and in Willy is further haunted by the images, Then didn't pay Pal party out in all definitely on you weren't from find small non, Envy Allen dean. That piece is done, and then just in general but until a couple of the frontier see you. And I think overall bit late. And it really has no reference his face down to Earth insight Call Raj. So I'll plan brush. And all the money that was to be made until after your e L no. L terry question the fall as hot widespread for available that dream actions and blessed people who live here hills areas. But at any rate. It's it's like for real. It's really Brielle. It's beyond real, and it is actually pretty dominate to be mandates. Lily's life and it becomes more real Dan the reality the same as she or the image of the simple as a sign which really has no you know I know or very little faces in reality earliest Dad Mesa center, Eld that is now gone becomes more real fan. Is the Allen? And more compelling Instagram. Practice play compare Fijian cleaning and light

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.

Secret Ladder Disguised

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 29 March 2015.

Jacob's Ladder by Nicolas Dipre

Off the cuff, I think it's just that Arthur fell from grace, doubting his gift, and then he lost it in its original form entirely.

As I've said before, if you ever have a chance to see Household Saints, this gives a clear trajectory of how this sort of thing can happen, especially in modern times, when, as Arthur Miller puts it in his essay "Tragedy and the Common Man," "modern man has had the blood drawn out of his organs of belief by the skepticism of science." You've got to see this movie!

It's the same old drama played out in the lives of everyone, but perhaps most explicitly in the experience of the Chosen People. Read Isaiah 55.

The main point is that God's word never returns to Him empty. It achieves the end for which it was sent.

Would it have been better if Adam and Eve had abided by God's law in the first place? Maybe.

Would it have been better if Arthur had languished in those simple childhood visions? Maybe.

But probably not. This, of course, is the felix culpa concept.

If he had been faithful all those years, the "high road" would have necessarily involved passing through St. John of the Cross's dark night of the soul. That would have been the safest route. St. John of the Cross believes that visions belong to a much earlier stage of the spiritual life and pass away entirely during the dark night.

The danger with visions, unlike with infused contemplation, is that the the devil knows about them and can parrot or piggyback on them. Infused contemplation is the "secret ladder disguised." When the soul is to able to escape in this night, when the sensible and spiritual members of his household alike are at rest, the devil doesn't even know it.

At that point, the soul is safer than it has ever been.

It's not at all surprising that Arthur would fall prey to something at his relatively undeveloped state. And he did not--as would have been the case in past centuries--have access to that clear path toward complete union with God.

So, as I've said elsewhere, Arthur takes the "low road" toward the definitive salvation described in Isaiah 55:

Yes, in joy you shall go forth,
in peace you shall be brought home;
Mountains and hills shall break out in song before you,
all trees of the field shall clap their hands.

In place of the thornbush, the cypress shall grow,
instead of nettles, the myrtle.
This shall be to the LORD’s renown,
as an everlasting sign that shall not fail.

As I've said (and diagrammed!) elsewhere, this "low road" has many characteristics of the mystic "high road" laid out by John of the Cross and others.

Although many of the people and experiences Arthur encounters along this path cannot rightly be called God's messengers or guides, they lead him in an albeit roundabout way to his final destination. Thus, "in joy shall you go forth, / in peace you shall be brought home" because as God communicates through the prophet: "So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; / It shall not return to me empty, / but shall do what pleases me, / achieving the end for which I sent it."

When you drop off the sure path to salvation, what greets you is not the entirely opposite path, but rather a path set up by the devil that retains many characteristics of God's original plan.The devil, inasmuch as he has no true being of his own, can only parasitically appropriate the goods that endlessly shower forth from God and twist them to serve his own purposes. Thus, the lodestone looks a lot like "the stone that the builders rejected." Thus, Carlton prescribes a path of purgation, illumination, and union. And so on and so forth. So many other aspects of Arthur's postlapsarian existence have an analogue in the Christian life.

One last thing. I think that Jesus might have a similar opinion of Carlton's devotees (maybe even of Carlton himself) as he did about prostitutes and tax collectors.

Obviously, it's a little different here. But I say that someone who has fallen into a cult sometimes has a better chance of salvation than someone who has never fallen into something so socially unacceptable. Where else in modern life can you find people living so extremely, throwing caution to the wind?

I think that Jesus would have an easier time among these types than he would the ones who faithfully attend every fish fry and diligently give up chocolate every year for Lent (like me).

This Parade of Appearances

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 7 March 2015.



Most of my recent thinking is the contemporary "Concert for Iceland": the attempt to give Arthur closure on this final chapter in his pre-turbulent reversals life. After that moment, any linear notions like "chapters" are no longer applicable. This is the contemporary Arthur who lives in the psychiatric hospital and is turning into a stylite.

I think Brand New Life is going to be a lot more of your music, like "Selling My Gold," "Helen of Troy," "Retire the Empire," "We Won't Give Up the Fight," and others of yours that I want to start working on after Concert for Iceland is "in the books" (whatever that means). I think I'm going to allow myself to be Billy Pilgrim about the whole thing, because I don't know where one era starts and the other finishes. As you know, I've found some freedom in the idea that this is what post-turbulent reversals life is like.

I also like the idea that, even once we start doing those more chronologically based shows, the project will always have an overriding sense that "time is out of joint." After all, we could be working on a Will and the 5 Wits project 15 years from now as 56 year olds! The actual passing of time plays a critical role in the project's views on time and memory. How potentially poignant to be exploring Arthur's happy early days of marriage in our late 60's! Incidentally, think it might be neat to allow ourselves to age but to continually get young actors and actresses who are not "out of joint." Or is it they that are out of joint? We interact with an "eternal" memory that never grows old, even as we ourselves age.

Of course in our case, it's not memory, it's fantasy. It's that dream of rock 'n' roll stardom that was never real but that hung there in the ether, haunting us. These songs that come from some vaguely earlier era, these young bodies and faces that populate our stages...these are all a shadow's shadow. These dreams, which live on eternally to shame us, have beggared us in this life. And this is a very Death of a Salesman conception of the American Dream in general. We invest everything in our fantasy world--buying it new stockings while the real world grows frayed and threadbare from neglect.

From this standpoint, we could even go one step further than allowing ourselves to age while continuing to have young actors and actresses. Have me (and potentially you) dress "normally" and have everyone else dress era-appropriate. That might help the audience better comprehend this idea of fantasy. In Death of a Salesman, it's the older Willy, dressed as he is in his current life, that interacts with The Woman, who is considerably younger.

The problem becomes what is that "actual" identity? How close does it come to my actual identity? And what is my actual identity?

Because ultimately, the play is about you and I interacting with this Gen-X fantasy, where we collectively lived in this idealized Back to the Future of the 60's and 70's until maybe Nevermind. But even after that point, many of us continued to prefer that culture and music to any of our own generation's offerings. One problem is that there isn't really any uniform that would be recognized as "default" for a person of our generation. I could maybe wear my "casual Friday" attire, but even that has gone from parachute pants to skinny jeans over the span of 10 years.

That's why I think the straitjacket and maybe the thrift-store hodgepodge underneath (nothing cool) might express the idea best.

Instead of being a blank slate, be the parti-colored motley of the Russian Sailor. Maybe I've got on a pair of Bugle Boy jeans, a Cosby Sweater, a basketball jersey, Docksiders. Having one or more of these things not fit well just drives home the point further. Our generation, and perhaps every generation since, has failed or refused to define itself, preferring instead to rehash and remix an idealized past. Even rap, arguably our generation's most novel musical offering, involves the curation and celebration of earlier music through sampling.

It is from this standpoint of not knowing ourselves that we seek answers from an earlier generation's experience, willfully ignorant of the fact that this past led directly to the confused present--that this past was once itself the confused present. And in this we become just another member of the audience. We feel the weight of dramatic irony because we know how it played out, but we still want to replay it all over again rather than live out our own tragedies and comedies, sing our own songs, etc.

Maybe the turbulent reversals began when commercial culture overtook and fully appropriated counterculture.

Maybe at that point it became nearly impossible for the apparel to "proclaim the man." Do we have "that within that passeth show"? Or are we but a "painting of sorrow, a face without a heart?" And maybe it's a good thing that we need to confront these questions.

Maybe the questions were always there and we just didn't know it, distracted by this parade of appearances.

Shakespeare's Sister, Biyaches!

The following is an excerpt of a 27 February 2015 email exchange between Will and Art.

Charlotte Cushman as Meg Merrilees

Will:

I love the idea! 

I am so sick today...just out of nowhere! 

I've been running ideas by musicians. 

Also, Allison and Liza are both in. Have you read any of Liza's responses yet? They are pretty cool. I like the possibility of a Leif Erickson's sister idea, kind of like Victoria Woolf's Shakespeare's Sister, except more of a badass.

Art:

Hope you feel better, Will! Virginia Woolf, I assume, although I think Victoria Woolf is hilarious (probably for some politically incorrect reasons, though). I just like the Glasnost that is happening. Breaking down this iron curtain of inscrutability, this wall of wiliness. Do we need a Ronald Reagan? "Mr. Witkowski, tear down this wall!" No, I think we need more people like Victoria Woolf's sister! 

I have read her responses and I'm enjoying them. I'll have to chime in soon, but I wanted you two to do your thing for a while. From the way she talks, I wonder if she is Steffi Humboldt. That's basically the same thing as Victoria (never going to stop using that, by the way ) Woolf or Shakespeare sister. 

We floated the possibility that Steffi was a little more familiar with the tunnels than expected. That hers is the hand that holds the apple. A fact that Farthington may have found out too late. A fact that Will realizes as he descends into the tunnel looking to dispatch Farthington.  

There are no apple orchards in Burma. Farthington is nothing more than Steffi's mouthpiece. 

And now, thanks to Will, Steffi has no mouth..."not that a mouth can ever be taken away." Farthington may or may not be dead. 

"Farthing" suggests that Farthington never was much to begin with. Or at least that he came to nothing...or next to nothing. Cult leaders are a dime a dozen, so to speak...nod to Lewis's The Great Divorce, Arthur Miller's Willy, Eliot's Hollow Men, Conrad's Kurtz. 

I'm not against Liza being Leif Erickson's sister, but she seems so right for the role of Steffi Humboldt. 

Maybe when she comes into her power, when she reveals herself she becomes Victoria Woolf: Shakespeare's Sister, biyaches! 

Leif Erickson's sister, Victoria's Secret, Virginia Woolf, The Anti-Virgin, Shakespeare's Sister, Primordial Sea Devil, and Steffi Humboldt all rolled into one.  

Eve is remembered in all of those names (primordial pronunciations?):

Leif Erickson → eif

Victoria Woolf → v or ia W

Sea Devil → ev

Or, alternatively, the word evil:

eif Er

ia Wool

evil

I'm not sure if any of what I'm saying even makes sense.

After the Fall

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 1 January 2015. It should be noted that, since 1 November 2014, all Art's emails have originated from Farthington's account.



I love all the new show ideas, and July 4th could be doable for me if it would be possible to work out as much as we can virtually and split rehearsals between TC and Lansing or a midpoint.

Here's what the Fourth of July concert evokes for me:

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

What if is ambiguous whether this show is even a show?

What if the performance is Arthur's attempt to "build that dome in air"?

Maybe the show is Arthur struggling through a lifetime of conflicts in a moment? It could be as authentically 1976 as 2015 and every other year.

I'm reminded of a clip of an avant garde 60's Hamlet in which Hamlet stood in the center of all the characters of the play who danced and moaned and writhed around him. Really, what I'm talking about is a second in a series of Evenings with Arthur White. We can communicate a lot about the character without spelling out much, and it could have the ballet elements you discussed. The mascot could evolve throughout the show, and the scrubs could fade in and out of other costumes. At least Father and I could handle costume shifts.

We've had debates about the setting of the Concert for Iceland. Maybe the Concert has somehow become Arthur's dome in air: a type of metaphysical battleground he must properly order for reasons he doesn't fully comprehend.

Maybe Arthur Miller's After the Fall would work as a template.

Epitome of the American Dream

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 5 July 2014.

I wonder if Stan could have been accused of murder in the cement burial of a worker (or someone else--Jimmy Hoffa?).

A line of grates cover the outflow of Savoyard Creek

And the Witkowski name--previously an irreproachable pillar of the community, an epitome of the American Dream--was suffering. This is all during the time of the riots, so it could be suffering for multiple reasons (and I think you've already mentioned that is was, even among the members of the Polish community).

Will always thought his father had achieved definitive success, that his father had paid all the appropriate dues and that his legacy was therefore assured inside the American "covenant."

Maybe Stan was killed before a verdict was pronounced.

But this would definitely set Will in motion, attempting to achieve the decisive ascendency owed his family by the American Dream--leveraging everything, sacrificing everything, risking everything. He is kind of like "Happy" at the end of Death of a Salesman speaking of his father: "He had a good dream. It's the only dream you can have--to come out the number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I'm gonna win it for him."

Depending on the circumstances surrounding the murder and the victim, I like Stan ending up in the Savoyard Creek, which was buried as a sewer in 1836, became Black Bottom, and then was partially paved over by I-375. I'm sure there is still a canal in Detroit's sewer system that follows its flow. These primordial rivers persist despite the concrete.

Here's the video about the woman who gives tours of Detroit's buried rivers. Also, check out these pictures of other rivers that have been forced underground due to the dominant concrete.



Pretty spooky!

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!

Better Men Than You Have Tried, Dumbass

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

You know I'm a big Arthur Miller fan, but I'd say the great tragedy of all times is that we're made to be saints and most of us don't even realize that's our calling. Or that it's an attainable calling.

I think the shift from classical tragedy to 20th-century tragedy is the increased chance of a 20th-century person attaining greatness. Older tragedy took for granted a world with limited social mobility; the American dream as it appeared in the 20th century made everybody feel like he could be a king, which meant we needed a tragedy for the common man.

Badass?

The older common man knew he couldn't rise above his station, so the point of older tragedy was better men than you have tried, dumbass.

20th-century America propped up more people toward tragic heights and I think Miller chronicled that problem beautifully. But the reason I'm so interested in the Catholic morality play as a form is because it aims at the bigger tragedy: the tragedy of missed sainthood.

Also, Catholic morality plays traditionally haven't been that great, so I like the idea of trying to make a good one.

I'm not dismissing McLuhan's arches and I get that we ourselves are perhaps challenging our own stations and assuming a type of grandeur that might be delusional (although your songs rank right up there with my favorites from more famous greats) and that documenting all this creates an interesting metanarrative. But the core of the tragedy is the unwitting conspiracy to pull Arthur away from his sainthood. And the second layer is that all the characters are missing out on their own sainthood.

But since we're dealing with decades in the lives of most of the characters, we do have the chance to turn the tragic elements comic. Not in the sense of ha ha, but in the sense that tragedy can scare us all into the higher reality of the comic.

Reality is comic: we are mostly born into average circumstances but with divine gifts, we find some success through an unsharpened use of those gifts, and then we misuse the gifts in a way that threatens to destroy everything we are. Then, hopefully, we wake up, recognize that the gifts come from God, accept His rule over the world, and choose to be agents of His light instead of our own.

Then He provides the ultimate Deus ex Machina through the crucifixion and resurrection, and we find the ultimate happy ending of salvation.

That Ocean of Flames

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

I guess I'm more cynical than you are (and impressed by the book I mentioned).

Last Judgment (detail) by Hans Memling

I would continue to consider the idea, though, from the artistic perspective. As I said, it has already figured prominently as a motif. One possibility would be that Arthur had a vision of his father and/or mother. One of the more disturbing visions that occurs again and again in Fr. Schouppe's book is when a friend or family member is seen in Hell's torment. Hell seems to be an all too common destination for people.

If this is true, many of us are in serious danger of experiencing something way, way, way more agonizing than anything on this earth and--oh yeah--for all eternity. Here's one from the book, which is highly readable due to it being more or less a catalogue of shocking accounts:

St. Peter Damian speaks of a worldling who lived only for amusement and pleasure. To no purpose was he advised to think of his soul; to no purpose was he warned that, by following the life of the wicked rich man, he should reach the same end; he continued his guilty life unto death. He had scarcely ceased to live when an anchorite (hermit) knew of his damnation. He saw him in the midst of a fiery pool; it was an immense pool like a sea, in which a great number of people, howling with despair, were plunged. They were striving to gain the shore, but it was guarded by pitiless dragons and demons, who prevented them from coming near it, and hurled them far back into that ocean of flames.

Could Stan Witkowski be in Hell? Perhaps Will has a vision of that down in the tunnels as he tries to retrace his steps and figure out who he killed. That could have some interesting resonances. We could create a Lazarus and the rich man type story, with the buried worker going to Heaven (not "Abraham's bosom" as in the original) and Stan Witkowski going to Hell. Could Stan be in Hell and Lena be in Purgatory, with Lena returning to warn Arthur about her deathbed pact with Will because, from her now-eternal perpective, she sees where it leads. I like at least one character to go Hell, and not just for being an out-and-out villain, like Farthington or perhaps Steffi. Perhaps Stan followed the American Dream straight to Hell.

In the book, the damned are able to do actual damage to the living. For example, one licentious man came back to a rich woman he had been flirting with and grabbed her wrist, burning it all the way down to the bone, such that she had to wear a wide bracelet the rest of her days. These damned are not trying to save anyone usually, they're just pissed as Hell (literally!).

As Miller puts it, "the possibility of victory must be present in tragedy." I think the inverse of that statement is also true: "the possibility of defeat must be present in comedy." As you've mentioned before, you want this to be a comedy, but we need some darker shadows to ground and provide relief for the redemptive elements.

Tragic Hero is the Best Option Left

Leda, Zeus, Helen, Clytemnestra, Castor, and Pollux

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 16 June 2014.

As you know, I have the same problem as you do.

I want to convince you of one difference: we have made that tendency of ours part of the project itself. Please read this post by Bob Lefsetz. I can't help but think we are the exact people he is describing here.

Now, no one wants to be the one who goes on one of those singing shows and finds out for the first time in their lives this shocking fact: "I am not only not going to make it but I am also absolutely terrible. The difference between that and us is the total lack of consciousness. Consciousness does seem to be a prerequisite for art, although there may be some counterexamples, like Neil Young for instance.

Of course, all this rationalization is the kind of thing that the protagonist does before being dragged back down into the chorus, back into the primordial, dithyrambic dance. Maybe we have nothing that individuates us from this formless mass of wannabes who refuse to accept their role as "consumers as opposed to creators" (Lefsetz).

We've been talking a lot about Death of a Salesman lately. While not my all-time favorite, the play (and its companion editorial for the New York Times!) is somewhat prophetic of this era in which virtual reality becomes more real than real reality (cf. McLuhan and Baudrillard).

Imagine if Willy had all the tools of the virtual age at his disposal; how much more quickly might he lose touch with reality and plunge headlong toward his demise!

For better or worse, ours is an age where the common man is seized more than ever with a "total compulsion to evaluate himself justly" (Miller). Rightly or wrongly, many in our society believe they have greatness within them, that they must be famous. We have huge, outsized ideas of ourselves and our place in the larger scheme of things.

But before we despair of our quixotic ambitions, consider that this is the very heroism that Arthur Miller thought should be accessible to the common man.

Arthur Miller describes the hero's tragic flaw as "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." As I drill into my students ad nauseam, Willy Loman is the hero of Death of a Salesman, not Charlie or Bernard as they often think! Many of them are stuck in a medieval morality play paradigm wherein a character's downfall = punishment for sin. Not so!

As Miller continues, "Only the passive, only those who accept their lot without active retaliation, are 'flawless.' Most of us are in that category."

So back to our little project. Do I need to explain to you the artistic imperative of building castles in the air (cf. The Master Builder, Thoreau)? We are using these electronic tools in the proper way: to achieve tragic status in the quickest possible way! C'mon now! What would Hilda Wangel say?!

Now, I want to assure you that I am working on the songs. I don't want you to think that there is no substance at all. But I'm intrigued with this idea of NOT building from the ground up. Starting on the ground is a challenge to my dignity. I start with the "image of my rightful status" and go from there!

And, no, this doesn't end well.

But I would much rather end up a tragic hero than a coward or villain or member of the chorus. I guess if I could have my druthers, I'd be an epic hero but, according to Hesiod, Zeus put an end to that age with Helen. Or maybe he already had the idea in mind with Leda.

Tragic hero is the best option left.