#like it’s giving thucydides. shut up

[the-casbah-way]

studying sparta 😀🥳👅🕺

having to rake through heaps of academic papers written by crusty old men with no critical thinking skills who insist on rimming other crusty old men with no critical thinking skills who died 2000 years ago ‼️🤨🤯🏃

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: I love your book reviews under the banner ‘Treat Your S(h)elf’ - nice play on words. You have such a wide and cultured range of interests that I really learn something new. Do you read poetry? What are your favourite poets? What are you currently reading?

I love reading poetry because as the poet Robert Frost put it succinctly, “Poetry is when emotion has found its thought, and thought has found words”.

Poets are before anything else in the words of W.H. Auden, “a person who is madly in love with language” and language is the bedrock of any culture and society and ultimately civilisation. When you truly think about it, poetry is meaningless when it has been left to gather dust on a piece of paper. It is simply a memory of an idea conjured up by a writer with something to say. Poetry must be read, it needs to be experienced because it keeps these ideas burning. These meaningful concepts about the nature of life, death and everything. Every time a person reads a poem, a new bright spark emerges in that person’s head. A new way of thinking, a new way of understanding. That is exactly why poetry must be read because it is the essence of our language.

The reasons I personally read poetry, you ask? Here are some reasons I can think of from the top of my head others are too personal to reveal:

I read poetry because poetry is thoughts that breathe and words that burn. And I read poetry because it is what happens when my mind stops working , and for a moment, all I do is feel. This is good therapy for me as I’m not the most openly emotional or prone to displays of emotion in public. It’s just not how I was built. Poetry helps one to feel. So some poems remain so close to my heart.

I remember when I was about to go on my first tour to Afghanistan I was quite calm and cold blooded because that was and is my nature. My father - who served with distinction in uniform like his father and grand father, and great-grandfather before him - was always proud and supportive of me being the black sheep of the family as the only girl in our family going through Sandhurst and now I was off to the last embers of a war in Afghanistan that everyone had forgotten about. He was concerned - like the rest of my family - like any loving parent about what might happen. But he didn’t question my professionalism or my abilities so he didn’t give me that lecture instead he thrust in my hand both classical literature (Thucydides and Homer in particular) and the works of selected poets. He told me poetry will save your life. He wasn’t anxious about my physical safety he was thinking about my soul. For what happens during war and what comes after if and when I come home. Long story short: poetry saved my life.

By nature I am restless to an incredible annoying degree. I fear being bored. I find it hard to sit and be idle. Poetry is my balm for boredom.

I am incredibly busy and I work punishing long hours. Time is premium. People make demands on me and my time. Poems are like super-condensed stories, and are therefore usually short enough to be read over your morning tea/coffee. In this fast-paced world we live in, sometimes poems are a better alternative to reading fully-fledged novels, or even short stories and poetry gives you the chance to continue to expand your literary horizons even during the busiest times in your life. And becoming more widely read is an incredible way to ensure you are continuously growing, and learning, while becoming a more cultured individual at the same time. There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you and when I read some of those beautiful pieces of poetry by my favourite poets it's like the paper is filled with the breathings of my heart.

The most frightening thing is people I know stop growing culturally after they leave university and get on with the business of life i.e. careers, marriage and family. Once on that treadmill they don’t or can’t stop. They are unable to step off and take a breath. Poetry gives you a breather and helps you to re-centre your priorities.  The more you read poetry, the greater your quest for knowledge awakens. Doorways will open inside your mind and unlock your hidden potential for a greater understanding of life. Anyone who reads poetry often can connect with this conclusive sentence formation that defines your very questionable outlook on life.

I also believe poetry allows us to be less rigid in our thinking with an authentic, personal touch. When I read poems, nothing is often straightforward. Every poem has a meaning hiding under it, but it is blocked by a myriad of literary devices such as metaphors and symbolism. It is important to be able to think more figuratively because it allows you to understand ideas and perspectives in a more abstract and possibly more meaningful way. Sometimes I find that having a single page of beautifully crafted words can be enough of a distraction to spark a sudden creative leap in my brain. There have been many times where I've miraculously thought of ways to solve a problem (big or small) purely because reading poetry forced me to think differently from the usual day-to-day thoughts required for general life.

Poetry is best read when you’re hidden from the outside world, in a quiet little spot, somewhere away from all the hustle and bustle. It is increasingly hard to do just that. I have so many demands on my time and limited space but I force myself to carve out the time and space to do this - one must try. As a rule I switch off all social media (not that I have many to begin with but most definitely my phone). The best time for me to carve out time is when I’m traveling as I’m able to shut out everything around me. Usually when I’m waiting for a flight in the business class departure lounge it’s quiet and not too many people to distract me and there is usually a delay to the flight. When I check into a hotel I feel a disconnect to the world around me. I feel like an alien. Poetry helps me to connect again. Poetry calms and focuses the mind. With poetry I can almost reset my day because it’s not just a time zone I have to get used to but also a state of mind - and especially if I find myself being unproductive too!

I often escape Paris and go into the countryside. I love going on walks, hikes, mountaineering, and other outdoor pursuits. It allows me the space and time to read poetry and reflect in peace. And of course I snatch time before I go to sleep to read a poem if I am not too tired.

The point is that I need the head space to absorb the poem and take some time to work out the meaning of the full entity. I try not swallow a whole book in one sitting, instead I read a few poems and leave the book until the next day or a few days depending on my schedule. Sometimes, you can read a poem again and you will find other meanings or pick up on information that you couldn’t see before. That’s poetry, you create the film, journey or picture inside your mind from reading the words on the page.

As for my favourite poets this is of course is a very personal choice. I didn’t read English at university but rather my academic interests were Classics and History, so I profess a very paltry poetic palate. Still, I’m grateful to those friends more versed than I to point me to other poets. So I do my best to keep an open mind and try and read poetry recommended by others or some thing that captures my eye when I browse through book stores or read it as a passing reference in a book I am reading. 

Different poets and poems are discovered at one stage of life and where I happened to live in the world and only take on another meaning when re-read them at another stage. So I tend to re-visit poets I used to read as a teen and then see how it resonates now.

The majority of my poetic readings are in my native English and Norwegian languages but because I have varying degrees of fluency in other languages (because I grew up there for instance) I love widening my poetic palate. One of my regrets is not knowing Japanese and Chinese to a sufficient degree to really read poetry in those languages even if I have basic fluency in literature and everyday conversation. So reading Ezra Pound is one way in English to appreciate these Eastern poetic influences. I’m also ashamed to admit that I only know a woeful smattering of words in Scotiish Gaelic - my Anglo-Scots father knows it fairly well but even he struggles - and really I must find time in the future to learn more of it because it’s such a fascinating language (not least because it’s also dying out and that is tragic).

So below is an eclectic and random list from the top of my head and in no real order of preference:

• Homer (Greek) • Sappho (Greek) • Rumi (Farsi) • Mirza Ghalib (Urdu and Farsi) • John Milton • John Donne • William Shakespeare • Dante (Italian) • Robert Burns • William Wordsworth • Samuel Taylor Coleridge • William Blake • John Keats • Emily Dickinson • Christina Rosetti • Gerald Manley Hopkins • Walt Whitman • Oscar Wilde • W.B. Yeats • Rudyard Kipling • Wilfred Owen • Alfred Tennyson �� Rainer Maria Rilke (German) • Cavafy (Greek) • T.S. Eliot • Hilda Doolittle • Marianne Moore • Sylvia Plath • W. H. Auden • Olaf H. Hauge (Norwegian) • Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (Norwegian) • Aslaug Vaa (Norwegian) • Rolf Jacobsen (Norwegian) • Sarojini Naidu (Hindi) • Gulzar (Hindi)

Living in Paris I tend to read more French poetry these days. By osmosis it helps me appreciate the French language and French culture even more.

• Charles Baudelaire. • Paul Verlaine • Jacques Prévert • Arthur Rimbaud • Alphonse de Lamartine • Alfred de Musset • Paul Valéry • Paul Eluard • Jean Genet • Françoise Villon

Poetry is an art that combines the essence of life through the fabrication of reality. Poets challenge and nourish me with their wisdom, philosophy, love and journeys beyond what used to be the limits of my own creative imagination. They push my boundaries ever so more. In doing so they grow my mind for understanding, my heart for empathy, and my soul for wisdom. It would hard to disagree with Robert Frost who sums up what poetry means to me, “a poem begins in delight, and ends in Wisdom”.

Thanks for your question

[alethiometry]

Character simping breakdown for our man Brasidas,,, GO 👀

(sorry for the delay, was watching blaseball while gathering my thoughts) *cracks my knuckles* HERE WE GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

How I feel about this character

SEXY BOIIIIII

in all seriousness, i think brasidas is one of the coolest characters in odyssey not just because of his absolutely fucking legendary intro scene, but also because he���s... not actually that well-developed of a character? all we really know about him is that he’s your friend, and he’s also spartan, and also he’s not as bloodthirsty or warmongering as other spartans you encounter. but beyond that, and despite him being more involved in the latter half of the main storyline than other characters, we don’t really see that much more of his motivations or character development until we see him again in the underworld. there’s a distinct difference between game-brasidas and fanon-brasidas, and it’s hard to talk about one completely divorced from the other. especially as someone who writes a lot of fic from his pov—which, honestly, is 99% just shit i made up because ubisoft basically said “here’s this badass dude, here is why you should like him, fill in the rest of the blanks yourself” and boy....... We As A Fandom Did Just That.

basically what i’m trying to say is, brasidas is basically everyone’s collective-yet-distinct OC at this point.

also, i’m putting this here because i don’t know where else i would say it but it needs to be said: at the end of the arkadia questline, if you successfully spare lagos, brasidas gets SO smug and passive-aggressive when he thanks you, IN FRONT OF MYRRINE, for seeing things his way. and honestly?!?!? FUNNIEST SHIT. LOVE THAT FOR HIM.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

KASSANDRA!!! although that’s a given. also lagos and anthousa and, honestly, myrrine. i was only reminded of the latter by @winedark which i completely forgot about until just this morning, which is why i didn’t list brasidas in that post i did yesterday about myrrine. oops.

also thucydides definitely had a big fat crush on the guy.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

also lagos! i just like their relationship in any form, honestly.

i also have a headcanon that brasidas is buddies with kalibos (the dude from the sidequest where you do a bunch of shrooms) and together they form the Chill Spartans Coalition. actually they may be the only chill dudes in all of sparta, now that thaletas has (in my game, at least) more or less defected to go live on mykonos, and lagos no longer actually lives in sparta.

My unpopular opinion about this character

okay soooooo i have a few hot takes, here we go:

1. as much as i like to joke about ubisoft being cowards, i... actually don’t mind that we can’t romance him in the game. not because i don’t ship him with kassandra/alexios (i think we all know where i stand on that), but because i simply do not trust ubisoft to write their romance well. my stance is pretty much: leave it non-canon, because fans write it better. and because it gives us less restrictions on how the relationship develops.

2. i don’t really mind that he got killed off in amphipolis. by that point in the game i couldn’t care less about hIsToRiCaL aCcUrAcY (esp given how perikles went out) so that’s not why i don’t mind... i think by this point i’ve read so many fix-it fics that it has, effectively, fixed it for me. (it being watching deimos skewer him like a fucking kebab.) basically, having him die at amphipolis gives fandom more opportunity for both happily-ever-after fix-its that are frankly better than whatever ubisoft could have written, AND tragic angsty sad fics that are my ultimate guilty pleasure.

3. i loved his character development in the hades dlc. this might be the only instance i don’t dunk on ubisoft’s writing in this entire post, but i don’t feel as if they did him dirty at all; frankly i’m extremely impressed that they threw in a bit of nuance to his character and his spartan upbringing, considering how the main game is basically pro-sparta propaganda that erases or masks actual wartime atrocities. like, if they’re going to talk about war crimes in a way that engages the player, then yeah, it should be with the dude who you actually spent time developing a meaningful friendship with over the course of the game. and boy does that dlc looooooooove to hammer home how good friends you are!!! god. also: if you tell him to stay in the underworld, he has a job! good for him! i bet he plays poker with charon on fridays.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

obviously it would have been great if brasidas were a romanceable character, if only because then we’d have more material to make gifsets of. still, at the end of the day, i still stand by what i said above. but that also doesn’t mean i’ll ever shut up about ubisoft’s cowardice in denying us the opportunity to peg him halfway to mount olympus.

anyway, back to the question/prompt at hand: i... actually don’t know? like i said in response to the first question, it’s really fun to have such a loosely-characterized npc to the point where we can pretty much write/interpret him in any way we want, and it’s hard for me to want more canon material that may restrict that.

name a character and watch me ramble my way into simping for them

[kappasigmalife]

Eternal Purgatory: Chp 3 first impressions aren’t always key

Eternal Purgatory: Chp 3  first impressions aren’t always key

 As chris opens the door to what he believes his is his room, he catches a glimpse of two girls making out on a bed. Shocked chris looks at the door only to see that its Paul’s room and his is next door labeled as 2. Paul goes up and tells him to knock before opening anything only for chris to stare dead in his eyes.

“Really, I wasn’t even told what my room was, but yes I must say I probably should of knocked before seeing what I can only assume is a paranormal three-way with your friends over here.” Paul looks at chris and tells him to go get some rest before someone or something sets him off. Chris likes to reiterate that after the shit he saw there isn’t anything that can tick him off again. Paul takes his phone out and sends chris a pic telling him to enjoy the view. As Chris opens the pic message his eyes begin bleeding dropping the phone and nearly vomiting asking what shit Paul always plans for.

“PAUL, YOU SICK FUCK, WHAT IS THAT?”

Paul responds that he prepared for just the occasion in case Chris was gonna be dick to him.

“that picture, is robbys ass, have fun with that image, in the mean time, I got two girls to please.” Paul closes his door leaving chris to question everything that just transpired and then looks at his phone again, this time a close up of a blonde hairy ass, making chris look away and run to the kitchen. He starts tearing it apart muttering to himself.

“come one, where is it, where is it, god knows I really need it.” Reefer walks in and asks Chris what he’s doing tearing apart the cabinets. Chris explains that paul sent him some pics and he trying to find the bleach to wash his eyes out with. Reefer just looks and contemplates the images in his head.

“trust me Chris, nothing will ever get that image out, to this day I still see them in my eyes.”

Chris looks away and finds a bottle of rum which he partakes in about 5 heavy shots before going to his room to sleep. All the while he cant seem to get any shut eye cause of Paul’s incessant snoring, while looking at his phone getting more pics of Robby’s ass. The following morning he wakes up to find Helen making coffee ready for the first day of their classes, as it turns out they will be taking western civilization with professor Thucydides and Chris remarks how it might as well be a poetry class.

“the freaking guy always overdid it on the context of history, it sounds like a terrible movie rather than historical events transpiring, he talks about feelings and imagery, whereas the only thing that matters is who they are, what they do, and why their important, I mean can we please just…. Oh my god im too fucking tired for this.”

Helen looks at him curious why he should have some coffee before Robby comes in taking some fro himself.

“Listen Chris, it’ll be okay, you got your brains and you rock in history and literature classes, I bet by the end of the semester every student will my begging to get help from you.” Robby interjects saying that Chris can’t be that smart if he died in a freezer, cracking jokes at his expense.

“What’s the matter, a little frostbite hurt your feelings, lighten up Chrisper, it’s just purgatory, we know full well that your death was from stupidity.” Paul appears out of Robby’s phone grabbing the coffee in his hands and cracking back at him

“Yeah see robby, that’s where your wrong, cause you died watching a marathon of one piece from beginning to end, all 700 episodes and without sleep.” Chris just stares at robby

“So you died cause you were a weaboo and had no life, good to hear, now I’m grabbing coffee then heading to campus, don’t want to be late.” Chris heads out the door walking to campus as Paul sends more pictures of Robby’s ass to him, this time chris admires them knowing that each angle is different almost like they were posed. Although the admiration is nice, chris once again bumps into a chubby goth kid Chris embarrassed apologizes and looks and sees it’s the same person from orientation.

“Oh, sorry I didn’t mean to do that again.” The boy just glares at him looking at the spilled coffee all over him.

“Thanks again for ruining my clothes, guess im doing to class looking like a slob.” Chris looks at the massive stain of coffee and scratches his head, then pulls out a black zip up fleece he got from his room in case it got too chilly in the morning.

“it might be snug but itll be better than the stained wear you got on, go ahead and keep it I got others at home, im late for class.”

The boy looks at the sweatshirt and puts it on commenting its labeled a XL, even though Chris looks no more than a large. He gets to campus and sits in the back of the classroom seeing Chris sitting next to Helen and sees the teacher approach him.

Professor Thucydides asks chris to help some of the students in the class considering his talkent in life for history and note taking, although chris agrees he looks back as the boy ducks in his books as the teacher calls his name.

“BRENDAN, you again forget that this is western civilization, not eastern drama, get the right textbook.” Brendan looks around embarrassed by everyone laughs with students making comments around him

“way to call out the new kid, like he didn’t fit in already.” “no wonder he sits in the back, trying not to be noticed by the crowds.” “I heard he was a transfer from a different country, whats he doing up here.” As Brendan  tries making an attempt to give a reason for not having the right book (he actually forgot to buy it), chris raises his hand and tries explaining.

“professor that was my fault actually, as I was walking I failed to put my phone down while walking and bumped into Brendan on the way to class, I spilled my coffee all over his book and it got ruined, I will ensure he gets a replacement from my own pocket.”

Thucydides apologies to Brendan and tells Chris to be careful around the campus as many will not watch where they go. The class begins the tale of the discovery of rome made by the brothers Remus and Romulus which chris finds more fascinating than everyone. helen nudging him calling him out as a history nerd.

“seriously its just history you read about this all the time, whats the difference between this and now.”

chris responds with a glimmer in his eyes and a smile on his face.

“hey I’m passionate about mythology and lore, its my favorite thing about  class.” Brendan looks at the board and rolls his eyes knowing full well that the textbook  is totally wrong.

“oh right yes Romulus was the eldest and remus was the little brother, they conqurored rome cause of a wolf mother breastfeeding them, what a load of shit.”

Thucydides looks at Brendan and asks if he said something was wrong.

Brendan looks at him and tells him the history is wrong and that none of that stuff was accurate to the true history that happened.

“There’s no way that all happened its makes no sense at all and I should know im…. Im adept at knowing this stuff.”

He covers his mouth and hears Chris from the back.

“what were you there or something, these are mythical werewolves controlling the elements, the only way to know for sure would either be to have been there or you were blood related,  which I highly doubt considering the amount of humans in the world.”

Brendan slumps in his chair and looks at the tag on the fleece chris gave him.

“oh his names chris, like the patron saint of travelers, I gottaa ay, you’re a nerd, but you have a hell of a smile.” The student next to him looks at him in a state of shock.

Brendan responds to his look.

“uh what’s your deal?”

“dude, you’ve been talking to yourself the entire time class has been going on, we heard everything you just said.” Brendan shuts his mouth and rushes out the classroom with chris looking back as he looks at a roster of students he going be tutoring during the semester.

“Oh he’s going to be a peach isn’t he.”

As chris starts walking out a young man comes up asking if he wants to join him for a coffee at the blue moon café down the road from campus. Chris obliges and looks at his watch, he rushes out to find Brendan to give him notice of his tutoring. Brendan looks at himself in the mirror and notices his eyes turning.

“shit no no no, I thought the drops worked, fucking pharmacy always has to screw me.”

He hears chris calling his name coming into the restroom and ducts into a stall as chris walks in looking for him.

“hey dude, I know you probably had Gregory hall food for breakfast, but I wanted to let you know im gonna be tutoring you, so don’t get so worked up okay, I’ll help with your preparedness.” “Yeah sure, just let me dump in peace.” Chris rolls his eyes and walks out.

That evening chris is preparing for his coffee dressing cleanly but knowing its just something small. Paul remarks hes getting worked up over nothing and that he should be chill like he is. Chris remarks that Paul is far from chill this morning.

“those 180 ass shots of Robby beg to differ, talk about vindictive.” Paul just looks at him and retorts that there could have been worse stuff.

“Trust me I could of done so much worse, you got off easy.” Chris shrugs it off and goes to the blue moon café to meet the young man a little muscular with a blonde goatee. Chris sits down and orders a hazelnut coffee done light with plenty of creamer, while the young man has a simple iced coffee with milk. The two sit down and talk with the young man looking at this phone.

“so I hear you’re a new kid but got tons of talent in class work, that impressive.” Chris smiles thanking him for the compliment trying to change the subject.

“Yeah always was a good student but I don’t normally like talking about class on a date, so where are you from.” The boy dodges the question immediately saying that Chris could be a big help to the class if he shared notes. Chris looks at him with his eye brow raised stating that he thinks people should copy their own notes rather than be explicit and copy everything else just to pass.

“if people want my help they can sign up for tutoring, if anything else its going to help raise the grade standard and I get paid more.” The young boy opens his mouth saying.

“look ill make it worth your while, im sure you haven’t had any in a long time, so help me with homework and ill give you some payment another way.” Chris gets upset and responds with a standard scowl

“you mean your offering sex, for grades, uh yeah no thanks I thought you wanted me for me, not my grades.” The boy responds

“well I wouldn’t go for you anyway, your plain and country is a terrible look in general, I need meat on bones firm and tight, glistening hair and well you don’t got that, but I need grades so what do you think.” Chris stands up taking his coffee.

“so your looking for prince charming in a world of mediocrity, good luck with that, and also I got more value in myself not to whore out for grades, you want that, talk to Gilgamesh, later.” chris goes home and straight to the kitchen getting a drink all the while paul coming in asking what happened. When he explains paul jokes about already knowing and rolls a joint for the two to share on the front porch.

Brendan looks out his window contemplating why Chris defended him twice that day and sniffs his fleece as his eyes change colors.

“mmmm, he smells like hazelnut.”

[jamesdazell]

RELIGION VS ART, LITERATURE, CULTURE - (Or, How Literature Literally Lost The Plot)

1. Literature ~ I

The origin of the aesthetics of a novel are found in the Gospels, the stories of the Old Testament, Augustinian confession, Plato dialogues (who was a Proto-Christian), comedy, and the moral fable. I wondered for so long why the best novelists were the ones so well acquainted with the Bible. The novel is a thoroughly Judeo-Christian work, and since Christianity is reformation of Judaism, and Islam is the reformation of Judaism through Christian scholarship, the tradition is Islamic too. Twentieth century cinema, a practical development of the novel (not plays) have dysfunctional characters who suffer from themselves usually isolated by their neurosis and essentially are imploding across the story line. Gangster films for instance, horror films, take pleasure in pain and suffering in the sense of violence in medieval passion plays retelling the crucifixion if Christ. The pleasure in suffering. In the degeneration of a man. The very emblem of Christianity is the dead Christ on a cross. Christ who suffers for our sins. It’s unsurprising that the king directors of the mob film genre, Martin Scorsese, Brian de Palma, and Francis Ford Coppola are all Catholic. The genre springs right out of it, and the audience revelled in its violent pains as well as a joy in pessimism, ugliness, and self-deprication, as well follow their descent in to madness and disorder. Not at all like in the tragedies where we take pleasure in the strength in suffering, wisdom on account of suffering. In cinema and the novel, the characters suffer often from their own awful psychological traits (the dysfunctional psychological story is the confession before God and a quest for a redemption, the judgement before God’s eyes, a Catholic guilt), that one suffers for having sinned. Outside of the Bible this also belongs in comedy, where the idiot suffers from ignorance, and in history where the person is said to have fallen to ruin by a lack of prudence. But as time went on, comedy, history, and Christianity all merged. Worst of all, that we’re supposed to take pity on the characters. Pity: the bleakest, heaviest, weakening effect on the body, mind, and spirit there is; and yet a Christian virtue. Pity is far worse than sadness. It’s a degenerating quality that weighs down the spirit and kills off joy. There are films where the stronger our pity for the hero is, the greater we’re to perceive their heroism is even more Christian. And the story is built along the action driven by specifically Christian values and concepts of the world. Fabrications which don’t exist in the actual world. Does the plot have a dualism of good versus evil? The moral good in resentiment towards the moral evil? Does it drive by the foundation value of Christianity: resentiment, and the Christian concept of evil, a figure of immorality, which does not exist, but has hithero been the make-up of every great being on Earth. More a Julius Caesar than a Jesus Christ. One, who possessed every life affirmative instinct possible, the other, the most life degenerating instincts.

Instincts which are also in the foundation of the novel. It’s said the first novel is Cervantes’ Don Quixote. If so, that explicitly proves it: Cervantes a Catholic, written in prison (a hermit existence), a comedy written as a history, that attempts to moralise its audience, written episodically like the picaresque books. The practice of writing a novel requires a hermitage, unphysical hibernation, a kind of discarding of the body, in to an asceticism. Shutting off the world for a writing desk, and life for the imagination. The novel a Christian art form through and through. The novelist becomes confessionally introspective, but doesn’t reveal it through the dialogue, but through the psychological study of its character in the same way that Christians were supposed to keep a diary to observe and critique their moral thoughts. The novel is a really weird form of literature, it’s a medley of many low styles of writing, that don’t even really fit together. 

Even the style of language in a novel is light with a rhythm and cadence that derives from comedies like Menander and histories of Herodotus, instead of the mightier line of epic or tragedy, or even the histories written by Thucydides and Livy. Found from Aristophanes, Plato, Menander, through Apuleius, right through to Cervantes, to Tolstoy, to Garcia-Marquez. The prose style of the novel reached its perfection in the writer Leo Tolstoy. But the Latin elegiac poetry and Roman Latin prose is the best style of writing of all writers ever. It’s Tolstoy but from a totally superior level that completely detoxes Tolstoy from writing. 

Time in a novel never stands still, it shifts back and forth, abruptly, as if the author could never grip a moment. In plays and poetry the matter at hand is gripped with intensity. Time in a novel is always transient without ever putting us in the moment. I have to go to epic poems, plays, and poetry just to hold on to a moment, to really feel the weight of a moment. The plot of novels never keep me gripped because they don’t even grip themselves. There’s more done in a single soliloquy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet than in an entire novel. I want to feel the moment that the character is in, the pressure that is upon him, the choice at the crisis, his own sense of himself, his relationship to his existence, other characters, his decisions, and the universe. I have to feel that the character is involved in something, in some crisis which makes the drama - but I don’t in a novel because the moment disappears and I’m given a new one before I’ve had the chance to accept it.

The playwright and the scriptwriter are both superior practices to the novelist - not to say anything of their content. Although the poet is the supreme writer of all, the playwright has a greater task than the poet, because they present life, the relationships between people, society, and the world at large. There was a time when the poet, playwright, philosopher were one thing and all came out in the same work. That kind of writer remains the most supreme of all. I don’t think a writer like that would even recognise a novelist without a great burst of laughter. How disagreeable the Western novel would have been to Shakespeare, Aeschylus, and Homer. Playwrighting and poetry is more akin to music than it is even its own ugly sibling, the novel.

Tragic heroes seem as though they’re similar but they’re a total opposite. They’re supremely great characters, better than we meet in real life, who suffer from a superfluity of greatness, isolated by their superabundance of energy towards a particular habit that breaks them free from traditions of the world around them, they are explosive across the story line. Essentially they are beaten down by the world that come upon them by feeling this new thing is a threat. “Greatness wins hate” writes Aeschylus in his tragedy The Orestia. Not one tragedy asks you to pity it. The heroes are strength in the face of danger. Pleasure of will to power in the face of pain. Defiant in the face of morality. Self-insistent, an anti-hero, neither good nor evil but beyond both. Tragedies see Christianity as beneath it. The novel (and thereby cinema) is just a comedy we take pity for; a comedy we take all too seriously.

~ II

We perpetuate our values, beliefs, interpretations of the world through the stories that we tell, and the culture we share among an audience. Our own Western tradition of story telling comes from the Abrahamic religions that the West had absorbed for centuries. It’s hard to divert away from them, as the tradition of all our story-telling concepts seem to originate there. Similarly, the stories that are told around the world have their origins in the traditional and prevalent religions of that region. 

In the Western world, wherever you’re telling a story its more than likely that, even if you don’t have to think about it, the story you’re telling has its roots in Abrahamic religion’s values, beliefs, interpretations, concepts, simply because for two-thousand years the West has been predominately divided up by the three Abrahmic faiths. And when we tell a story we are really just interpreting these values, beliefs, ideas, interpretations, goals etc. we are only articulate these through a story. Sunsan Sontag expressed her view of this in a conversation with John Berger, saying that there are no stories. Stories only happen where there are writers. That life doesn’t happen in stories, life merely happens, the universe merely happens, and events merely happen in the infinity of events; and it;s our story-telling that isolates the scenario, constructs their beginning and end, places a perspective of value on to it, and gives it a meaning. That there are no stories until the story-teller makes one.  

Anybody can tell a story. It’s ingrained in us how to tell stories. We know how to tell stories through the stories we absorb all the time through the films we see, the stories we are told as children, the video games we play, the way history is told, the books we read, the essays we read, the way the news is told in the media, and the anecdotes we tell each other - we are surrounded by stories. But where do their own techniques of story-telling come from, and are they universal?

Art has always been religion’s greatest obstacle. Not science. Science, in its relinquishing of the senses as empiricism, and an objectivity that goes as far as to deny human significance “i look at the universe as realise how insignificant we are” science says - thereby denying the body and the powerful significance of one’s life - science has so far been religions greatest ally. Art on the otherhand offered people a whole view of life and power over life that religion has had no comparative to. God is not the issue in the 21st Century. You don’t have to be religious in the modern world to be religious. You just have to perpetuate religion’s values and beliefs through culture and stories. When Martin Luther nailed his treatise to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg on 31st October 1517, and the Reformation sprung up which effectively ended the Renaissance (the Golden Age of Man of nearly two millennia), because he felt that the Catholic Church had been corrupted by paganism, culture became Christianity’s best ally. Through culture Christianity became secularised. It poisoned the rivers of culture through a new art movement Romanticism. Although philosophically after the Renaissance philosophers have always held scepticism towards Christianity, Romanticism is effectively secular Christianity. Which itself has all the ingredients of the decadent movement (or, playing in one’s ashes, or the delight in degradation), atheism (or Christianity without God), and nihilism (or, conceptual art.)

So what happens the moment you say, “well, I don’t want to tell an Abrahamic story.” Where do you go then? Say that you’re not Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, say you don’t have an Abrahamic interpretation of life and the world, what if you don’t hold Abrahamic values, how do you not tell a story that is relating these Abrahamic values and life interpretations? Let’s consider that.

~ III

I said in an earlier essay on The Tragic Artist that theatre was an extension of poetry and that theatre pre-dated formal Western philosophy. Both formal Western theatre and formal Western philosophy arose within the same people, relatively soon after each other - so soon, it could be easily argued in reaction to each other. Poetry was once philosophy too, but it divided in to two halves, those who made theatre and those who made philosophy. One of art and one of logical reasoning. Both were interpretations of their own world view and extolled the values and beliefs of that world view.

You have to really work hard to untangle the traditional Western mode of story-telling and not step in to it. Here’s a quick list of what our stories cannot involve:

Redemption (as in the endings of Dostoevsky - after a series of immoral actions, then concluding by the act of praying or converting to religion in an act of vindication of from one’s sinful actions)

Pity - characters going through suffering but we have to pity them. Pity has a weakening effect on strength.

Self-sacrifice for the greater good or out of despair of life (or, the martyrdom of Christ)

Suffering from oneself, or from life, (the ineptitude to live well and the author’s demand that we pity their ineptitude and call it drama)

Love of one’s neighbour (converting from individual to the herd)

The idea that love conquers all (Agape - the God’s love is the highest power and redeemer of humankind)

Hatred of the powerful, the people vs the ruler, what is that if not Moses’ people versus the Egyptian rulers, David versus Goliath, Jesus versus the Romans (Considering the Abrahamic religions have their origins in lowest classes of society, the herds of the oppressed lowest classes that rued their rulers, whilst the Asian religions and Ancient Greek religion have their origin in ancient educated nobility. Hatred of the powerful is a resentment of power, and the qualities of powerful, the great, the strong. Pleb revolt in favour of degenerate qualities because they are weaker and want power. The Bible Romanticises these events, but in reality they turn in to the revolutions that gave us Lenin, Saddam Hussein, Hitler, Napoleon, even Donald Trump. I already expressed that in the essay WE.) Hatred of the powerful is hatred of power itself, hatred of the strong is hatred of strength itself.

Sin and the Ten Commandments -That one’s suffers because on is sinful.

Christian concepts for various incarnations of the devil, daemons, whether incarnate or in possession of the soul. (What is the Devil if not a kind of God? And if there are no Gods, then there is no Devil. And if there is the concept of a Devil, there is within that the concept of a God.)

Good and Evil. The idea of a character of moral evil. Evil having its origin in Judeo-Christianism. The closest to evil in non-Abrahamic story-telling is what is contemptible like Eastern cinema, Epic poems or Tragic theatre. In Western stories where the antagonist of moral evil the character is always one-dimensional, flat, depthless, we’re simply supposed to believe in the idea of Evil and that’s what they are In Eastern and Greek, all the characters were good, only that some were contemptible in character, but for that they had to have character.)

Parallel worlds, alternative reality or religious afterlife. - the belief that there is a better world, a truer world, a paradise world that awaits, and that this world is only a punishment, a training, a testing ground for an afterlife where a person is saved from suffering. Or, the inability to handle life and so invents another “better” one and degrades this only and actual one in to a dream, a fabrication, even - ugh! - a punishment.

The all encompassing one hero fated to save the world - (or, the chosen people appointed by divine origin, in the case of the Jews, or the divine son, the world redeemer, in the case of Christ.)

Immortality of the soul - for that there would need to be an afterlife

Free will (so that one can be accountable for one’s actions and thereby punishable, concept of The Last Judgement, and eternal damnation. For that one would need a soul, an afterlife, and a critic like a God)

Faith - (what is faith but not wanting to believe what is true.)

Hope (Hope is the worst kind of cruelty, for it prolongs the torment. Hope after nothing, will to do it, the willingness is all. when it is willed sufficiently enough it is done.)

~ IV

If you were cancel out the timeline and geography of story-telling in the Judeo-Christian tradition, a huge chunk of time and geography is removed. What’s left is Asia, which has its own religious outlooks of Taoism, Buddhism, Shinto etc and Western geographical world that pre-dates the prevalence of Abrahamic religion, ie. Before the Hebrew Bible and before Christianity was made the official religion of the Roman Empire (which pretty much contained all of Europe).

There were only two places where I could go to to find story-telling that was counter-active to those: Asian (particularly Japan) and the Ancient Greeks (specifically Archaic Greece.) The only two story-telling approaches that arose out of world views that sprang from the educated noble, strong, masterful societies and cultures. Japanese and Archaic Greek story-telling comes out the section society that could have the strongest view of life, that stood before society like a eagle on an eyrie.

In Buddhism, there is no concept of evil, there is no sin. Sin has a Jewish origin. The dichotomy of Good and Evil is a Zarathustran origin. Our morality, a Christian. Buddhism isn’t dualistic like the Abrahamic faiths and Hinduism. It’s monoism. The yin and yang are one, complete, whole, inseperable. The East doesn’t have this influence until the 20th century Westernisation in its story-telling. and western story-telling doesn’t begin to break away from it until its Eastern influence in the 20th century. The tradition of tragedy pre-dates the concepts of good and evil. In Homer both Trojans and Greeks are Good, Hector and Achilles are both good. It’s the same in tragic plays. However, in Japanese stories a person can behave in a way that is contemptable. Disloyalty is contempltable, or irresponsibility of power etc. Instead of Christian morality there are noble codes of the samurai just as there are heroic codes in Homer.

What would be my highest concept of an artist? My highest concept of an artist. That one has gratitude and a confidence in the face of all things. Does not seek either consolation or soothing from life. Whom can really swallow the benefit in every bad situation. The Archaic Greeks held so much truth of the nature of life, that life would have been unbearable to live with such a degree of truth. In order to be able to live and not divert from it they created myth, a beautiful veil over life that sprang right out of that truth. What is requires is intoxication and ecstasy in to life that one springs in to visions that beautiful life through gazing in to truth so long. In a word: Art.

Art allows us not only to bare the sufferings and pain of life, but be grateful for it. What cant an artist endure who is of that degree. Who can go through life with confidence and gratitude in the face of all things. The artist who has a super abundance of life, knowing that all things are for them, can bear with reality and know that antagonisms make them. What is there this artist could not be grateful for, could not deal with, could not come through better as a result of all things that arrive to him/her. Everything works for their becoming. There is no misfortune of life. All things that occur work to serve them. And the awareness of the terribleness of life is not consoled, soothed, or diverted from, but overcome through Art. Only an artist to that degree of gratitude to life would I even begin to call an artist. That they overcome, ascends above, and dances right over suffering. They see it for what it truly is and not merely for what it seems to be. That art is the proper affirmation of life. As though he would recoil off the truth of life’s in to art by instinct, in order to love it still all the more. That one has no resentment towards the presence of anything, but only holds what is proper in contempt. And what does this artist hold in contempt? Anything that diminishes this instinct.

~ V

What then are all Abrahamic values? Symptoms of declining life. An impoverished life, poor in spirit, a life denying will. Symptoms that one suffers super abundantly, unendurably, from life, from stronger people, and from one’s own conscience and body. The body becomes sin, weakening, where depressants like pity become a virtue, the individual degenerates in to the need for the herd to protect and preserve it, where every quality of strength becomes an evil, and the afterlife is created as a redeemer from the pain in this one.

To be not without a little scepticism towards the social origin of religions, a little prejudice perhaps, but observation nevertheless, isn’t it funny that in religions which come from the lower classes, God is much more vague and monotheistic. Religions from the lower classes, as expected they would be from a people that knew “power” vaguely and a great singular “them above us” God is something just as fearful as a “the noble rulers” wants to be praised as much by them just as “noble rulers.” Whilst in religions that come from higher classes, gods are many (polytheistic) like the noble courts would be, and resemble many characteristics about noble courts. Since they were “higher up”, they have a gods closer to the eye, closer to the bearer, a god that does not want to be praised all the time, one or many that can be ill-tempered, flawed, and with human temperaments, that can be outwitted, a god like the Olympians, the Egyptian Gods, the Hindu gods, the Shinto gods etc, that one can even be amongst them and perhaps, even overcome them.

I’ll come outright and say it, the prevalence of Abrahamic perspectives have killed off high culture wherever and wherever they have prevailed. Just as they are prevailing right now. We approached a curve during the 20th Century through our enthusiasm for Eastern religion (which make a hundred times more sense) and the Greek Chorus-like ecstatic return to nature in music, (the colourful and enchanted but robust view of life Icelandic Sagas - which we might owe to even for a Bjork), and love of cruelty, sex, and danger in cinema (as it had been on Shakespeare’s stage, Seneca’s, and Sophocles’s stage). I only encourage artists to look elsewhere. Namely Eastern and Archaic Greek. Just recognise that it hinders the greatest art. Make your art out of a higher spirit, mentality, and perspective than what Abrahamic traditions can serve.

~ VI

Do we understand yet what the secret great goodness was occurring through the 20th century right from its beginnings to its end? From Imagism’s interest in the Japanese Haiku, Kabuki and Noh theatre, from modern dance being inspired by the ecstatic movement of Ancient Greek chorus, to Picasso’s enthusiasm for African and Ancient art, to the 60 and 70s enthusiasm for Eastern religion, its stories and symbolism, to the dream-state expressionism in theatre, to the ecstatic method of making music through 60s to 90s. Music became more physiological again, more instinctive on the way it not only affected our emotions but the way it affected our bodies. It could do with far more intellectualism in how it does this, but that it begins there is the naive genius of popular music. The 90s and very early 2000s rekindled a huge enthusiasm for Eastern culture and philosophy and religion, as well as Indian Hinduism (the practice of yoga is still popular, and Buddhist meditation), as well as a Dionysian ecstasy particularly in music, And a love of the strange, the dark, the mysterious, even the terrifying, as something to compel strength, even a love of the ancient Roman and Greek, Eatern worlds (through cinema)). It’s likely our actors are better in the 20th Century than in centuries earlier. Because we are more complete beasts. We are more barbaric, animal, primal, beasts. We don’t sever aspects of ourselves under “sin” like we had done for hundreds and hundreds of years. And combined with the elegance of literary language and scene, we straddle both high and low. We far far less likely to think of life as though it’s a chronic illness, as Abrahamic values had seen it - as even Socrates had seen it when he said “life is a long sickness.” It is precisely our barbarism that makes us more complete human beings, more animal man, fuller of life. And yet not full enough. We began to revive a foundation for super abundant life affirmative values and behaviour. Somehow perhaps very calculatedly underswept almost entirely by the mid-2000 it all disappeared.  Will this curve end? End because of the cultural conscience that has exploded upon it from Middle Eastern terror and political unrest that took hold of the West’s consciousness? Is that not itself more cause for it. Exhaustion versus Exaltation, Energy, Ecstasy. We were on our way to undoing or interfering with the Abrahamic religious influence on the Western culture, and we were creating so much better culture on account of it. How much of the 90s looked to Eastern religion, symbolism, story-telling, cinema and philosophy, that by the year 2000 we were so tired of seeing yet another martial arts appearance in a Hollywood film. But look what that did FOR pop culture. Then swept away swiftly by as early as 2002, beside the low culture that arose of Reality TV of The Simple Life that became in to the Kardashians. Why has the Kardashians been so successful? Because suddenly the whole mediocrity of the world could see themselves as a Kim or Kylie. They didn’t only identify with it they could turn to their own mirror and appear like it, and they could be claim some social affinity to multi-millionaire society to improve their social attractiveness. That took away the imaginative and well-scripted drama on TV. It took music back to that retro-retrograde of music of the raw punk and post-punk that hadn’t quite had its fill, that simplified music and the un-artistic, pathos instead of art, instead of the new peaks it was reaching as a synergy of all the genres and ideas that were circulating in the late 90s taking popular music if not music to where it hadn’t been to. And then 9/11 happened and resurged the cultural and political consciousness of Abrahamic religions. Even resurged Christianity in the West as an ignorant counter-active culture to its bigotry disdain for Islam. (As it’s doing now under Donald Trump.) So once more the Abrahmic culture gained a resurgence, defeating the Eastern-cure that was the enthusiasm for Eastern religions from India to Japan, which would have been the foundation to have a real resurgence in to that most supreme of Greek culture, for Archaic Greek culture, but from our 21st Century advantage of a perspective surveying the whole of all these varying cultures. Isn’t it clear that we were on the way, and that 9/11 interrupted this profoundly!

What fears and distrust of the East and Middle East it made the West. Causing a near immediate effect of making the West forget that the greatest music (and the poetry, cinema, and music of the 60s, 70s, and 90s was profoundly influenced by music of India, Asia, and the Middle-East - just as it influenced Greece, Rome, and the Renaissance, and the Orientalism of the early 20th century, and in short, every great period of Western Art). The 1970s (the first post-modern decade) gave us the 20th Century’s peak in popular culture’s masters. (Not meaning Arts masters, but where popular culture had figures that were touching on the Artistic Masters themselves.) But they were few and far between. But in the 90s the enthusiasm for these few figures was creating a mainstream culture that followed in their footsteps. And by the end of the 90s and first couple of years of the 2000s the brightest stars of this culture were hitting that same mastery and with the broad audience of pop culture full of enthusiasm for them. 2. Music

~ VII

But it was all abandoned. How did the Renaissance end? With the Reformation, with Lutherism, and Calvinism, and Protestant Reform of the Catholic Church that hoped to redeem the church from the Renaissance paganism love of Greece and Rome, to pull it backwards in reverse to the resurgence of Christianity. It already killed off music during the Renaissance. The joyful and strong music of Francesco Landini, Guilliame Dufay, Adam de la Halle, to become the cold and morbid music of Palestrina. That took away rhythmic power in music to have melodic music, that arose from the most commonly heard melodic music, the choirs of Christian mass. The whole tradition of classical music is a censorship on music. There’s no doubt what dances right on top and over Abrahamic religions - the Archaic Greeks, drinking songs, tragedy, ecstatic music, beauty. Dionysius. The Renaissance, the last Golden Age, did not consist of thousands of Leonardo da Vinci’s, these were exceptions, within religious times. It didn’t matter that these were religious times, these were exceptions within those times. It’s not that life is ugly, but the truth of life is ugly. So ugly that without the beautiful image and the ecstatic music we can hardly bare with such truth of life. The world can be a terrible place, that’s why we have culture, so we can live in it, that’s why we have art, so that we don’t perish by the truth. Out of the truth of reality, which would otherwise stun us in horror as stiff as a Niobe, the artist, during intoxication and passion for creativity, recoils in to artistic expression, allowing them despite the truth of life to love it all the more nevertheless. The degree of a musician is often how transformative they can turn an experience; can turn dark to light, can turn pain to pleasure, can stare in to the darkest realities of life and feel untouchable, can scale that same power as its great antagonist and become a laughing dance over it, singing never directly out of pathos but ironic to the lyric, have inventive rhythm sections and polyphonic melodies, can keep rhythm as the stronger force in music than melody, can sing as though to turn all the pain in to pleasure, and through doing so celebrate the reality of life and the vitality of the individual, freed of everything that had tried to hold it down, transformed in to a wild self-affirming return to nature.

When the future high culture looks back at our pop music with any admiration, i know of no other musician it will look admiringly with more certainty than Bjork. Throughout her catalogue she has touched on every genre, and there are touches of every form of music of every kind, without ever not sounding nevertheless quintessentially Bjork. She puts herself in to music and makes it conform to her not her to it. But more than that hers is the one music that is reminiscent of music of previous high cultures. And therefore most likely to be enjoyed by future high cultures. I fundamentally believe this: that all high cultures relished in the same culture. Its a rare culture because its the culture of rare types of people. The confusion of the contemporary world is that it mistakes the high art of the upper classes of the modern world (1600-present) for high culture, when nothing could be further. and that the people’s culture has had more to do with the high culture of high periods, its just that its shallowed and hollowed by a confusion of instinct and low personality, that lacks genius as its audience. But there should be no mistaking the backwards anti-music of opera with music of high cultures compared to the energy and wildness of popular music, made for dance, sex, even danger, and catharsis. And everything else which constitutes virility and life. And essentially strong and healthy types. Enjoyment even in the stimulus of pain in life, (how many albums were conceived out of heartbreak, and how many popular musicians say its hard to write a song from being happy), music which lifts off pain often out of the stimulus of pain. That confronts it instinctively and creates and masters over it intuitively until its purged of pain. And ends up almost grateful for it. What are all the stale opera houses in the world compared to that, which is a music that only tries to dramatise pain. Opera is itself is a complete misunderstanding of music. And for it to be called high art is a complete misunderstanding of culture. The modern world has had no high culture. Not forgetting that classical music and opera both came out of Christian religious music. And that because there was once a time that Church was higher than the state this music was naturally assumed as higher music socially, politically, and religiously. And that instrumentals for dance with secular singing etc had been the great European music until the Church banned it. And its that music that resembled our popular music. Classical music is really just a strange anomaly in the history of music - except for choral music - that really only appears in the modern world and nowhere else. And on the grand scale of how long music has been around, that’s a relatively very short period of time.

My praise for FKA twigs, (who is in many ways that risidual-Abrahamic artist - but what she is, is better than what she does). I praise her for taking music back to its ritualistic nature that it takes us to in ecstasy. I was just watching some videos from the 1990s (actually Give It Away by Anton Corbijn, which is comparable to Papi Pacify). And was just like that’s why music had me so excited back then. it broke down the bullshit. it united us all in this ritualistic ecstasy that is music. the art of music in the 1990s was more real to me than ‘real-life’. I don’t think so much today. I feel music is dressed up in the values of real life. In its materialism and consumerism, its capitalist aspirations. How many shops, manufacturers, qualities of life are entwined with music. Here music was a strength. A gravity. A superpower. A sage. Wherever the visual aesthetic of music brings us back to the nature of music, culture is the better for it. Everything about music in the 1990s verged on the ritualistic, and these projections that sprung from it, that were these visionary icons. As though connecting and portraying something deep and more enriched than the everyday, that seemed to defy and confront it. And liberate it. And liberate us to some greater direction than the world seemed to have in store for us. It seemed to remind of us a way into ourselves and a way out of the miseries of the world. If we could only sustain it in ourselves and overlap it on to the world each day. Dance and music have moved forward in ways that literature hasn’t even begun to. And for that same reason, cinema lags behind too. That’s why I invented my Poets of Ecstasy, as a redeemer of all better things in literature. And as an objection to the ascetic practice of novel writing. 

~ VIII

Homer’s works would itself be inspiration for the whole Archaic age of Greece, taking them out of the dark age. The age that gave it Thucydides, Heraclitus, Protagoras, Pindar, Sappho, and Aeschylus to name a few. And Socrates ended that age, the same way that Luther ended the Renaissance, the same way that Christianity ended the culture of the Romans.   My writings of the last six months have pointed unswervingly to that the Archiac/Tragic period of Greece was the greatest culture and art movement of all time. It even brought Greece out of its own Dark Age. And the philosophy imbued in tragedy is the greatest philosophy of all. And that the Japanese nobility’s tradition of Buddhism and its own folk tales and theatrical stories are only a step lower and are sort of that foundational level if you were to lose your grip on Tragic art. That it’s there to catch you, and ultimately to keep you “culturally hygenic” and prevent you from falling in to the Abrahamic stories that have undone every great period of art and culture in all time.

I’m not blaming any person, I’m blaming psychological traits, values, the interpretations and perspectives on to life that come along with the Abrahamic tradition - as though it were a thing that can be clasped on to a mentality. 3. Visual Art Renaissance and ancient art was not realistic because it was fascinated by the rational view of life but that it painted myths with realism and clarity that was esteemed because it was imagination of cultural myths depicted with the clarity of realism. In the late 19th century they depict real life with subjective impression and a lack of myth. 20th century art is an art period without myths, without stories, without its own tales.  Conceptual art is pure nihilistic art because it has nothing to interpret the world out of it, its a vision without substance beyond opinion, flat, and usually a polemic against something. It is art, but its nihilism. Conceptual art is merely a compensation for lacking myths. We have no stories, we have lens through which to see the world, to interpret it. We shed all our myths through atheism and the modern artistic movements. But nevertheless we have to make sense of the world and comment on it, so we use conceptual perspectives to scrunch it up, chew it up, and breathe air in to it. Conceptual art is that one can't see life with any clarity so the artist sees it through impressions, distortions, and concepts. Lies because he does not know how to see the truth. It doesn’t want Christian tales but it’s replaced them with nothing. So it has non narrative and often non figurative and where it does it is only the mundane absurdity of life, at best an empty but beautiful image, or an art conceived out of a concept of the absurdity of life , an art like this is fundamentally nihilistic. Full of nothing. That life was chaotic absurd and meaningless, just like its art. We live in an age of no myths. What’s needed is poets and story-tellers to create new myths. Romanticism is full of Christian concepts, Gothic is full of Christian concepts, Decadence, Conceptual, Surrealism, etc. The Renaissance proper was verging on to the Greco-Roman Hellenism art and at its very highest examples was veering towards Archaic Greek. The Reformation was the undoing of the Renaissance.The spirit, values, and ideals latched on to the art - which yes, may be a product of the Renaissance through figures like Michelangelo perhaps even Dante - but religion’s great opposition, Art, began to relax in the full summer of its Renaissance and found itself bitten by its enemy. All the myths were made by poets, but the rationality of science and rejection of Christianity left us nothing. I don’t want Christian myths, or even Greek and Roman myths, but we need to start making new myths, out of new values and perspectives. It’s up to poets and story-tellers to give artists a way of seeing the world clearly. A way for the world to see the world clearly. The conceptual artists aimed to do this, the Impressionists, the Romantics, the Renaissance painters, the Byzantine artists, and the Romans and Greeks, and any other era of artists. The only way to overcome Romanticism, is to overcome Christianity. Turn to the East, to the Japanese art, the Buddhist-Hindu art to purify oneself and purge the Romanticism out. Then the Archaic Tragic height, the highest peak art has yet known, will be reachable.

It’s not at all a problem that we have them, but that we don’t have the other, the better. But it gives it a reason to exist. It actually makes tragedy more profound. It’s actually the reason why Shakespeare may be more profound than Aeschylus - because he created a story-telling technique where the morality of Abrahamic faith was the “essence of evil” to the non-Abrahamic principled hero. As though the tragic hero were himself a new found European freedom, a free-spirit in every full sense of the word, who complete stepped out of Western Abrahamic tradition, but could not succeed in “living” within that world. The waste of this free-spirit in the backdrop of the Abrahamic world was Shakespearean tragic; the waste of the exception, the great hope for the future, the greatest. That was his tragedy from his first play to his last. He made all his tragic heroes tremendous by making them defy morality, customs, tradition of the world over and over again until the world finally engulfed him, and then honoured him after his demise. This was a story-telling technique that Aeschylus had no need for. The Abrahamic faith hadn’t yet caught hold of Europe’s higher classes. Aeschylus’s moral world was Zeus, and the breaching the Olympian gods, but even they were used as representations of Aeschylus’ perception in to the order of the universe. Not that it was ruled by gods, but that it had within it patterns of nature. When Aeschylus and Shakespeare are sandwiched on to each other, then there is a story that is entirely built on an understanding of the nature of the universe and the nature of man.

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Here are a few easy-to-read articles about the differences between East and West story-telling

http://lithub.com/our-fairy-tales-ourselves-storytelling-from-east-to-west/

https://blog.tkmarnell.com/east-asian-storytelling/

http://stilleatingoranges.tumblr.com/post/25153960313/the-significance-of-plot-without-conflict

http://thebookaholic.blogspot.co.uk/2007/11/are-asian-stories-different.html

https://andreaskluth.org/2010/08/18/somewhere-between-apollo-dionysus/

http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/dir/traditions/asiamiddleeast.html