I started this blog in another form years ago, with sporadic updates from wherever I happened at the time to be living. I thought it useful, as more changes loom in the lives of my son and family, to resume this conversation.
I am writing a suite for solo violin, dedicated to a good friend of mine with a taste for the musically peculiar. The overarching mythos of the piece is an evocation of briefly glimpsed and only tenuously understood Elven revels: not in the sense that humans get to join in the Elven revel, but apprehending the spree from the Elvish perspective. When Elves, particularly Tolkien's Elves (which are the basis for mine, to a large extent), get drunk and have a revel, what does it sound like? When an elf is "in his cups," about what does he complain? This is one of the questions I wish to answer for myself with "The Music of Wild Elves."
It makes me wonder, contemplating a mythology for what is, at heart, an abstract form: what is the story against which we should be comparing our lives? Or are our lives merely the accretion of random experiences, connections made and broken by chance and necessity? I have friends and acquaintances who subscribe to the latter view, but I am not so sure that is the course of wisdom.
Is it not odd that we always seem to be looking for the story? How we always seem to be searching for the best analogy, the best simile or metaphor to perfectly elucidate our meaning? It may be that only story can do that.
In any event, we have once again taken up the Parker Pen to do war upon the apathetic and ignorant vassals of sloth, greed and filth.
Conquer!
This is the art of the artist. To search for the best analogy, the best simile or metaphor to perfectly elucidate meaning for themselves and others. The artist is the repository of meaning in a society - expertly crafting the depths of worldview into tangible forms. I love my job! I get to be astounded everyday as I watch how they do this with infinite variety, skill, and passion.
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