The world is a Manichean struggle between Eros and Thanatos. Eros is the wimp-ass god of nurture and sentimentality a cosmic Love Boat, plying the seas of fantasy and treacle. It’s a female thing best kept confined to the hearth and the nursery.
Thanatos, on the other hand, is the stern-faced god of morality, with his call to self-discipline and sacrifice. He is the god of manly death.
We have a choice between living the adrenalin high offered by the slash-and-burn world of Thanatos, or the numbness of love and sentiment that is the legacy of Eros. Thanatos demands orderly ranks; Eros tolerates an unruly rabble. Thanatos is bracing liberation; Eros is stifling boredom.
Our problem is that Thanatos is a little too stern, and sternness is so yesterday. We’ve got to lighten up his image and repackage him to increase his marketability. He needs multiple identities that appeal to all segments of the fragmented demographic we call America.
He will need many costumes to fulfill his multiple roles: the dress-down fashion of the Yuppie, the ragged robes of the mendicant, the torn jeans, funky T-shirts, body piercings and tattoos of the youthful mall rebel. He’ll sport the dark suits of the oligarchs, the designer sweat suits of the soccer mom, the logo loaded jacket of the NASCAR devotee, and, above all, the robes of the preacher.
Let him polish his Mercedes, recharge his cell and ramp up the sound system until the walls quake! Give him games to play, violent videos to wtch, meds to deal with the psychic damage he must endure to thrive.
Let him dance with abandoned gaiety; drive the beat of his dance macabre with the throbbing riff of guitar and drum! Place a Bible in his hand and let him invoke the loving wrath of the redemptive Christ, leading the masses into the yawning jaws of the apocalypse.
It’s the mad dance of death and destruction, sanitized by the rose-colored glasses of the thirty-second spot! It makes the heart sing songs of joyful dirges and lamentations!
But, I am spent. The wine bottle is empty and the last roach has turned to ash. I go now to sleep the manly sleep of the dead.
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The manly sleep of the dead!
ReplyDeleteCase, wonderful! Brilliant in its costume jewelry for the soul.
Mark,
ReplyDeleteThanks. Good to hear from you again.
Stravinsky was all over it at the SAME time as the Fabian Socialists began forging their future, the Rothschild clan was 6 generations deep in global fiscal control, the oil oligarchs monopolized the energy source for the next century, the chemical and electrical trusts were working with the lawyers to patent and monopolize every good and bad thing that came out of their labs, and H.G. Welles obliged to write in praise of a Utopian future, being as he was the Fabian scribe and dissemination agent.
ReplyDeleteOnly Stravinsky saw the folly and had the genuis to summarize it in The Infernal Dance of King Kastchei.
Kraken be damned.
Release the Firebird!!!!!!
Stravinsky captured it--discordance and clashing harmonies passed off as pleasing melodies.
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