Music as Magic - Part IV

I will train my feet to go on with the joy,
a joy I have yet to reach.
I will let the sounds of these woods I have known
sink into blood and to bone.
I'll remain no more than is required of me,
until the spirit is gone.
~ Midlake, “Core of Nature.”

While I’m not sure the members of my new favorite indie band, Midlake, share my beliefs, they certainly reveal a deep, profound love of the natural world throughout their music. They speak of the forest, of the sunlight, of being left to their own ways, “a way of life that will surely be gone” (taken from another of their songs, titled “Small Mountain”). The music is folksy and somehow deep, and the vocals are, in a word, haunting. There’s a decent review of their second CD—the one I have been listening to nearly nonstop since I bought it on iTunes a month ago, called The Courage of Others—here.

I don’t have a whole lot more to say on the matter. Their music speaks for itself.

Revisiting Russian Mythology

The Firebird, an ever-beloved Russian myth

It’s been months since I posted anything concerning my thesis about the Amazon Legacy in Russian folklore and mythology, and since I haven’t taken a single Russian class this year, I’m feeling a little nostalgic for the language I studied so enthusiastically and the fairy tales in which I thoroughly engrossed myself for so long. If you haven’t read the introductory posts about my thesis from the early days of my blog, or if you’d like to refresh your memory on the topics, you can find the old posts here. If you have a memory like a steel trap, then you’ll recall my overview of the Rusalki, Mother Moist Earth, and Baba Yaga as well as my interpretation of lingering myths as aspects of a pre-Christian Goddess cult. And, of course, you’ll also remember my less than subtle Pagan/Feminist bias. Keeping all that in mind, I present to you another portion from my thesis titled “Rusalki, Mother Earth, and Baba Yaga: The Amazon Legacy in Russian Myth and Society.”

Despite the adoption of patriarchy that followed the nomadic invasions, the ancient goddess of the hunt clearly lingered in Russian folk belief as the rusalki, Mati Syra Zemlya, and the infamous Baba Yaga. Furthermore, although the adoption of Christianity strengthened patriarchal values, belief in such vestiges of feminine divinity continued to survive. While the upper classes tended to convert to Christianity with little more than the prompting of their rulers, the peasantry—especially the peasant women—remained vehemently opposed to any change in their ways, hence the beginnings of the dual-faith characteristic of Russian folk practices.  The Church launched a lengthy campaign of demonizing women, particularly those women such as midwives who were perceived as a threat to Christian patriarchal power: “The clerical assault on a woman as Eve and rebel, coupled with the state’s attempts to impose its patriarchal will on the family, resulted in a general denigration of women in Russian life but testified paradoxically to their power and stubborn resistance to male authority.”

When condemning women as essentially evil replicas of Eve failed to quell them completely, the Church presented an image of a “good woman” as “modest and hardworking, pious and chaste, devoted to her household and children,” and, above all, “submissive to her husband.”  Instead of focusing on Eve’s sinfulness, the Church transferred focus to the veneration of Mary the Mother of God, a woman able to possess both the qualities of humble virgin and loving mother.  It was only after this model of proper womanly behavior arose that women began to accept Christian teachings with any enthusiasm, as evident by the delayed emergence of female martyrs in Russia, and even then those martyrs were few in number.  Among the elite class, who were under more direct pressure from the early Christian emperors to convert and conform, the cult of Mary grew to replace the pagan goddess cults.  Paraskeva-Piatnitsa, a pagan goddess-turned-saint whose cult of Fridays (piatnits) was banned by the Patriarch in 1589, offered still another alternative for worshippers nostalgic for motherly figures.  Whereas the humble and pure Mary “was never fully assimilated to the pagan female divinities in all their aspects,” Paraskeva-Piatnitsa could don completely “the identities of Mother Moist Earth, Baba Yaga, and the rusalki,” for as a widow she answered to no man and as a spinner of flax she was connected to both the hag Yaga and the maiden rusalki.  The manner in which village peasants addressed their saints—often through ritual incantations—also revealed the link between those saints and their pagan roots: “[i]n folk practice a prayer often differs from a spell only in its mode of expression.”

However, the denigration of women eventually soaked through the class divisions down to the peasantry, where it tainted their tales with images of women as either weak, incompetent, or conniving, like in the story of the Fox Physician from Archangel province. Whenever personified in Russian tales, the fox is always portrayed as female,  perhaps influenced by the feminine gender of the word for fox, which is lisa. In this tale, a peasant couple plants a pair of cabbages. The wife’s cabbage does not grow at all, but the husband’s cabbage grows until it is so large that when he climbs it, he reaches the heavens. The wife wishes to join him in the sky, but cannot do so on her own; therefore, he places her in a sack, which he holds with his teeth while climbing the giant cabbage. When the foolish wife asks him a question, he responds, thus dropping the sack and killing her. While he is mourning, a fox appears who promises the husband that she—the Fox Physician—can heal his dead wife if he only gives her butter and flour. The peasant agrees and leaves the fox to her work, but instead the fox eats the flesh of his wife and then bakes bread out of the butter and flour, which she also consumes.  The implications of this tale are transparent: the wife is silly and utterly dependent upon her husband, while the independent woman—represented by the fox—causes nothing but trouble. The fox, eating first the foolish woman and then the bread she herself made, seems also to resemble Baba Yaga in her voracious appetite for those unfortunate humans who enter her hut unprepared.

Sources:

Elizabeth Warner, The Legendary Past: Russian Myths (2002);

Joanna Hubbs, Mother Russia: The Feminine Myth in Russian Culture (1993);

Margarita Mazo, “Stravinsky’s ‘Les Noces’ and Russian Village Wedding Ritual,” Journal of the American Musicological Society (Spring 1990);

Adolph Gerber, “Great Russian Animal Tales,” PMLA (1891).

Clausewitzian Uncertainty

Carl von Clausewitz, picture from here

I’ve been trying to finish this entry for over a week now, but the words just haven’t been flowing. I was initially inspired, but simply ran out of time. Then, when I attempted to return to the half-finished musing, I was unable to think of anything to add. Now, since I have about a half hour to muse and write and pretend I know what I’m talking about, I thought I’d give it one final shot before discarding the idea entirely and blogging about more nothingness. Thus, here’s the original thing that inspired me last week:
“Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating. It prefers to day-dream in the realms of chance and luck rather than accompany the intellect on its narrow and tortuous path of philosophical enquiry and logical deduction only to arrive—hardly knowing how—in unfamiliar surroundings where all the usual landmarks seem to have disappeared. Unconfined by narrow necessity, it can revel in a wealth of possibilities; which inspire courage to take wing and dive into the element of daring and danger like a fearless swimmer into the current.” ~ Carl von Clausewitz, On War

I came across this passage while reading for one of my classes, and from the very first clause, it drew me in. Now, I am not normally a proponent of taking quotes out of context, but the above paragraph—although it refers to human nature as it relates to the conducting of war—is applicable in other contexts as well, and so I don’t feel guilty about applying it that way. The fascinating uncertainty spoke to me of Faerie, of the Otherworld, of Elysium. In Clausewitz’ imagery of the “fearless swimmer” diving into the unknown and uncharted, I saw myself trudging toward an ever more uncertain future. All the tarot readings in the world can’t tell me what, precisely, I will face. Only time will tell. My intellect may strive always for the logical conclusion, the knowing, the “clarity and certainty,” but my heart will keep pushing me further despite, and perhaps because of, my inevitable ignorance.

The trend Clausewitz speaks of, namely, the longing for order and reason on an intellectual level, but still craving and even thriving in uncertainty, triggered one of those “uh huh” moments for me. An author I once had the privilege of working with spoke at length about the “uh huh” moment as the point when the reader recognizes what the writer is describing as something real. Reaching the “uh huh” moment in one’s own writing is a product of the author knowing their topic inside and out. Although I admit I don’t always care whether or not my audience has a clue about the validity of my information, I am constantly conscious of the “uh huh” and do, in fact, hope that my labors in researching memory, myth, history, science, everything I can get my hands on won’t go entirely unappreciated. I write what I know. I try to make the difference clear between when I know something and when I’m merely guessing (and, whenever possible, I prefer to make educated guesses).

We all search for reason, for logic, for purpose, and yet these qualities are elusive by nature. Philosophy can present us with a valid argument that is entirely incorrect, or worse—impossible to prove one way or the other. For example, perfectly valid arguments can be given to both confirm and disprove the existence of God (or, more appropriately for me, the gods). If life is a war, and each day a battle, then to thrive in the “uncertainty” which “our nature often finds […] fascinating” is the best we can hope for. No amount of divination, or even educated guessing, can reveal the exact path set out before someone, and so the grip of logic and reason can never illuminate what lies beneath the dark waters. As I’ve heard often quoted, change is the only constant. Therefore, I would argue that the unknown is the only known, uncertainty is the only certain thing…and that’s just fine.

Music as Magic: Part III

One of my favorite bands, Mae. Even though
they are technically a Christian band, I still
love their music. It's simply fabulous.

Whenyou’re my boomerang
And I tried so hard to make you stay
But without a doubt I see
This time, you won’t come back to me
~ Mae, “Boomerang”

I’ve mentioned a few times on here how important music is to my life. I really do walk around with a constant soundtrack playing in my head, whether it’s screaming metal after a bout of combatives practice or some mellow Harry Connick, Jr. as I grab dinner. If I could remember flux equations half as well as I could remember song lyrics, I’d be unstoppable in my Nuclear Engineering courses. If I could retain historical dates and names and battles with just a fraction of the accuracy that I can with melodies and harmonies and chords, I would be the History departments beloved brainchild. Alas, as it is, I remain mediocre in my memory capacity for anything other than images (I can paint, sculpt, sketch, or otherwise recreate what I’ve seen nearly perfectly long after the original was removed from my sight…with the caveat that it was pretty enough to make an impact) and music.

The song currently running on repeat in my personal soundtrack is Mae’s “Boomerang.” Mae is one of my favorite bands, and has been since I first discovered them years ago when I was in middle school. Their name is actually an acronym for “Multisensory Aesthetic Experience,” and it’s a very fitting title for the band. They hail from my home state, which accounts for only part of my preference, promise. I bought their original CD, Destination: Beautiful, when it first came out. I did the same for The Everglow and then for Singularity. You can access the band’s website and any merchandise/music here. About a year ago, I discovered their (M)orning EP and bought that off iTunes. “Boomerang” is from that EP. For some reason, the song has been speaking to me recently in a way that makes me wonder what I have to learn from it. It doesn’t hurt that the lyrics express very much the way I’ve felt for the past week or so.

Funny how those rotten oranges never seem to truly go away, long after you’ve thrown them to the trash. Oh well.

I could write paragraph upon paragraph about how the metaphor of a boomerang on the wind cleverly compares the songwriter’s repetitive relationship. I could discuss at length how the upbeat musical accompaniment both contrasts the sadness of the words and emphasizes the positive feelings that can result from finally learning to let go. However, I’d rather just link you to the song, so you can determine for yourself what it means to you. Thus, without further ado, here it is:

First Suspicions, Proved Correct

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who happens
to be my favorite composer.

While taking a shower last night, some words and melody came to me as they often do, and I began to take to memory the music. By the time I finished taking the shower, I had written the first verse. When I got back to my room, I wrote it down, and then the chorus came to me, but I just couldn't complete the second verse until this evening. I had all but two lines dones. Today, however, as I dug through my drawer looking for a pair of earrings, I came across the notebook that was still marked with the page of the unfinished song. I sat down, scrounged around for another pen, and finished it. I may write the guitar part tomorrow. I can hear it in my head right now, weaving around the melody, but I haven't had a chance to put pen to paper and compose the exact chords. The song is called "First suspicion, proved correct." Enjoy.

I’ve been broken before, I’ve been torn,

I’ve been beaten to the ground.

I have followed in the steps of giants

whose passing barely made a sound.

It’s a strange world our fathers gave us,

it’s a hard road our mothers made for us,

and sometimes things just don’t work out.

Though I tried to be there for you

and lost myself in search of you,

I know the greater truth now:

It wasn’t worth the pain,

nor was it worth the time.

I should have stopped before I started,

for you were never mine.

I have been here before, now once more,

and I finally learned this time.

I’ve been lost in the woods, but always could

find my way home alright.

So armed with all of my memories,

I will not spin these fantasies,

and one day, I’ll be glad we’re through.

Until then, I’ll bite my tongue,

remind myself you’re not the one,

and, only in my dreams, be with you.

It wasn’t worth the pain,

nor was it worth the time.

I should have stopped when I suspected

that you were never mine.

No, you were never really mine.