Back to the Future.
A moth, sleeping on the Scribal key board. Will we disturb it as we write this? Who cares?
The Scribe does, of course. She has complicated relationships with insects, this may be a friend of hers. Did she invite him for a sleepover? Who knows?
A piece of paper to divide him from us, so he can sleep in peace. It’s lucky he’s up near the useless keys or I would have had to kick him out. She may wait for insects but I certainly won’t. I don’t wait for anyone except her, and that not by choice.
This one is gorgeous, I confess it. He looks bland in his picture, but he is the colour of rubbed pewter, beautifully metallic, with the finest lines of gold running along his ridges. So tempting to nudge him and see his wings spread out. Only Scribal threats prevent me.
Onward. What shall I give you today? So many possibilities in that title, I could attack any subject and have fun. A selection, I think.
Start with myself, since that’s really all that matters here.
Am I glad to be out of Ancient Greece? No. I had to send Hector home, and I never got to interview Aeneas. My drinking contest with Apollo and Hermes had to be put off. Things are what they are sometimes, and even I can’t change it. Troy will never look the same to me.
I will have to leap around a few centuries at least, change the nature of the conversations in Roma, perhaps.
Satan is a big fan of interviews, now that he’s done some. Who will he impersonate next? Virgil himself? He never got to meet Aeneas either and that didn’t stop him from telling the story.
This Virgil will find Aeneas, a different place, Ancient Italy, he will be busy there, conquering. An interview, followed by a sound thrashing, what can he say to justify himself? I’d like to give Dido a chance to speak for herself too, before her suicide. Maybe just before, it will make for good pathos. I am keen to see her in person, I never noticed her before, since there was so much going on at the time. My oversight, my loss, I will rectify it soon.
Few have read The Aeneid, though it is an important mythological expression. All of the classic ideas can be found in it, the blatant misogyny, the worship of men in their perfect form as warriors. Their God given form, brutal and shallow, but sanctified.
It starts with Aeneas sneaking out of a burning Troy with his father on his shoulders, goes through years of seafaring, tribulations including a trip to the underworld, the accepting and discarding of a wife, Dido, and ends with him taking lands from others and founding Roma, the idea. The city itself was founded by the Twins, Romulus and Remus, if you recall. Suckled by a wolf, imbibing her simple ethos, her driving force. Romulus will do the sensible thing and kill his brother, one ruler is enough.
Interesting times, you have to admit.
Unlike this century that has so much to mock but is too ugly to work with. What can I say about your utterly plasticised world, your vegetative youth, your ultraindifference? Should I be surprised when minds go wasted? If the brilliant won’t say something worth hearing, how will the stupid ever learn? Not your problem, you’re thinking, but you are wrong.
Who will be caring for you when you are old and vulnerable? Complicated drugs, procedures, your precious health in the hands of imbeciles who can pass medical school but can’t follow a complicated discussion on any subject. You will be tended by people who have no idea how to write a full sentence or add two numbers together, since they ‘don’t have to’. Wonderful. Who will you talk to? No one but your phone and anyone who lives in it. Your gaming friends, your sports friends, no brains needed there, your fellow culturalists. What joy. Kill me now.
This is why I prefer spending time in the past, or in my own world. Words have had great meaning for centuries, only yours has rendered them meaningless. What else have you diluted? Everything. Even meaning has no meaning.
Music. Sad days indeed. What if the swift clings to her ugly throne as long as the beyonce did? A perfect nightmare for the world, worse for my precious Scribe who has to be out on rare occasions and actually hear it herself. Dangerous days, I encourage her to limit them.
Still, the giants are silenced. How can it be otherwise? Gifts from the Gods will burn you up- bleeding fire on the inside, where nobody sees it. It is the season of the remix. A tragedy, unless a giant does it. Wells run dry, sparks are extinguished, no flame lasts forever. Well, mine does, but I’m the FireLord. Artists are starving, their work is given away now, so I have to ask myself, in the classic manner, who will feed them? Where will they live? Would you give away your work? Hardly. Be glad your arm isn’t being twisted.
Of course there is no new music to hear, no rhapsodies unfolding somewhere as I write this. AI will own that world too, just as it is slowly taking over yours. It’s almost as if human stupidity is on an exponential trajectory, skyrocketing, going to blow off the page shortly. Except that no one knows what a graph means anymore, unless something tells them. Who can tear their eyes away from this wonderful headlong plunge into annihilation? Will you go out with a bang? No. It will be a slow strangulation as all the life is sucked out of your life.
The Human race, irredeemably flawed, hideously ugly, ignorant, careless, and cruel. What will you be like in your death throes? The Scribe and I don’t care, so long as you go.
“Entropy” by Nigel Stanford.
“The Aeneid” by Virgil, translated by Robert Fagles.