Myths of the World: a Thematic Encyclopedia by Michael Jordan

Myths of the World by Michael Jordan was disarming, if only because it made me recall a nerdy youth, when I took to bed ill for the sheer luxury of reading encyclopedias. I like books I don’t necessarily have to read back to back, start to finish. Here, I could crawl under the blanket and learn more about the Ganesh statue a friend blessed me with, or read the important highlights of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Myths of the World: a Thematic Encyclopedia groups global stories, as the title states, in themes. It makes for fascinating reading in clusters, comparing lore of different cultures, on the big questions of humanity like love, apocalypse, childhood, morality, and creation.

While it certainly is not exhaustive, this nifty collection of stories does span diverse continent, and does not get stuck in that proverbial pit where the fascinating Greco-Roman mythology is the only interesting kind, so we do actually encounter a whole world. Spanning Japan, Polynesia, early America, Nordic, Celtic, African, Siberian, and more.

Blessedly, the writing never gets that cheesy new-agey lilt to it, and sounds pragmatically and curiously anthropological, without sternly erasing any enchanted beliefs we do have. And amazingly we find humour in all eras and places on earth. There’s even a myth from Siberia about The Diarrhea Man.

Myths of the World: A Thematic Encyclopedia by Michael Jordan,
Kyle Cathie Ltd, London, England, 1993

Lorette C. Luzajic
www.thegirlcanwrite.net
Visit my other blog: thegirlcanwrite.wordpress.com

Feud of the Gods

I missed what is now old news: Moby’s declaration of love to Eminem, after years of feuding between them over whether or not Moby’s music should be called “techno.” Seems the yappy rapper impressed the lily-livered sage with his anti-Bush rhetoric. I’ve been a fan of Moby’s music for a long time, but spent 2007 hopping around to Eminem and dreaming up ways that we could get together. Eminem used to offend me, too, and now I just can’t get enough of his dynamite. I think Moby is catching on, too, as he ages. Some gods are more theatrical, some more solemn. Each has his place. Britney and Kevin? Elton and Diana? Madonna and the rest? It’s just the feud of the gods.

Now Moby is more famous for his one minute on last week’s Daily Ten than he is for his baldness, unorthodox ethical life, and 20 years of innovative, exquisite music. “I love Eminem, and I decided if I’m gonna have feuds in the future they’re not gonna be with the most successful musician on the planet, who travels with people who have guns.”

Moby was not, of course, the only queer or woman to take offense at Eminem’s fag and bitch jabbery. Whole armies of human rights advocates were up in arms. So was Boy George.

Then again, Boy George and Elton John both made public their distaste for their own mother, The Madonna. Weird. It was just plain bizarre for Elton to poopoo Madonna’s live shows for lip-synching. Consider that if I am naked, dancing aerobically on the roof with acrobats and drummers, flying through the air, I may have to lip-synch here and there. But everyone knows Madonna does all the work that is humanly possible, all the time.

You would also expect a skinny white boy like Eminem to very realistically diss fags the way many cultural groups do- most certainly his demographic. It was refreshing to see Elton John get it right for once and join with Em at those infamous Grammy awards of yesteryear as if to say, “can’t we all just get along?”

I’m the quintessential fruit fly, born that way in my own way, and the view from here is this: Elton John performing with Eminem is building a bridge the way nothing else could be. Props to both parties for showing the truth: that showbiz is just showbiz. You gotta read behind the scenes. Music makes a world where Eminem and Elton can merge audiences in peace. In the Madonna era, we are the champions.

Hilarious that some of these same girls have got too big for their britches. That they dared to lash out publicly at Madonna! Oh, keep it to yourself. I mean, come on, Madonna made a world where I can spend my life in clubs with the fiercest and the finest. I can go to gay church on Sunday and watch Will and Grace with my best friends and their shih tzu Lola. I can drink frosted crantinis and still pick up men, because everyone mingles now like one big happy family. And those crantini girls? They’re a really married couple, because I live in an awesome country that affords my friends to make the same marital complications that I’m allowed. Elton was still in the closet until Madonna let him out. I mean, wow, ELTON JOHN tried to pass himself off as straight- kind of like Jodi Foster. Imagine.

So what was what’s his name? Yes, war is stupid, my silly bear. That’s why Eminem and Madonna put out powerhouse songs like Square Dance and American Life. So what was your sketch, honey? Oh, right- Madonna doesn’t do her own accounts and she should have dissed Eminem for saying ‘fag’ instead of giving torch to free speech.

Since when do we only hear what we want to hear? How little can we then know about human nature and behaviour? Besides, Georgia you’re a big girl now. You’re allowed to walk on the streets with those eyebrows without getting killed.

Here’s the deal: whatever our special subgroup, whatever our unique identity markers, we’re going to have to endure some blatantly irritating stories and insinuations, but we also get to tell ours. We MUST fight to keep free speech, not fight to censor the speech of someone we don’t like. It riles me up how much we take for granted: it wasn’t too long ago that I could not vote because of my pretty little head. I don’t have to be married or live as a man in order to paint. I might hear “bitch!” as I walk down the street. Bring it on. But don’t send me to a country where I would go to jail for showing my ankles. Come on, George, you should be going up to the guy and asking if he wants to talk about it, for crying out loud. Do you think there are ghetto kids home in from the streets, crying because Tupac said nigger?

The thing is, ladies, we need Madonna to remind us, like the great Mother that she is to all, that though gay music is indeed among her inspirations, the rest of the world is still breeder. And in that world is also eroticism, and oppression, and sorrow, and beauty, and those worlds must also tell their stories. I’m very happy to be among the shiniest gems in this city, but at some point I am also one of those fine breeder specimens (with a twist, of course!) with unique needs and stories of my own.

The point is, Georgie Girl, Eminem and Madonna are both a zillion trillion kabatetrillion times more spectacular, creative, talented, smart, and more adept at perceiving the world around them than you will ever be. Yeah, it was a blow to me as well, and I just had to accept that I will never be as celebrated as Madonna! And as soon as I understood that we have to have teachers, the easier it got for me to be humble. What could we learn if we were at the top of our game? Even Madonna learns, gleans, muses over and mulls. She knows she is not the only player in showbiz, even if she is the Lady Messiah.

Besides, if I were relegated to a life of nothing but the Pet Shop Boys and Erasure, I’d shoot myself in the eye. Don’t get me wrong, I believe the Pet Shop Boys are underrated and love their glossy, detached sardonicism. And Erasure is so happy and angelic, a true flame of positive energy making. But once in a while I’m going to have to mate. And when that happens, it’s either smoldering with Nina Simone’s blues, or Led Zeppelin maxed up on volume, or, well, Madonna’s Bedtime Stories.

I knew Moby was smart enough to come around, and that he’d come to agree to disagree and offer his respect. I’m not saying you have to love Eminem just because I suddenly do. I was very much of that mindset that I couldn’t tolerate the word ‘bitch’ and hence, I missed out on a lot. Then I figured it out. I do not have to endorse a certain headset toward any group just because I am capable of listening to elements of those groups through their cultural markers like music, film, art. But I sure as hell have to give props where props are due, and allow you space and audience to say your piece, so that I can also have mine.

Sigh- the last man I seriously considered running away with, the rippling army brat slash firefighter- expressed some surprise that someone of my awesome intellectual fortitude would give a flying flick about what Paris was wearing and whether Eminem’s 20 year relationship with his foster sister/wife was going to last.

Well, I wasn’t going to go anywhere if I wasn’t allowed to read my magazines! Most people are a little embarrassed about their celebrity fixations, perhaps guilty because they cannot name a dozen Nobel or Pulitzer winners. But I’m not ashamed. Guerrilla scholar and intelligence of the world, Camille Paglia, is also very candid about her worship of various icons, including Madonna.

By following the triumphs and tragedies of our stage and screen, we are merely re-enacting the great loves and the great feuds of the gods. Like Dionysus and Isis and Ganesh and Pan, like Medusa and Imanja and Thor- our pantheon is rife with vanities, insanities, jealousies, scandals, affairs, murders, adventures, broken hearts. Human beings have a profound need to deduce their world through the scandalous sagas of the gods and goddesses.

Ancient or modern, we do now and always will weave our stories within theirs. Moby and Eminem are just classical archetypes, finding their places after a dramatic rift. The escapades and sagas of the immortals are exactly the theatres we’re re-enacting. Academics can snivel at me, and turn into their soulless diagrams of the epoch of Horus or Tristan and Isolde.

But we live our life in archetypes, and today’s paparazzi zeitgeist is no exception.

November 2007
Lorette C. Luzajic
www.thegirlcanwrite.net
www.literaryaddict.wordpress.com
www.thegirlcanwrite.wordpress.com
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Sam Bourne’s The Righteous Men

Five years from now I won’t even remember that I read Sam Bourne’s The Righteous Men, but so what? Not every book has to change your life.

I’d been longing for another page turning religious thriller in the post-Da Vinci Code era. While there were dozens of possible ‘spin-offs’ to choose from, none held my attention past page four, and most were blatantly parroting the exact same themes. I mean, how lame is it to write another whole novel using Da Vinci? Try another artist, at the very least…while there is nothing new under the sun, a tiny bit of originality surely goes a long way.

Bourne’s first novel, complete with banal sentiments, kidnapped wife, and an implausible plot was still a book I devoured cover-to-cover. Throw in an unusual Hasidic Judaism movement in Crown Heights, New York, a NY Times reporter who is a link to the possible Moshiach (Messiah), some ancient Kabalistic legends, a dead pimp, a weird Christian sect, and an ex-girlfriend with curves to there. What an adventure.

Some of the puzzle solving is indeed a bit of a stretch. Bourne can spin a good yarn, but doesn’t yet have the mastery to make you really care about the characters. I couldn’t have cared less, really, if the kidnapped wife was ever returned, and I never felt real affection for Will, the main character, or his amazing father, who handily is a judge. I was never turned on by the ex-girlfriend and felt the rabbis were a rather wooden lot. But nonetheless, it was still compulsive reading, and I always love a few religious legends thrown in. Religion has always been a fascinating panorama of human behaviour, and too much or too little of it seem to be bad news. Without any, stress levels skyrocket. With too much, weird obsessive fixations are seeded. Religion is also the distinguishing element between cultures and generations. Other people’s religion always seems bizarre, and puzzling out what the cues mean explains so much about them. The details of rituals make for great reading, and I’ve always been partial to a good Catholic mystery, with stained glass and flickering candles and corrupt priests and banished sinners. The sterile Protestant world I grew up in did not have luxuries like rosary beads and saints and weeping statues, so I always found fascination in a good Catholic plot. Now that all of the intriguing Catholic storylines have been done to death, what’s girl to do?

It takes a very imaginative writer to find conspiracy theories, Messianic plots, and global murder blue prints in the legends of the Torah and other Hasidic books. Bourne introduces the kabala and only refers to Madonna once. While his character sketches and the plausibility of the plot are definitely suffering a little, he does bring alive the studious world of Jewish theology and makes the reader curious to learn more. The title Righteous Men refers to an ancient belief that righteousness and justice can cloak itself into invisibility in a simple man (never a woman, of course) – or even a sinner man. And you’ll wonder if Jesus ripped off that bit about angels disguised as convicts or whatever it was. In any event, it brought to mind Peter’s letter: “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” (1 Peter 4:8). And as it turns out, for all his malevolence of trade, the pimp was a very nice guy.

Lorette C. Luzajic – read more of my work through www.thegirlcanwrite.net. Check out my other blog at www.thegirlcanwrite.wordpress.com.