The Archetype of the Troubadour ... is Alive and Well ... all Over the World

... which is more than can be said for some 'archeypes' treated in modern movies and television shows.

Barry McGuire and John York

A few evenings ago I was watching PBS and caught Barry McGuire (with John York of the storied career, includig The Byrds) singing Eve of Destruction. And I thought to myself, since I wasn't thinking to anyone else at that moment, that the archetype of the 'troubadour' is alive and well. Which is a good thing. There are tens of thousands of troubadours singing all over the world, it just happened to be Barry McGuire that pulled at my reflective mind.

The health of our archetypes - i.e. how we treat and dress and give voice to archetypes in our cultural media consumables - is imortant to our health. Degrade our archetypes and we degrade our culture. Which in turn makes us less than what we could be. Since it is our archetypes that inspire and instruct (both of these) us that we are and can be 'bigger' than any of our 'ordinary' moments.

Boy, he has sung that song across a lot of Time, relative to how lasting, across Time, human beings can be.

A Bit of Recent History on the Medieval European Troubadours

"Astonishing in their diversity and grace, the circa four thousand poems of the Occitanian and Catalan troubadours survive by the foresight of a few enlightened patrons who, sensing the end of an epoch, began amassing these precious works in large manuscript codices. Yet the medieval hour was late; poems that had been sung for generations were collected and transcribed at the very end of their general currency in society. And only two hundred or so melodies (preserved in what degree of exactitude?) were ever written down at all."

Joel Cohen's liner notes to Lo Gai Saber: Troubadours et Jongleurs 1100 - 1300, 1991.

You can read more about this recording here.

New Archetypes are not Created

Of course, there were troubadours all over the world before the term was invented in the Middle Ages in Occitania. Then it was largely about 'love' - Divine and of this human plane. I include songs of activism in the troubadour archetype. The 60s and 70s were a rich time for troubadours. The 80s and 90s not so much. But ... the archetype is alive and well today. Hooray! Just as they love love, so we do, and must, love them.

There are no new archetypes created. (Just as there are no new spiritual teachings.) Yes, we can dress and disguise our archetypes, and so empower or disempower them, in the guises of our time and place and the persons around us. To degrade them for entertainment's purposes only is to lose them. To lose them is to lose part of what we are and part of what we can be.

Namaste! I bow to and honor the light within you!

The Bay Psalm Book ... and Ends of Eras for New First Editions, and More

The End and the Future ...

On Tuesday a copy of the Bay Psalm Book was auctioned for $14.2 million. This is a new world record for any printed book. This little book (it is little) was the first book printed in what was to become the United States. It was published in 1640 in Cambridge, Massachusetts - so soon after the Plymouth colony was established in Massachusetts in 1620. The print run was about 1700 copies. Only 11 copies survive in the world. It's full title is - The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre. With a subtitle of - Whereunto is prefixed a discourse declaring not only the lawfullnes, but also the necessity of the heavenly Ordinance of singing Scripture Psalmes in the Churches of God. [all sics apply]

So Many Evolutionary Arcs

And then ... my mind began to 'think'. And so 'I' went along with it. (Why not?) It seems to me that the end of an era has already happened. I doubt that any 'first editions' of fiction published from today onwards will ever be sold at any auction for any price.

Works of fiction, stories, have travelled a long arc in how they are transmitted from the inspired (or not) author to the consciousness of the one being storyTold to. First there was oral transmission (and of course memory) only, to both storytellers and those being Told to ... and then handwritten script given to printers (oh what fun that iterative cycle must have been - just ask James Joyce!) ... and then we story creators had typewriters (hooray!) for both ourselves and those who typed for us ... then word processing (cool and now ubiquitous and taken-for-normal) ... publication outside 'paper' begins with audio and fiction on the early web ... then we have voice recognition on the input side ... and, on the production side digital books (and some digital books are digital-only, so the concept of 'first edition' is truly conceptually gone (going, going, gone, gone, gone)) ... and let's factor in that 'stories' were originally told (only told) ... and then told or read ... and then told, read or watched/viewed (bearing in mind that most of the latter stories have never been available in told or written formats) ...

... so ... what does the future bring? Virtual reality stories? May be. Where the experience will be storyLived as opposed to storyTold to. And then we will have joint creation, between the story receiver in the virtual world and the creators of the virtual world. Games are the joint creation of a story, because they are the creation of an outcome. We already have shared authorship of novels - especially in the SF/Fantasy realm. And, of course, multi-participent games create stories jointly. StorySourcing is bound to come, for some, if it has not already - an interative play on the games I played as a youngster where we would (drink) and write a line and pass it on to the next in the round at the party. Hah! That was fun at the time!

Story, Daydreams, and Culture

And steady state in all of this is Story itself and our 'need' for Story and stories. Just as mammal biology needs breath ... so consciousness (it seems) needs ... stories.

There are billions of stories told by ourselves to ourselves together, collectively, on Mother EAerth every hour. They are often called 'daydreams'. Because they never 'happen'. And the collective of daydreams, growing exponentially, is only one layer in the collective consciousness of thoughts that encircle us. Just as there is an atmosphere that is breathed ... so ... there is an aether (to deliberately choose to use an old-fashioned word for technical reasons) that is 'received' by each of us.

Once upon a time, long gone, stories were planted upon Mother EAerth to serve a purpose. The 'template' of Story was also planted. By Seeders and Caretakers. We do need to be careful of our consumption of Story. For, like all food and drink, we need to be careful of what we consume. Artificial ingredients create bad health. Consuming too much 'bad' food/Story causes ...

Namaste! I bow to and honor the light within you!

The Fallow Time

For the joyful fun of it ... dedicated to ... all writers everywhere waiting to hear back from an agent or an editor ... The magnificent Kinks and Tired of Waiting For You.

Acknowledging that seeking out fallowness, the Fallow Time, and waiting therein is important. Out of true stillness comes true inspiration on 'what to "do" next'. Acknowledging that 'unseen activity' is always there. Regardless of who has an opinion on that one way or another. Acknowledging that we must create 'cause' to experience any 'effect'. Some times, the cause we make has to be on our own consciousness - the feeling of the inevitability of 'success' for us and our writing is important. Some times, we need to be still and fallow to hear both what Story Tells us to tell, and, what we need to 'do' in the material world to create effect.

Or ... maybe ... it is just 'what to write next'. The Fallow Time is a good spaceTimePlace to be to come to know what that 'next' is.

Acknowledging that it is also a cool song from one of the most amazing periods, artistically, in the last few hundred year (in the West!).

As a writer I have found it simple and deep to follow in my writing journey the truism of Ibrahim Khawwas, the “Palm Weaver”, giving his definition of the Sufi path -

“Allow what is done for you to be done for you. Do for yourself that which you have to do for yourself.” (as quoted from “Tales of the Dervishes” by Idries Shah. page 147.)

This is a good Russian Doll maxim for those writers who want to work with it.

Usually I choose to have the last word here. However, here is a voice that is totally for the imagination and the imaginal - Carl Gustav Jung "The Power of Imagination". He is important because tellers of stories need to understand archetypes. Simply said.

Namaste! I bow to and honor the Light within you!