...and where are all the bards?
Pop-culture references aside, I have recently realized that thinking about mead halls saddens me.
Why?
Perhaps it is because I am a dreamer with an eye inclined to the heroic, the fantastic, and the charm of things old-worldly. Or perhaps I am wishing for what the mead halls represent: pride, togetherness and a fine oral tradition. Either way, the buildings are no more.
In their steads we have fast food restaurants, diners and the various and sundry bars and pubs. No more does the community get together because they are a community and share that bond. The annual chicken barbeque is close enough. Lost in individual lives, food is tasty but serious meals are a waste of time. Our time-charged consumermobiles drive us from point to point, picking up burgers on the way.
Being a self-proclaimed writer of sorts, I find this disheartening on a number of levels. One is the fact that everything has managed to balance the appearance of being dynamic with a static and homogenized reality that nothing actually seems to happen--nothing worth immortalizing. Birth, growth, school, work and death, with a light chance of success and a smattering of relationships. Another is that, by downplaying the importance of meals and togetherness, individually and as a whole, the would-be bards are ostracized to dark corners and holes to dig up materials for the next contest or open mic night. The bard becomes disconnected rather than immersed, tolerated rather than welcomed.
Food cannot be blamed for it all, though I maintain it plays its own role in the problem. It is also that, in the race to win any more, a body needs so much information with immediacy and in abundance. We have ready access. With food, knowledge and even networked relationships flying hither and yon at the speed of irradiated humming birds, the attention span slips slowly thorugh mechanized processers, diminishing. Bards, for all of their love, interest and care for their communities, have no place here. The places closest to their beloved halls are regular bar stools or the table set aside for the coffee regulars in some small-town diner. Through there has never been such a capacity for communication, people have become distant and dazed. Some lose the ability for apt face-to-face discussions, while others never are given the chance to learn.
Never before has the village that raises the child been so hands-off. In disconnecting ourselves, we have lost our feel for the underlying themes and strings that bind humans together. Ye olde truths and tales from the bard are become relics--shiny baubles and memories of past eras. How quaint.
It seems that communications galore have closed off our minds. People no longer talk with the stars or walk with the gods. The man who swam in the sea last week has met no mermaids and has slain no krakkens.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
It sounds as if you, Leslie, are "dreaming the Middle Ages," as Umberto Eco calls it in his essay "Return of the Middle Ages" (in Travels in Hyperreality, 1983). Like many of the discussions we have in our R47 group, this post reminds me of that essay where Eco discusses the fascination with the Middle Ages that he coins "neomedievalism" abounding in our present culture.
Eco says, "it is not surprising that we go back to that period every time we ask ourselves about origin" and that "looking at the Middle Ages means looking at our infancy" (65). This idea of neomedievalism has been heavy on my mind lately, and I plan to develop it soon--in fact, I've incorporated part of my thinking into my honors project on Tolkien. I'm planning to post something on it soon--either here or at the Point of Know Return--probably an excerpt from my hp. Hopefully you can expect that in the next week or so.
Post a Comment