Mythology @ MindSay

I am all mellow today and have been reading mythology -- Prometheus and Pandora-- by Thomas Bulfinch. I am hoping that I can make myself read a chapter or two per day.

 

While I was reading I was listening to my winamp but Nas kept coming up. He's great but kind of distracting.

 

So reading the mythology reminded me of how I learned my first myth story, that of Persephone, and of one of my favorite educational childrens toys, the Show 'N Tell Viewer:

 

 

It was a record player that also automatically played filmstrips and had little books with it.

I had the myth of Persephone as one of my sets.

 

When I was in sixth grade, for independent reading assignments my school had hundreds of the little booklets and we read them and answered the questions at the end, but they didn't have the actual Show 'N Tell Viewer and film strips (unless they kept them hid somewhere).

 

Anyway, I think this thing contributed to my higher reading level and encyclopedic interest in everything.

 

If I ever have kids I am going to track one down (wouldn't be impossible I guess, since I found this pic on the 'net, right?) and let them learn to use it (with my supervision!) on rainy days.

 

If any of y'all ever run across the books let me know. Seriously. Even if I don't have kids, the little books were cool.

Digging further back into my past, I uncovered my earliest paintings of Melusine.  During the spring and summer of 1991, I discovered a little book of French fairy tales and thus my obsession with Melusine began.  I even attempted to write a new detailed view of the Melusine myth, one that I firmly believed would appeal to a brand new audience and then everyone I knew would love me for it, but I wasn't yet mature enough to tackle such a daunting task and the story I worked so hard on for a whole summer was lost.  Later I turned to roleplaying games for inspiration.  I would "play" Melusine as a superhero code named "Vipress" and not just write about her.  I was in love with a group of guys I used to game with and they all treated me like a tag along girlfriend -- you know, someone else's woman whom they had to include in their reindeer games so they wouldn't piss off their friend, Tom, my boyfriend.  I knew I wasn't as liked by them as I liked them.  So I was the odd one out in our GURPs Supers game.  Clueless about the rules, yet beaming with creativity and the joy of taking an active part in a game that seemed reserved only for the boys, my heart would soon break when the boys would get into heated discussions over rules and thus ending the "play" to the roleplaying game.

 

Frustrated with roleplaying, I went back to my apartment and, still new to the art making world, I bought some cheap poster board and acrylic paint and created the first two paintings you see above.  I first drew the figures in pencil, then darkened my lines with a bold sharpie marker, and painted the figures up with the paints.  For working with the cheapest materials possible, my imagination and concentration yielded some great results.  I remember when I hung up the finished paintings in my room, my roleplaying buddies were quick to remark that "I was showing improvement" in my work.  They didn't need to be so hypercritical, or so patronizing, but at age 19, and coming from a family who put me down and never supported me for choosing art as a career, I was willing to take ANY compliment as a sign of approval.

 

Looking back at these paintings, I can clearly see the comic book and roleplaying game influence on my style.  But the world I sought to join, that of the science-fiction/fantasy gaming community, would continue to test my patience.  Late summer 1991 would see me travelling to every sci-fi convention I could get to -- I bummed rides from friends, suffered endless bus rides, and even went to my first comic book convention in Chicago carrying a substantial load of paintings taller than my hieght (I'm five feet tall).  I didn't know back then that I wouldn't have to carry so much, that I should've just took photographs, but I was so enthusiastic that my heavy, awkward load didn't matter.  I was determined to get a job.

 

Gen-con 1991 (when it was still held in my hometown, Milwaukee) I discovered a new roleplaying game company that seemed to accept me: Whitewolf.  They seemed as excited as I was about my artwork.  There was an exchange of phone numbers.  I met their staff.  We had dinner.  It was cozy, friendly, and everyone I met was anxious about their Vampire: The Masquerade game.  A game that would later become incredibly popular and it would seem like my style of art would be made for (see the third painting for reference) .  A game I almost got hired to illustrate (they really liked my witch with the bloody offering painting above).  Except I made a big mistake:  the group of gamers I went to the convention with, the boys I loved so dearly and would've done anything for, were arrogant sons-of-bitches and didn't get along with the art director.  Maybe they were over protective of me.  Whitewolf, in its infancy as a company, wasn't offering any pay for publishing art and yet I would not be able to own my art after it was published -- basically I would've been giving it away.  This gaming company would later on be very popular and once they were making money, of course they finally offered to pay illustrators for their work.  No matter, I wasn't bound to get my "break" with them and seven years later I'd further sour my chances to get into the company when I got into a fight with the same art director.  But that's another story.

 

We want to talk more about Melusine and why she's made such an impact on me.

 

There's a lot of me in the figure of Melusine.  I began to dream about fairies, especially about Melusine.  I saw her as a very real, very tangible character.  The more I learned about her, the more I felt like her.

 

Melusine wouldn't be the only fairy queen kind of character I would dream of.  The summer of 1991 was one of those times of my life where the other world seemed to surround me.  I was so open to everything new, I was even going out to the woods in the middle of the night hoping to spy me some real fairies.  The last image is a close up of a very large ink and pastel crayon painting of a fairy queen named Jhana (GAH-nah).  I still have the dream journal I kept during that year and Jhana was my primary "spirit guide" who, through riddle and poetry told me a lot about myself.  In my painting of her, I can clearly see aspects of myself, as if this was more of a vision about who I was to become in the future.

 

I still want to wear the headdress she's got on.  Isn't it gorgeous?

 

Well, no matter what my misadventures in the realm of roleplaying games and science-fiction, I still have the joy these characters bring -- that was never lost and remains safely guarded, stored in my loft, waiting to be rediscovered.  Today I uncover them and share them here... images from a time when I was more innocent.  Just look at the last two self-portraits.  I appear child-like and medieval, not yet prepared or mature to emerge into the big world.

 

I like myself much better now and wouldn't go back in time to relive the past, but it is nice to appreciate where I'm coming from.  I'm much closer now than I ever was to getting published.  Good to peek back and pat myself on the back.  It's time to go back to the drawing board and concentrate on the present again.  There are exciting things to come... just wait and see. 

I imagine when I was a teen I worked my way though various forms of literature.  Science fiction, fantasy, greek mythology, not to mention the more realistic if just as wild stuff described by Hunter Thompson and Kurt Vonnegut and George Orwell.  I enjoyed a lot of it, stayed with science fiction for a bit longer than the others, and of course participated in the fandom of The Hobbit, by Tolkien. But I put all that behind me by the time I got to college and immersed myself in the realism of books about police, spies, Watergate and Viet Nam.

But during those earlier years I never put any of the stories I had read into any real historical context.  I never connected the dots between popular fantasy-fiction and true ancient mythology.

I bring it up today because I just got a Christmas package from my Icelandic penpals.  I am slowly learning a little about Iceland, about the language, and about the history.  I have not yet tackled the Sagas, writings of early Iceland from the era of the 10th and 11th century. 

 

But this year, I was sent a statue of Odin.

 

WHO or WHAT is Odin?  I hadn't a clue! 

Two years ago they (my trucker buddy class) related to me their story of Christmas which included an ugly troll named Gryla who steals naughty children!  And she has a cat who EATS bad kids!  She and her husband also have 13 children who have become friendly yet mischeivous and each one comes down from the mountain to leave a gift in the shoes which children  leave on windowsills.  So Icleandic Christmas involves 13 days of gift giving, starting today. Last year I received a deck of cards that held pictures of the little trolls with the great names like "bowl licker, window peeper, door sniffer, sheep worrier (ruh-roh!), and candle beggar.

 

This morning I had to turn to the great god google and learn, with help from Wikipedia, about Odin. 

Odin himself is part of legend/lore/mythology and one of the Norse Gods.  What I found fascinating in reading about him : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin , was the interconnection with several things from modern lore that I have heard mentioned, but never was able to put in any perspective.

For instance Vallhalla.  I have heard reference to it for years, and sort of lumped it with the other mythological place of El Dorado.  It was a reverential place and that was about all I knew.  Well, Odin, among his many characteristics, is a god of War, as well as of poetry, victory and the hunt.  One of his activities is to recognize the fiercest of warriors who are lost in battle.  He is assisted in this task by the princess Valkrie - another character I have heard of but never knew anything about.  Once chosen, the warrior spirits are brought to Valhalla to feast and await the final battle.  (in the final battle, Odin is victor but the world is destroyed.  From the remains of his adversary, he creates the earth (the body), rocks (teeth and bones), rivers and lakes (blood) sky (skull) and clouds (brains).  Odin then chose two trees and into them blew breath and life;  one of Odins brothers then embued them with brains and feelings; and his third brother gave them sight and hearing.  One tree was now man, named Ash, and the other was woman, named Embla and all human kind came from them. 

 

Odin is also the father of Thor.

Odin is accompianied by two ravens called Thought and Memory.

 

There are just so many incredible interconnnections you can follow from the above linked wikipedia entry it will take me days to follow them all and hopefully, gain a better understanding of the myths.  The Irish, like the Norse, have mythical characters that represented qualities and traits.  Good battled evil for things such as love, freedom, and eternal peace.  Giants in both realms were the forces of evil.  Bad men who died in Norse belief (as well as men who simply did not die heroically in battle) went to the 9th world,

 

a place called . . .

 

wait for it! . . .   

 

hel. 

You have to start reading yourself to learn that hel was a realm lorded over by Hel,

a goddess sent there by . . . Odin!

Welcome to Hel :

 

I'm going to try to not become a geek all over again, but I'm going to enjoy the next few days!

This will probably be a lame blog post, but I really don't care.

Mythology test tomorrow and I should be studying. Should be is the keyword here...I've been listening to music and goofing around with the "Stumble Button" for like an hour now. That thing is addictive! It's reaching into parts of the internet I never knew existed....

[/lamepost]

:D

I visited Virginia Beach over the Memorial Day weekend this year.  I was absolutely surprised at the sight of this beautiful scuplture. It's Neptune (aka Poseidon), the mythological God of the sea.  He was carrying a trident and surrounded with creatures, such as an octopus, sea turtle, dolphin, shark, fish, and swordfish.  I was taken away with it and very happy with the way the photos turned out (especially the first one).