Great Works

A creative frame bearing resemblance to the mythology invitation, is to make a piece as an aesthetic response to one of humanity’s great works of art.

A tall order, I know, but the great works, whichever ones stand out to you, most likely are important to you for personal as well as cultural resonances.

In my earlier years I wrote songs in response to three Sophocles plays: Oedipus Rex, Agamemnon (part 1 of the Oresteia), and Elektra.

At the time of writing the songs, I was a counseling psychology grad student, so there was an extra dimension of psychotherapy-tradition based fascination in Oedipus and Elektra, due to the Freudian work done on these two topics.

Greek tragedies, which often take personages of mythological size, even when historical, are so full of poetic riches that I feel you could take one play and work with it forever.

My invitation to you: Is there a big, hefty work of art that you would like to respond to, personally, with a piece of your own? Make a piece as a response back to the artist who started this creative conversation with you when he/she/they affected you with their art.

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Lyrics:

Brother, you have to help me. I met you at my father’s grave. A lock of hair told me you were there. A lock of hair I’d recognize anywhere. 

Father’s ghost is hanging round the house, and mother’s nerves have gone to shit. I pour my wine and pour my scented oil, and watch them seep into the soil. 

Iphigenia, you must remember. She of the warm doe eyes and curls. She let me suck her thumb, when we were babes, my only comfort in this world. 

And our father, so handsome in his robe, there is no sense that I can make. How could he cut her white tender throat, all so his armies could set sail? 

Our mother, brutal as a man, kisses that traitor right in front of me! I am not welcome. They’re making love, while the blood’s still under their nails.

Eeeh!

Recorded by Brad Perkins of Worm Farm in Ypsilanti, MI in 2008 with Mike Billmire and Merilee Philips of the Painted Room.

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Thumbnail image respectfully lifted from Patrick Benson’s illustrations for North: the Amazing Story of Arctic Migration by Nick Dowson