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An epic begins with an invocation of the muse. Sing Muse - the poet intones, yadda yadda yadda, this or that, and then commences with the middle of the story.
Today we live an epic, what Baudelaire called the heroism of modern life: where everyday each of us commences an existential odyssey armed with "the denial of death" and a few tools. We are either Moses, Odysseus, Aeneas, Agememnon, Hector, Achilles, Leopold Bloom or Stephan Daedelus. We have our friends.
We have our challenges: the TV where politicians and news anchors read off a prompter, is a kind of fake invocation of the muse, in an imitation of prophetic or Delphic ecstasy. And what is the word "media" but the word for middle - what is between us and understanding or misunderstanding. Media is hot and cold - as McLuhan said, and used by us or uses us. The CBS logo is the Cyclops, a corporation invested in diverting our attention. Is our only escape from this cave to blind the giant? Or else we risk being devoured.
What is the denial of death? It is that mechanism that allows us to carry on with our lives, otherwise we would be overwhelmed by the futility of it. Ecclesiastes is very aware of this mechanism and counsels us to live in the moment, not selling our future into a reliving of the past, nor becoming so absorbed with the past that the future surprises us. Live now. Love now. Enjoy this moment. Thank God for this very now. Create now.
Not an easy thing to do. We may wander 40 years in the desert or spend 10 years enchanted on some island. Will we find ourselves transformed into beasts? Will we be swallowed by the earth or refuse to enter the promised land, spooked by the unknown?
Giants and Sirens threaten and beguile.
How like Calvin's description of the dangers that await us simply by walking down the street or sitting in the privacy of your garden (Institutes I, xvii, 10).