EPISODE 415: PALIMPSESTS
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
On Monday the roof of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris went up in flames like a book of matches, and it seemed like much of the Western world pretty much stopped dead in its tracks at the sight of it. I saw footage of the spire coming down before I knew what had happened, and I have to say it was somehow almost as upsetting as watching the World Trade Center collapse. In fact that’s exactly what it reminded me of; the camera showed a large group of people standing, watching it in the distance. They gasped as one as the spire collapsed.
I’ve been to Notre-Dame. In fact while I was visiting Paris I was invited to say Mass there for tourists. But I remember almost nothing about the interior of the church, and I can’t say that I left Paris with a conscious sense of it as a special place for me. It was the Eiffel Tower that really knocked me upside down, the way being at the top changes your perspective on the world; the cafes, too and the appreciation for the life around you they gave you. That Paris is the City of Light is entirely a propos; it helped me see things in a different way.
And yet there I was on Monday like millions of others with my heart in my throat and tears suddenly in my eyes as that spire collapsed. And I’ve been trying to understand why. Is it just that we share a deep gratitude for Paris, and to see it suffer like this pains us as well? I think that could be it in part. But maybe it’s also like watching an elephant die, or a redwood, something ancient. The fabric of our world is built out of places like Notre-Dame, spaces or objects that have always been there. It doesn’t matter whether we spent any time inside the Cathedral or believe in God; that building is part of our understanding of what reality consists of. To watch it burn is to watch some part of us burn, too. ++ One article I read described Notre-Dame as a palimpsest, that is an object or piece of writing which has been added to over generations such that the original thing has been largely erased. It’s utterly befitting; Notre-Dame has gone through many, many changes and iterations through the centuries. It’s basically a four-dimensional piece of pop culture. That is to say, not only is it a building that tried to send visitors on a journey into fantastic stories, via everything from the statues and stained glass contained within to the kinds of experiences and insights the architecture itself brought out in people, but that what those journeys were meant to be changed over time, and that glimpses of all or many of those layers are still possible today.
(In four dimensional space, in addition to being able to see height, length and width, you would see the entire history of an object, from beginning to end. For example, you know those online greeting cards that were popular for a while where you put your family’s heads on a set of dancers and then they dance to some weird and incongruous song? Like this, for example. Or this Star Wars-themed clip I tried to put together which is worth watching just to see who has the deader eyes, Anakin or Amidala. (It’s close, but to my mind it’s Anakin. It’s always Anakin.)
Well in four dimensional space, what you’d see would be like a set of blurry streaks, as each character’s complete pathway from the start of the dance to the end would have to be included in the image.)
The Bible is a palimpsest, actually. What we call the Good Book is actually a collected set of books which are not only written by different writers but within themselves have been edited, woven together with other stuff and/or revised by others. That’s how you can have two creation stories in Genesis, or for that matter two floods. Or four accounts of the Passion.
Your face is a kind of palimpsest, too, and your body, who we were and who we are all layered in there together. And watching Notre-Dame burn is not only the witnessing of a cherished piece of architecture get destroyed, but in this strange way seeing the shredding of time and imagination too. It’s like watching the Star Wars saga somehow slowly begin to be wiped from reality, such that going forward Princess Leia is someone those of us who are old enough remember having been there, but there’s no actual trace of her presence anymore.
Or maybe it’s like seeing a parent cry for the first time. Suddenly everything is different and the future is tarnished with loss and uncertainty. ++ You know, come to think of it the Star Wars saga is another great example of a pop culture palimpsest, in that George Lucas was always “fixing”/changing his films after they’d already been released. Which is why for the last thirty years I have lugged around VHS copies of the original three films even though I haven’t had anywhere I could play them for probably half those years. It doesn’t matter, I’m not carrying them around to watch them, I’m just fighting to ensure they continue to exist.
And speaking of Star Wars, heard a couple great hot takes on the Episode IX trailer from friends this week. My friend Tim wonders if “Skywalker” doesn’t refer to Luke per se, but represents a new term for Force users, created so as to get rid of the good guy/bad guy opposition built into Jedi and Sith. Sometimes we do good, sometimes we do evil, but we’re all Skywalkers.I like it.
Meanwhile I was going through some responses to the newsletter and came upon this prediction as to the end of the saga, from my friend Ken.
Final scene—filmed in black and white, single violin playing mournful dirge that evokes not REYs theme, but the ROGUE ONE Oh my god they killed everybody theme.
We are looking over REY'S right shoulder. REY is looking out over the ocean where TWIN SUNS are setting. Cut to close up of REY’s face, expressionless. We see the suns’ glow upon her features as she slowly lifts with her right hand, gloved in black, a cigarette to her lips, taking a long drag, the glow of the cigarette barely competing with the glow of the setting suns. Cut back to view over the shoulder, and REY starts slowly walking into the sea. As the camera pans back we see another glow emerging from bottom of screen. Slow pan back to reveal the butt end of a lightsaber handle. Presumably hers? Slow pan back, we see the lightsaber is in something. The ground? Something else? Meanwhile, REY is up to her waist in the water, 20 feet offshore. Pan back to reveal the lightsaber is definitely stuck in something on the ground. REY is up to her shoulders. Pan back to reveal, just as REY’s head sinks beneath the surface, KYLO REN dead with lightsaber in chest.
Fade to black.
Title
Fin
It's very French, I know. Still, tell me you don’t want to see it. (Me too.) ++ So Game of Thrones had a kind of a slow start on Sunday. Sort of a Let’s take the long way to the apocalypse, for the night is dark and full of terrors and the frozen waterfalls are lovely at this time of year.
After the fact someone pointed out to me that there are scenes in the new ep, “Winterfell”, taken straight from the pilot episode ten years ago. Which (shocker) intrigued me and so I rewatched both the pilot and the new episode and then came up with a list of parallels between them (again, shocker). And it turns out there are many parallels, SO many – not just the kid running to catch a glimpse of the approaching army or the creepy pattern of body parts arranged by the White Walkers Design Collective but things like the prominence of the question of executions, whether they’re just and who is responsible for them, or people arguing with a Stark male about whether to be true to his vows or play it smarter, or conversations in the Winterfell crypt about both Ned’s sister Lyanna and Targaryens. It really does just go on and on.
And as I was working through this, I came up with this prediction: Bran is going to be asked to execute Jaime. I don’t think he’ll go through with it, but he’s going to be asked to do it. There’s that weird comment he makes when Jon says he’s a man now, “Almost”. Which hearkens back to the pilot, when Catelyn tells Ned he should not be bringing a ten-year-old boy to an execution, Ned insists, saying “He won’t be a boy forever.” (Ned is so much the worst.)
What makes a Stark man a Stark man? Seeing through an execution. So maybe that’s where Bran is headed… ++
By this time next week some of you may have already seen Avengers: Endgame.I somehow agreed to direct a four-day preached retreat which goes pretty much sun up to late evening, Thursday through Sunday. I’m fine with it, really I am.
It's going to be great.
Meanwhile I had dinner with a friend, his wife and their 13-year-old daughter, all of whom were still spitting fire over the ending of Infinity War. It was fantastic.
Live feed of Me from the dinner:
None of us have any idea how they’re going to resurrect everybody. My hope is that a lot of years have gone by, so we really get a sense of how much has been lost. And then eventually they come up with some kind of time travel thingy and shazam.
(I really am a genius at screenwriting.)
But really, I just love the fact that even a whole year later we really don’t know what’s coming. How often does that happen? Er, other than in real life, I mean.
(*sigh*)
++ LINKS ++
I love behind the scenes stuff like this article about how GOT directors got their favorite shots. Or this article on the design of bathrooms in football stadiums, because “you don’t really buy beer, you just rent it”.
(It includes the insane statistic that nearly half of all fans will place a call while using the restroom during a game, 10 percent will complete an online purchase and 8 percent will actually consume food while on the can.
WHO IS BUYING THINGS ON THEIR PHONE IN A FOOTBALL STADIUM MEN'S ROOM?
ALSO: PLEASE STOP.)
Having grown up with science fiction movies, capturing a black hole on film did not immediately strike me as something that was something. Then I read this. Also, there's good news and bad news from universities.
And finally, this interview of Tina Fey by David Tennant is not only the best interview of Tina Fey I've ever heard but met all my nerd needs this week.
What with this retreat going on I don’t think that I’ll get out an episode next week. But let’s all imagine we’re at Endgame together, watching life and hope somehow emerge from death, and laughing at everyone who tells us all that's possible is what we see in front of us.
Ready? Here we go.