Art and Culture # 78
Making Modern Myths
-For The Uncensored!
It’s easy to complain that “there’s nothing good to read or watch” these days. In 2022, book stores are constantly filled with everything you can find. There’s nothing more relaxing than walking into an old used bookstore and smelling all the experience and history used to concern that similar feeling of love and care put into a page. Or straight myopic drug hysteria caroused into words. Either way, that moment when entering a bookstore is akin to walking into a church. It’s looking to history and the years before that will give inspiration to what we see around us. There’s libel, and plagiarism, but manga was always used to being inspired and not necessarily being a product of isolation.
Modern Myths require hard work. It doesn’t mean you get to use every example ever to create your world. It’s using what you see and how you can approach a subject. If the consequence of yearning for something new is to hold yourself to higher standards. But if something is inspiring, so be it. It’s being honest about what inspires you is where you will go in your craft.
To be solely understood and misunderstood. The Modern Myth is almost akin to Ayn Rands “The Fountainhead” as creativity is put at the pinnacle of man’s greatness and folly. Or even Marvel’s Iron Man, or DC’s Batman and Superman. Or Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. All of which are combined to tell a great story in a world that is devoid of entertainers and thinkers. The two can go together.
Which will lead into the next idea Modernity doesn’t always need to be centrally relevant to what art is created. Rebellion is missing in 2022 where everyone wants to think the same thoughts. I was always taught that led society down a wrong path. Now a new society wants to take control of Art.
To complain is not the goal. It’s the reason why I have written more than 106 works of art. As a risk taker, it’s easy to mistake creation with modernity. Reality is akin to what people perceive. For New York City residents, tall builds do not bother them. To an African Pygmy, that would be science fiction territory. Unbelievable. To someone living in the country, the sounds of insects don’t bother them. For Mythmaking to exist, all of this must converge in a creators mind. Too much experience and little writing can also hurt a thinker, too. Too much thinking and no writing can also create more time to think and less to write. To brainstorm for the next writing day is a good thing. To take detailed notes is good as it provides proof, but the proof of a work is not meant to be left in notes.
What the Modern Myth allows is to talk about all subjects that are important, but also not take modernity seriously. To understand that imagination and modernity don’t always have to live in the realm of realism. Writers like John Updike and John Irving would never be able to write a science fiction story because realism was important to them. Gabriel Garcia Marquez had no qualms about magic realism because it was a bridge between the past and the present. Where anything could happen. But Magic Realism is a subject that was born in Colombia, with a hot jungle, and the ability to let schizophrenic visions, become a life long obsession. It’s not different than old wise Native Americans who smoke marijuana and predict a future, or at least provide some spiritual comfort. To tell a yarn and help ease any distress in the group.
Story tellers are no different than people who smoke weed grow long beards and they have a vision for their work. Drugs, to me, have that subtle effect of heightening reality. But to someone who has sleep apnea, like myself, my sight and ears were always sensitive as if I was smoking marijuana. Does it make you a good modern mythmaker?
Tom Wolfe had a phrase, from 1987’s “Bonfire of the Vanities”, “the master of the universe,” as the wall street tycoons could tell fate through the stock market, and money ruled the first world society. Modern Mythmakers are not just superheroes in billionaires in capes. But they surely don’t exist in Goldman Sachs, either.
What modern mythmaking has allowed many is to form opinions and say them across the Internet, too. But if a Myth is meant to last only when a hero is vanquished, is a Legend merely just one more step into immortality? Yes, and No. If modernity is only obsessed on superficial takes, then myths are left to accountants and bureaucrats, not story tellers.
People will remember Myth Makers, not Activists.
-Louis Bruno is the author of more than 20 books, including, The Michael Project, The Michael Project: Book 2: The Lost Children of Eve, Thy Kingdom Come, The Disintegrating Bloodline Part 2: Chaos, The Data Chase, The Disintegrating Bloodline part 3: Solvè, The Disintegrating Bloodline (and the original text re-released in 2019), Apocalypse Soldier, The Data Chase, Selection: The First Book of the Life and Death Saga, and Blinking Eyes: The Second Book of the Life and Death Saga, Hierarchy of Dwindling Sheep, The City of Sand, The God of Curiosity, To the Moon and Back, The Villain Lives and The Villain Lives: The Divided Pinpoint, Come Home, Young One. He has a Bachelor of Arts in English from University of Phoenix. His books can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Lulu. He can be found on Gab, https://gab.com/thereallouistbruno, Minds https://www.minds.com/lbruno8063/. Instagram @lbrruno8063 and @louisbrunoofficialbook. Our Freedom Book https://www.ourfreedombook.com/thereallouistbruno17. He has written for the Intellectual Conservative and Ephemere. His next book, The Voices Are Alive is out now: https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/louis-bruno/the-voices-are-alive/hardcover/product-mvggdg.html?page=1&pageSize=4. Also, if you can’t subscribe so that you can get members only content, please be sure to share the articles, as well. If you do Subscribe and pay, as well so you can get my articles in your inbox every time, and access to the paid articles that some readers won’t get to see. Every little bit helps in the war against Big Tech. Thanks for reading.
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