Myths and Folklore Blog

 As much as I wanted to give Icarus a happy ending, I could not resist the siren's call of the story lab videos. The TV Tropes was a tempting one, as I am a fan of perusing that site, but the TED Talks grabbed my attention first and felt like they would provide more benefit for me. I think I will definitely be doing another story lab in the future; this one was a lot of fun. The first TED Talk I watched was The Danger of a Single Story  by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I must confess that I have actually watched this TED Talk before for another class (Native American Music), but it is very good and the speaker is very charismatic so I watched it again. I love the message and the anecdotes are hilarious, albeit cringe-inducing due to the secondhand embarrassment. She introduces herself as a storyteller and I find that description apt. She reminds me a lot of the Cherokee storytellers I've met with the way she talks to her audience and with the tone of her overall talk. The message ...

  Notes Pygmalion is another interesting one and I get that the gods turned Galatea into a human but what if she were kept a statue? did Pygmalion make a proportional person, or was she made like Michelangelo's David, meant to look proportional based on perspective? what if her eyes were still like stone? solid gray-white eyes whose gaze would terrify I like to think Pygmalion would still love her, after getting over the initial horror like if Victor Frankenstein was not a coward I once made a squash plant like that. Its leaves were green with splotches of white, and it climbed the garden fence like a vine. She bore female flowers and I named her Lilith. Her fruit had two skins, yellow over green, and was especially vulnerable to the elements in spite of this, for both skins were delicate. Thus they had to be harvested quickly, and were relatively small. The seeds were half-formed, so it would have been impossible for her to bear a child plant. I must admit she frightened me at fir...

  Notes Icarus is one in need of a happy ending I think. As a child I had a huge book full of children's stories. One of those big fancy hardcovers with the pages golden around the edges. It had a retelling of this story, but from Icarus's point of view. I remember he had marveled at the sun after being in the tower for so long. I remember him describing how warm it was on his back, how he wanted to get closer to that warmth. I have no idea what possessed whoever wrote that to just make it so much sadder. "drawn by desire for the heavens" Icarus, trust me, dating Apollo never goes well. didn't even get a flower named after him for his trouble, just a sea and an island. I think Icarus should get to have nice things like Apollo, and his sun chariot Or Helios, those two kind of got blended together  (Daedalus and Icarus by Antonio Canova: Wikimedia Commons ) Bibliography: "Daedalus and Icarus" from Ovid's Metamorphoses translated by Tony Kline. Story So...