Sleepfest/Dreamfest 2004

[oneirophrenia]

Nothing feels as good as ten hours of pure, comatose sleep after a long weekend of carousing and wandering about.

Somewhere in the midst of that oneiric odyssey, a rather odd dream came up. I've been rather psyched to see the new film Troy for some time now, as I've always had a thing for Homer--more so the Odyssey than the Iliad, but in these sad days of widespread Classical ignorance, you prettymuch have to take what you can get. So a film adaptation of the sack of Troy will hopefully fill in a bit of that void. I recently read a wonderful sci-fi novel by Dan Simmons called Ilium that prettymuch revolved around humanity's godlike, semirobotic descendants recreating the battle of Troy just for the hell of it, so between these two influences somehow my subconscious produced this:

There I was, in the camp of the Akhaians, drinking myself silly with Akhilleos and his gang of fuckin' thugs. Apparently, according to the dreamlogic, I had been called back through time to bear witness to Akhilleos' heroics--but there wasn't much heroics going on with that inebriated prettyboy at the time. So I meanered out into the camp...but it wasn't the Argives camp outside the tent of Mr. Big himself...it was Bloomfield. And Troy, apparently, was just downtown Pittsburgh with a big wall around it.

So far, that's really all I remember about it...but some of the imagery was pretty fantastic: the huge iron wall surrounding downtown, the towers of Iliumburgh rising up out of the dark, lit up by the fires of the Trojans. Freakin' bizarre, but I know I have to do something about it now. Maybe build this image into a story about a nanotech plague that rewrites human neurons with personality templates derived from Classical Greek literature and thereby recreates the past with a distinctly Mad Max/Blade Runner feel to it.

My mind works in mysterious, oftimes incomprehensible ways.

Comments

[jdecay.livejournal.com]

I'm psyched about Troy as well. And like you, I much prefer The Odyssey. Because more of the story exists on a personal level, there's more to relate to. And Homer does certainly build the anticipation of seeing Odysseus finally take on the suitors at the end.

In regards to Mad Max / Bladerunner meets Greco-Roman imagery, might I suggest Titus, with Anthony Hopkins. If you haven't seen it, it's a really neat look at Shakespeare.

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

Oh, I absolutely *adore* _Titus_. What a singularly beautiful film. Someday, I hope to see a really good adaptation of the Odyssey--because, just like you said, it's a more personal (and personable) story of one man's long quest to just get home to his old life...a truly epic quest, indeed, and something that I believe *anyone* can relate to. The Iliad is a great war story, a tale of deeds without compare, but ultimately, Akhilleos and the others are just wooden hero figures acting out the grand passion play of Akhaian heroism. Odysseus, on the other hand, is such a *human* fellow.

[raincrystal.livejournal.com]

Apparently your weekend made you feel like you were in ancient Troy. That's the only explanation. Bacchus was Roman, wasn't he... who was the Greek equivalent?

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

Dionysius. My second-favorite god, after Morpheus. Everyone expects me to be a major fan of Pluto, being the big cheese of the Underworld and all that...but Pluto was actually really boring. Just sat around a lot and moped, which makes sense: the Underworld in Greek mythology wasn't all that amusing. But I prefer gods who can have a good time, and Dionysius is definitely that. Nothing in the world like a good Dionysiac frenzy now and again....

[raincrystal.livejournal.com]

See, I like the tragic/angsty figures like Orpheus and Persephone, so the underworld is totally my place. XP But then, that's probably because I enjoy fictional melodrama.

Also (and this is why the Trojan War is so cool,) I like the jealousy fights and the gods being all catty and manipulative and horrible to each other. Yeah, I like the idea that even the gods are unhappy and imperfect sometimes. XP

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

That's what I loved about the Greco-Roman gods as well: they weren't idealized figures such as the Christian god or even some of the Hindu pantheon--they were as fallible as we are, and as such that was why the world was not some perfect, god-haunted place....The great figures responsible for its creation were just as flawed as we are, and susceptible to the same jealousies and drama as we humans.

You know...I have a song I wrote a few years ago called "Rock Song for Dionysius"--it's actually just a goofy, drunken synthpop song written while highly demolished on Cuervo--but I must dig that out and send it to you. I think you'd particularly like it.

[raincrystal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, if humans are REALLY made in the image of god, then god would HAVE to be that way!

That song sounds awesome. ^^

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

I shall have to dig that song out....It's kind of lame, though--after all, it *was* done during a major drinking binge--but I'll remix it a bit, make it funkier, and then we'll see what we think of it, eh? ;)