Here's the thing about myths. Classic myths, for the most part, were made up by thousands of people. As the stories were told, retold, and re-retold, parts were created, modified, and eliminated through years of the greatest text editor ever written, the oral tradition. They've had a lot of time to get refined and polished. All the rough patches are worn smooth by centuries of rewrites. The ultimate editor was the audience- if something didn't work, the audience discarded it.
Unfortunately, I don't have centuries to create my myth (at least I don't think I do. As me again in 2208), and despite what Walt Whitman claims, I don't seem to contain multitudes. Generating the a complete, internally coherent mythology in a few weeks all by myself is pretty difficult. I was only able to complete it by accepting that my myth will never compete with any of Ovid's (unless you tell it to all of your friends, and they tell all of their friends, and so on, and so on....)
That said: I had a lot of fun creating my myth, and trying to apply the mythic formula to modern problems. I don't know how effective my myth is, but I think it's cohesive.
I'm not going to be teaching at the high school level - I don't plan to right away, any way - so I think that I would not have my students generate a myth out of whole cloth- at least, not as their first assignment. I would probably first have them construct myths using characters we've studied, then move on to creating mythological characters of their design. I could see it as a great group project. Every group could be instructed to create a canon of mythological beings, discuss the features of each being, and explain how they interact. It would be an easy way to overlap classroom standards, combining writing, reading and even artistic skills (they could draw the beings, and a map of the mythological worlds they inhabit). My main goal, as with any creative assignment, would be to convince my students that creative works don't always have to be perfect, that the act of creation is sometimes more important that the work itself. My wife is in an improv class, and one of the things they sometimes say is "dare to suck." It doesn't mean you should try to suck- it means you should try new things, even though they may not work.
So, in that spirit: I dare to let my myth suck.
2 comments:
I really love that..."Dare to suck". My whole problem is that I feel like what I writing is not brilliant then I will just stop. It is funny because I am an actress and what I had to really work on with theatre was improv. I have always judged myself. I am so much better these days but it still happens when I write. I am just not as confident with it. But I am going to take these words of wisdom and "Dare to suck"...not to be mistaken with trying to suck. But I think it really is a great policy. You never know what the final product will be and something that appears to be brilliant might be crap.You never know. I am sure however that your myth will not suck.
Katie Watts
You know i agree with you that our existing myths have been refined and worked upon by the audience. However, i like that our myths have not been through that continues change process, because tha means they are still our own. If we lok at our myths hundreds of years from now, and they were actually good enough to stand the test of time, then we would probably not recognize it as our work. The fact that my myth still constains all my errors and probably bad grammar is what makes it mine.
Hopefully my myth was entertaining to read and touched upon the central ideas behind creating a myth.
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