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Heroes & Villains: STAR WARS thru the lenses of epic & mythic storytellers living & DEAD...

Updated: May 4

OPENING CREDITS


I'd like to thank the following individuals and groups for their parts in this production:

  • Barbara Hafner - friend who told me about the cool and informative events at Garden City's Cathedral of the Incarnation

  • I like that the Cathedral is resurrecting the early church’s inclusion of the arts within its sacred walls and using theater to deliver its messages and draw the surrounding community together.

  • the musicians, artists, article writers and others whose stories are being shared here

  • my Dad and Mom for sharing their word gifts of Puns & Poetry

  • Artist Knut Masco for that "Grate" meme of Bobby that serves as my thumbnail


Refer to the post's "Closing Credits" for contact information for these creative folks.



DISMISSING THE YOUNG ONES TO CHILDREN'S CHURCH


FYI - I spent nearly 30 years playing in the basement with our next generations...


EPISODE 1/CHAPTER 1: STAR WARS & THE GRATEFUL DEAD


Some WEIR...







In this next podcast, Grateful Dead roadie Steve Parish relates these interesting connections between these two tribes...

The Dead owed a piece of land close to Lucas's Skywalker Ranch and even recorded at his ranch. Jerry and George frequently "bumped" into each other. Seems they were both admirers of Joseph Campbell's perspectives on myths and the hero's journey. The two even went together to see the opening of the first installment of Star Wars.




EPISODE 1/CHAPTER 2: MYTH MAKERS: JOSEPH CAMPBELL'S INFLUENCE ON GEORGE LUCAS


[from the opening of the next article with my added emphases]

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) was a world-renowned mythologist who helped modern society understand the true power that storytelling has in our culture and within our personal lives. He studied and identified the universal themes and archetypes that are present in mythical storytelling across history and across the world. His seminal work, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, outlined what Campbell called the Hero’s Journey, a motif of adventure and personal transformation that is used in nearly every culture’s mythical framework. George Lucas was an avid admirer of Campbell’s writings, and used them as a direct reference in his creation of Star Wars. The two didn't meet face to face until after Lucas had already finished his original trilogy of films…



I was first introduced to Joseph Campbell through a Richard Rohr Daily Meditation. In this 2024 offering, Richard explains that the hero must journey through 3 stages:


  • The departure: We usually don’t leave home willingly. More often than not, we’re taken there by some circumstance, shipwreck, accident, death, or suffering of some sort. That’s called the departure. The hero has to lose or walk away from their sense of order and enter some kind of disorder. 


  • The encounter: After the hero leaves their castle or their stable home, they have to experience something bigger, something better, something that is more real and more demanding of their real energies. Of course, that takes different forms. In the Gospels, after his baptism, Jesus goes into the desert for forty days.


  • The return: Surprisingly, the third stage of the hero’s journey is the return. The hero’s journey is not to just keep going to new places, making the trip a vacation or travelogue. We have to return to where we started and know it in a new way and do life in a new way. We are not somehow “beyond” the order and disorder of our lives; we’ve learned how to integrate both of them. This stage of return is so rarely taught. What is good about the order, what is good about the disorder, and how do we put them together? That is the “reorder” or the return.



In this interview, George Lucas states that he intentionally employed the power of myth to focus the viewer's attention on the social issues of his day.


[from the transcript]

Bill Moyers: joseph campbell said that all the great myths the primitive myths the great stories have to be regenerated if they're going to have any impact and that you had done that with star wars are you conscious of doing that are you saying i am trying to recreate the myths of old or are you saying i just want to make a good action movie


Lucas: well when i did star wars i consciously set about to recreate myths and the and the classic mythological uh motifs and i wanted to use those motifs to deal with issues that existed today in the 1977 film star wars...






In this next article, we hear directly from Joseph Campbell...



EPISODE 1/CHAPTER 3: SEEKERS AFTER WISDOM HAVE BEEN GUIDED BY STARS: DARK & LIGHT...FOR EONS...



The Cathedral of the Incarnation's "Moon as Sacred Mirror" contained several events that helped us explore SPACE...Both OUTER and INNER...This next article offers insights on this heavenly phenomenon. I liked the author's closing "observations" [my added emphasis]


"Nothing in science is ever case closed, nor is it in history," Mathews said. "We may never know if the Star of Bethlehem was a conjunction, astrological event or a fable to advance Christianity. Maybe it was simply a miracle."





Please take a few minutes to take in the scope of this perennial visitor in the night skies...

by perusing this backdrop on music history. The song follows...


First, my Dead subject matter expert: David Dodd:



Next, more music history on the 1978 New Year's Eve closing of San Francisco's Winterland concert hall.



As this 14-minute epic voyage begins, we can hear a fan shouting, "DARK STAR!" followed by enthusiastic cheers as the band plays those familiar chords...


This song is an example of what was known as "Space & Drums"...loooooong improvisional musical passages...Half of the 14 minutes is musical...mystical preparation for the simple yet cosmic lyrics...


At 08:30 Donna and Jerry sing those simple and mysterious lyrics: "transitive nightfall of diamonds"...



And here at around 11:00 we see Jerry and Phil who are now playing the "GRATE gig in the sky" along with Pigpen...




EPISODE 1/CHAPTER 4: ONCE IN A WHILE WE GET SHOWN THE LIGHT IN THE STRANGEST OF PLACES...IF WE LOOK AT IT RIGHT...




[the next article (with my added emphases and image) begins with the amazing popularity of the Grateful Dead's 2015 "Fare Thee Well" shows and continues below. Click link for full story.]


This massive popularity puzzled casual observers. To some, the Dead were faded troubadours of freewheeling drug use, even if only two of their nearly two hundred songs mention drugs. Others saw lingering paragons of a long-gone counterculture. But the Dead were firmly apolitical, distancing them from contemporaries who sang of a new, external American dream (pacifism, collectivism, free love). Dead songs are markedly different. They explore an ancient but internal dream. Garcia said, “For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part,” which helps explain the band’s peculiarly enduring legacy.



The Dead formed a lasting, spiritual connection with its fans by adapting for contemporary audiences the biblical story of exile and promise of a return home. Plucking these themes from traditional American music, they spoke to deeply held aspirations and worries. Even the shape and direction of their storied live performances traced this story musically from wilderness to paradise.


The ancient story saturates their lyrics. While their songs tell of misfits and outsiders, loners and drifters, the music is often lilting and transcendent. In Wharf Rat, a derelict sings with surprising brightness, “I know that the life I’m leading is no good/I’ll get a new start/I’ll get up and fly away, fly away.” Doubt and yearning for a promised land are constant themes: “So many roads…All I want is one to take me home” (So Many Roads).



EPISODE 1/CHAPTER 4: WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER...ONLY LOVE CAN CONQUER HATE...


Sculpture at NYC's United Nations
Sculpture at NYC's United Nations

"And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up their sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

— Isaiah 2:4,



As I watched the next video's Star Wars movie scenes depicting violence on "both sides", I HOPED we would find an alternative...



...and I was reminded of two musical alternatives...




"HEAR'S" another...










AFTER THE SHOW IS OVER


Inspiration for next tune... As regular readers know, I've been participating in a month-long series of moon-centered adventures at the Garden City Cathedral of the Incarnation. Among the staff are a guy with dreadlocks and another who follows Jerry. I subscribe to this uploader "LongStrangeTrip710" because of creative offering like this...recalls those early Flash Gordon serials...So, let's board their spacecraft and see where we end UP...





Post Game Show...


Here are two photos from today's adventures in SPACE...


Upstairs...under the inflated moon...She leaves tomorrow for parts unknown...


and in the new Gallery area in the basement...



These words are written above two arches inside that doorway:


"The words of the prophets are written on subways walls and tenement halls...and..."




GRATEFUL CHILDREN'S CHURCH


"Ripple" - today's opening "hymn" contains images of unseen forces at work in our lives...Let's ask the children to share their thoughts...


If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine

And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung

Would you hear my voice come through the music?

Would you hold it near as it were your own?


Ripple in still water

When there is no pebble tossed

Nor wind to blow


Reach out your hand if your cup be empty

If your cup is full may it be again


Let it be known there is a fountain

That was not made by the hands of men


"If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine..."






The words of this next "hymn" provide several paths for helping children reflect on life's deeper meanings...


I have spent my life

Seeking all that's still unsung

Bent my ear to hear the tune

And closed my eyes to see (1)

When there were no strings to play

You played to me (2)


(1) a description of contemplative practice...Part of the work of the Cathedral of the Incarnation's Center for Spiritual Imagination (see link in "Closing Credits").

(2) a description of loving service to a fellow human being




See How They Love One Another



For years, the members of the band have been helping make our shared world a little kinder...a little brighter...






My Mother the Poet


Early in her "career"...she had a poem about me - her son who rode waves - published in Surfer Magazine.


Later in her life and after raising 7 children, with the help of my sister Peggy, she published a book of poems entitled "The God of the Universe Dances in Trees"...



One of these is called "Where Do Clowns Go?"




Wavy Gravy: Clowning for Peace and other worthwhile causes...




CLOSING CREDITS (DEAD See Scrolls...)


Knut Masco: Artist, Activist, Deadhead...created this post's thumbnail of Bobby


Cathedral of the Incarnation


Two blog posts about their "Moon as Sacred Mirror" offerings:


The Center for Action and Contemplation



My Dad and Mom for their word gifts: Puns & Poems


 
 
 

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