The brief scene with what looks like Hypatia teaching is lovely — it reminds me of a J.W. Waterhouse painting. Also seen — the Pharos lighthouse, [...]]]> I’m excited about the new movie about Hypatia of Alexandria, Agora, starring Rachel Weisz and directed by Alejandro Amenábar. Here’s the teaser trailer (if you can’t see it, here’s the link):

The brief scene with what looks like Hypatia teaching is lovely — it reminds me of a J.W. Waterhouse painting. Also seen — the Pharos lighthouse, Christian mobs, female librarians scrambling to save the scrolls in the Library of Alexanria (which produces a visceral reaction in me — the idea of all the knowledge and literature lost made me cry when I first learned about it), and the toppling of a statue of Serapis (a syncretic god used by the Ptolemaic dynasty to unite disparate religious groups in Egypt).

Hypatia was the last head librarian of the Library of Alexandria, and the apocryphal story is that her father raised her to be the perfect human being — physically and intellectually. The IMDB listing for the movie calls her an atheist, but she was a Neoplatonist. In that philosophy God becomes a singular concept, which I find a bit similar to the tao of Taosim or what atheists like me half-jokingly invoke as “the Universe.” However, Neoplatonism allows for the existence of many gods and the belief in an immortal soul. So it’s not atheism as we would think of it at all. It actually is compatible with religious pluralism — but not so much with any religions that claim to be the one and only true religion. And thus the problem when Christianity came to Alexandria.

Though, interestingly, the Gospel of John begins in a clearly Platonist way: “In the beginning was the Word [logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And Hebrews 9:23-24 is even more blatantly Platonist in its understanding of Christ as one who communes on our behalf with the ideal world, of which our world is only a shadow: “Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.”

I’m interested in seeing how the movie treats this subject. The meaning I would take from a story like the destruction of classical Alexandria is that there are certain absolute stances that are incompatible with peaceful multicultural existence. It’s also a shame that the religious motivation for her murder has overshadowed the accomplishments of Hypatia’s life — she’s become a symbol, and I hope the excellent Rachel Weisz will make her a woman.

A biography of Hypatia:

Hypatia of Alexandria: Mathematician and Martyr
by Michael A. B. Deakin

Via GalleyCat, where there’s a brief disussion of song lyrics as literature. “What have song writers learned from regular writers?” it asks, but when it comes to song writers like John Darnielle, I think there is a great deal [...]]]> Check out Tobias Wolff rocking out to John Darnielle singing his much-beloved Mountain Goats song “Woke Up New.”

Via GalleyCat, where there’s a brief disussion of song lyrics as literature. “What have song writers learned from regular writers?” it asks, but when it comes to song writers like John Darnielle, I think there is a great deal “regular writers” can learn from them. A song like “Woke Up New” distills a moment and a barrage of emotions into something compelling and touching. I suppose there is a kind of John-Cheever-like profound simplicity that is both specific and general enough for the listener to empathize.

Songs are often inspirations for me when I write, whether it’s just a matter of mood or more explicit appropriation. Of the latter is my story “Minx Mouse Monster,” inspired by the Rasputina song “The New Zero” and “Fancy Dress,” the comics story I collaborated on with Brian Belew, written for Image Comics’ Put the Book Back on the Shelf: A Belle and Sebastian Anthology.

The story is based on the song, “The Model,” and it was a challenge to take all the images packed into it  (read the lyrics at B&S’s website here). I tried to follow a thread of narrative in the song, while working in references to other parts of the song in the background imagery (including the harpsichord of the instrumentation). How successful was I? You tell me. You can read the whole story at my Scribd page. If you look, you can find a negative review by Douglas Wolk at Salon.com; my biggest quibble with it is that he doesn’t get that people are wearing masks because “a fancy dress,” as it’s called in the song, is what you call a masquerade party in the UK and Ireland. As I saw it, the song is about the identities we put on that keep people from knowing the self that we are to ourselves.

Brian and I have another story based on a song coming out in an Image Comics anthology, This Is a Souvenir, the Songs of Spearmint and Shirley Lee. The song is called “A Leopard“ and is about lost childhood.

Put The Book Back On The Shelf: A Belle And Sebastian Anthology

The New Zero

The Model

Woke Up New

This Is A Souvenir: The Songs Of Spearmint & Shirley Lee