My grandfather used to tell us bedtime stories.
He passed only a few years ago, but I remember that me, my sisters, and cousins would listen intently as he read us classics like Little House on the Prarie, or he would make up his own stories where us kids would have adventures and we each had a magic artifact. Even when we thought ourselves 'too old' we often hung around in the hallway outside where we could just so happen to overhear his bedtime stories.
Often, whenever the book or story made reference to a previous night's tale, we'd interrupt, and he would softly chuckle and smile and make us feel clever for remembering. With books he would emphasize those links to the past; and if he was making up the story he'd tie it more closely to that last adventure, making both tales bigger and more important in the telling.
He instilled in me a life-long love of reading, starting with childrens classics, then comic books, then fantasy and science fiction, and eventually history and religion. It wasn't just the stories themselves that I loved, it was all the shared history and connections between them. I discovered a word, one that described what my grandfather imbued into his bedtime stories, that timeless sense of connection built on a shared history:
Mythology.
It is a rather sticky concept, when you examine it closely, like a glacier made of billions of snowflakes over the course of millennia.
Modern mythologies are rooted in older stories, which themselves are based on ancient ones. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is based on sixty years of comic books, which are based on 1950's sci-fi, which draw from victorian adventures, inspired by folk tales, which are informed by biblical stories and classical mythology.
Our very language is imbued with these stories and references, hence the words: herculean, abyss, titanic, martial, jovial, and so on.
My goal is to bring these ancient stories back to the forefront of western culture, so that we may understand our culture and ourselves just a little bit better.
So, here on steemit and dtube I will be mirroring my longtime audio podcast LEGENDARY PASSAGES, starting with episode 75. Each episode is 15 minutes or less, with a short introduction and then a passage from a public domain translation.
Basically I read greek mythology as bedtime stories. Every once in a while, instead of dry narration there is actual diologue, which I perform in a method I call 'semi-dramatic'.
Curious about the adventures of Hercules, the Minotaur, or the Argonauts? You've come to the right place.
Looking for a something vaguely interesting to listen to while falling asleep? You've hit the jackpot.
Homepage:
https://LegendaryPassages.wordpress.com
