*Share thoughts on the Muse and the Musician

[kavaris]

This stuff is very hard to figure out, so i dont blame anyone if they cant contribute, Alas ive started reading and writing alot on this topic, and I def am interested, BUT admittedly, its one of the hardest topics to really see into. That is, if any of yous want to figure it out w/ me, this is the invitation to do just that, and to join me in figuring it out ~or to point me in a direction that might help me (us) understand the Archaic Period and Classical Greece, in order to get a better sense for what it was like, leading into the Hellenistic and Roman Periods.

I was inspired by @Nemra in how he titled his thread, but i thought that i dont think theres gonna be enough books around this very specific thing that im looking at ATM, which rests on knowing "the history of the Muse and the Musician" (or just helping me to understand day to day life in Archaic/Classical Greek living), and learning about places such as Ancient Sparta and the rest of Greece, cause there's this peculiar and unrecognizable thing going on~After we come out of the Mycenaean Period to Archaic an Classical Period of Greece, specifically in terms of How the Muse is perceived, and its relationship to the Musician,

we begin to see this personification of the gods through the musicians. Musicians back then were quite different: And just how Greeks experienced & thought of the Muse was quite different. The common word for Muse simply referred to rhythmic speech ... We have to figure the Muse out, cause its so complex, just in itself

By the Medieval Period, we all know how the Musicians had all become more like the town jesters, or the town scryer in the way they functioned in day to day life. In stark contrast, the musician in Archaic Greece WAS the personification, they were  the Metamorphoses, or a Mythological Anthropomorphism towards people not objects (characters or people), because they received the Muse and communicated it further. Im using terms that i am assuming you are familiar with, so hopefully you will looks into these terms, and what they mean in the context im talking about. Some of you might know what im talking about.

Youd be surprised what weve come to learn, as far as the role of the musician and music itself is concerned, how they could subsequently evoke the muse ~or~they were the muse ~invoking through them, and being perceived as such,  given their connection to the gods... And the gods are basically like, 'who the Greeks rely on for answers and for settling disputes, et caetera, etc.

So, invoking the muse, to them, it was seen as this powerful thing that went beyond inspiration for some artsy means (quite the contrary), it crossed into political, social and spiritual affairs and disputes, and many more things going on in their daily lives (of course, thats is part of my question, getting to the bottom've Ancient Greece)

The muse was an extension of the gods, and the musician was akin to a vehicle for that purpose. Likewise, it was the musician who would personify the Muse and play the songs that would then dictate what would happen, like they depended on the musician to say "who is stronger" or "who performed the best" or "who deserves to be heard by the oracle" or something, transferring the right of personification to the individual, and in some sense giving a voice to that individual. In some sense they even were playing the role of the oracle. These are of course the kinds of questions we want to have answered.

The musician was essentially establishing what the rules and laws would be in the coming centuries. They were establishing what the language itself should be and sound like, what significance should be carried in words and their meanings, prescribing meaning and giving a voice to the things that we, in todays day and age take for granted as already having and possessing a voice.

The word i use for the tradition around Greek gods is Metamorphoses: That is, the transformation of the quality within a god, likened to that of a quality we now see as something a human today may express, or possess (emotions, qualities, traits, et caetera). And the Greeks relied on the gods for those things, including answers to solve hard dilemmas, even if the musician wasnt there or the muse wasnt there,  they had to really weigh on the gods for a clue as to what to do, given their devotion towards them.

The Greeks have this musical language, this mode of expression that you really have to understand in order to understand them. Of course, i havent done a good job explaining just how significant the language/music was (not to mention, the gods themselves were) in everyday life, nor have I explained WHY the gods were so significant, and things like that, but that is because this topic sortve requires you to have investigated it ~im sortve asking for alot, but I believe yous will figure something out~

Edited 13 hours ago by kavaris

[kavaris]

Bonus Ques.: Is there a connection to Orphic tradition, and the musicians within that context? Atleast, those are the sortve of questions that also connect back to this, granted, *Orpheus in itself is complex, and could be opening up a can of fiery worms

Note: I had Greek Mythology and related in High School (im 37) lol, but i mean to say, back when i was 17-18, this was the only subject I was interested in, cause the teacher was talking about like, "How so & so represented the boy's penis" ~in the story~ Not that i remember what we were talking about, But im just saying, this stuff was cool. Like the computer class was cool too, but i kept getting in trouble during the last two years of school, for me. So Mythology was more up my aily, in the sense that~it was accepting of chaos. If yous arent accepting of Chaos, i cant really shine.

Like i have a theory that the reason the Old Norse/Germanic side got turned onto Christianity was cause they were essentially striving for order, and not true chaos. However, its possible they didnt have a true understanding of it either, and were just initially thinking of Jesus as "another god" in the pantheon, that which represented and orderly living.

This may not be true, and ive not investigated it, but i just have a feeling. That is, I feel as though, the chaos goes where the chaos was made, and somewhere around the Greek and Roman interaction, theres a real chaotic thing preserved, that which is in between Jesus and the Bronze Age Collapse, and these events where its like, you have all these cultures who are like, uprooting their own traditions, and relocating. We dont know alot about it, cause ive tried to look back into history to find out, and we simply dont know enough, outside of say Greek writers/commentary and Egyptian records (who btw, are very thorough in naming all the cultures, Alas thats not what i mean to talk about)

I mean to direct our attention towards what I call Mythological Period, up to today. Like, on the surface, it my seem like it goes from hunter gatherers, to farming, to proto-civilization, but its more like, cycles of life, and we are misunderstanding, in living form, like. We cant understand history because we are that far away, but we can, in the very least, say how we feel about it, and why it happened the way we think it happened, using our misunderstanding as a way of pointing to that which mightve happened.

Edited 12 hours ago by kavaris

[kavaris]

Bonus Ques., #2: And this is more getting into the individual provinces, like Sparta, Athens, etc, etc., which is for instance, Why were Spartans so obsessed w/ being warriors (or why were the people who wanted to become spartans, Spartans in the first place)? Like, Ive not looked outside of the basic warrior-aspect of Sparta, as I was originally focused on Sparta from the perspective of the outcasts, the Spartans who were kicked out and who ended up sailing to Italy (Puglia, where my ancestors are from. but my ancestors definitely were not big strong, warrior-minded people at all, so iuno who the fk is related to Spartans) And so like, that is a whole nother side of the Spartans most people dont know of; But if we stay in mainland Greece, we see how Spartans really rely on Athenians and others to learn words and grammar and such...

Like, they werent dumb or anything like that, but they needed a little help to get going, cause they were sortve fixated on war (im describing this wrong, cause its part of their role in society to be warriors, but the question is how you join, and how you leave/besides through banishment, is a question i have, and i dont know how that process works, nevertheless they sound like traumatized souls, dark souls in terms of the way they are to be this cloister of warriors, but i guess the military is this same idea, or similar).

But that is to say that there is more complexity to these stories that we need to dig up to really understand them, and im just naming Sparta and Athens cause they are the two most recognizable, though i meant to really touch on other cultures~And accidentally go caught up describing Sparta. In any case, that is one such question.

Edited 10 hours ago by kavaris