Trojan War Wednesday: "Epic Hotness Countdown"
Being the 1st installment of RAGE!, disrupting Homer by remixing the Iliad
Author’s Note:
The Iliad begins with an invocation to the Muses. In the Homeric tradition, the storyteller was seen as the instrument of a divine force who was the one actually relating the story, in much the same way that Kermit was an instrument inspired by Jim Henson to sing “The Rainbow Connection.”
The storyteller, or rhapsode, recited lines of formalized rhythm partially from memory and partially by improvisation, riffing off a variety of accepted tropes. The rhapsode would get into the flow, expanding some sections, summarizing others, taking cues from the audience, and sometimes going off on unexpected tangents. At festivals, rhapsodes would compete against each other for prizes and honors in the ancient equivalent of rap battles.
In the Homeric tradition, every telling of the Iliad was a unique expression of performance art, an aspect that was lost once one version was written down and accepted as literary canon.
This retelling attempts to restore the interpretive and improvisational aspects of Homeric tradition in installments from a variety of first-person viewpoints. Lacking the meter of a rhapsody or the structure of a formal poem, these installments will be called “wordblobs” until the Muse provides a better term.
This initial wordblob invokes Calliope, the Muse of Epic Tales, broadcasting from her studio atop Mount Parnassus. Enjoy!