Trey Smith
I am just now finishing a really good book by Norman Solomon, Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State. It chronicles the author's life in terms of the worldwide and national events and history that led him into a life as an activist.
Over the course of today (and, maybe, tomorrow), I will share some interesting comments he made in Chapter 13 -- a chapter unlike most of the rest of the book.
Only in omniscient fictions can pieces fit together with anything that approaches tidy. Our lives lack the smooth arc of drama's acts, while actual memory is on the chaotic side: tangled, in innumerable shades of gray and color, with double and triple and quadruple exposures, and moments that are uncountable.As I've recounted in this space recently, I'm often left with little or no such exposures, though I do understand the tangled essence he speaks of. What about you?
I think this may be how myth is forged...smoothed out versions of historical realities which convey some sort of truth or values, but without the chaos. Cultures, nations, families, all have myths, and I think even individuals create their own, the elevator speeches of our lives cobbled together to make some sort of dramatic sense, but without the mundane and boring daily details.
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