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ABOUT THAT AWFUL SCENE IN EARTH OVERTHROWN

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

ABOUT THAT AWFUL SCENE IN EARTH OVERTHROWN

 

“a modern-day Orpheus”—Billboard

“a consummate storyteller”—The New York Times

“one of the great voices in American storytelling” —Wired

 

When her husband Ouranos jails her latest babies (four gigantic monsters) in the dark depths of Tartarus, Gaia demands to know just what Ouranos thinks he’s doing. “I didn’t approve this!” she cries, feeling anger for the very first time in all her eons of life.

“When they grow up, they’ll be more powerful than we Titans, Gaia!” her worried husband pleads. “It’s too dangerous! Look how huge they are already!”

“I do not give my permission for this,” she retorts, insulted at his behavior. After all, she created Ouranos and chose him as her husband and king. Together they raised twelve perfect Titan children. But now that she’s birthed a few monsters—he is the father, after all–he thinks he can imprison them? And and go against her will? Because he’s afraid of something that may happen in the distant future?

“You do not have my permission!” she hisses.

“I don’t need your permission!” he snaps back, locking the young monsters in their cells.

A darkness overpowers Gaia and she decides Ouranos will no longer be king. Assembling her twelve Titan children before her, she brandishes a razor-sharp blade. “Who among you will wound your father?” she demands, “And take his power?”

Only Cronus, her last born, the one with no talent other than ambition, agrees. In his low, hateful voice he asks, “If I do this, mother, you promise I will become king?”

“Yes,” she replies.

“How shall I wound him, mother? What shall I cut from him?”

Gaia widens her eyes. Her well-behaved, creative children have never seen her in a fury like this. “What makes a man a man?” she asks darkly.

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This chilling, and yes, quite adult scene is part of EARTH OVERTHROWN: GAIA AND THE TITANS. What Cronus does next, and how Aphrodite in her famous seashell is born from Ouranos’ blood, is just part of this revelatory Greek myth. Backstory after backstory. All the way to the conniving grandson, Zeus, and the war he declares on his parents.

If you’ve ever been curious about where the Gods of Olympus—imaginary as they are–came from, well, here’s your ticket.

The tale is accompanied by a live score performed on 12-string guitar. It’s for adults only.

EARTH OVERTHROWN: GAIA AND THE TITANS

An Odds Bodkin Storytelling Event on Zoom

Thursday, March 3, 2022 at 7 pm EST

Tickets $30 per screen (buys your login and password)

 

 

Origin Myths

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

Long before geology and science in general led to a revolution in our understanding of Earth’s ancient story, pre-scientific peoples asked the question, as all of us do: where did all this come from? This Earth? We humans? The life systems of rock, oceans and sky that sustain us? When and how did it all begin?

Those questions remain profound ones, questions that we’re still working to answer. Our human origin story is more finely honed with each passing archeological and genetic discovery—and there are plenty more to be unearthed—while Earth’s origin story, and that of our Solar System and the Universe, is deepened by astrophysical discoveries every day.

However, pre-scientific peoples were just as smart as we are, they just didn’t have our modern tools. Did that prevent them from using their raw senses and storytelling skills to explain where they themselves came from? Certainly not. After all, what’s an ancient father or mother to do when their child asks, “Mommy, where did the stars come from?” Better say something by way of explanation, otherwise your child will think you’re a know-nothing.

And so, around fires in caves and eventually in mud huts and stone cities, origin myths were born. Every band of humans had one, unique to their surroundings.

The ancient Greeks were especially detailed in their fantasies, and no Greek more so than the poet Hesiod, who lived around 700 B.C.

I have based EARTH OVERTHROWN: GAIA and the TITANS, on Hesiod’s Greek genesis story, The Theogony.

In this origin myth, Gaia is the Earth. Her children the Titans create the ecological systems upon her surface. They all take both human and elemental forms, switching easily back and forth, and all have human failings, just like we do.

That makes The Theogony an interesting tale indeed. Jealousy, horror, dashed expectations, war and betrayal stalked the Titans, just like they do we moderns, who fancy that we know so much more than the ancients.

There’s even some humor.

STORYTELLER ODDS BODKIN

EARTH OVERTHROWN: GAIA AND THE TITANS

MARCH 3, 2022 at 7 pm EST on Zoom

Performed with 12-string guitar

Tickets: $30

Part I of a 3-part series, POWER MYTHS OF ANCIENT GREECE in March/April

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where’s My Bravecto?

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

I drove up to Wendell Veterinary Clinic in Newport, New Hampshire the other day, about a fifteen-minute drive, and stood in the downpour under my umbrella outside their Covid window.

In return for handing the young woman my folded check for $60–I whipped it over super-fast since the rain was coming down hard between my umbrella and her window–she handed me a bag containing one Bravecto. It’s a miracle pill.

Back home, Samson our dog ate the chewable with great glee, thinking it was just another tasty snack, snorting with delight down there on the kitchen floor.

“What have I got for that boy?” I’d said, building it up like I always do when I’m preparing to give him a snack. No different from Pupperoni, which he adores, or Dentastix, which are minty and good for his, well, dog’s breath.

Bravecto. It’s a miracle pill because Samson is no longer in danger of contracting Lyme Disease for the next three months. Ticks, fleas and any other nasty little arthropods that crawl onto him, once they bite and dig in, well, all of them die in about six hours. His blood has become poisonous to them. Deer Ticks, the tiny carriers of Lyme, don’t have time to transfer the nasty bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi (scientist Willy Burgdorfer discovered the spirochete in 1981) into Samson’s bloodstream. Instead, the ticks die and dry up, flaking off by themselves. Wood ticks, too. All of them.

The active agent in Bravecto, I’ve learned, is called fluralaner. It’s revolutionary. A stunning advance in veterinary medicine. Gone are the days of flea collars and combing through my dog’s fur for blood-filled bugaboos.

Why am I writing such an unnecessary post about something so mundane? Because 400,000 people a year contract Lyme Disease in the U.S. It’s treatable, but only if you recognize its complex symptoms early enough. Otherwise, you can be messed up for life.

As a man who used to run in the woods in total abandon, fearless and free, busting through thickets and crossing tall grass fields here in New Hampshire, at least until Lyme arrived and the woods became a place to worry about, I have a glaring and probably obvious question to ask.

Where is my Bravecto pill? You know, my human version?

Please, Big Pharma, you could sell millions and millions of these pills. How about it, Merck?

Guys like me would buy them every three months.

Coming up Oct. 29th Live on Zoom: HEARTPOUNDERS: Halloween Tales of Horror, Odds Bodkin’s scariest tales. Tickets on sale now.

 

 

TONIGHT at 7 PM EST: Odds Bodkin Live on Zoom Telling FALL OF THE TITANS

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

Grab a $15 ticket here and join Master Storyteller and Musician Odds Bodkin for a real-time Zoom performance of FALL OF THE TITANS. The show is tonight at 7 pm Eastern Standard time.

Background lore on Celtic harp, then the tale told with characters, narration and a full score on 12-string guitar.

Gaia gives birth to Titans. All is well on the early Earth until she starts to make monsters. Then things fall apart.

An adult Greek mythology epic storytelling. No children, please.

Your ticket buys the URL and password.

Find a screen and join the event!

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“a consummate storyteller” — The New York Times

Sponsored by Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square.

 

 

GAIA: AN ANCIENT MYSTERY

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

The name “Gaia” entered the popular lexicon along with the “Gaia Hypothesis”, a theory proposed by scientist James Lovelock that views the Earth as a vast, self-regulating organism. Gaia hails from the mythology of the ancient Greeks, who viewed her as the originator of life on Earth, and as the Earth itself. This is all pre-scientific thinking, of course, but nevertheless, Gaia’s story is a creation myth worth knowing.

With Nature in revolt in many formerly livable lands across the planet due to an excess of human activity, the consequences of which are drought, flooding, see-sawing periods of hot and cold, crop losses, human migration, pandemics and social stress, among others, renewed interest in the original Gaia story isn’t surprising.

Upon reading the Greek poet Hesiod’s most famous work, The Theogony, or “Birth of the Gods”, as a storyteller I decided to create a version of this old Greek creation myth from Gaia’s point of view. The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, takes a similar tack only with the Arthurian legends: the author views the events of Arthur and Lancelot from the POVs of the women of Camelot and the Lady of the Lake.

In Babylonian mythology’s creation myth, the Enuma Elis, the primordial Gaia goddess is called Tiamat. In one benign version of the story she is the feminine salt water who mixes with male fresh water to produce early life. In another version, Tiamat is a monster, a vengeful bringer of storms and chaos.

In my FALL OF THE TITANS tale, Gaia is a little bit of both.

I’ll be performing it Sunday, July 19th at 7 pm EST on Zoom. A $15 ticket will buy you the URL and a password to join the event. It’s sponsored by Grendel’s Den, where I’ve told FALL OF THE TITANS to adult audiences before. I also performed it at the Boulder Climate Conference a few years ago. It’s a fun evening, filled with characters and music on 12-string guitar.

It is not for children, however, since there is treachery and sexual violence in the tale.

To read more backstory on FALL OF THE TITANS, scroll through my recent blog posts. You’ll find more articles about the characters and situations in the epic.

FALL OF THE TITANS

Odds Bodkin, Storyteller and Musician

July 19th at 7 pm on ZOOM

Tickets: $15

 

 

 

CRONUS, EATER OF HIS CHILDREN: Mythological Background for Odds Bodkin’s FALL OF THE TITANS Zoom Concert on Sunday July 19th

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

Let’s say you’re not just any king,

No, you are King of the Universe.

Let’s also say that you’re paranoid and will never let go of your power. Add in that you, the talentless last son in a big talented family of Titans, have become King by cutting off your king father’s privates and throwing them into the sea. No kidding. That’s what Cronus does in FALL OF THE TITANS.

In the ancient ways of power, if a king loses his virility, he can no longer be king.

To make matters worse, your mother Gaia has given you the slicing weapon to attack Ouranos, her husband and your father. She is angry with him. Henceforward, your siblings loathe you. You are a pariah.

However, you are now Cronus, King of the Titans, and they have no power over you other than to chirp at the margins.

According to the myths, Titans lived before the gods of Olympus, and as giant creators, they basically built the Earth and its ecosystems. It was only after eons that the Gods of Olympus took the Earth from them by force of arms, luck and a few hired monsters. They did this in a ten-year war called the Titanomachy.

TICKETS

But why did this war happen within a single family? How could they have been so angry at each other that parents battled their own children?

Cronus is the main reason. Gaia tells him that she’s heard of a prophecy that one of his children will overthrow him as King, but the prophecy doesn’t say which child. Shortly after, Cronus becomes a father when his wife, Rhea, gives birth to tiny Hestia, a goddess the size of a pea.

Cronus wonders, “Is this the child who shall overthrow me?” To his wife’s horror, he promptly gulps down the newborn, imprisoning her in his stomach. The next newborn, Demeter, lands in Cronus’s stomach a year later. Baby Hera, little Hades and lastly, infant Poseidon follow in due course.

Gaia does not approve of Cronus’s actions, but she loves all her children equally, including this wayward son. Always, she insists upon loving her children equally. And so she lets the evil of swallowing the children go on. It’s part of her downfall.

Desperate to keep at least one of her babies to hold and love, daughter Rhea begs Gaia to help her keep this next baby’s location a secret from Cronus. Gaia agrees and the newborn boy is cleverly hidden on the isle of Crete.

The little boy grows up hating his father Cronus for imprisoning his brothers and sisters. One night, he drugs Cronus and his father vomits forth the Olympians, now fully grown.

“Follow me,” cries Zeus, no longer a baby, “and we will take this world from the Titans!”

Thus the Gods of Olympus begin to tear Earth away from the old nature spirits who built it.

 

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Now, as a storyteller who tells old myths for adult audiences, I love this old zinger and will bring it to life from my ZOOM studio Sunday, July 19 at 7 pm EST. It’s a full evening’s entertainment, with a score on 12-string guitar and character voices, as usual.

In a first, however, joining me after the show will be Kari Kuelzer of Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square, taking questions from the audience, which I’ll answer. I’ve told FALL OF THE TITANS live at her place a couple of times before and so we’ll see how this Zoom experiment goes.

Hope to have you in the audience!

–Odds Bodkin

 

FALL OF THE TITANS: An Adult Storytelling on Zoom

Sunday, July 19th at 7 pm Eastern Standard Time

Tickets: $15 for your meeting invitation and password

 

 

 

 

 

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GAIA’S SECRET WEAPON: Mythological Background for Odds Bodkin’s FALL OF THE TITANS Adult Storytelling July 19th on Zoom

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

You can feel your immense dragon wings folded flat against your mile-long body as you grind through the dark tunnels of Tartarus, Gaia’s subterranean womb. You, Typhon, are her secret killing machine, her ultimate monster. With your dragon heads and giant claws and your sheer immensity, she’s placed her last hopes for victory in you. Overhead, the war on Earth’s surface against the gods has been going on for ten years now, and Gaia is worried the Titans will soon be defeated. If that moment comes, she will free you through the Earth’s crust with one mission only: to swiftly grasp and kill the god Zeus. Only you, Typhon, are powerful enough to do it.

Zeus’s betrayal is especially bitter for Gaia, because it was she who saved him as a baby from Cronus, his father, who had devoured all Zeus’s siblings up until that point. It was she who had hidden newborn Zeus on Crete, far from Cronus’s seeking gaze. She’d secretly visited the young god and watched him grow up. He’d called her “grandmother dear,” and she’d loved that. In her wildest dreams she’d never imagined he was capable of such treachery.

He’d hidden his true powers from her all along.

Well, Typhon, now it is Gaia’s turn to be treacherous, because she has hidden you from Zeus. He has no idea you exist.

That will be a fatal mistake.

FALL OF THE TITANS: An Epic Tale from Greek Mythology

Adult Storytelling with Characters and Live Music by Odds Bodkin

Sunday, July 19th at 7 pm EST on Zoom

TICKETS: $15

 

SPONSORED BY GRENDEL’S DEN IN CAMBRIDGE, MA

A WOMB OF ROCK: Mythological Background for Odds Bodkin’s FALL OF THE TITANS July 19th Zoom Performance

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

Tartarus.

Chances are, if you’re familiar with the word at all, it conjures up some dark subterranean prison for ancient Greek titans–towering, evil creatures made of stone–and other bad actors. Take Sisyphus, for example. He’s imprisoned down there. He rolls a boulder all the way up a mountain, only to have it tumble back down, just as he reaches the top. He does this over and over, hence the term “a Sisyphean task”—doing something pointless. Another denizen of Tartarus is evil Tantalus, a demigod king who cut up his son and served him, boiled, to the Gods of Olympus. For all eternity he now starves beneath a fruit tree just out of reach, above a pond whose water recedes whenever he kneels to drink.

But peel away the deeper layers of Greek mythology, back to the time before the gods and humans, and Tartarus wasn’t a super-max prison for ancient Greek bad guys. Anything but. Instead, it was a place of divine feminine creation. A place where the sky, sea and mountains were first born, after Gaia had poured out the stars and created gravity, or, as it was called, Eros.

According to the Greeks, Gaia, the Earth, was the first thing to exist anywhere. She emerged from the silence and stillness of Chaos, and became self-aware. She was the first titan, and the first thing she created was her womb. Tartarus was so deep in the Earth that later, Zeus claimed a bronze anvil, dropped from the Underworld, would fall for nine days before it reached this place.

It was here that she created Ouranos, the Sky, her future husband, and the other early titans who fashioned the first ecosystems.

It was in Tartarus that her husband Ouranos locked away six of Gaia’s children, which enraged her.

It was in Tartarus that she created Typhon, a monster made for one purpose: to kill her grandson Zeus after he betrayed her.

And it was in Tartarus that Zeus imprisoned Gaia’s beloved family of creators forever in darkness, far beneath the light-filled life systems that they originally made.

FALL OF THE TITANS–A Live Odds Bodkin Zoom Performance on July 19, 2020 at 7 pm EST.

Tickets are $15.

SUNDAY JULY 19TH at 7 PM: Odds Bodkin’s FALL OF THE TITANS

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

From Odds Bodkin’s cave of magic comes a ZOOM performance that translates 100%: FALL OF THE TITANS.

Where did the Greek gods come from? Who were the Titans? Who was Gaia? Why did Cronus the Titan swallow his Olympian children? How did only Zeus survive?

Find out in a feature-length adult storytelling on Sunday, July 19th at 7 pm. Buy your ticket, get your ZOOM invitation and password, then sit back and watch elemental characters come to life. Greek lore explained with Celtic harp music, then a tale told with 12-string guitar.

Every seat is a front row seat.

A performance for adults. No young children please.

Sponsored by Grendel’s Den in Cambridge MA.

Tickets are $15.

THE MALE AND FEMALE KNIGHTS OF MEDICINE FIGHTING THIS SUDDEN WAR

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I’d just like to admire the male and female knights of medicine who, all across the globe, are donning their armor and going into battle to save us.

Doctors.

Nurses.

Orderlies.

Administrators.

Support personnel.

Ambulance crews.

Manufacturers retooling their factory floors.

An endless queue of worthy persons, doing their jobs and striving for the greater good.

Frontline medical personnel are putting themselves in direct exposure to this pathogen, hoping their suits protect them.

If we accept that a viral pandemic is much like a house fire, we’ll appreciate this moment in human and Nature’s history. This pandemic is behaving much like a house flame just after its early ignition. At the moment, it’s just creeping across the carpet. It hasn’t reached the curtains yet. If we all pay attention and cooperate, we can step on it now and put it out.

Here’s a Joe Rogan interview Chris Bodkin sent me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw

Here’s an important and exhaustive article David Batchelder sent me: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

I’m sending them on.

 

 

 

 

 

12-STRING GUITAR MOTIFS for Fall of the Titans

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

 

I’ve had a wonderful run of well-attended shows at Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square this winter and want to thank Kari Kuelzer, Charlie Gargano, Joe Froeber and the great staff at Grendel’s for making all the evenings run so smoothly.

Everybody’s having a good time.

This season’s last show is Sunday night, March 31 at 6 p.m.

FALL OF THE TITANS

TICKETS $15

The Eldest Olympian is Love, But With a Dark Origin

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

You’ve seen Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. There she stands at the sea’s edge, demure in her newly opened scallop shell. Her hair is plenty long enough to cover all of her, since she’s in her birthday suit, but she’s no prude, not this goddess, and so she’s left one breast uncovered.

A reception committee has arrived to greet her. A handsome winged god, Zephyr, hovers on the left with his cute girlfriend, Aura. Both are blowing a breeze that is driving Venus toward shore and fluffing her hair, almost like a fashion shoot. On the right is the Hora of Spring (one of the Hours), a lovely minor goddess who seems to be doing a bit of floating herself as she holds out a garment for Venus to put on, when she’s ready, of course. Pink mallow flowers hover in the air and appear in miniature on the garment, as well.

In 1480 or so, when Boticelli painted his Renaissance masterpiece, he did not include any blood in the water, notice. There is no Titan on the distant cliffs, laughing, while another Titan, his father, clutches his bloody loins. Nope. Wisely, Botticelli left out the rest of the story.

If you’d like to learn the terrifying origin of The Goddess of Love, the eldest Olympian, join me in my performance of Fall of the Titans, this coming Sunday on Harvard Square at Grendel’s Den.

As gruesome as it is, it makes a strange kind of sense.

An adult storytelling with music on Celtic harp and 12-string guitar. No children please.

 

FALL OF THE TITANS

Odds Bodkin

Sunday, March 31 at 6 pm

Grendel’s Den, Cambridge MA

 

Tickets $15