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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.

———————–

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

NEXT SUNDAY IN CAMBRIDGE: Fall of the Titans Adult Epic Storytelling

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

This coming Sunday, March 24th, Odds Bodkin performs FALL OF THE TITANS: The Original Game of Thrones at Gendel’s Den in Cambridge MA at 5 pm. Character voices, sound effects and a full score on 12-string guitar bring this epic Greek myth to life.

After sold-out shows this winter, this is Bodkin’s last appearance on Harvard Square this season.

Arrive at 5, order drinks and food from a great menu, and then settle in for this cosmic tale of creation, family jealousy and the overthrow of worlds.

Tickets $15

 

 

 

A Supercontinent Led Me to this Ancient Greek Myth

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

Pangea—you’ve heard of it. The ancient supercontinent of the Late Triassic that slowly broke apart into the continents we have today. Geologists have successfully matched so many rock formations at the edges of so many modern continents that they’ve reverse-engineered the rock patchwork puzzle all the way back to Pangea, or “All Earth.”

A few hundred million years of continents drifting an inch a year.

While looking at reconstruction maps of these long-lost continents, I noticed that scientists had named the ancient oceans around them with names like the Rheic Ocean, the Iapetus Ocean and the Tethys Ocean.

Rhea. Iapetus. Tethys. These were names I’d not heard.

A little googling revealed that they were Titans from ancient Greek mythology, first named by a poet, Hesiod, around 700 B.C. in a work called Theogony, or “Birth of the Gods.”

A little unclear about who the Titans were exactly (other than evil giants in Hollywood movies) and what if anything they had to do with the Greek gods, I found a translation of Theogony and lo, realized I’d come upon the Greek genesis story, like Adam and Eve in the Bible.

The story of Gaia and her Titan children, the builders of the earth. At least in the Greek imagination.

Here, ten years later, Fall of the Titans is one of my favorite epic tales to perform. The character voices are wild. The scenes of origins are exciting and revelatory and fun to enact. And as always with my tales, I’ve composed a score for it on 12-string guitar.

Since it usually takes me ten years of telling such a story to be ready to record it, I’m ripe for the plucking now, and so will be recording Fall of the Titans live at Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square this coming Sunday, March 24th at 5 pm.

If you’d like to be part of this live recording event, grab a ticket and I’ll see you there!

TICKETS $15

 

FALL OF THE TITANS this coming Sunday in Nashua, NH

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

FALL OF THE TITANS this coming Sunday in Nashua, NH begins at 7 pm at the Riverwalk Cafe and Music Bar. Adult Greek mythology told with voices and 12-string guitar music. One of Odds Bodkin’s newest epic evenings of storytelling.

Eat, drink and imagine, all in one evening.

Tickets: $13. Get yours today!

 

 

WHEN MOTHER NATURE DECLARES WAR: Houston and Hurricane Harvey

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

It’s simple. As the planet’s air warms it holds more water vapor. That means that when it rains, it pours. For three decades, climate scientists have tried to get their message out and much of the world has ignored them. They predicted storms just like Harvey, and here it is, along with Sandy in New York. But giving storms human names diminishes what they are. In truth, they’re weather monsters. They should be named Godzilla, or Hurricane Frankenstein.

Science can be hard to understand, but stories aren’t. If you want to help those climate scientists convince the public and learn to tell science-based stories about climate disruption yourself, come to Boulder, Colorado this September.

Living Beyond Hope and Fear: Warrior Principle, Climate Action, Boulder’s climate symposium, takes place Sept. 15-17 at Shambhala Center. This year there’s a new emphasis: climate storytelling. Join us.

The Helpless Sky

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

In the last line of a story I’ll be telling at the Climate Symposium in Boulder next fall, Gaia, the original Earth Mother, reflects on how uncomfortable anger makes her feel. Bad things happen when she senses injustice and she’s been implacably rough on her husband Ouranos and grandson Zeus during the story. What, she asks herself after she goes into hiding now that the Titans have fallen, could ever make her that angry again?

 
I guess the time has come. Our atmosphere is definitely angry nowadays. Basically, it’s drier dries, wetter wets, windier winds and hotter hots. Fire seasons continue to lengthen. Whether rain or snow, precipitation is heavier, hence floods in new places. When they do begin to spin, hurricanes and tornadoes are more destructive than before. Insurers are desperate for forecasts. For thousands of years, farmers and herders in Africa, South America and the Middle East counted on rainy seasons to avoid famines. Slowly drying out now, those lands are forcing migrants to flee what are essentially climate wars. We haven’t even mentioned our own great population centers, built at the sea’s edge.

 
Ever cooked spaghetti in a pot? You turn on the heat and wait for the boil. Long ago I learned that if I cover it with a lid, it boils twice as fast. Instead of letting heat escape out the top, I trap it in a closed system. Smart, right? It might be hard to imagine, but Earth’s atmospheric pot had no lid prior to the Industrial Revolution. Over the last 150 years, though, we’ve installed an invisible one made of greenhouse gasses from fossil fuels. It’s not anyone’s voluntary doing. We only figured this out a few decades ago. Up until then, all that exhaust was progress. As vast as it is, we’re slowly closing off Earth’s heat release system, high above our heads. Not completely yet, but we’re getting there, busily tossing tiny carbon footprints by the billions up into a helpless sky.

 
There has to be a way to figure this out before the thing boils, with us in it.

 
I’ll also be conducting a workshop designed to turn climate-aware people, including scientists, into The Cadre of Science Storytellers.

The Great Mother’s POV

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

How would you feel if Earth’s creation––mountains, sea and sky, all living things––were your work and you were Gaia, the original creator of it all? She was, at least according to the ancient Greeks. Gaia is the first of the Titans and she’s driven by Eros to create life constantly. She gives birth to the Twelve Titans, all of them perfect. But when she births six monsters, peace in the Titan family falls apart and launches a Game of Thrones-style conflict among generations. Sex, violence, betrayal and rebellion fill this vivid adult story from Greek mythology told from Gaia’s point of view.

Come hear Master Storyteller and Musician Odds Bodkin tell this wondrous and shocking tale at Grendel’s Den in Cambridge, MA at 5:30 pm this coming Sunday, January 22nd. With character voices, a full score on 12-string guitar and fresh narration, Bodkin turns this little-known myth into a vivid imagination entertainment.

Adult storytelling. Not for children.

Bodkin’s first show at Grendel’s Den sold out, so grab your tickets now!

Fall of the Titans: The Original Game of Thrones

What is Gaia Theory? What Does It Have To Do With FALL OF THE TITANS in Cambridge?

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

This coming Sunday January 22nd at 5:30 pm I’ll return to Grendel’s Den in Cambridge, MA to tell Fall of the Titans: The Original Game of Thrones, an ancient Greek myth. The 90-minute show, told with narration, character voices and a score on 12-string guitar, is prefaced, believe it or not, with modern science, Gaia Theory in particular. Gaia Theory isn’t a belief, it’s a bundle of sciences. Biology. Chemistry. Physics. Ecology. Plate tectonics. Climatology. Paleo-geology. Vulcanology. Glaciology. On and on. It combines these and other disciplines into the grand notion that Earth is a giant, self-regulating organism, creating and sloughing off complex life forms for many hundreds of millions of years.

Pangea (“all-Earth”) is the name scientists have given the ancient super-landmass that fused the continents 300 million years ago but which drifted apart into what we’ve got today. In certain places, rock layers along the west coast of Africa are identical to rock layers along the east coast of South America, after all. Now the Atlantic Ocean separates them, but at one point they were in the same spot on Pangea. Continents drift about an inch a year.

So what’s the link to my storyteller’s version of Hesiod’s Theogony, a poem from 700 B.C. about the ancient Greek gods we see in the movies all the time? The link is paleo-seas, the waters that surrounded Pangea’s break-up. Scientists have given them names. The Tethys Sea. The Iapetus Ocean. The Pontus Ocean. The Rheic Ocean. Where did these strange names come from?

Well, the scientists who named them were obviously familiar with Hesiod’s creation myth, because Tethys, Iapetus, Pontus and Rhea were Titans, children of Gaia, the Earth itself, all of whom are characters in the Theogony (“birth of the gods”). Think of them as the Earth-Makers. The Bronze Age Greeks looked around and saw mountains, sky and seas and had no idea where they’d come from, so they dreamt up a Titan who created each one of them. Tethys, a Titaness, created the streams and rivers. Pontus created the sea. Iapetus created death to make room for new life. Rhea was the mother of the Olympian gods––Zeus, Hera, Hades, Demeter and so on. They were all part of a family that tore itself apart because of imperfection.

At least that’s the story.

So learning about ancient seas made me curious about the names, the names led me to the story, and now Fall of the Titans is a full-blown performance piece. It’s lots of fun with some pretty cosmic music on 12-string guitar and voices for Gaia, Ouranus, Cronus, Rhea, baby cyclopses, Zeus and others. It is an adult story and is definitely not recommended for children.

I’ll have my Celtic harp to help introduce the science part.

Tickets are $15 for tables and $10 bar seating. I hope to see you there!

FALL OF THE TITANS: THE ORIGINAL GAME OF THRONES/upcoming show in Nashua, NH

Posted on by Odds Bodkin

Along with Homer, the ancient Greek poet Hesiod essentially codified old spoken tales of the Olympian gods into the wondrously complex mythology we know today as the Greek myths. It’s good to bear in mind that in their day, these were deeply religious stories and the Greeks believed them as fact. Where had the Earth come from? What caused day and night? Who created the stars? How did the sea become salty? How did memory and prophecy enter the world? Why did weather change? What caused volcanoes to erupt?

Religions do this, each in their own way, even fossil religions like Greek pantheism, and so all these questions Hesiod tried to answer in his poem, The Theogony. “Theo” means deity and “gony” means “the birth of,” and so Hesiod’s “Birth of the Gods” covers all these topics and many more, all filtered, of course, through the mind of a brilliant man who lived circa 700 B.C.

Most folks know about the antics of Zeus, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, Apollo and the other gods as grownups, but far fewer know the tale of how they were born into a Game of Thrones-style family feud among their parents and grandparents–the Titans.

This coming Sunday, January 15th at 7:00 pm at the Riverwalk Music Bar in Nashua, NH, I’ll be telling my storyteller’s version of this wild old yarn. I call it FALL OF THE TITANS because after they created the Earth, the Titans did indeed fall. It has echoes of Moses in the reeds (Zeus is the hidden baby) and features gorgeous scenes of creation as well as sordid adult moments. If you don’t know this story, you’ll learn how the goddess of love, Aphrodite, was born. Be warned: it’s fairly chilling for most guys. Ambition, lust for power and child-devouring also play significant parts in this Bronze Age narrative.

This is an adult performance and not recommended for children under 13.

As usual, I’ll have my Celtic harp for background lore and my 12-string guitar for scoring the tale itself. I last told this tale in Boulder, CO to an adult audience and they had a great time, so I hope you’ll consider coming to the show. Tickets are $10 here.