A Class in Magic Sword Stories

We had to back my Heroic Tales class off until March 7, so if you haven't signed up yet, it isn't too late! We will meet at Small Town Coffee in Kapa'a, at the Products Fair.

I just finished the Magic Sword class -- stories about Magic Swords and the heroes who wield them. If you're a writer, this class is for you!

 Each class teaches a different writing technique, using the works that gave birth to a genre to illustrate it. Magic Sword stories illustrate the way to handle your internal monologue when you are writing.  It's a great technique!

Creating the Heroic Tales Classes

Aloha again!

I am working away at the classes for my Heroic tales course, starting Thursday Feb. 21 @ 7 PM at Small Town Coffee, Kapa'a Fairgrounds. I have completed the first class, which is an introduction to seven different genres of Heroic Tale. The third class on Utopias is already prepared.

I also have most of the Magic Sword tales class ready to present. Now that's an interesting one! When you cross Excalibur, the sunny, positive sword of kingship, with the dark Viking sword of doom called Tyrfing, with its three vile deeds, you get the Sword of David in the Queste del Sainte Graal, which is a sword of kingship that also commits three vile deeds. Countless magic-sword stories have been told that use aspects of these three seminal magic-sword tales. Tolkien makes gentle fun of the whole idea in his Farmer Giles of Ham, where the sword Caudimordax, or Tailbiter, is the terror of the local dragons.

I am noticing that my different Heroic Tales classes kind of support each other. Explorer Fiction is a lot like Utopian fiction, but the explorer who finds a Utopia observes and records social customs as a way of reflecting on the author's own time. The explorer in Explorer Fiction just records wonders -- monsters and strange people. The Woman's Journey, which goes beyond fame and fortune to quest for wholeness, seems to lead naturally into the Spiritual Quest, which goes beyond personal wholeness to fusion with the Sacred. And Magic Sword Tales, which usually involve the irony that using the sword on others leads to you getting killed yourself eventually, bear a complicated relationship to the Dystopias.

The whole thing is becoming so interesting I am thinking of making the eight classes I am creating into a book.  These are genre studies, really, so each chapter would sail across the centuries picking out examples wherever they may be found. The Utopias class starts with the Garden of Eden and ends with a 20th century Shangri-La, so that one really covers some ground. Woman's Journey stories track back into the timeless mists of folklore. Explorer Fiction can start with the 12th century voyages of Marco Polo, and continue into the 21st century space program. Spiritual Quest stories have been with us since the Descent of Inanna 4000 years ago.

Time melts away, when you look at story telling this way. Come melt away some time with us, Thursday Feb. 21 7-8 PM at Small Town Coffee, Kapa'a Fairgrounds. The first class is free!

Dr. Matt

Preparing the Heroic Tales Class

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I am having way too much fun creating my Heroic Tales classes for delivery at Small Town Coffee Thursdays 7-8 PM (Kapa’a Fairgrounds). The first meeting is February 21^st. I get to talk about all my favorite books!

I just finished prepping the Utopias class, our 3^rd meeting. We will take an hour looking at Utopias from the 12^th to the 20^th century, starting with the astonishing legend of Prester John.

The Magic Sword class will start with tales of Tyrfing, the Viking sword that always killed someone once it had been unsheathed.

And the Woman’s Journey – ! Well, I don’t want to give it all away. There will be a hatful of great ideas at every class, for students to develop into a story or an essay. I will co-edit student writing with the student, to develop it to its highest potential.   

We will sail past so many great books in an hour! Blue House bookstore will order any book that you hear mentioned in the class, at a 20% discount to the student. Each class will also have a keynote work that is available for sale at the class with the same discount. We will spend a week each on

1.     Structure of the Heroic Journey

2.     Magic Sword stories

3.     Utopias

4.     Explorer Tales

5.     the Woman’s Journey

6.     Dystopias

7.     Visits to the Future

8.     Hawaiian Tales 

Hope I'll see you there!

Dr. Matt

Heroic Tales Class Coming Up!

Thursday February 21^st, 7-8 PM at Small Town Coffee, I will kick off my Heroic Tales class. This will be a hum-dinger of a roller-coaster ride through some wild genres of story-telling. We will use the seminal works of a genre as a spring-board, and look at how their structure was imitated by a host of later works, creating the genre as we have it now. Students will each write an essay or a story related to one of the genres we discuss. I will co-edit it with them to bring it to a finished form.

After this basic training in literary reading, any time we see a work in that genre we will recognize it as a genre work, and know more or less what to expect. Then we become active readers, observing and enjoying how this particular work follows the genre pattern, and how it violates or alters the pattern in surprising ways.

Come join us at this feast for the heart, mind and soul! You’ll walk away with a story or essay in hand, and a head full of knowledge about the amazing forms taken by the Heroic Journey in literature and in life. There will be a sign-up sheet in the Blue House bookstore at Small Town Coffee in the Kapa’a Fairgrounds. Students will pay $80 (cash or check) at the end of the first meeting if they want to go on with the whole set of 8 meetings. Contact me if you want to reserve a seat by prepaying (mahopmi@gmail, or come by Small Town Coffee Saturday 10-2 when I work in the bookstore).

The Archetypal Fiction Class Ends

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Well, my Archetypal Fiction class at Small Town Coffee has come to an end, after 21 fun Thursdays! At the end of its term, it gave birth to a small Writer’s Workshop, in which I and some of the Archetypal Fiction students will just get together over a weekly potluck to read our work and comment helpfully on what we hear. We are all teachers and all students: price of admission is something good to eat.

We had a great time the first evening of the Workshop, reading each other long free-verse poems we have written and looking at how they link to music. I played a recording of myself reading a narrative poem called The Pirate Band Laments Its Fallen King, in sync with the music of the pirate band itself – or rather themselves, since there are really two pirate bands, one with electric guitars and the other with a piano and other classical instruments like flutes and trumpets. They get into a musical competition to see who can lament their fallen king the best, and we hear their sad conversation about the Great Man when he still walked the decks and ruled their lives.

I had just seen Pirates of the Caribbean for the first time when I created the words and music, and  this was a weird spin-off from that unique movie experience. It all seemed so real to me at the time, I developed a short story from the lyrics. Who knows where these things come from?

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Aloha!

I will be running a workshop on How to Write Archetypal Fiction, Thursdays 7-8 PM starting Sept 6. These will be at Small Town Coffee. This will cover the ground I have been gradually describing in this blog.

I actually am a doctor, but of medieval literature not medicine. I have a BA, MA and PhD, which we used to say means "Piled Higher Deeper." Maybe it's true, but I certainly have a lot of information about how a great story is put together, which I learned while studying each century of English literature from the 9th c. to the 20th century.

But what is it good for? Over the last thirteen years I have figured out that classic story structure conceals coded instructions on how to live your life so you feel successful and happy.

The first workshop (Sept. 6) is a free overview of the three archetypal journeys -- one to fame and fortune, one to re-union with Mother Earth, and one to wholeness and the happiness it brings.

Each covers the same seven steps in different ways, and together they make a tremendous tool-box for the writer, or for anyone involved in a struggle for fame and fortune, for reunion with Mother Earth, or for wholeness and happiness.

Sept 13 the 21-Thursday Workshop starts. On each Thursday from 7-8 PM at Small Town Coffee, there will be readings from whoever will participate, a chance to comment and react to the writer, and short presentations of different steps in the journeys. I'll read from the story I am writing if no-one else volunteers, and I will undertake responsibility to prepare and perform the presentations.

Each journey covers 7 steps, and there are three journeys, so it will take 21 Thursdays to cover them all.

The first 7 Thursdays (Sept. 13 - Oct. 25) will be spent on the ever-popular Hero's Journey to fame and fortune, which is the basis of most stories written or filmed in Western civilization.

The next 7 Thursdays (Nov. 1 - Dec. 20; no workshop Thanksgiving Day) will cover the Heroine's Journey, which is the Vision Quest or return to the Earth to contact the spirit(s) that dwell therein.

The final 7 Thursdays are all in 2013 (no workshop Dec. 27; Jan 3 - February 14). They will cover the spiritual journey to wholeness and direct experience of the Sacred.

The last one, on Valentine's Day 2013, will be a Lover's Special about living with personal wholeness and how it changes who we are in the world by awakening in our hearts a burning need to help others on their way. This makes us better partners and better parents, because we want to help. The gifts we give shine because they are not grudgingly given.

Since I have spent twenty years figuring this out, and will draw continuously on my 3 degrees in English literature, I will require a small fee -- $25 / class, divided by the number of people present (not including myself). So, if 5 people show up, that's $5 each. If 25 people show up it will be a dollar apiece! I will remind everybody about this before we start each class.

See you at Small Town Coffee, Thursday Sept. 6 7-8 PM for the free overview of the three journeys. This alone can give you a hundred handy hints on how things work in literature as in life, that you can put to work in the pages of your story, and in your experiences in the world.

Dr. Matt

Empty Mind: Step 2) on the Path

Aloha! I have been away house-sitting, but now I am back. I left you with the second verse of a poem about the great Friend and Partner, the Holy Spirit or knowable Presence of the Unknowable Oneness. Let's continue our review of the seven states of consciousness, with an account of the second state of consciousness that awakens us to Her Presence: Empty Mind.

Centering Prayer (described in an earlier blog) leads to Empty Mind, because through Centering Prayer you stop labeling things with names and reactions. Without names and commentary the things around us seem to be One Flow. And in that Flow anything can exchange information with anything else because we are all parts of One Thing, like organs of a living Body. You also are part of that flow in Empty Mind. Experiencing unseparateness, you remember you are not separate. The barriers between you and the world are subtly weakened, as if some veil had dropped.

Suppose you have chosen to do your Centering Prayer in a forest glade.

A thrush lands on a stone five feet away. It cocks its shining black eye at you, turning its head quickly one way and another. You perceive it without reacting. Because you are Empty, you hear,

“Good morning! Good morning!”

You turn your attention to the thrush. You must fully believe the thrush spoke, or you cannot do this. Faith makes the technology work. If your brain believes it picked up the thrush’s thoughts, then you can open a dialogue. If you tell yourself, “thrushes can’t talk,” you short-circuit the process. The inner portal dilates shut like a startled anemone. Instead, think back to the thrush,

“Good morning. No harm! Are you having a good day?”

“Good Day! Good day! And you? And you? Are you having one too?” And without waiting for an answer, it flirts its wings and is gone.

The stone says, “She’s nesting near-by, that’s why she is so flighty. There have been thrushes nesting here for centuries, since long before your time, young friend.”

“Have you seen her parents and grandparents come and go?”

“Back to the beginning, child, when the first thrush alighted on me. I greeted her and made her welcome, and she flew off into a thicket to nest nearby, she and all her generations since.”

“How do you know she is a thrush?”

“I hear people talk, as they come and go. Rocks learn a lot just sitting and listening.”

Part mentally from your new friends with courteous friendship. Your inner portal has dilated to shamanic levels, communicating with spirits in all things. Practice your new skill with anything. 

But remember always that in the end there is only One Spirit, that pervades us all and gives us life. In communicating with individual spirits, in other people or in any other object, you are communicating with Her through the mask she wears in this form. 

Trees know Her tree wisdom -- root deep, twine branches with your neighbors, seek the sun. Rocks know Her rock wisdom -- hold on, wait patiently, let things change around you but remain steadfast to yourself. Spiders know Her spider wisdom -- build for the joy of it, build again if it is destroyed -- build for life and nourishment. But these are only Her masks. She is the great Partner in all things, with Whom we dance our lives away.

The next blog reviews the third state of consciousness on The Path to bliss: Working Meditation. For more detail, my book What Happened to Happiness? (available at Amazon.com) refers the 7 states of consciousness to their descriptions in 13 ancient traditions.