"Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other."
--H.P. Lovecraft, The Silver Key
My Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself. --JRRT
My daughter Hannah saw Sam Gamgee in person this week. The coolest dude of The Lord of the Rings, the real hero of the story.
But that’s not the coolest part.
The coolest part was, she called to tell me. Breathlessly and right away. Because she knew I’d appreciate it more than anyone.
Walking through the campus of Endicott College this week Hannah saw that Sean Astin was due to speak to the students, that very night. A fortuitous find, if you happen to revere The Lord of the Rings and The Goonies as I do, and she does.
I showed her and her sister the films back in the day and we’ve watched them together a few times since. Hannah has gone on to introduce her friends to them.
It’s nice to know there is something of a mini-me out in the world.
It’s unnerving when your kids go out on their own, and take one step further from home than they’ve ever been (points for guessing the reference). When my phone rang at 4 p.m. and I saw it was Hannah, my heart raced a bit… it was an odd hour to call and I immediately thought something was wrong.
But it was very right.
“You’re never going to get what just happened!” she said. I was thrilled that she’d be seeing a star who brought us so much joy on screen… but even more happy that she thought to call me.
Hannah is like this. She’s naturally social, communicative, with a much better sense of this than I possess. Last year she started working as a teacher at Landmark, a school that specializes in children with high-functioning disabilities. A great fit, given her skillset.
She’s still close enough to come home and do her laundry and have dinner with her parents from time-to-time. But when she’s away she picks up the phone … and sometimes we talk about One Eyed Willy, Chunk, and “Baby Ruth.”
I’m thrilled she got to see the actor who played so many great characters we love, in person. But more than that, I’m happy she remembers her old man.
It’s a good reminder that I need to pick up the phone more often. I taught her some things … and she teaches me as well.
***
In other news of a biographical nature, I'm working my way through the new Robert E. Howard biography Robert E. Howard: The Life and Times of a Texas Author, by Will Oliver, and greatly enjoying that. My early impressions after about 200 pages: It is thorough, deeply researched, and walks a middle path between the likes of L. Sprague de Camp's Dark Valley Destiny and Mark Finn's Blood and Thunder.
I am also getting close to the end of my heavy metal memoir.
Cauldron Born is sword-and-sorcery brought to heavy metal life. Band members Howie Bentley and Matthew Knight are not just talented musicians (the latter is also the band's new lead singer) but also published S&S authors, well versed in the sacred genre. After hearing them speak on recent podcast interviews and YouTube videos I figured some of their music was in order.
Blast their first album "Born of the Cauldon" this Metal Friday. Soak in the impeccable guitar tone and revel in that incredible album cover art by Lionel Baker II (you can view more of his artwork here, click on the album links).
Roy Batty is pissed. He is the peak of what a replicant can be. Brilliant and reflective. Handsome and powerful, a physical specimen.
But despite his near perfection—his is a light that burns twice as bright—he is, like the flesh and blood humans he is designed to replicate, mortal.
His maker, Dr. Eldon Tyrell of Tyrell Corporation, has programmed the replicants with a short lifespan. Roy wants more, telling his maker, “I want more life, fucker” (one cut of the film substitutes, “father,” which makes the point of who he is addressing even more blatant).
But more life is beyond Tyrell’s power. So Roy crushes his head like an egg.
His rage is understandable. We’ve all raged at the finitude of life. If you live long enough you see grandparents, aunts, parents, friends--hopefully not children—perish, and deal with grief of separation that may be eternal.
Roy’s life burns twice as bright, as does his incandescent rage at his maker. But is it possible he is mistaken, his anger misplaced? And that he should be, perhaps, grateful?
Roy’s death is beautiful. The speech he gives, reportedly ad-libbed, is perhaps the most powerful and poignant scene in the film. Ridley Scott made some interesting, purposeful choices with how he filmed it.
Death is necessary. Without it, life lacks meaning.
Ernest Becker in The Denial of Death explains that we are limited beings with unlimited horizons, and so live in a constant state of terror (often subliminal) about our own impermanence and insignificance. That all we do—witnessing attack ships off the shoulder of Orion, for example—will all be lost when we pass. And nothing will have come of it.
Yet a life without death represents a different kind of terror. In The Denial of Death Becker describes the concept of a transference object, which is a person, institution, or idea onto which an individual projects their need for meaning, security, and immortality.
My personal transference object is J.R.R. Tolkien. I happen to like very much what JRRT has to say about death. Tolkien writes that Iluvatar, the creator, gave Men the gift of mortality, setting them apart from the Elves, who are bound to the world until its end. Elves may be immortal, but they are also weary and burdened by time; their spirits are tied to the fate of Arda (the world), and they experience sorrow and loss without the release of death. Men, on the other hand, are granted the ability to leave the world—and their destiny beyond it remains a mystery, even to the wise.
This idea is most clearly articulated in The Silmarillion, where death is described not as a curse but as a “gift” that allows Men to transcend the world and return to Iluvatar in a way the Elves cannot. But as Morgoth corrupts the world, Men come to fear death, forgetting its intended grace. Instead the Numenoreans strive in vain for immortality.
Tolkien calls death a great gift, the greatest given to men. It breaks the cycle of worldly attachment and offers the hope of something greater. In Tolkien’s Catholic worldview, this aligns with the idea that death is a passage, not an end. It is the one thing that prevents stagnation, that pushes us toward humility, courage, and faith.
Death, for Tolkien, is the door through which true transcendence is possible. Interestingly, both Becker and Tolkien believed that human culture, politics, the stuff around us, was not the way to ultimate meaning. We must shift our perspective towards the cosmic. This mirrors my pursuit of identifying my values and searching for meaning in the symbolic world of ideas rather than the physical. We'll never find meaning here, not even in rings and Silmarils.
Death makes life meaningful, because without it spending time with people does not come with a cost. Without death, any achievement could be unlocked in time. Everyone would eventually share the same experiences, and memories, as they’d explore every crevice of the planet. Because you could in theory do everything, nothing would be unique, or special. Including any given human life.
You would never have to think about whether you want to spend your time reading a book, or watching a movie, because you could consume all of them. You could choose not to spend time with a loved one and instead watch 200 straight hours of Netflix, because you could spend as much time as you wanted, later. I am not sure love as we know it would even exist; we’d get bored with our life-mate and take up the next.
So death is a gift. It’s a mighty paradox, and I almost feel ashamed, flippant, at writing that. I am quite certain that when I lose someone dear, I will be devastated. I can’t even contemplate my own death, and potential eternal separation from everyone I love.
Yet on a relatively rational day like today I believe it to be true. The abstract knowledge of my own death motivates me to appreciate the warm spring sun coming through the window on my face. It motivates me to write this essay. “Blessed” with immortality and lacking any urgency, why not write it tomorrow, or tomorrow, or … never?
Part of me wonders if I’m not just rationalizing my own terror, the knowledge that I one day too will depart down The River of No Return.
Would I accept immortality were it offered to me, if some AGI were able to stop aging and keep us forever young? I don’t know.
But today, at least? I believe death is a gift.
Roy’s memories are not lost like tears in rain because his story remains. Deckard is the witness, and we are the witness of the film. His death and all deaths are tragic of course, but it’s also the ultimate gift for humanity, which makes more Roy never more human than at that very moment.
And perhaps his soul, symbolized by the flight of the dove, is saved.
***
Holy crap I’m writing about some heavy topics these days. I seem to have no choice, just following the muse. I suppose this is what happens when you’re north of 50 and an empty nester, dealing with a death in the family and others suffering with old age. But the spring is here and I’ve got a lot to be grateful for.
“It is honor, Able. A knight is a man who lives honorably and dies honorably, because he cares more for his honor than for his life. If his honor requires him to fight, he fights. He doesn’t count his foes or measure their strength, because those things don’t matter. They don’t affect his decision.”
The trees and the wind were so still then that I felt like the whole world was listening to him.
“In the same way, he acts honorably toward others, even when they do not act honorably toward him. His word is good, no matter to whom he gives it.”
--Gene Wolfe, The Knight
Character matters. There is truth in the world of ideas.
I was listening to a podcast the other day. One of the guests--an author, self-described philosopher, and entrepreneur—concluded a view of the world I find abhorrent: Objective truth does not exist, values are manufactured and none better than others, and the purpose of life is maximizing personal happiness.
I’m leaving this dude’s name out because I don’t know him, and I’m attacking the idea, not the individual. But I do wonder: How do you end up in your mid-50s endorsing nihilism? Cheerily admitting there are no such things as absolute moral values … which means that everything is in theory permitted? It’s a train of thought that leaves dragons hoarding wealth they’ve ruthlessly abstracted from others, swelled with hubris, unable to see that their gold is derived from the thankless labor of uncountable generations who built civilization, created the human project from squalor, and allow for the existence of privileged coastal millionaire elites.
Few openly admit to nihilism, but many act that way. “I’ll extract wealth from the less fortunate, because no one is watching. And after all, it’s technically legal and I can get away with it.”
We each have the freedom to construct our own meaning and live our own lives as we see fit … except when that freedom infringes on or destroys other’s lives. The strong are obligated to lift up the sick, weak, and needy. Because it’s honorable to do so. And I would argue, an obligation that is an objective truth of the human condition. How long does this last if everyone behaves like a selfish douche canoe?
Imagine if Able of the High Heart was a nihilist? It would make a much different book than Gene Wolfe’s The Knight.
The story centers around a small boy who enters through a portal from our world to Mythgarthr, a world of high fantasy, gods, magic, monsters… and stouthearted knights. After an encounter with an elflike being, Disiri the Mossmaiden, Able rapidly grows into a powerful man and embarks on a journey into knighthood.
This sudden transformation means we get a uniquely compressed character arc. Able goes from an adolescent experiencing the vicissitudes of life, to young man called to perform duties to others, to grown man called to service to his own heart and conscience. From learning from others to teaching others the way. As we all should, objectively. Because if we don’t do this, we’ll leave the next generation in shambles. Which should concern you unless you’re a nihilist and think that death and life are one and the same.
Of course, we’re never going to be perfect. We throw away much for pleasure. Reject responsibility to others because it doesn’t maximize our momentary well-being. As Able does with the vixen of the woods. This is part of growing up. I think we all have to indulge in pleasures of the flesh.
But at some point adults realize it’s time to fight the dragon.
As noted recently I struggle with Wolfe. I find him needlessly opaque and allusive, at times impenetrable. Not so much with The Knight, which I enjoyed, if not unreservedly. Even here Wolfe does not make the journey easy for the reader. The story is told in an epistolary/letters from Mythgarthr to modern earth style which I don’t love, which leaves important sequences glossed over or relegated to the background. Able often for example will completely gloss over a battle, and only later do we realize the extent of his heroism through offhand remarks from observers after the fact.
… but that’s sort of the point, isn’t it? Knights with a code of honor don’t crow about their accomplishments. They don’t virtue signal on Instagram and sell self-help books as they lead deeply insulated, selfish lives. That would be … dishonorable.
There’s much other great stuff in here that make the The Knight a memorable journey. Wolfe-ian symbols I’m quite certain I failed to grasp. When Able plunges three times into a deep pool, beyond air and endurance, to retrieve his armor and sword, and hears the horns of Aelfrice/elfland, we feel a mythic power we cannot articulate, literally and metaphorically deep. But one lesson we can be sure of: Unless you confront the metaphorical dragon it becomes terribly real.
I’m sure I will tackle The Wizard after a palate cleanser. For now something a bit lighter is in order.
I started this blog back in September 2007, a time when things were different. Iron Man was still a year away from kicking off the MCU superhero craze. The iPhone had just launched in June and so we weren't yet staring at screens all day. No Instagram, and even Facebook was barely a thing, which made blogs like this if not hip hangouts, then places were real dialogue would sometimes occur.
In September 2007 my oldest daughter, Hannah, was only five years old, and just starting kindergarten.
We've come a long way baby. The MCU grew to massive proportions then deflated in a super hero sized bout of fatigue. YouTube and TikTok are our inherited legacy, and blogs like this have gone the way of DVDs and vinyl--the refuge of die-hard holdouts. Fortunately we've still got spaces for blogging and other long-form writing. Updated platforms like Substack.
Hannah is now 23 and has a Substack of her own.
I suspect my average reader will not be hip to her essays (though if you happen to have 18-25 year-old children who are thoughtful about culture, movies, and music, have them take a look). Hannah and I are very different, with different cultural touchstones, entertainment tastes, and life experiences, but we also have many things in common. We're both avid readers, we love The Lord of the Rings films, and most notably we share a passion for language and for writing.
And now, we each have our own little bit of cyberspace where we share our writings with the world.
I post this here not to direct traffic her way, just to say that I'm incredibly proud of Hannah and wish her the best in her new endeavor. I've read her handful of essays as well as other work she completed for school, and she's really good--better than I was at her age, when I was still doing my best impression of Animal House's Flounder (fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life son, though I was giving it a go).
Every dad wants their kid to be successful, and she's become a fine young woman, an excellent first year teacher, and now, a fledgling blogger. May she not have to endure the same typos, gaffes, and occasional trollish comments her Dad has suffered. I expect she will, but that's the writing life, and the wages of fame and glory.
