[tmbchr]™

Carnival Culture 00: Introduction



Carnival Culture: Living The Costumed Life

  1. THE HOLY FOOL
  2. MC FOLKSINGER
  3. LITTLE DRUMMER BOY
  4. THE QUEEN OF SONG
  5. LE CHEVALIER
  6. PEACE-KEEPERS
  7. GOOD-TIME GIRLS

carnival001.jpg

STEP RIGHT UP!

The majority of people lead what can only be described as completely ordinary lives. You wake up, go to work, talk to the same people - and your day-to-day life is an altogether predictable routine of going through the motions.

In the ancient world, holidays (literally, “holy days“) and festivals were set-apart times of the year in which we could turn conventions upside down and shake ourselves out of our old routines. This cleansed us, renewed us, and allowed us to re-focus our efforts and re-dedicate ourselves to our lives and to the people around us.

I hate to go off on one of those “but in modern times, that’s all shot to hell thanks to consumerism” type of rants, so I won’t. Suffice it to say, that as publicly-shared sacred times and traditions decline in importance, the individual resorts increasingly to diversionary entertainment to fill the void, and allow one to wiggle out of our own hum-drum lives into someone else’s story for a little while.

Consumerism and modern times aside though, this is what story-tellers throughout all of human times have always done for us: lead us out into realms of the imagination. Shamans and priests do the same thing on different levels, involving you directly as a character in a spiritual, religious, symbolic and mythic drama in which you have a part to play, and at least a loose script to act according to. Though the man on the street may not recognize it, our shamans and priests today, for better or worse, are entertainers. They guide us through ritual stories which we either play out internally as patterns or reenact through the decisions we make as citizen-consumers in the “mundane” world.

Entertainers, as a rule, though - whether in modern garb or ancient - live on the edges of the real world and the imagination. They act as bridges and guides, leading forays into the world of mystery which lies past the boundaries of our day-to-day lives. Carnival Culture is a new regular feature which I will be running for the next several weeks on this site, as an exploration of and dedication to those figures - both archetypal and realized in the flesh - who exist on the fringes, who live in and beyond worlds most of us only dream about.

This page will act as an index for articles in this series, and will be updated as new volumes are published.

Carnival Culture: Living The Costumed Life

  1. THE HOLY FOOL
  2. MC FOLKSINGER
  3. LITTLE DRUMMER BOY
  4. THE QUEEN OF SONG
  5. LE CHEVALIER
  6. PEACE-KEEPERS
  7. GOOD-TIME GIRLS






14 Reader Responses

  1. Carnival Culture 01: The Holy Fool - [tmbchr]™ Says:
    November 15th, 2007 at 6:46 pm

    […] [See: Carnival Culture Index] […]

  2. Jecklin Says:
    November 19th, 2007 at 4:10 pm

    I sure hope you take the time to discuss Mikhail Bakhtin.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivalesque

    And, of course, such a topic just isn’t complete without reference to Rabelais’s Pantagruelism, Fr. Gassalasca Jape, S.J., a few others that I now can’t think of.

    “Protestants have never excelled at evoking the Carnivalesque. In one of the ironic twists of the Reformation, the Protestant desire to arrive at a “critical” understanding and implementation of tradition ended up closing off the Carnivalesque spaces in society.

    Catholic culture on the other hand, with its ordering of life around the ritual of the Mass, is better situated to foster such spaces.”

    The perfect launching ground for further research is:

    http://www.newpantagruel.com/pantagruelism.php

    “Mikhail Bakhtin called this space the Carnivalesque … a space where, for a time at least, the disparate elements of culture and society are brought together and shorn of pretense. The King and the Peasant share the stage; they may trade places; for a while it may even be difficult to distinguish one from the other.

    “It functions as a way to subvert ‘official’ culture and hold at arm’s length the worst abuses of society by fostering communal exposure to a shared and received tradition through which the commonwealth can recognize and reorient itself towards the spiritual order and transcendent ground which lies behind and above the mundane everyday orders of politics, power, religion, and money.

    “I don’t think this evocation of the Carnivalesque is necessarily ‘Catholic,’ but I think I understand the transposition of the two because Protestants have never excelled at evoking the Carnivalesque.”

    http://japery.newpantagruel.com/2004/0...nivalesque_not_just_for_catholics.php

  3. Tim Boucher Says:
    November 19th, 2007 at 5:32 pm

    “Protestants have never excelled at evoking the Carnivalesque. In one of the ironic twists of the Reformation, the Protestant desire to arrive at a “critical” understanding and implementation of tradition ended up closing off the Carnivalesque spaces in society.

    Catholic culture on the other hand, with its ordering of life around the ritual of the Mass, is better situated to foster such spaces.”

    AHA! Jackpot: that connects us back to the history of the modern state, stage performance and ritual in Catholic and Protestant countries, economics, politics, and so on.

    Thanks!!

  4. Jecklin Says:
    November 19th, 2007 at 8:35 pm

    Voegelin connects it all rather interestingly, though he leaves out the stuff you touch on time and again (with his annoying “gnosticism” label.

  5. Tim Boucher Says:
    November 19th, 2007 at 9:03 pm

    Which part, specifically, does he leave out that I mention so much?

  6. Jecklin Says:
    November 19th, 2007 at 9:26 pm

    your general fringe interests. He won’t go there. If only he had. The occult, gnosticism etc. I guess he didn’t think he needed to. He would have been the puzzle master if he had.

    He’s dense and difficult, but give him a try, man if you haven’t.

  7. Headed North - [tmbchr]™ Says:
    November 20th, 2007 at 11:59 am

    […] I am heading north for a week to rendezvous with my family. As such, I will have only limited access to the internet, and likely won’t be checking or responding to email much - if at all (unless you’re one of these people). However, I have tons of things scheduled to auto-post in my absence, so it will be like we haven’t missed a beat for the most part. When I get back, I will be publishing part II of my carnival culture series on bards, troubadours and folksingers (it will probably take me that long to finish). In the meantime, enjoy the holiday! Read Similar Articles: […]

  8. Carnival Culture 02: MC FolkSinger - [tmbchr]™ Says:
    December 5th, 2007 at 7:07 pm

    […] [See: Carnival Culture Index] […]

  9. Carnival Culture 03: Little Drummer Boy - [tmbchr]™ Says:
    December 17th, 2007 at 3:48 pm

    […] [See: Carnival Culture Index] […]

  10. Carnival Culture 05: Le Chevalier - [tmbchr]™ Says:
    January 11th, 2008 at 4:44 pm

    […] [See: Carnival Culture Index] […]

  11. Carnival Culture 06: Peace-Keepers - [tmbchr]™ Says:
    January 16th, 2008 at 4:42 am

    […] [See: Carnival Culture Index] […]

  12. Help A Brother Out - [tmbchr]™ Says:
    January 22nd, 2008 at 3:41 pm

    […] If you’ve been enjoying works such as my Carnival Culture series, your donations will help me keep it going, along with lots of other cool projects I have in the works. Thanking you in advance! […]

  13. Carnival Culture 07: Good Time Girls - [tmbchr]™ Says:
    February 5th, 2008 at 3:47 am

    […] [See: Carnival Culture Index] […]

  14. Saltimbanques - [tmbchr]™ Says:
    March 2nd, 2008 at 1:16 pm

    […] Related: Also check out my article series, Carnival Culture, for which I have several new installments brewing. Articles With Similar Themes: […]



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