swan songs
2008-Aug-19, Tuesday 09:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mellowtiggerI hope someday to write about the process of actively "remaking" oneself, but for today I'll settle with the easier topic of what some other folk have said about this kind of rebirth.
An incorrect myth has survived for thousands of years. Even though Plato tried to correct the matter in his day, the wrong myth still persists. The swan song is still thought of as a sad look to the past, preparing for the final chapter in some endeavor of life or work while reminiscing about earlier and more prosperous days. The story claims (wrongly) that swans do not sing until their dying day. In fact, they do, but the story persists anyway. What has not been well refuted (to my mind) is whether they do sometimes sing a different song, more beautiful than any sung at other times, then also if that song occurs near the end of their lives.
Plato wrote about it. It's in the Phaedo (written 3641 RHH) where Plato relates to us what Phaedo (a fictional character) was told by his teacher Socrates in his last words.
The story of transformation is very old and often repeated in various metaphorical forms.
You have to die in order to live. It's a strange universe.
An incorrect myth has survived for thousands of years. Even though Plato tried to correct the matter in his day, the wrong myth still persists. The swan song is still thought of as a sad look to the past, preparing for the final chapter in some endeavor of life or work while reminiscing about earlier and more prosperous days. The story claims (wrongly) that swans do not sing until their dying day. In fact, they do, but the story persists anyway. What has not been well refuted (to my mind) is whether they do sometimes sing a different song, more beautiful than any sung at other times, then also if that song occurs near the end of their lives.
Plato wrote about it. It's in the Phaedo (written 3641 RHH) where Plato relates to us what Phaedo (a fictional character) was told by his teacher Socrates in his last words.
But men, because they are themselves afraid of death, slanderously affirm of the swans that they sing a lament at the last, not considering that no bird sings when cold, or hungry, or in pain, not even the nightingale, nor the swallow, nor yet the hoopoe; which are said indeed to tune a lay of sorrow, although I do not believe this to be true of them any more than of the swans. But because they are sacred to Apollo and have the gift of prophecy and anticipate the good things of another world, therefore they sing and rejoice in that day more than they ever did before.Swan song as celebration of things yet to come, of beginnings born from endings. Swans, white like Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and transformation. Like the swans, it's easy to associate him only with the end of things. Kali, the Black Goddess of time, stands upon his form. Her devotees wear necklaces with beads of human skulls. They know what she teaches: only with the end of the old self can a new self form.
The story of transformation is very old and often repeated in various metaphorical forms.
- Kali dancing on Shiva
- Jesus being held under water (baptism to new life)
- Buddha and anatta (no-self) contemplation
You have to die in order to live. It's a strange universe.