For the past year or so I have been whiling away the hours in the age-old pursuit of writing a comic book. It’s a natural evolution of my writing career, I’ve penned a few Bardic storytelling sagas a mythological play or two, 99 published songs and at least as many poems so why not take a stab at the alluring graphic novel form? This feels different from the other times I have attempted to put the jigsaw of words together in the creation of a narrative, mostly because this time you are involved. Yes you, along with the rest of humanity.
Let me quell a few questions you may have right off the bat by explaining my interpretation of the Daimon and what it means to me. This project was conceived almost 2 years ago when I sat down at the piano and decided to write a song that was not, I repeat, not part of a grand operatic over-arching storytelling cycle, no, just a song that stood on its own two feet. That “song” ended up clocking in at 10 minutes and is called, My Daimon. This song also spawned the entire corpus for an ongoing graphic novel series, so what is it they said about the best laid plans of mice and men?
The idea of the Daimon comes from the same culture who invented the first alarm clock in 428 B.C., yes, those industrious buggers, the Greeks. In its earliest form the Daimons were personifications of our emotions. Impulses that arise within the human consciousness to tempt us with the idea of love or the need to hate. By the time of Socrates, the Daimon took on the more familiar role of guiding spirit, analogous to the Roman Genius, the Christian Guardian Angel or the Norse Fylgia. Plato took it a step farther in writing, The Myth of Er where after a warrior experiences the afterlife, he comes back to tell the living that before we were born we choose a reason for being here on earth, a spiritual destiny that we decided to fulfill.
Once this destiny is chosen the Moirai, the three fates stand before you. Lachesis, who sings of the past and measures the portion of your life’s thread, sends the soul onward with a Daimon to be the guardian of our life and the fulfiller of our destiny. Then her sister Clotho, who sings of the present, draws the soul within the revolution of her spindle and thus ratifies the destiny of each. The spindle is then handed over to Atropos who sings of the future and who makes the threads irreversible, passing them beneath the throne of necessity. It is then we drink from the river of Lethe, the river of forgetfulness and unmindfulness which flows from the cave of sleep.
The Three Fates - Francesco de' Rossi (1510–1563)
Those who were not saved by wisdom drank more than was necessary for the reason we remain naive of our chosen spiritual destiny is the result of drinking this water. Once we are born it is our Daimons purpose to remind us throughout our life, the reason we choose to exist in the first place and it is our purpose is to fulfill that reason..."
“If you bring forth what is within you what you bring forth will save you, if you do not bring forth what is within you, that which you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
~Gospel of Thomas
This idea resonated in a most extreme way with all 150 trillion synaptic connections in my brain that it has become my mission to attempt uniting the people of the world with their Daimons using the super powers of comic books and music.
I have formulated these ideas (and others) into an ongoing comic book series called The Wild Daimons. These will be printed, touchable, and listenable objects as each comic book will come out simultaneously with a new song. Fantasy and reality will collide as if they were truly interchangeable bulbs, burning inside the inner metaphysical lamppost of your mind. Yes, the delicate levers of the imagination are going a bit haywire but in the best way possible.
If you are a person of this world, well then now you know how you are involved and it does not stop there. Planet Daimon is busy spilling forth a mythos with something new, something old and hopefully something unpredictable and metamorphic for your journey in this madcap, topsy turvy, askewed, beautiful ball of dirt we call home.
A good graphic novel demands collaboration and so 6 months ago I sent up my daimonic bat-signal which luckily was seen by my good friend and macabre instigator extraordinaire, Greycat. Here are a few behind the scenes developmental sketches he’s done thus far. I’ll be providing updates in the blog as this gets closer to hitting the stands and when pre-orders will be made available.
Push The Record Button~
Always good advice to push record even if you’re not supposed to be recording... You never know what might happen. In my case, two new songs materialized onto the proverbial tape machine back in April in a scantily clad 48 hours. My home sweet home studio, The Hollow Hill, while already fulfilling its fate as a recording studio, was recently further transformed into an unrecognizable mausoleum of musicians, microphones, wires, cables, knobs, buttons, pedals, instruments and random bits of state-of-the-art foam. Tremendous thanks to three members of The Wild Daimons who made these songs soar, Michael Clark, Drums/percussion, Nils Frykdahl on bass and Ben Milner on odd knobs.
Pitch your tent at the Hippocampus
Suddenly the act of recording cements these songs in the fixture of a certain time and place and the occasion can never be recovered unless of course you believe that time is not linear, which is my way of thinking. The past, the present, the future, they are all side by side in the roller-coaster seat of our inner space mountain. So yes, we recorded them, they are being recorded and they will be recorded soon, that’s all happening right now. This way of thinking is not any more far-fetched than the everyday miracle of conscious awareness. This time the proof is not in the pudding but in your dreams.
Light can be amplified in its past by measuring it in its present. Optical instruments of retrocausation prove that photons in the future interact with photons in the past. And the record-breaking box-office time travel science fiction movie of the year is playing in the theater of your mind and it’s called Dreams. Yes, the unconscious seems to be already informed of the future and it chooses to express this phenomenon in the nightly ritual of abstract precognitive visions.
If you’re still with me then I have a book you might be interested in devouring. Actually, you already read it. Here is a bit from the author on the subject~
“You are far more than what you imagine you are, limited to whatever you are consciously experiencing in the present moment. You have a future, even a long future, and it is already here. You also have a past that is still here. The great adventure of precognitive dreamwork (and precognitive lifework) is directly experiencing that vastness and value of our lives and our stories."
“The unconscious is no mere depository of the past, but is full of the germs of future psychic situations and ideas.”
~Carl Jung
Word To the Wise~
Cryptomnesia~ Consciously forgotten but unconsciously remembered details, facts, moments throughout your life. Concealed recollection.
Well that's all from me for now. I always enjoy a discourse with the readership of The Craneskin Bag so please don't be shy about reaching out. I am here right now.
Victory, luck and blessings to YOU my friends,
~Dalrymple MacAlpin
Full Moon, April 16th, 2022
Excerpt from one of my old Dream Journals
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