Strange Times Call for Strange Storytelling - with Dn. Nicholas Kotar
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- čas přidán 1. 08. 2024
- I've spoken with Dn. Nicholas Kotar a few times on this channel. He is an Orthodox deacon, writer, storyteller and podcaster for Ancient Faith Ratio. He recently published another book in the Raven Son series called Son of the Deathless that's freely available on his website.
In this conversation we talk more about storytelling in our current culture and how we can approach more traditional storytelling while living in a postmodern world. We also talk about the new Lord of the Rings series, Rings of Power, Russian novels like Laurus, different kinds of stories like fairy tales and myths compared with contemporary fiction and much more.
Get Dn. Nicholas' new novella (Son of the Deathless) for free by subscribing to his website: nicholaskotar.com/
Eugene Vodolazkin - Laurus, a Glimpse Into the Medieval Mind: • Eugene Vodolazkin - La...
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Timestamps
00:00:00 - Coming up next...
00:01:03 - Intro music
00:01:28 - Start
00:02:53 - Nicholas' writing experiences
00:06:00 - Propaganda in storytelling
00:13:15 - Returning to old storytelling
00:15:15 - Writing from the wild
00:18:52 - Storytelling is not enough
00:23:07 - The absolute negator
00:26:17 - Laurus and the lives of the saints
00:29:50 - We had technical difficulties
00:30:58 - Identity in strangeness
00:39:31 - Your story VS fantastical stories
00:44:37 - Diverse casting
00:48:49 - Returning to the wild
00:56:34 - We as artists
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My intro was arranged and recorded by Matthew Wilkinson.
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![Write Your Life And Become A Better Storyteller - Mark W Travis [FULL INTERVIEW]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xFK5Ih3CPFc/mqdefault.jpg)
Following the two JPs advice I went from a dark path to getting married and working towards baptism in the Holy Orthodox Church🎉
I just got Chrismated last Sunday, largely thanks to Pageau's work!
Welcome to the Church!
Glory to God
Same! God bless you brother.
Glory to God!
Fascinating discussion. I’d love to see more interviews with story writers and philosophers on this topic.
Alan Moore's "Swamp Thing" is an interesting comic containing aspects of this "integrative marginal storytelling" (a monster that saves the world etc.). The Swamp Thing represents the magical aspect of reality bursting back into corporeal form in a disenchanted, illuminated world which has no shadows left for monsters. Recently I have been stumbling across a lot of older comics which express many of the themes you discuss in reaction to the disenchanted postmodernist world. In a sense it appears that these integrative marginal stories of the postmodern age have already been summoned forth from the "cauldron of story".
Very interesting. Do u have any more comic authors or writers to suggest?
23:18 “To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.” - Flannery O'Connor
I’d love to have a reading list of those old Russian stories and stuff you guys always mention and how to find them.
Kotar has a podcast dedicated to them: In a Certain Kingdom. A collection illustrated by Ivan Bilibin is great.
I struggle with mental issues and your channel is a safe place for my mind because of how creative it is. And not only creative, but its pure. Thanks for all the help your channel has provided for me.
Man, what these guys are describing is Charles Williams! Go read his novels! I’ve never found anything better at shocking you with the fantastic as a way to get you to see reality. Especially “Descent into Hell,” “All Hallows’ Eve,” and “The Greater Trumps.”
Definitely at the top of my list for next things to read!
It is really difficult for humanists to authenticate the experience of something that is more than what they can perceive. It leads to a reality that they cannot embrace. It will be very interesting to see how this unfolds.
Certainly it seems without the element of transcendence human storytelling cannot go into true mystery and becomes lifeless (despite all the CGI)
🥇
Great stuff guys! I’m currently finishing my first book that encapsulates significant moments of my life in poetry form.
Looking forward to contributing to the Greater Story of Mankind. 📜 ✍️
St John of Shanghai & San Francisco once gave communion to a girl with a highly contagious animal disease who wouldn’t receive medical help. As he gave her the Body of Christ, her symptoms began and she spew it out. St. John picked it up off the ground and ate it, for he could not let that happen to the Lord, nor to the girl.
Everyone was afraid they would get the disease, but they did not.
Quite a shocking scene to imagine!
Extraordinary. Was the girl ill, or possessed? Your recounting conjures an image of the host provoking a demon, and the transmutation of evil by the actions of the Saint. Especially as nobody else became infected.
@@callunaherissonne662 the story is about a person with rabies. i could swear when i read the story it was about Papa Nicholas Planas. i could easily be wrong, because it was many years ago. let's both go look it up.
This was just an incredible conversation. I was riveted by the idea of the old storytelling tropes, how they allow you to enter into the experience of another to enrich your own. I so much agree that the artist/creator should consider themselves to be a tool, something that of itself must be pruned and enriched - so that our creativity has a chance to actually be our own, and not a processed trope. 00:25:23 is the magic bullet. I think if you put mystical discipline and fiction on a line, then mysticism is oriented toward the brightness of the good, and fiction is looking 'down' and back and the emergence of light from the dark. That's why we have the hero's journey, or any other story - because a story we resonate with is one that involves pain, death, growth, change, from a thinner to a deeper contact with reality.
Some points in the discussion reminded me of this quote by Flannery O’Connor:
“The fiction writer should be characterized by his kind of vision. His kind of vision is prophetic vision. […] The prophet is a realist of distances, and it is this kind of realism that goes into great novels. It is the realism which does not hesitate to distort appearances in order to show a hidden truth.”
Sounds like a social engineer/satanist.
This episode has so many amazing references, I need to rewatch and create a to-read list
“Son Of The Deathless”
🔺
a fascinating and wildly handsome title
🔻
now, if the Son is… deathful
that's the sequel :)
Loved this convo. Thank you brothers.
glad to hear some critique of how Critical Drinker & co gave been reacting to Rings of Power.. it is definitely akin to a kneejerk reaction of a religion fundamentalist to anything that doesn't align with their dogma..
That's not a fair critique whatsoever.
If the rings of power was truly an attempt at expanding on the story Tolkien was telling, or a genuine attempt at telling a new story, using Tolkiens work as a template, then yes, it would be just a dogmatic poopooing.
It most certainly is not that though. It is a postmodern perversion of the story itself. It is literal pornography. They are trying to destroy the world that was built.
It isn't "knee jerk" at all. It's based on the words and actions of the shows creators themselves. They are pulling an Edward Norton in fight club. They are just trying to "destroy something beautiful".
Their critique of TROP is the same argument he made about Wandavision. Instead of telling a story, they are just using an icon of literature, to lecture the audience about nonsensical social issues, while destroying the icon in the process.
It isn't just that they are destroying a beloved story for the fans of said story. They are also destroying the story for the youth who are not yet familiar with the Canon, and those not yet born.
Having watched a lot of videos on these channels, the Critical Drinker and Nerdrotic seem a lot like fools in the sense that JP applies the name to Kanye West. Watch the Fools!
Outstanding conversation again. Very insightful about what's going on now in the West.
Thanks
I think Book of the New Sun is just the story you are explaining about.
why?
Yikes what an opener and so spot on
Wow, a Martin Shaw / Pageau discussion! Something I'd been wishing for but never expected, can't wait! (P.s. Shaw is from Devon not Ireland 😊)
Dcn. Nicholas’ comment on people over-consuming one type of story, and Jonathan’s on wanting to go live in a fictional worlds because we hate our own, made me think of the recent explosion of “isekai” anime and manga.
This is a genre formula in which the main character - usually a young adult male shut-in who is extremely socially awkward and/or misanthropic - gets killed in a random accident, and then is reincarnated into a fantasy world. They often feature Mary Sue plots (eg. the “reborn” character has an incredible natural talent for magic or fighting, and gorgeous, vivacious large-breasted women are constantly attracted to him despite his average looks and zero charisma).
Isekai for years has been one of, if not the most popular genre in Japan and new ones are still constantly being pumped out. Their immediate origin and purpose is obvious, but this discussion really solidified the reasons why they bother me so much. I think of something Tolkien wrote, responding to the criticism that his books were “escapism” - he said that yes, they are, but in the sense of a man escaping from a prison. I fear that far too many people now crave escape *into* a prison, like the institutionalized inmate who doesn’t know how to cope with the world outside the prison walls.
You're missing the point completely. Isekai in practice suffers from the same problem as all genre fiction in the modern era, which is the problem of mass production, but Isekai as such is a legitimate genre that explores in a more precisely literal sense possible uses of escape. If you find the enormous popularity of the genre so remarkable, perhaps instead of immediately blaming the young people who crave escape from their world look to the world from which they are escaping. I think you will find then that they do have a sense of their world as a prison, and in that case, you should assess to what extent that is accurate, and to dismiss that sense entirely is not only absurd but also invalidates your appeal to Tolkien in the first place. I should note that Japan, in particular, is historically a very regimented society. As a podcast on video games to which I occasionally listen pointed out, the popularity of high school settings in anime is partly due to the fact that, for many people in Japan, high school, or teenage years more generally, becomes a symbol of freedom in the context of their society. I do not mean that Japan is totally unique in its relevance to this problem, but it is the most immediately relevant in the context of the present discussion.
Thank you very interesting. Great to hear mention of ancient Welsh poetry the Mabinogion.xx
Glad to hear that you will be having a conversation with Martin Shaw soon. By the way I would also love to hear a conversation between you and Malcolm Guite - if you haven't thought of inviting him already. I recently read his new book 'Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God' - highly recommended.
Hello from another cow country! Thank you for your illuminating conversation. I had read Beast and The Master and Margarita but I admit I was a little mystified. My Midwest upbringing didn't give me the keys to these experiences, I guess. I look forward to reading Shaw (and Son of the Deathless) in the north woods. Cheers!
Hey lads, good to see a conversation between two of my favorite people. 👍
I'm one of those who reacted bad to the Rings of Power trailer. Seeing those pure and simple fairytale characters from the LotR being portrayed as prosaic everyday life American humans was repelling.
Maybe in the hands of genius writers and director it could be pulled off.....but, nah....
I would really recommend the first season of true detective. Its one of the few shows I've seen that really have a profound artistic vision.
And its surprisingly competent with its iconography. The show attempts to be a bridge between the secular and the divine. wether it succeeds its debatable but its a very genuine attempt. I think it's the sort of story telling we need during these times.
Jonathan mentioned Martin Shaw!
I listened to C.G. Jungs "Liber Novus", met my soul, and now can't stop thinking and writing various thoughts and visions associated with revitalizing life within story. I have a distinct feeling that most storied or religious writings are too dead, or too exposed to the dead to bring that life back into story.
I'm attempting to summarize the section of 'your story vs fantastical stories' and i'd like to hear if i have a good way of understanding it. The summary i have so far is - The identification with that of another can possibly lead to taking on the aspects which may be derogatory. We should learn to value which ideals to identify with in order to become our best selves instead of taking on aspects of another which we may value but are not what lead to a whole self. - I'm really hoping for some feedback where the summary might improve or if I might not understand the concept
Nice.
This feels like a call to action - I've loved, studied, and collected early original versions of fairytales all my life. I am reading the Language of Creation by Matthew. For someone who wants to begin writing as a force for good in the world, where is the best starting point?
set aside time to write every day. As you do, study the craft of writing. Ursula LeGuin's Navigating the Sea of Story is a great guide.
@@NicholasKotarauthor Thank you Nicholas, I appreciate this. I will order the book! 🙏
I always had very dark hair und guess who I associated with as a little girl? Arielle the mermaid and I drew women only with red hair. Also I remember reading some kind of historic novel at around 8 years old and of course associating with the main character who was not of my "race" and living on an other continent. Actually reading about settings in other cultures and people that were/looked not like me was one of the particular interesting things that motivated me to read...
Great chat, guys - thanks!
I never saw technology as neutral like a gun or a knife, I've always thought that it's just too crude of a comparison.
I did not expect my two interests in the EFAP community and the Symbolism community to intersect
Interestingly enough, I am currently reading the letters of Flannery O'Connor, and the process she used for writing is quite similar to what is described here. She never knew beforehand where the story would go, or what a particular character would do/say. She created the world, and the people in it unfolded naturally, and she followed them into the story.
This was very insightful. I'm at a loss for what to say though. There's so much being discussed here that I had a hard time latching onto one subject.
If you want to read a really strange story from the American side of things, you need to check out Ex Dynamis Chaos by Malcolm Terzich.
What should we be giving our children to read and watch in these times?
Rosemary Sutcliff
fairytales
@jonathan where can I buy God's Dog in the UK?
Mr Pageau... Have you read Alice's adventures under ground? Have you ever asked yourself.. Why is the jar empty?
🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿
Okay, can I have the title or link to the intro music? Cause it sounds like a really interesting variation on the Russian Chant "Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered" that's sung during Pascha (Easter)
It does sound a lot like that! I cannot remember the name of the music, but I believe it is the same as Ancient Faith Radio's theme and it may even be Russian composed.
It was also used by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in his Russian Easter Festival Overture.
Yeah it is. Rimsky-Korsakov used the melody(not sure if it was exactly that one you mention, but it was traditional Russian Orthodox, yes).
If you go back to Jonathan's older videos he uses an actual clip from R-K. Copyright stopped him from continuing that. Instead a couple musicians did their own arrangements for him that he currently uses
@@Xanaseb Yeah, I love the Easter Overture! That makes sense
Matthew 22:6((C.E.V.))✝️
I have been so fed up with modern story telling, such as novels and movies that i just dropped all care for it. The only story i want to follow is the story of the Jesus.
They should pitch these ideas to dailywire. That would be awesome.
I guess my most important question is regarding imagination: there's this tension right now about imagination being bad. Is imagination in the same realm as St Christopher and the passions? Because our culture's obsession with the new is intimately related to our use of imagination. And while it sounds "mature" and measured to say imagination is ok, it's important to be very precise and careful about this. Is imagination going to save us? Or is it the problem? Would it be fair to say that it is not imagination what reaches for God, but that which receives Him?
Vivid Imagination techniques during prayer can lead to prelest, no one is saying imagination is bad in of itself. Look up Jonathan's discussion with fr Maximo's constas
@@MangyPL I had watched it and I didn't get it at the time, thanks for your comment. I'll admit at first reading it I took it as a dull indoctrination from the terse style, but I really thank you for reminding me of that talk. God bless.
RISE🌟UNITE🌟SHINE🌟
200+ watching, and only 60+ likes? Really?
May God bless you and grant you many years. Kyrie eleison.
I also am frustrated by a local of character motivation in today's historical fiction - most of the characters are self-seeking cynical assholes who have zero hospitality and zero fear of God when in reality, in previous eras people greeting strangers to the town would have felt compelled to be hospitable and kindness to a fellow Christian. I tried watching the recent series The Great Fire about the London bridge fire in the 18th cent and found the whole thing incredibly inauthentic and frustrating
The Rings of Power has plenty of problems. But don't criticize or adopt a strong position against it unless you've watched it. That's an absurd thing to say. The marketing makes it seem FAR WORSE than it appears in the show.
The green knight is gnostic.
Film or original?
@@Charles3x7 Film, the original is Christian.
Copy. Yeah, I was very disappointed by the film. It seems to send only a message of despair, though I didn’t find it particularly gnostic, unless you’re considering the devoured masculine to be the hero as opposed to antihero. I thought it was more so a rejection of masculinity as futility, consciousness therefore being a pathetic mistake as opposed to an ultimate reality simply entrapped by the illusory feminine.
In which case I would have considered it gnostic
@@Charles3x7 if you see it through a gnostic lens, the hero actually transcended broken reality by accepting death. But there are many small little tidbits that show this. Sophia is this gnostic feminine idea which is crowned in the end. It's also seen very clearly in more than one scene, but I'll mention two to be brief. When we meet the protagonist he is chasing after a prostitute and falling (like man according to gnosticism). And when the court receives a letter it's the Queen who receives it, but when she drops it, then it is burned before it touches the ground (because according to gnosticism true knowledge cannot be incarnate).
"And his ilk"... not making fun of them. Sure.
I disagree. People aren't upset by Amazon disfiguring Lord of the Rings on its own. They're upset watching modernity take over every great story and see it twisted into a propaganda tool to further woke agenda - it's perversion of legacy as great writers. It's a contagion. The belief we're worshiping Lord of the Rings shows your guest is missing the point on this front entirely.
The Beatles said it best in images of inversion, in the context of the childhood playground and a today democratic education, with the shocking Helter Skelter: when you get to the bottom you go back to the top of the slide, then you stop and you turn and you go for a ride, till you get to the bottom then you see (Christ) again.
The first voice, therefore, which John heard in Revelation 4, saying in the Presidency, Come up hither and I will show you things which must be hereafter in the muster of the nations, is equally the great voice as of a trumpet, which he hears nationally behind himself in Revelation 1, and in scripture then beginning to be openly shown anew, at such universal heights, in its fulfillment anew on every New World
And whereby, he turns to see that voice and nationally to locally falls at his feet as dead, in the very judgment of such a nation, whereby Christ also lays his right hand of the future kingdoms to come therein upon him, and they rise and walk and talk together in the midst of the seven churches as the mystery of such a newly urban constellation epically and ethnographically grown in the wilderness.
Should have a group podcast with Kotar, Ruocchhio and Butler
I don’t want to sound like one of those far right dudes but a lot of the Disney stuff is anti white hate
Im black and i see it dude, you’re good lol
"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make ye odd" - Flannery O'Conner
I'm not sure that it's fair to criticize the people who see right through the ideological lens with which certain "artists" create. I am the first to defend "propaganda". People who bandy that "propaganda" criticism do so out of their own aesthetic and cosmological blindspots. And there's nothing wrong with propaganda or with art that has a cosmological lens behind it. But it's a matter of substance. Why are you so interested in redeeming the nice storytelling "technique" in fundamentally bad content? I don't think this duality between technique and content is helpful for anything. If a piece of art is masterfully executed (like many postmodern films which are precisely about that), what is it to us? Why are you so keen on saving their nihilistic deception and positing as valuable?
Wow. Nickolas, you mention the forbidden subject, Russian lit. Aren't you afraid you'll be cancelled by the mob of Russophobes?
Oh Gawd, not Bulgakov! Anything but that!
There's an itchy spot under my noodles, do you mind?
Remember Pageau spaghetti sauce? Great for noodles!
Wandavision sucked.
Better to read a couple challenging books than 300 trashy ones?
Lewis Carrol >>>> Mark Twain
Yikes what an opener and so spot on