The Hills Are Not Yet Bleeding Red (hey, it got your attention)

Thoughts while reading Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien

It's funny that a book reminding me of reading Greek tragedy in high school brings with it such fond remembrance. When a plot unfolds in the Greek model you are guaranteed a somber, downer of an ending, but those days discovering Antigone in my freshmen English class were fun filled journeys of discovery, full of excitement and wonder, in stark contrast to the personal tragedies of the characters we were studying. There was none of the pressure and expectations that dominated such work in college and it was all so fresh and new! It makes me smile now to think of how amazed I was at discovering the common current running through fiction from the most ancient of days to our present time. I couldn't believe how connected everything was, which is especially poignant to ponder now considering how forcefully and exponentially the Internet has entirely driven this point home. I'd like to think this hasn't made more traditional ways of discovering the human connection completely obsolete and irrelevant. The Internet is a wonderful tool that I obviously don't mind using, and though it can be used to generate and present new material, I feel it often best lends itself to discussing, analyzing and taking apart culture found in the physical world. Those Greek plays were great stuff (oh my goodness, I should be shot for using the word 'stuff' in a descriptive phrase referencing such mighty classics). Most, if not all, of our current entertainment genres come directly from the varying types of play and it would be a terrible mistake to forgo all the wonderful types of art that have come before the Internet to only limit ourselves to one medium, no matter how multifaceted a medium it is. The more I think about it, the more I think it would be a lot of fun to talk to people about those Greek stories again, any takers?