Religions > Bible > Conservatives Unite In The NeoClassical Renaissance! Postmodernism's Legacy: Social Security Shortfall Due To Abortion of 45 Million Innocents: Abortion is Not in The Constitution: The Right to Private Property Is
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Religions > Bible |
| User: |
"Captain Ranger McCoy" |
| Date: |
30 Jun 2005 11:58:46 AM |
| Object: |
Conservatives Unite In The NeoClassical Renaissance! Postmodernism's Legacy: Social Security Shortfall Due To Abortion of 45 Million Innocents: Abortion is Not in The Constitution: The Right to Private Property Is |
The only way to save the Constitution is with a Classical Renaissance:
http://jollyrogerwest.com
"It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh." --General
MacArthur
Once upon a time a man could support a family with a decent job.
Today 30% of the family is aborted, and 50% of househoulds are divided
by divorce, with both men and women working to support the ever-growing
government.
Once upon a time a dollar, based on the gold standard, would byuy a
ticket to a John Wayne movie, ehcoing classical American values.
Today ten dollars buys admission to diluted, soulless, meaningless,
gutless Hollywood remakes of comic books, TV shows, and movies. Or it
buys a subscription to the burgeoning corporate porn companies, which
serve to further divide the family, pit men against women, and grow the
government. And so it is that the gold standard has been replaced by
the porn standard.
Once upon a time parents took care of children and children took care
of parents.
But today the government sanctions the abortion of children, which will
result in Social Security's bankruptcy, as instead of rasing children,
people are encouraged to work harder, pay higher taxes, and support
more government and corporate bureaucrats.
Once upon a time a family could buy a house with a decent wage, but
today a decent wage allows one to take out a huge loan so that the bank
owns the house until the government/corporate bureaucrats decide they
need the house for a walmart or strip mall.
And so it is that wehn we abandonded poetry, when we abandoned the
GReat Books and Classics, we abandoned the Constitution.
Bring it all back with a Great Books Renaissance and Classical
Revival!!!
http://jollyrogerwest.com
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| User: "Ed Pope" |
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| Title: Re: Conservatives Unite In The NeoClassical Renaissance! Postmodernism's Legacy: Social Security Shortfall Due To Abortion of 45 Million Innocents: Abortion is Not in The Constitution: The Right to Private Property Is |
30 Jun 2005 12:03:11 PM |
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Bring back the unions, Sparky, I'm telling you bring back the unions.
Americans can then again have decent wages and decent lives.
And stop being hypocritical jackasses when it comes to the issue of
family: uh, yeah, Newt,et. al., I'm talkin to you....
Captain Ranger McCoy wrote:
The only way to save the Constitution is with a Classical Renaissance:
http://jollyrogerwest.com
"It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh." --General
MacArthur
Once upon a time a man could support a family with a decent job.
Today 30% of the family is aborted, and 50% of househoulds are divided
by divorce, with both men and women working to support the ever-growing
government.
Once upon a time a dollar, based on the gold standard, would byuy a
ticket to a John Wayne movie, ehcoing classical American values.
Today ten dollars buys admission to diluted, soulless, meaningless,
gutless Hollywood remakes of comic books, TV shows, and movies. Or it
buys a subscription to the burgeoning corporate porn companies, which
serve to further divide the family, pit men against women, and grow the
government. And so it is that the gold standard has been replaced by
the porn standard.
Once upon a time parents took care of children and children took care
of parents.
But today the government sanctions the abortion of children, which will
result in Social Security's bankruptcy, as instead of rasing children,
people are encouraged to work harder, pay higher taxes, and support
more government and corporate bureaucrats.
Once upon a time a family could buy a house with a decent wage, but
today a decent wage allows one to take out a huge loan so that the bank
owns the house until the government/corporate bureaucrats decide they
need the house for a walmart or strip mall.
And so it is that wehn we abandonded poetry, when we abandoned the
GReat Books and Classics, we abandoned the Constitution.
Bring it all back with a Great Books Renaissance and Classical
Revival!!!
http://jollyrogerwest.com
.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Conservatives Unite In The NeoClassical Renaissance! Postmodernism's Legacy: Social Security Shortfall Due To Abortion of 45 Million Innocents: Abortion is Not in The Constitution: The Right to Private Property Is |
07 Jul 2005 11:26:32 AM |
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God Bless & Thanks for Fighting!
Happy 4th to all the men and women in uniform!!
& God Bless y'all every day, all year round!!!!!
Forward this to a Marine!!
IN THE NAME OF FREEDOM
The night fell fast, I found myself alone,
A DC summer storm was blowing in,
I stood at the tomb, these soldiers unknown,
and knelt and prayed for the rain to begin.
Not for the monuments nor any money,
nor pomp, circumstance, nor the pedant's pride,
the politician's smile, nor lawyer's fee,
for these present treasures, none of them died.
I ran to Jefferson to read the wall,
to make sure that God was still written there,
then to Washington, and across the Mall,
where Lincoln invoked his immortal prayer,
Winded and ragged, lightning everywhere,
I slowed to a walk, pondered what would be,
if God's great Enlightenment weren't there,
we could still be brave but never be free.
I found comfort in the Mall's mud and rain,
without mines nor cannons nor raining shells,
so free from fear, iniquity, and pain,
because thousands had endured a thousand hells.
And I found myself back before the tomb,
humbled by the humbled, with naught for name,
shivering, though they had the colder room,
sans light, nor sound, nor tomorrow, nor fame.
I thought for a moment, what it could be,
the center and circumference of their dreaming,
it must have been the prophet's poetry,
that granted their souls eternal meaning.
So judges and Congressmen, please don't forget,
the reason these patriots picked up swords,
not for perks nor power were their deaths met,
but for honor and duty-- for mere words.
So do take pause before telling a lie,
for there's one more thing I saw on that night,
as the wind and the rain began to die,
I walked away, turned, and beheld a light.
Wil'O'wisp, reddish light, sailor's delight,
It hovered there-- just above the tomb's stone,
As fading thunder whispered to the night,
"Freedom's the name of all soldiers unknown."
Semper Fi!!
http://jollyrogerwest.com
http://classicalpoetryforums.com
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Conservatives Unite In The NeoClassical Renaissance! Postmodernism's Legacy: Social Security Shortfall Due To Abortion of 45 Million Innocents: Abortion is Not in The Constitution: The Right to Private Property Is |
30 Jun 2005 12:38:19 PM |
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On 30 Jun 2005 10:03:11 -0700, "Ed Pope" <ahorseis_forever@yahoo.com>
wrote:
Bring back the unions, Sparky, I'm telling you bring back the unions.
Americans can then again have decent wages and decent lives.
No, they can't------unfortunately
There are no more conditions present that allow mobility from minimum
wage to middle class that were present for generations.
The path to "what unions gave us" was from menial jobs to skilled jobs
via education--or the incorporation of the younger work force into
jobs that unions represented.
Now EVERYONE goes to college. College is what high school used to be.
Without a degree, you can't even acquire a job above McDonalds. But
holding a degree in a working envioronment isn't comparable to the
thousands who belonged to the auto industry, steel manufactoring, or
other large industries.
There is no industrial base that can sustain consistent grown in
trade unions. The popularity is waning for Unions, not because Unions
are bad, but because the conditions of unionism aren't conducive to
being organized in the army of degree holders.
We're now in a technological age, not in the heyday of industrialized
output.
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| User: "Ray Fischer" |
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| Title: Re: Conservatives Unite In Pro-Liar Propaganda |
30 Jun 2005 11:54:17 PM |
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Captain Ranger McCoy <mobydickmovie@yahoo.com> wrote:
The only way to save the Constitution is with a Classical Renaissance:
Neocons and anti-choicers don't want to save the constitution. They
hate the constitution and the rights it protects.
Once upon a time a man could support a family with a decent job.
Once upon a time people lived in shacks without running water, without
electricity, without medical care, without job protections.
Today 30% of the family is aborted,
Pro-lie *****.
and 50% of househoulds are divided
by divorce,
pro-lie disinformation.
with both men and women working to support the ever-growing
government.
Meanwhile the government spends $300,000,000,000 to kill muslims.
--
Ray Fischer
rfischer@sonic.net
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Conservatives Unite In Pro-Liar Propaganda |
14 Jul 2005 11:24:39 PM |
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http://jollyroger.com
http://killdevilhill.com
Nantuckets. For there is more than one island, mate. There's the quaint
tourist town which awakens during the Nantucket Film Festival in
mid-June and does not slumber until mid-September. This is the
Nantucket of skyrocketing real-estate echoing a soaring stock market,
where gas street lamps light the way along cobblestone roads for a
regal parade of sport-utility vehicles. This is the pristine,
slate-shingled town with the gabled bed and breakfasts, filled with
Ivy-League college and Irish exchange students working summer jobs at
theaters and outdoor restaurants, where cranberry-red lobsters are as
prevalent as the patrons. This is the Nantucket where one shall find a
few fleets of fifty foot yachts floating in the harbor, where the
"rebel" sons and daughters of vacationing lawyers, doctors, and
dignitaries blare this year's requisite rap, grunge, and ska from their
parent's convertible Saabs, Mercedes, and Jeeps. This is the Nantucket
where the $750 film festival passes are worn at all times as if they
were medals of honor, where the cultural plebes attend the screenings
of films yet seeking distributors, hoping to catch coveted glimpses of
actors and actresses whose names are being dropped like autumn leaves
on a windy day. This is the island that you may notice if you stay
there for a few days or a week in the thick of a postmodern fog, mate.
This is the Grey Lady you will come to know should you refrain from
reading any Thoreau, Hawthorne, Emerson, or Melville during your
retreat. But should ye see the mist begin to dissolve on a windy
summer's eve and catch a glimpse of red on the horizon, ye musn't
hesitate to break away from the madding crowd and ramble on down a dirt
road.
http://jollyroger.com
http://killdevilhill.com
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Conservatives Unite In The NeoClassical Renaissance! Postmodernism's Legacy: Social Security Shortfall Due To Abortion of 45 Million Innocents: Abortion is Not in The Constitution: The Right to Private Property Is |
01 Jul 2005 12:12:25 PM |
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Come lighthouse builders, soldiers of the word,
Come gather 'round me on this soft spring eve,
Prime yer wit's pistols, polish wisdom's sword,
For we're setting sail for all we believe.
Where principle transcends all politics,
Where lawyers are replaced by higher law,
Where children amongst the Great Books frolic,
Defenders of honor are held in awe.
For isn't forever worth fighting for?
Where rhyme and reason resound once again,
What sailor's soul could ever ask for more,
Than to serve the Lord with poetry's pen?
And I think I feel that ancient wind rising,
It's a choice I made, girl, so long ago,
The tide's turning, and we're both realizing,
That far, far away, this captain must go.
With all these castles built on shifting sands,
There's not much left for a poet 'round here,
All that can keep me now, from far off lands,
Is fearing that this fog will never clear.
This fog-- I just can't help dreaming beyond,
Dreaming a dream so bold it must be real,
Until that day which has never yet dawned,
Is crossed by my spirit's thundering keel.
'Cause I know there's just got to be a place
With wondrous mountains and a shining sea,
With Caroline's grace and beautiful face,
Where moral beauty's anchor sets ye free.
And I know that in-between here and there,
I'll sail on by some more who don't believe,
Forgive the blind leading the blind nowhere,
For in the end it's themselves they deceive.
Tonight I'm setting sail for victory,
Too many people talking of decline,
Tomorrow is the children's history,
So in me wake I'll leave them something fine.
Come sailors and sinners, it's not too late,
Serve something Greater, mate, and it shall save ye,
Set sail to make eternity yer fate,
Come serve aboard the Carolina Navy.
http://classicalpoetryforums.com
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Conservatives Unite In The NeoClassical Renaissance! Postmodernism's Legacy: Social Security Shortfall Due To Abortion of 45 Million Innocents: Abortion is Not in The Constitution: The Right to Private Property Is |
03 Jul 2005 09:33:47 AM |
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http://jollyrogerwest.com
Ahoy there literary seafarers and welcome aboard the renaissance fleet
at Carolinanavy.com. Aboard our fine ships of the line ye'll encounter
thousands of literary and technological tributes to the classics,
ranging from classicgreetings.com, to the poems of the day series, to
discussions pertaining to all of mankind's greatest artistic and
intellectual endeavors. And while the thousands of ships range in
design and destination, the original poetry and prose, penned by the
three sonneteers, shall remain ruggedly constructed from, "Oak planks
of reason, riveted with rhyme, designed to voyage across all of time."
For the truest way to live the Great Books is not to merely talk about
and read them, but it is to create within their rich context-- and that
is the destination of this enterprise. Upon this glorious new medium
words are free as never before to voyage to the far reaches of the
seven seas, and thus the Truth knows no natural barriers but for a
local lack of Faith. With the rising cultural and technological winds
at our backs, we'll strive to keep an even keel as we marry eternity's
meaning to this brave new medium. And I say there'll be no turning back
'til we've gained the renaissance.
In addition to being a launching site for our words, may our classical
portals become a destination-- a temperate tavern for all wind-whipped
poets, philosophers, and statesmen. For I say it's always those brave,
salty sailors and soldiers of the soul who have the best stories to
tell, and where better to hear a tale of everlasting honor than beside
the sea? There's an infinite peace to be found in the ocean there, a
permanence and invincibility which reflects and buoys the nobler
aspects of mankind while drowning the baser, and it's this same
infinite grandeur which is the hallmark of all Great Literature. Go
running along the beach, alongside the rolling surf where no stone
monument endures, and ye'll soon notice that all the leeward sounds of
punditry and politics, the millions of contemporary quips, quotations,
and distortions of pedants and litigators, can no longer be heard. For
already the muddled buzz of those words have begun fading, fading since
the moment they were uttered, destined to be replaced by the steady,
leveling wind of the Great Books.
Some souls are born to be seafarers, ceaselessly drawn towards the
freedom in the boundless infinite, endlessly seeking to walk with the
eternal, and it are these souls who keep the context of the Greats
alive. This they do in their daily lives, in their daily efforts, in
their daily acts of nobility which are far more often accompanied by
humility and hard work than by pomp and circumstance. Some of them have
read little of the Greats, as Shakespeare had never read much
Shakespeare, but if they did, they would immediately find themselves in
a friendly harbor. For the Greats rarely tell us things we did not
know, but rather they so beautifully bolster and eloquently affirm
those things which we always knew to be true. So let these classical
ports become places where we voyage to strengthen our souls.
Though they often sail in silence, the Greats remain perpetually poised
on the brink of formidable action, and I say these vigilant minutemen
are about to be awakened by this renaissance's call to arms. Those now
training within our ports to become privateer poets shall possess the
weapons of wit, wisdom, and eloquence that shall prove essential in
winning the imminent literary battle. Victory shall provide us with the
pristine territory and cultural positions which so many congressman,
pundits, lawyers, and professors aspire to by inferior means. For
poetry is only ever won by poetry, and as the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution were written by poets and
philosophers, so it is that the documents might be best apprehended and
defended by the same. The magnificent magic of the foundational
documents stems from the reality that rather than being written for
journals, or pedants, or lawyers, or bureaucrats, they were beautiful
poems written for the people, marked by subtlety, brevity, profundity,
and eloquent beauty. Take this to heart mates-- if ye seek to join us
in this battle, write not for the scholars, nor for the newspapers, nor
for the state, but write for the people. And when ye go to sleep
tonight, be prepared to rise when the lone horseman takes his midnight
ride through the streets.
The WWW has ushered in a brand new art form-- the creation of a portal.
Like all true art, it is not created by government agencies, nor
committees, nor corporations, but it springs forth from that vital
element for which there is no substitution-- the Individual's Vision
and Hard Work. The primary purpose of venture capital is to hire other
talented people to help realize a vision, but those in the business of
writing literature can rarely, if ever, afford to do this, even if they
had all of Kleiner-Perkins' money. For in order to withstand eternity,
the entirety of a work, be it a sculpture, play, poem, painting, novel,
or internet portal, must derive from the soul of a single artist. From
the software, to the graphics, to the prose, this is truly an infinite
medium to work in, where a poet-programmer may engineer a Classical
Portal, creating a boundless community of the eternal. And to a greater
degree than any previous art form, the WWW allows an individual to
create an entire context with which to surround his poetry. The
economic benefits of the internet are manifest, and the crew here
believes that the cultural benefits shall prove to be even greater, for
wherever freedom reigns and industry and honest enterprise are
rewarded, the Greats shall triumph.
However, freedom must be perpetually defended, and stalwart statesmen
can only exist in a context fought for and forged by soldiers of the
soul-- those who readily turn away from fame and fortune so as to
attend to their honor and the poetic pursuit of truth. Those common men
of higher character who, though opposed by prevailing winds and tossed
upon tempestuous seas, remain steadfastly loyal to the their art,
steadfastly dedicated to uniting words and actions in holy matrimony.
Thomas Jefferson, while contemplating the sacred source of freedom,
penned, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with
the blood of patriots and tyrants." And in pondering the diminished
value of life lived without Truth and Honor, John Stuart Mill wrote,
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and
degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing
worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about
than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has
no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of
better men than himself." This is the same sentiment Mel Gibson
expressed in Braveheart, when, as William Wallace, he said, "All men
die, but some men never live." George Washington, during the twilight
of the revolutionary war, when the American forces were all but
victorious, declared, "The readiest way to procure a lasting and
honorable peace is to be fully prepared to vigorously prosecute war."
And Robert Frost, in contemplating the ultimate purpose of poetry,
wrote, "Sometimes I have my doubts of words altogether, and I ask
myself what is the place of them. They are worse than nothing unless
they do something; unless they amount to deeds, as in ultimatums or
battle-cries. They must be flat and final like the show-down in poker,
from which there is no appeal. My definition of poetry (if I were
forced to give one) would be this: words that become deeds."
So it is that Admiral Drake Raft shall soon take the offensive as
captain of the imminent gunboat USSCONSTITUTIONS.COM, while Captain
McGucken and I shall remain aboard The Jolly Roger, presiding over our
home portals, from starbuck.com, to westerncanon.com, to
carolinanavy.com, to killdevilhill.com, to classicals.com. This
division of duties, between soldiering and statesmanship, time hath now
made appropriate within the context of our success in settling brand
new literary territory on the WWW. When we first set sail aboard The
Jolly Roger about four years ago, a home port devoted to the classics
did not exist. But now, by the grace of God and all our thousands of
merry maties, a bustling classical portal has come to be, and thus the
original pirate motif has played itself out to some extent. For within
the context of Classicals & jollyroger.com LLC, we are no longer
primarily cultural rebels, seeking to pirate the profound from
waterlogged postmodern institutions, but we're now the colleagues,
friends, and fellow-citizens of the thousands upon thousands of
literary seafarers who frequent our sites. And make no mistake, mate--
we are forever thankful for the ceaseless fair weather and favorable
winds provided by yer emails. Captains Knottingham and McGucken shall
henceforth devote themselves to the governing of our home ports,
content to be serving the seafaring settlers in peace and harmony,
while Captain Drake shall boldly lead the Carolina Navy all-out
campaign against the Postmodern Elite, from the gundecks of the
USSCONSTITUTIONS.COM.
Admiral Drake Raft would like nothing better than to remain at home and
raise a family in an upright, traditional manner while writing poetry
for The New Yorker, but before bringing children into this world,
somebody from this generation must venture forth to rediscover,
rebuild, and reinforce America's moral foundations. For these
fundamental, precious entities are far too fragile and pretty to be
forever trusted to vacillating, craven, poll-driven politicians and
their spiritually-barren economic and administrative advisors. Men
willing to pledge their Lives, their Fortunes, and their Sacred Honours
are the only ones fit to lead a literary renaissance. Men who Read,
Write, Think, and Act in eternity's context.
For there is yet a war to be won within the greater culture, and the
spoils of victory are nothing less than the college campuses, the
romance in all deep, forsaken literature, the greater culture, the
hearts and minds of the Good People, the children's innocence, the
millenium's renaissance, and the correct continuity of a relatively
short, simple document-- the United States Constitution. Considering
the extent of the entrenched positions and annealed attitudes of the
Postmodern Elite, winning this war shall prove to be as formidable a
task as it is necessary. Their advantageous positions are well-funded
by our tax and tuition dollars as well as by their conscienceless
marketing of temptations of extensive reach to all ages. From their
well-fortified academic and cultural posts, they lead a relentless,
ubiquitious assault on behalf of ignorance in both education and
entertainment, all the while eroding the classical context of the Great
Books. But fear not, maties, for with God and the Greats on our side,
any sailor endowed with a soul shall emerge victorious. For nobody can
ever take from us the Honor gained by defending Truth and Beauty. And
what can be more beautiful than a girl reading a Great Book?
Literary wars, much like the definitive wars which this country fought
for freedom, are always inevitably won by those fighting for morality,
honor, and Truth. So it is that the noble United States has so far
defeated tyranny, slavery, communism, and fascism, all to defend the
basic precepts and principles of the U.S. Constitution. And in
defending this very same sublime piece of literature, America shall
defeat postmodernism. Though the former conflicts were all won by the
sword, which is protected by the Second Amendment, this contemporary
conflict shall be won by the pen, which is protected by the First
Amendment. So it is that those fundamental freedoms which the
Constitution protects remain free to protect the Constitution.
http://jollyrogerwest.com
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Conservatives Unite in utter Stupidity, adovates Moby |
30 Jun 2005 12:30:18 PM |
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On 30 Jun 2005 09:58:46 -0700, "Captain Ranger McCoy"
<mobydickmovie@yahoo.com> wrote:
The only way to save the Constitution is with a Classical Renaissance:
And so it is that wehn we abandonded poetry, when we abandoned the
GReat Books and Classics, we abandoned the Constitution.
Bring it all back with a Great Books Renaissance and Classical
Revival!!!
Being the posterchild of a system that went from subjugating,
enslaving, castrating, lynching blacks----to one that begrudges them
in other ways,-- or demonizing anyone who doesn't inculcate the greed
or homophobia of religious reich beliefs is certainly a conservative
"value"
BTW, if you have ANY exposure to history at all, you could paraphrase
your entire whine in about a dozen different historical eras.
Didn't you know that?
===================================================================
"The commandments carry no internal evidence of divinity with them;
they contain some good moral precepts, such as any man qualified
to be a law-giver, or a legislator, could produce himself, without
having recourse to supernatural intervention.*
Thomas Paine---Founder
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Conservatives Unite In The NeoClassical Renaissance! Postmodernism's Legacy: Social Security Shortfall Due To Abortion of 45 Million Innocents: Abortion is Not in The Constitution: The Right to Private Property Is |
08 Jul 2005 06:58:57 PM |
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Rock on with the rising Great Books renaissance!!
http://jollyroger.com
When the higher ideals and fundamental precepts are forsaken, the
entire democratic ship of state may drift along happily through the
fog, navigating by polls reminiscent of the one given by Pontius
Pilate, not aware of the nature nor consequences of the errant
direction. And when a few in the rising generation begin to seek the
fixed stars above, which they've read about in antiquity's forsaken
myths and felt deep within their souls, they will be branded crazy. And
when the classical rebels see the stars through the breaking fog, and
seek to navigate a straighter course by the Permanent Things, they will
encounter violent opposition from the postmodern culture czars who
benefit from the lack of higher standards, who prefer their arbitrary
will to the rule of Law in cultural entities ranging from politics, to
architecture, to education, to poetry. The relativistic oligarchy shall
view the rising poets' loyalty to God as insolent rebellion, and the
postmodern media shall be commanded to destroy them. And on that day,
the postmodern critics' souls shall be tested, as they choose to be
loyal to tyrants or Truths greater than themselves, as they choose to
remain upon postmodern liberalism's sinking ship or sign aboard a
fighting frigate bound for eternity.
One could spend several volumes chronicling the nature of
postmodernism's adherents and their predilection for bureaucracy, and
the dark character of their political, cultural, and literary ponzi
schemes, but that is not jollyroger.com's destination. We all know
what the fog looks like-too many know nothing else-and the nobler
and more pertinent task becomes taking us beyond it. To criticize
nihilism is to exalt it to undeserved heights, and rather than studying
the ephemeral, poets would be wise to devoted themselves to penning the
eternal.
Whether it's inevitable as fate or it hinges upon perseverance and
free will, we do not know, but jollyroger.com must gain a popular
culture worthy of the Great Books' context. And the only way to do
that is to navigate by the same timeless beacon that yesterday's
poets navigated by-honesty's courage.
The contemporary poet's task is not only to pen the eternal verities
in the era's language, but it is also to resurrect the context in
which those timeless truths may freely navigate and gain the home ports
of the children's souls. And that is where the WWW has played an
invaluable role, for it has allowed us to establish a universe
perpendicular to the contemporary popular culture-a universe wherein
words mean things and the classical context thrives, but which also
intersects with the popular culture. For Great Books growing dusty upon
shelves are of little use, and the classical sentiments must be
continually performed in the living language. While the majority of
contemporary editors, agents, critics and literary officials yet remain
loyal to the degraded postmodern-MFA mentality and the fleeting
insta-classic literary fashions, the greater spirits of the rising
generation are classical in nature, as children's souls always are.
And by allowing The Jolly Roger to circumvent the literary
middleman's cynical vortex, the WWW has allowed a renaissance to set
sail.
Although all enduring truth must by definition be robust, history has
shown that its messengers have often been castigated and impugned. But
upon these American shores, it has ever been our right, as it has been
our duty, to continually foster and defend the classical context
wherein the foundational documents serve the people, come hell or high
water. The Greats have all agreed upon this-liberty demands eternal
vigilance. The pursuit of smaller government, less taxes, rhyming
poetry, and more freedom is as long and arduous a voyage as it is a
noble one.
As a beacon in history's darker contexts, America was founded as a
haven for truth's messengers, thereby becoming the world's
wellspring for science, religion, and freedom. The Declaration of
Independence and Constitution, which may be found at the end of this
book, were penned in tribute to higher principles superior to all
politics and time. Even though the Founding Fathers believed in the
existence of higher laws, they were humble about their ability to
discern them, and thus they presented us with a Constitution which
could be amended. They had as much faith in their children as they had
in the timeless truths, and thus they bestowed us with the tools to
pursue justice and happiness in a free marketplace of ideas, which they
perceived to be ultimately governed by Nature and Nature's God. The
eloquent words of America's founding documents provide for the civil
structure that protects and promotes the acknowledgement of higher
principles by which natural rights are defined, thereby preserving the
sacred freedom of all individuals who are humble before the higher
ideals. And thus upon these shores the honest have always been promised
the freedom to pursue the exalted American dream.
But when the language is degraded until the poetry no longer rhymes
except in vulgar rap, when sacred customs are honored more in the
breach than in the observance, when words and their meanings part on
their separate ways, when the bottom line is placed above the higher
ideals, when the base bass beats over the melody in the music we listen
to, in the clubs we frequent, and in our hearts and souls; when
innocence is lost before it is known, when cynicism is loaded upon hope
and hope is ballasted with irony, and we're exhorted by tax, tuition,
and smut-subsidized cultural officials to carry this pyramid's load
down the road to serfdom, shall we still be free to dream those greater
dreams? When under this burden America is then cut free from her
religious anchors in the name of secular economic freedom, and women
are sent off to raise the Dow Jones to pay taxes rather than raise
moral children, can America long survive and prosper as the flagship of
free republics, even if all the postmodern pyramid schemes never
collapse? Science and history have suggested otherwise-that where
God's morality is eroded, the eternal Bureaucracy marches forth to
become the stolid regulator of human interaction. When people cease to
govern themselves according to higher principles, they lose the ability
to be guarantors of their own wellness and happiness, and they soon
find themselves subject to a political order determined by other
mortals-the rule of Law gives way to the rule by men.
Where the Word-the sacred vessel of all poetry and politics-was
diminished or deconstructed, bullets and slogans oft became the new
brushes with which humanity painted upon history's canvas. And as the
past is prologue, any optimist of human affairs would be wise to aspire
to the wisdom of those who gave us not the gift of freedom, but the
documents which define and defend the freedom that they perceived as
being a gift from God.
In asking what is best for the future of a democratic republic, we are
really contemplating the best way in which to pass along freedom's
traditions. How might we rebuild the classical context wherein children
learn to love reading the Greats, and teachers are given the necessary
authority to teach them? How do we reinstall the killer-app open-source
software of the soul-the classics-which teach not by dictating how
to think, but by inspiring free thought in a rational context?
Today, too many of our peers reside in a superficial context of image
and sound, wherein the popular art, movies, music, and literature make
circular references to the same superficial brands in a self-contained
cultural whirlpool in history's greater context, where ephemeral
lusts, common degradation, and wayward feelings overrule rational
thought and the higher ideals. So how shall we introduce our friends to
a far more profound culture in the context of the Great Books? How
shall we revive the center and circumference of civilization, the crux
of conscience, the jury of justice, the romance of marriage, the honor
of honor, and the device by which we mark the pinnacles of our
aspirations-the written Word? We're not sure of the exact mechanism
nor means to accomplish this, but the crew here believes the answer
lies more in art than in scholarship, more in poetry than in politics.
For intellectuals study yesterday's renaissances far more often than
they inspire today's, and politicians follow the popular culture far
more often than they lead it.
At the dawn of the internet in 1995, the three sonneteers set out upon
a fleet frigate, seeking to pirate the profound and establish a brave
new website where the eternal optimism of the literary classics would
prevail-where the news of the day would always be that the world's
grown honest and Hamlet's gone mad. We saw the chance to marry the
greatest that has ever been written and spoken to the greatest
publishing medium ever known to the individual, and to create a
classical context wherein the glory of words would resound. We saw the
opportunity to circumnavigate the postmodern nonbelievers and cynics,
to appeal to the nobler aspects of humanity's conscience, and prove
that the world yet loves common sense embroidered in eloquence. We saw
the opportunity for a renaissance wherein dignity and honor would be
restored to public office, and the poetry would rhyme once again.
And with a little bit of that Midwest humor which walks hand-in-hand
with Midwest honor, we decided we'd have fun following the dream that
Providence had enabled. We would salute the passing postmodern era from
the decks of a pirate ship, acknowledging postmodernism's vast
success in pervading all aspects of contemporary culture; and with
broadsides of truth fired from the Western Canon, we'd let them know
we considered it good sport to play along with their irony-the irony
that a lover of the Great Books could be considered a barbarous
buccaneer upon Princeton's ivied campus. We were ruthless rebels
because we sought Truth's Traditions.
Postmodern liberalism had won the day, but as a fundamentally
secular-materialist philosophy, that was all that it had ever sought,
and tomorrow shall belong to the classics. For however fun the
postmodern era was, I don't think we'll be making a tradition out
of it. Political rhetoric is soon forgotten, while poetry is that which
endures.
We figured the best way to communicate our exalted vision would be to
combine the cutting-edge technology with the exact same literary
devices used by the sages of all ages. We'd use the common language
and the colloquial to sign sailors aboard, and we'd endow the poetry
at jollyroger.com with rhyme and meter. Whispering reason is far louder
than pompous pedantry, just as poetry is far more adept at winning a
girl's heart than polemics. The greatest writers had adorned their
works not with thesauruses, but with wit. If a preacher knows something
of poetry, then we'll listen, for they must know that deeper meaning
behind the sacred scripture-that law and order exist to protect
beauty's fundamental freedom.
A contemporary literary renaissance presents itself as a formidable
task-one cannot do it alone. For the fashionable relativists are
right in that truth and custom must have an appropriate societal
context within which to exist. And the concurrent relativistic societal
context, fortified with the entrenched prejudices of a maturing,
tenured generation that ushered in a Dionysian revolution via the
pre-internet electronic media, along with a plethora of ideological
"isms" to replace God's simple grace, coupled with a fading popular
culture centered about the printed word and an enforced cynicism
amongst a generation who for the most part only know of the Greats in
their deconstructed, corrupted form, makes the Apollonian renaissance
that jollyroger.com's sailing towards seem all but unreachable.
But then again, as the ancients noted, "post tenebras lux." After
darkness light. Just as God and the Greats originally sprang forth in
tradition's void, so it is that they might be born again in the midst
of a deconstructed culture. For poetry, religion, and romance are
sought by the immortal parts of all souls, and they never have greater
cause to be than when they are not. In the long run, without Truth men
cannot have those possessions most coveted by all deeper
souls-meaning and freedom. With this bold vision and humble hope,
jollyroger.com has set out to resurrect a classical context.
Though jollyroger.com's destination is pristine, the voyage has not
always been and will not always be so. It is a wonderful time to be
alive for the author and entrepreneur, with abundant wealth and
opportunity being fostered by the internet revolution, but even so, it
is a sobering mission to be called upon to serve poetry. For there are
those powerful elite today, and their ambitious disciples, who so
vehemently oppose the first Two Amendments of the United States
Constitution, who have it as their mission to prevent the honest from
lifting those pens which are mightier than the sword.
Neither Wall Street nor the postmodern academy nor publishing
industry-the iron triangle-will invest time nor money nor faith in
a renaissance, but that is OK, as a renaissance has little use for
money, and eternity's time will do just fine. Wall Street prudently
considers the poetry of a cultural renaissance a financial risk in
today's cultural conditions, while the academic MFA postmodernists
consider it a dire threat, and the corporate conglomerates of the
publishing industry have one foot in either camp. But we foresee the
dawn of a new era, wherein those who join in serving and enlightening
the public with the classical sentiments will profit immensely, both
spiritually and monetarily. It is time for a sea change, matey, and
time for the poetry to rhyme once again.
There have been and there are yet to be cruel nights out there in the
postmodern fog, where the Good Ship will seem all but lost, and where
the winds of elite and popular opinion will rage and blow in
opposition, while the critic's cannons blaze away with all the fury
of an MFA scorned. But such is the rugged nature of all greater
adventures, and as of late the seaward signs suggest that the wind is
shifting towards a more favorable direction.
Where men are yet free, they must have poetry equal to that freedom,
and where men yet have poetry, they must be free. Thus exalted poetry
is worth fighting for, and too, these are the reasons why those who
serve the darker powers shall always oppose pristine poetry. The
relativist's favorite tactic in cultural warfare is to redefine
sacred institutions as degraded, corrupted, political entities, from
poetry to the Presidency, until it appears that there is nothing to
defend, until only the dishonorable seem fit to slouch towards office.
Thus they win the war by convincing the common man that there is no war
to be fought, by deconstructing honor and chivalry, by proclaiming
poetry to be no more than politics, by teaching that Presidents were
always corrupt and will always be corrupt, and then enforcing their
dismal science throughout the culture. They deconstruct God and appoint
their friends to all the newly-minted bureaucracies which seek to
overrule His Decree, and which exacerbate the problems they seek to
solve, thereby providing coveted opportunities for more taxation, more
government programs, and more bureaucracy. With a snide smile they call
it irony and cynicism as they benefit in the shadows of the postmodern
fog, but we see it as something much darker than that, as their methods
rebel against God's Will.
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| Title: Re: Conservatives Unite In The NeoClassical Renaissance! Postmodernism's Legacy: Social Security Shortfall Due To Abortion of 45 Million Innocents: Abortion is Not in The Constitution: The Right to Private Property Is |
09 Jul 2005 01:28:04 PM |
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http://drakeraft.com
http://jollyroger.com
Dedication of The Tragedy of Drakeraft.com
By Drake Raft
Back From the Dead for a Renaissance.
As a dead poet it is quite an honor to be composing this dedication for
The Tragedy of Drakeraft.com, a novel written by my good friend,
band-mate, and colleague, Dr. Elliot McGucken. And it is an even
greater honor to be dedicating it to all of you, the stalwart
crewmembers of jollyroger.com. I'm up here in Boone right now, setting
up our third Classicals Caf? in the North Carolina mountains, and I
hope to have all of ye over in the near future. The other night I was
testing out the sound system in front of a few friends, and here's an
MP3 of my reading the introductory sonnets from The After Dark Field
Book. To tell the truth, I'm not all that much into poetry readings, as
I've always thought that words are far more intimate when they're read
in silence--ye can print all the sonnets out from here. But if words
must be read within the Jollyroger.com Classicals Caf?s, then I say
they shall be endowed with rhyme and meter, and they shall mean things.
Just like how Guns 'n' Roses' words always did.
How my name ended up in the title The Tragedy of Drakeraft.com, and how
my semblance ended up as a character in the book is a good story in
itself. During the heights of the fleeting grunge era, our obligatory
Chapel Hill band was called Drake's Raft. Around that time, Elliot
wrote a story about the Great-Books secret society that we three
Midwesterners from fly-over country had founded at Princeton, and he
kind of infused the narrative with some cool events from a summer's
East-coast tour which landed us back on the Princeton campus, where we
played our final gig in McCarter Theater. During the tour I started
writing sonnets--I could get a lot more down in fourteen lines of
iambic pentameter than I could in a typical grunge ballad, and I found
the sonnet to offer a far more profound vessel for a poet's
thoughts--it made people think, whereas our songs had only ever made
them feel or something. And there's no quicker way to a girl's heart
than through her mind.
One night in Vermont, Elliot came across the notebook with the sonnets
that I had been keeping to myself, all four hundred of which are
published here. At first glance he had thought they were song lyrics.
Then, while reading them, he got this idea for a plot centered about a
Princeton student who is called upon to avenge the Greats. The story
was called The Drake Raft Field Trip, and it eventually evolved into an
epic based on Hamlet, wherein the Great Books had been murdered and
villainous kings in the form of fringe feminists and duplicitous
postmodernists had come to inhabit Princeton's cultural thrones. And it
was I, Drake Raft, who had been called upon to avenge the brutal murder
of the Greats. Elliot had probably chosen me because I'd been lead
singer in Drake's Raft.
As a cultural flagship of the greater society, and with a rich
scholarly heritage and great gothic architecture haunted by reputable
ghosts including those of Fitzgerald, Einstein, Feynman, Joseph Henry,
"T.S. Eliot", "Salinger," and Madison, Princeton provided an ideal
setting for such a novel. A major battle in the revolutionary war had
been fought just down the road from the main campus, and an American
canon ball is lodged in the stone walls of Nassau Hall--it was fired by
the rebel troops when the Redcoats had temporarily occupied the
building during the battle of Princeton, just like the postmodernists
are now temporarily occupying it. Couple the rich heritage with the
pristine campus and all the majestic spires and sinister gargoyles, and
Princeton becomes the ideal stage for a contemporary tragedy, as
tragedy must always have a most noble backdrop.
To personify the murder of the Great Books, the character of Uncle Walt
was brought in. Uncle Walt is based upon a distinguished, traditional
scholar who was ousted while we were at Princeton--he was more of a
soldier than a philosopher, and Princeton's postmodernists defeated him
and his noble vision via their typical underhanded demagoguery, aided
by their anonymous accomplices in the liberal press. In the novel, the
Nobel-prize winning, villainous Elizabeth Sycorax has murdered Uncle
Walt and replaced him at the helm of Princeton's English department,
which she has transformed into the Cultural Studies and Creative
Writing department. My character, Drake Raft, is a senior at Princeton,
and he is called upon by Uncle Walt's ghost to avenge his murder.
Knowing that the Princeton establishment would be watching my every
move, I feigned suicide and set up a website, drakeraft.com, while
contemplating the method and motivation of my vengeance. This is the
simple premise that lights the blazing glory of the book, and Elliot's
tome proceeds to encompass the center and circumference of the eternal
verities in the language of our generation-- a generation which the
boomer marketing elite have branded generation-x and generation-y or
whatever, but which I prefer to call the renaissance generation.
It would be difficult to compose a classic within the ever-shifting
context offered by the popular culture which is relentlessly
dumbed-down, idolaterized, and commodified by the dominant postmodern
media and academic institutions. All the fleeting brands trumpeted by
the "savvy" postmodern lawyers, accountants, vulture capitalists, and
marketing executives would already be long gone by the time the book
was published--at least ten blockbuster movies would have been raved
about and forgotten by the time it made it into print. Thus Elliot took
care to root The Tragedy of Drakeraft.com in the eternal context that
we are today building at jollyroger.com. This deeper context, defined
by the likes of Shakespeare, Jefferson, Moses, Salinger, and Twain,
shall always form the popular culture of the community of eternal
souls, and those who wish to join it must begin by honoring it. As a
dead poet myself, I have overheard a few truths spoken in this
heretofore undiscovered country--those poets who honor the Greats shall
in turn be honored by them, and those who forget the Greats shall be
forgotten.
As jollyroger.com's noble context naturally alienated the aging
literary elite who momentarily benefited in the wake of the Great's
desecration and deconstruction, we are fortunate to have the internet.
For without the WWW, it would have taken a much longer time to
circumnavigate the postmodern literati's waterlogged fleet so as to
sign aboard a vast, global audience. Even now, the elites' postmodern
disciples of opinionated mediocrity, who received their basic training
in the debilitating creative writing workshops, are blindly rushing
forth to become the officers aboard the sinking publishing houses and
within the government ministries of literature. And they would rather
continue sinking into the void of their vapid popular-porn-culture
while publishing their own profitless, meaningless, esoteric literature
than honestly profit by publishing and promoting our exalting
words--for the postmodernist truly believes that God is dead, and that
there are no higher laws, and that all is politics, and thus that their
nihilism can be equal to classical literature, just as long as they
party with the appropriate critics. But as Huckleberry Finn once said,
you can't pray a lie.
Because they saw no beauty in Shakespeare, because they were blind to
God's greater glory, it was easy for them to adopt their pseudo-
scientific view that literature is a political and economic entity
rather than an aesthetic one. In their debased, vitiated arena, where
they prophesized that all is politics and that words could hold no
intrinsic meaning, it became true for their own literature. And thus
there is no reason for us, nor for our children, to read their fading
fads. Instead, from this day forth, we shall take care to point the
kids towards Treasure Island and Huckleberry Finn.
As an artistic rendering of contemporary truths, The Tragedy of
Drakeraft.com pays full homage to the wild romance of lighting a fire
in postmodernism's infinite night. It's been an awesome rush launching
jollyroger.com and building the Classicals Cafes, while Windy and her
friends in architecture school up at MIT decorate them with all the
cool nautical stuff--personally I'm more into literature than
furniture. But just when it's getting dark out in the mountains on
these late November evenings, and I'm left alone with some old copies
of Shakespeare and Aristotle and Plato and some makeshift tables and
second-hand lamps in this run-down mountain mill, all of a sudden all
the old, mismatched furniture and rusty anchors and frayed ropes
transform themselves into classical antiques, and I find myself within
a castle. We just got our first shipment of coffee, and the aroma has
enhanced the late-night, lonely mystique, which haunts these words as I
set them down on my laptop, my fingers numb from the lack of heat. As
the shop is yet to open, she now exists in the perfect silent splendor
of a dream. This is the quiet before the show, and I almost fear to
touch it, but touch it we must. For we fall into love--we never rise
into it. If ye would like to run a Classicals Caf? of yer own, drop
me a line at ! We have been called upon to avenge
the deaths of our proverbial fathers embodied by the Great Books, and
our most wicked vengeance shall be a renaissance.
But as is often the case, for a fire to be lit, the match itself must
be spent. History hath shown that a cultural renaissance is never born
without revolutionary thinkers, and revolutionaries run great risks as
they go up against the aging power structure which cares nothing for
right nor wrong, but only for power itself. And thus there's the darker
side to all our lofty pursuits, but the most sublime romance hath
always been tinged with inherent danger. And that's why I, Drake Raft,
must meet my death within The Tragedy of Drakeraft.com. For I had set
out following those ultimate truths which lie somewhere beyond the
entrepreneur's commerce and the soldier's duty. I had set out for the
White Whale.
I've always thought that perhaps the word tragedy in the title of
Elliot's novel refers to a generation being denied its classical
heritage and a literature of its own--a heritage and literature
censored not by physical force, but by subtle postmodern subterfuge and
desecration. Censorship may be accomplished by refraining from
publishing a work, and too, it may be accomplished by desecrating the
context that would surround the work, by which the work would take root
in and grow, and too, as the postmodern elite have shown, both methods
might be employed. For they removed the classics from the elementary
schools and high schools while appointing their nihilistic officers at
the cultural helms, and in the glare of PowerPoint presentations on the
merits of raising the bottom line by lowering the higher ideals, a most
effective censorship followed, wherein many of the children who have
become this generation don't even notice that the deeper, classical
context is missing. And the infrastructure that would have once
published and promoted meaningful literature, like the New Yorker and
the publishing houses, hath been demolished and replaced with feminized
magazines and content websites that exist primarily follow TV's
superficial lead, and make some bankers wealthy during an ponzi-IPO.
So many have grown accustomed to defining rebellion as agreeing with
aging marketing executives. We're all familiar with abortions, and
cynicism, and divorce, and the duplicitous artistic lies that the
secular boomers excuse as mere irony--what yesterday would have been a
moral atrocity is today commonly accepted when it is not honored and
revered. The leaders of Silicon Valley are blind to vast wealth to be
made by passing eternity's judgement, and thus the wealth shall belong
to those on Poetry Mountain. The postmodernists often sanctify decline
by allowing and encouraging women to participate in it--pure politics
and base profiteering at the expense of ideals is fine as long as it
can be demonstrated that a woman benefits monetarily. They make a show
about skirts in the courtroom, and then idiots are allowed to believe
themselves to be refined and enlightened by embracing the trite
plot--pretending to hold it in higher regard than the crucial sex, and
should ye criticize the general vapidness, it is because you're
intimidated by intelligent women. Children are denied their innocence,
and having lost their soul, adults are allowed to stay adolescents
forever. Postmodernists have a way of reducing everything to sex and
politics, and then when you criticize their methods and means, they
accuse you of only talking about sex and politics. As Hamlet said,
"They make their ignorance their wantonness." And the only way to
defeat them is not to argue with them, but to defund them while
exalting in the Greatest that has ever been thought and written. Let
them come for me, Drake Raft, as I am already dead--I shall teach them
things about their place in eternity that they should fear to know.
Without the Greats' context within the institutions that were built for
the sole purpose of transferring the Greats' context from one
generation to the next, so many of my peers pass through both the
church and the university without even knowing that there is a nobler
way. So it is that in a Godless context, a generation may be denied its
literature in the name of free speech as the First Amendment might be
used to defend pornography, Southpark might be considered "savvy" and
"intelligent," and Good Will Hunting might become the peak of
intellectual achievement, just short of Dogma. Those who grow up never
knowing what the true source of light is shall forever believe the
shadows to be the reality. And as shadows are layered upon shadows and
the fog rolls in, it becomes dark--so dark that the blind don't even
know they're blind, and forgive them we must, for the blind know not
what they do. They'll pass through this world without ever having seen
God's greater light--they'll live without ever having lived at all. It
would be prudent to fear a generation with no sense of the eternal
Word, and even more prudent to take every opportunity to introduce them
to it. For I, Drake Raft, am dead, and too many in this generation
don't even know it. But they shall soon find out, within the pages of
The Tragedy of Drakeraft.com.
II.
It is oft stated that the internet has been revolutionizing the world's
economy, and as a medium of the printed word, it makes sense that the
internet would allow entrepreneurial poets to revolutionize literature.
The simple purpose of all businesses is to serve the people with some
life-enhancing entity, and we felt that with the shortage of rhyming,
metered poetry and the scarcity of profound novels and rich literature
with strong plots and noble characters, we could quickly corner the
market and make a decent living by publishing and promoting such
timeless entities. We could marry our passions to our professions, make
our avocations our vocations, and serve the world with a renaissance.
Basic research in physics had lead to quantum mechanics, which when
applied to the silicon lattice lead to the engineering of the
fundamental component of the modern economy--the transistor. The
organization of transistors lead to the integrated circuit, the
grouping of integrated circuits led to computers, and the need to
govern computer operations ushered in the development of software. As
local computers were networked together via standardized hardware and
software, the internet was born. Then came the whole development of
content and commerce sites, including internet portals and shopping
destinations, and behold, jollyroger.com entered its own unique time
and place in the entrepreneurial progression of technology, as the
flagship of the WWW RenaissanceTM. And now the center of innovation has
progressed beyond the software and to the soul, and the latest
innovation is a classical oasis wherein the timeless aesthetic truths
are buoyed by science and technology. The internet is the ocean, our
serve is our hull, we stand at the helm with our programming abilities,
but that higher purpose is governed by our vision, and we fly the flag
of classical poetry. Innovation hath moved from Sand Hill Road in San
Franscisco to Boone, North Carolina--from the medium to the message,
from Silicon Valley to Poetry Mountain.
From physics, which has its roots in philosophy and religion, to
quantum mechanics, to the transistor, to the integrated circuit, to
hardware, to software, to the internet, to culture, to poetry. And all
of a sudden, the "New New" thing, the latest innovation in technology,
is the world's classical portal. For the first time in all of history,
there exists a corner upon this watery globe, accessible from all
latitudes, devoted to the higher ideals and eternal truths that keep us
free. The eternal is forever new, and thus while so often forgotten or
obscured in humanity's daily pursuits, the eternal marks both the
beginning and end of all innovations. Religion, science, then
technology, and on the web poetry's been set free.
And what better time than this for technology to allow traditional
poets to triumph in the literary arena? The infrastructure to support
contemporary classical literature had been eroded by the postmodern
ideology and its diverse manifestations throughout the greater culture.
Science and technology, which enabled the mass media based on sound and
video, amplified the more superficial, Dionysian, idolatrous aspects of
mankind, and when coupled with the postmodern theories which were
fostered by the misapplication of science to the soul, the written Word
was assaulted on all fronts. People read less in the popular culture,
and reading meant less within the academy. And yet, they still had this
marvelous potential and will to know their eternal soul. Hence the
cynicism and irony and apathy which afflicts this generation, which
shall never be satiated by the fleeting Dionysian alone--we long for
the eternal, and eternity is only known by thoughts, and thoughts are
only known by words. The deconstruction and desecration hath cleared
the field of our imaginations for a renaissance.
At first glance, it may seem ironic that as creative writing workshops
proliferated, the quality and profundity of the literature declined,
but upon closer scrutiny, this makes sense. To begin with, creative
writing cannot be taught, and thus the classes were most often lead by
dishonest hucksters and politicians. And the students who majored in
it, who were by definition blind to the irony, went on to become the
postmodern agents, editors, and literary government officials so as to
subsidize their ambitions. For it was generally the narrow-minded and
dull-witted who actually believed that creative writing was to be
learned from a fringe feminist rather than divinely inspired upon the
open ocean of human endeavor, and thus the postmodern conformers
flattered the feminist politician-poets, and they received the key
recommendations which landed them jobs in the presently sinking
literary industry.
While modern marketing gurus are promoting the fragmentation of
literary demographics and publishing and promoting more superficial,
celebrity-oriented work, we have shoved off in the opposite direction
with the vision of serving everyone with the timeless truths. Our goal
has never been to be all things to all people--but it has been to be
the best to everyone.
Throughout jollyroger.com's formative years, we gave agents and editors
ample opportunities to join us in venturing forth aboard the flagship
of the WWW Renaissance, and while some stated that they were delighted
in what we were doing, and while we signed with a couple prominent
agencies, we could find no editors at prominent houses who had the
courage, nor foresight, to sign their souls aboard. Many of them are
just now learning how to check their email. Because of indifference,
ignorance, and arrogance, they simply refused to believe that the good
people were ready for a renaissance, and as technophobe humanists, they
failed to see the vast potential of the internet to deliver this
cultural commodity. Because they sought to serve their egos rather than
the people, they foresook both their duty and their profitability. And
they left the WWW Renaissance for the physicists and poets.
It is no secret that a rather large contingent had boarded
postmodernism's sinking literary ships believing that God was dead, and
it has always been the tyrannical tendency of the postmodernist to
project their prejudices upon all things. Fresh out of creative writing
class, with their ambitions overshadowing their talents, many had gone
into the literary business for the sole purpose of negation--to tear
down that which was greater than themselves, for that was the trade
that they had been taught in postmodern academia. They were interested
in neither art nor commerce, but only in power, nihilism, and empty
prestige. And while the latter traits may work fine on a college
campus, where nobody takes anything too seriously except for their own
opinions, but out here, where eternity's wind blows, opinions do not
matter. Only the Truth can survive. Petty politics is no match for
honesty married to technology, and for "Oak planks of reason, riveted
with rhyme, designed to voyage across all of time."
There is a just symmetry underlying all existence, and the result of
the postmodern establishment's prejudices and apprehensions has been
that they have missed the boat--the WWW RenaissanceTM has been ours to
define and defend, to build and promote upon this wondrous new medium.
As is so often the case, the postmodernists' prejudices became their
prison. Only in their degraded, deconstructed context could they
pretend to be poets, but a poet is only as good as the higher Truths
that they pen. Neither wit, wisdom, nor poetry can be bought by
politics, nor pedantry, nor money.
In a free country, freedom belongs to the open minds and the free
spirits. The nihilism and pedantical politics, which is substituted for
the rhyming truth in the modern academy, cannot survive in the free
market. Only words which serve the noble heart and soul--the sublime
sentiments of the good, honest people of the world--ever survive in the
form of classics.
Reflecting upon the nature of our classical portal, it is easy to see
what the internet has done. It has removed the middlemen from standing
in-between the Greats and the people. And by middlemen I mean the
postmodern agents, editors, professors, reviewers, critics, and MBA's
who are taught to focus on the bottom line while ignoring the higher
ideals. As Chuck D. of Public Enemy said,
The majors are going to have to share the marketplace with the
public and with the artist. The Internet won't wipe them out, but no
longer will the majors make a 300 percent profit on CDs; no longer will
middlemen determine what the price of a CD will be or how the public
will view an artist. Because of the Internet, artists will bypass
retail, marketing, and promotional outlets and go directly to the
public. The middlemen and retail outfits will have to adjust.
For the Greats were the world's greatest communicators, and as J.D.
Salinger said about The Catcher in The Rye, they need no middlemen
critics--they market themselves, they publish themselves, they promote
themselves, and they signify themselves. There is nothing more intimate
than reading words, for when ye pick up a Great Book, nobody and
nothing stand between yer soul and the author's. Perhaps the most
beautiful thing about the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence were that they were written for the people, and one
doesn't have to go to Princeton, nor Harvard, nor Yale to understand
their sublime eloquence. One doesn't have to become a lawyer nor earn a
Ph.D. in public policy. All one has to do is read them, think about
them, and talk about them. A republic's freedom is staked upon an
educated people; and what better way to educate oneself than to read
the Greats, and what better way to inspire others to read them than a
renaissance?
There are few greater sins than standing between children and their
potential, and that is what the aging postmodern liberals are best at.
For only in a darkened context can they reign supreme, and thus they
delight in popularizing a thousand, thousand temptations while
deconstructing the context within which we are even able to define
temptation so as to defend the better angels of our nature. But now,
with the internet and the new millennium, their stonewalling, and
tenure, and petty power pyramids are fading fast in the cultural
context. In the deconstructed cultural context they attempted to foist
upon us, some might have lost the ability to judge their degraded
culture as offensive, but there is no denying that it is boring. And I
say that this rising generation refuses to be bored.
The Tragedy of Drakeraft.com can be read on its own, in the
contemporary pop- culture context, but unlike Dawson's Creek, it shall
offer the reader far greater enjoyment and profundity if it is read
within a classical context. We hope that the book becomes a portal out
to greater things. I would advise ye to read Hamlet, then read The
Catcher in The Rye, and then read Hamlet again. Read Moby *****, and The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and the Gospels, and Revelations. Read
the Founding Father's letters and their noble documents of State, and
then come back and read these words again. For the literature of the
WWW Renaissance must be read in the greater context of the Great Books.
And I promise ye this--within that noble context, life's greater,
eternal riches do reside, which neither time may tarnish nor moth
corrupt. Aye, aye then, me merry maties: as the postmodern fog clears,
we'll be navigating by God's greater beacons as we sail this
renaissance on home.
Drake Raft, The End of The Millenium, 1999
Just another poet back from the dead for a renaissance.
Emails Regarding the Earlier Version of The Tragedy of Drakeraft.com:
The Drake Raft Field Trip
From: Alicia Triche
To:
Subject: QUALITY: The Drake Raft Field Trip
Hi-
Okay, I don't know who you guys are, I've only breezed through most of
the pages in this web site in, like, the past five minutes (so, did
that letter to Rolling Stone actually get published?) but I just have
to tell you something!!
I just read the first bit of the excerpt you have from the Drake Raft
Field trip thing, and it's actually really good!! Let me explain how
exciting this is to me--I NEVER think anything is good that was written
after, say, 1950 or so. I am sick and I mean SICK of gratuitous,
insincere, disgusting references to whatever bodily fluids will get
people published. Like, the swishy butt in "Even Cowgirls Get the
Blues," and basically every story Walter Kirn ever wrote, and for God's
sake, I just read something by modern "acclaimed" author Jessica
Treadway that talks about breast milk! NONE of this was actually an
integral part of any, like, PLOT, either.
But this story you guys have posted, it's pretty sincere, and you've
got the language of our generation down pretty accurately, and it was a
lovely experience for me, to read it. I've always had this fantasy that
there would be modern books that match the quality of all the classics
I love to read--is that what you guys are about?
I just wanted to say, good job, and I really mean that, And I haven't
seen anything quite so brilliant in anything I've read that was written
so recently. Sincerely,
Alicia
From:
To:
Subject: Drake Raft
Hello there Elliot.. You may be wondering who the hell i am.. well i
met you two summers ago in Linda's bar on Franklin St. I was the
English nanny, friends with the spanish girl Pillar. Well anyway i read
your book that you sold me..The Drake Raft Field Trip (The Tragedy of
Drake Raft). I was really engrossed by it when i took it babysitting
with me and their dogs decided they wanted it for lunch.. So now i am
left at the part where they were gonna have a concert?? What the hell
happened at the end.. please tell me.. I hope that you are still using
this Email. from Hazel Butler.
From: ugmtjh6961@-------
To:
Subject: I know your pen
Captain, or maybe I should say Elliot, Ahoy how ye be good matie? I
tried to send this mail once, but apparently I have screwed up and will
have to send it again. I have just finished reading your news letter
for this month. It says you're a ghost. Well I will tell you Captain or
maybe I should say Elliot, I know your pen, and the true answer to the
mystery of the Jolly Roger. I haven't spoken until now out of love for
your work. The fact still stands that by any name you hold a pretty
pen. I have read The Drake Raft Field trip and loved it. I tip my hat
to ye, to speak the truth can be a hard thing to do. At the same time
running a ship can be a hard thing to do as well. I dabble both in html
and in writing poetry, and I lend my fingers or my pen to your service.
I currently am going to order my own copy of the D.R.F.T. and your
sonnets, I would like to support the good ship as much a possible. If
there was a time when I wanted to send the good ship a picture, a
little art work, how would I go about it? Take care of yourself Elliot,
may the Lord protect you and keep you. At the Good Ship's service, John
Harrell
From: Debbie Burton
To:
Subject: The Drake Raft Field Trip
Loved reading the excerpt from "The Drake Raft Field Trip." Meant a lot
to me. Thanks for letting me read it.
Debbie
From: WRalph@----
To:
Subject: the drake raft field trip
elliot-
i am loving your book. every un-PC joke my brother and i ever made is
in there - the far side lab guy, lesbegay magazine and feminist
literature (clittorally speaking is perfect) and the chinese assistant
who speaks no english etc etc. i love the kids' reactions to
everything, like response of pretending to be homeless to increase
sensitivity. i guess they're what older people call refreshing but it's
just that they are what we all think and no one says. there is some
author, and of course i can't remember who it is right now, whom i love
just because he/she always knows exactly what is going on in people's
heads. em forster maybe. i'll remember later. all the college stuff is
totally true to life - the secret societies, the social life, the
theater people, and i love the fact that drake got kicked out of class
b/c his poems rhymed. every little nuance actually exists. the people
are reminding me of friends of mine. it's great. i hope this jolly
roger mission of yours succeeds. if i weren't here, i'd help. write
back. weatherly
From: "C. Lyle"
To:
Subject: The Word
I can't believe that I sat here and read this whole thing. It's almost
3:00 am and I don't usually read this much this late. I would normally
copy it and read it later, but I just couldn't stop reading. I know I
will be thinking about this for days to come. The story comes at you
from all angles, and has an incredible mixture of ideas. I love where
you seem to be going with this. I can't wait to read the rest of the
story.
and it had that fresh smell to it-- you know, that one fresh springy
smell that doesn't really smell like anything except for itself. You
know the kind I mean, and if you don't, you're missing out , so first
chance you have, go out sometime right after an afternoon June
thunderstorm, and breathe deeply, and then you'll know what I mean.
Yes, I know what you mean. It revives your soul and makes you want to
live forever.
Crissala
P.S. The Drake Raft Field Trip seems to be another excellent look at
the "quiet desperation" motif from an awakening standpoint. Extremely
cool book.
From: JC
To: Elliot McGucken
Subject: The Drake Raft Field Trip
Ahoy!
Just as I am on the verge of finishing my first rigorous year at the
Naval Academy, I am on the verge of finishing your great achievement,
The Drake Raft Field Trip. It has rocked like few books I have read,
and when I say rocked I mean it in the truest sense of the word. I'm a
lover of rock n' roll, but only the kind that rocks the soul and your
work here is more counterculture than one hundred million Woodstocks
and gave me a better high than the biggest, shiniest heroin needle ever
could.
When your book spoke with characters who are replicas of the hearts and
souls of our peers, I didn't understand it. But the scene after Uncle
Walt's piano lesson, that is a work of Shake-a-spear's caliber. From
then on I understand your book. It's a satire of Swift's caliber, and I
can see the characters in the people who surround me. All I can say to
that is Hallelujah and Amen! The truth is being spoken in a mighty way
and rocks the soul! We are on the verge of a great rennaissance here,
it's happening even as we speak.
My heartfelt gratitude for writing that book. God bless yer merry soul!
Keep rockin', JC
From: jill
To:
Subject: Hello
i own an unbound original galley proof of "the drake raft field trip".
i love it. it can be a little self indulgent at times but its real
ludicrousness and pace keep it cool. your video sounds like a real
undertaking. good luck, let me know how you're doing with it. jill
jls0667@email.unc.edu
From: "Joshua P. Hochschild"
To:
Subject: Ahoy!
To the Captain of the Jolly Roger:
I have read with interest the first two chapters of The Drake Raft
Field Trip and it has kindled my curiosity. I would like to request
information on purchasing a manuscript of the book, if you have not yet
found a pub lisher. I can't promise to pay any price, as I am a
philosophy grad-student, and we don't get as much funding as you. We
don't make the bombs of defense. Joshua P. Hochschild
Department of Philosophy
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556
From: Samuel Anderson
To:
Subject: Your work- I want it
Elliot and the crew: Where can I get your literature in full? I love
REAL writing, and I really enjoyed chapter one of The Drake Raft Field
Trip--- now I need the rest. I'm not joking, so don't laugh at me
(because you like to laugh at people) and just tell me how I can get
the remainder of your literature. Soon!
Samuel Anderson
From:
To:
Subject: Very interesting....
I've just caught up to The Jolly Roger a few days ago after seeing a
reference in alt.politics. I'm afraid it's going to take some time
before I understand enough to come aboard. However, being a 44-year old
boomer, let me suggest that just as Gen-X'ers are not all of one type,
neither are boomers. (Although I must admit that my generation's
propensity for self-righteousness makes us hard to love as a group.
This is the generation that is nostalgic about its rebellious drug
abuse as young adults, but thinks it can stop 14-year olds from smoking
cigarettes.)
I've just now finished reading Chapter 32 of The Drake Raft Field Trip.
Coincidentally, just before that, I read an editorial in REASON
magazine that made reference to a 1959 essay written by British
novelist and physicist C.P. Snow, who 'posited that the humanities and
sciences were moving away from each other and that humanists would soon
be utterly ignorant of the science that shapes our world'. It appears
from Chapter 32 that certain humanists have already decided that
scientists incapable of grasping the humanities. The opinions of your
"bald man with glasses" are dismissed because he is a 'scientist' - as
if a gap exists that cannot be bridged. Part of what we may perceive as
'problems' with so much of our media and government these days stems
from the fact that so many editorialists and elected representatives
have not paid the price in learning from the classical writings of the
past. It is a shame that most of us can get through 16 years or more of
college/university education and still be ignorant of the writings of
the great classical authors. In the meantime, I'll continue to follow
your voyage.
From: chad7@______.ASU.EDU
To: Red Avenger
Subject: THE DRAKE RAFT FIELD TRIP
Captain,
I think I have unraveled the mystery of the jollyroger. There are two
Drake Rafts. One is the real person named Drake Raft and the other is
the character in the Drake Raft Field Trip. The character in the
D.R.F.T. is representative of Elliot McGucken and his struggle against
the liberal establishment at Princeton. Cliff is the real Drake Raft
and Timber is Becket Knottingham. I hope I have figured it out.
I have just finished reading the Drake Raft Field Trip and I thought it
was excellent. I was very interested in Sycorax's speech to the
Princetonians After Dark and the jollyrogers near the end of the book.
I just finished writing a paper for a class called the Human Event here
for the Arizona State University Honors College. The class is centered
around trying to find the truth in the works of the Western Canon. But
anyway, the paper I wrote was on the topic of whether or not I thought
Plato's society in The Republic was just or unjust. I never thought of
his society being similar to that of the liberal agenda as Elliot had
it in Sycorax's speech. I was very impressed.
Fighting the battle against the postmodernists here on the western
front, Chad D.
http://drakeraft.com
http://jollyroger.com
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10 Jul 2005 09:12:33 AM |
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http://jollyroger.com
http://jollyrogerwest.com
http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/050545.html
A lot of people hate heroes," he continues. "I was criticized for
portraying people who are brave, honest, loving, intelligent. That was
called weak and sentimental. People who dismiss all real emotion as
sentimentality are cowards. They're afraid to commit themselves, and
so they remain 'cool' for the rest of their lives, until they're
dead-then they're really cool."
Literary creation, for Helprin, "always starts with something very
small," he explains. "I can sit down to write a story just by
thinking of the first two words of a Scott Fitzgerald story: 'This
Jonquil'-it's a woman's name. This always gets me in the mood
to write. We create nothing new-no one has ever imagined a new
color-so what you are doing is revitalizing. You are remembering,
then combining, altering. Artists who think they're creating new
worlds are simply creating tinny versions of this world.
Rock the Renaissance!!
http://jollyroger.com
http://jollyrogerwest.com
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11 Jul 2005 08:15:25 AM |
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http://classicalpoetryforums.com
The Starbuck Classical Poetry Port was inspired by a mystical memory
which has haunted me ever since this foggy May night by the Corolla
Lighthouse, which can be found just North of Duck, on the outer banks
of North Carolina. The Lighthouse can be found there, while the memory
resides here. Hoping to climb the spiral stairs in the Corolla Light,
Misty and I had hopped the criss-cross wooden corrale fence so as to
see if the door to the Light was unlocked. Not only was this a first
date with a totally awesome girl, but it also happened on that same
gothic night that I was introduced to Moby *****. Now a lot of people
might contend that Moby ***** is a novel, rather than a poem, but as of
late I have been staying up to all hours of the morning studying the
subject, and I say that Poetry is the music of the rational soul, the
ultimate expression of the spirit's reality, and a mirror of the
intangible, phantasmal essence of our existence. Poetry is found in all
the magnificent works which define the fundamental words at the
foundations of all our laws, convictions and conventions, our morality,
our conscience, and our sense of divinity. Shelley himself declared
that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind, and I contend
that one can find no noble milestones in history which were not
preceded by the spoken or written work of an individual who had the
courage to render a bold new vision in words. Though it is often
endowed with rhyme and meter, poetry derives its everlasting glory from
the depths of the profundities it preserves. Thus the classical poets,
who we shall dedicate all the Classicals Inc. websites to, range in
character from Shakespeare, to Plato, to St. Augustine, to Thomas
Jefferson, to the Prophets, to Herman Melville, to Kipling, to
Salinger. And though lacking corporeality, all Great Poetry is as solid
and permanent as the rock of the eternal soul.
As all noble actions are preceded by thoughts, and all thoughts
reside in words, so it is that our freedom, character, and divine sense
of meaning derive from language and literature. The Gospel of John
presents a brief history of God's aspect and language, which are
forever wedded:
In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was With God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
And having stated thus, I cannot forget that the truest definition
of poetry is poetry herself, which remains the ungraspable phantom of
life-- the White Whale itself, immortal, immutable, and superior to
both the artist and critic, ultimately inaccessible, even to those who
created it:
Against long, dark clouds like a lonely torch,
A misty light, a late May misty night,
We hopped the fence, had a seat on the porch,
The windswept spray haloed the sweeping light,
She told me stories from the years before,
When they saw ghosts dancing within the waves,
Some friends on a blanket, down on the shore,
Watched the phantoms rise from their watery graves.
How beautiful she was, for I could see,
A sense of that profound romantic high,
We shared the wild mystery of the sea,
Knowing deep down all else would someday die.
The storm blew in upon the wicked wind,
Elements had never been more alive,
On nights like those are forged the ties that bind,
When in the black ye see a light yet strive.
Against long dark clouds like a lonely torch,
I found myself ten years on down the road,
In a culture with little left to scorch,
And I recalled how the thunder did explode,
I remembered the way the wind did howl,
How the sea roared with all inequities,
And yet the beacon gave no avowal,
A solemn sentinel above capricious seas.
A misty light, a late May misty night,
I find myself there, holding Misty tight.
It turned out the Corolla Light was locked, so what we did instead
was we sat in some old rocking chairs on the front porch of this quaint
little house beside the lighthouse. It was the gift shop, I could tell,
for I could see all the racks with the postcards and miniature
lighthouses and books on Blackbeard. They'd just found Blackbeard's
ship about eighty miles on down the coast, just off of Wilmington. And
there, on the windowsill, somebody had left a copy of Moby *****. It was
a big old hardback edition, and as the gusts of wind swirled in under
the awning, they flipped the pages back and forth, back and forth, as
if some ghost was searching for the one portentious passage that alone
contained the words which so beautifully expressed the moment's somber
sentiments-- the humble, profound feeling that precedes a spring storm
blowing in off the Atlantic.
Now I'd never been all that good at small talk, and it didn't
help too much that this was sort of a first date. So in a way Herman
Melville came to my rescue on that night, just as he would, time and
again, with words that filled a contemporary void, echoing the subtler,
unheralded beauty, providing a literary beacon by which to navigate
through life as aspiring classical poets. Moby ***** became a literary
bible for Drake, Elliot, and I, as we saw ourselves as the captain of
the Pequod, being called upon to avenge the deposed Greats and the
honor, nobility, and pride of Generation X.
Moby ***** was a tragic record of the harshness and indifference
of the baser natural and human elements, which are utterly immune
towards the greater glory of all rhyming contemplations, just like
David Geffen and Time Warner. And we took it to be a motif for the
modern reality of young artists coming of age in this postmodern fog,
surrounded by the intellectually indifferent, amoral, ambitious
university presidents, editors, publishers, and professors. The
classical traits, such as honor, honesty, humility, prudence, and
integrity had been cast overboard along with the classical literature.
The abstract structure of the culture and the old, traditional,
time-honored rules had been deemed an obstacle by the rising
resentniks, for the Truth contained therein got in the way of their
politics. Forever be it known that there is a difference between Truth
and Politics, and that good Politics is that which humbles itself
before the Truth. Thus the postmodern liberals performed a most wicked
crime upon the culture and future generations. They deconstructed the
Western heritage, removed God from the center and circumference of the
universe, and replaced Him with fringe feminists, economic indicators,
multiculturalists, and marketing executives, just to make sure the
transition looked cool.
http://classicalpoetryforums.com
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12 Jul 2005 03:29:06 PM |
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Who killed Drake Raft?
http://jollyroger.com
http://drakeraft.com
Dedication of The Tragedy of Drakeraft.com
By Drake Raft
Back From the Dead for a Renaissance.
As a dead poet it is quite an honor to be composing this dedication for
The Tragedy of Drakeraft.com, a novel written by my good friend,
band-mate, and colleague, Dr. Elliot McGucken. And it is an even
greater honor to be dedicating it to all of you, the stalwart
crewmembers of jollyroger.com. I'm up here in Boone right now, setting
up our third Classicals Caf=E9 in the North Carolina mountains, and I
hope to have all of ye over in the near future. The other night I was
testing out the sound system in front of a few friends, and here's an
MP3 of my reading the introductory sonnets from The After Dark Field
Book. To tell the truth, I'm not all that much into poetry readings, as
I've always thought that words are far more intimate when they're read
in silence--ye can print all the sonnets out from here. But if words
must be read within the Jollyroger.com Classicals Caf=E9s, then I say
they shall be endowed with rhyme and meter, and they shall mean things.
Just like how Guns 'n' Roses' words always did.
How my name ended up in the title The Tragedy of Drakeraft.com, and how
my semblance ended up as a character in the book is a good story in
itself. During the heights of the fleeting grunge era, our obligatory
Chapel Hill band was called Drake's Raft. Around that time, Elliot
wrote a story about the Great-Books secret society that we three
Midwesterners from fly-over country had founded at Princeton, and he
kind of infused the narrative with some cool events from a summer's
East-coast tour which landed us back on the Princeton campus, where we
played our final gig in McCarter Theater. During the tour I started
writing sonnets--I could get a lot more down in fourteen lines of
iambic pentameter than I could in a typical grunge ballad, and I found
the sonnet to offer a far more profound vessel for a poet's
thoughts--it made people think, whereas our songs had only ever made
them feel or something. And there's no quicker way to a girl's heart
than through her mind.
One night in Vermont, Elliot came across the notebook with the sonnets
that I had been keeping to myself, all four hundred of which are
published here. At first glance he had thought they were song lyrics.
Then, while reading them, he got this idea for a plot centered about a
Princeton student who is called upon to avenge the Greats. The story
was called The Drake Raft Field Trip, and it eventually evolved into an
epic based on Hamlet, wherein the Great Books had been murdered and
villainous kings in the form of fringe feminists and duplicitous
postmodernists had come to inhabit Princeton's cultural thrones. And it
was I, Drake Raft, who had been called upon to avenge the brutal murder
of the Greats. Elliot had probably chosen me because I'd been lead
singer in Drake's Raft.
As a cultural flagship of the greater society, and with a rich
scholarly heritage and great gothic architecture haunted by reputable
ghosts including those of Fitzgerald, Einstein, Feynman, Joseph Henry,
"T.S. Eliot", "Salinger," and Madison, Princeton provided an ideal
setting for such a novel. A major battle in the revolutionary war had
been fought just down the road from the main campus, and an American
canon ball is lodged in the stone walls of Nassau Hall--it was fired by
the rebel troops when the Redcoats had temporarily occupied the
building during the battle of Princeton, just like the postmodernists
are now temporarily occupying it. Couple the rich heritage with the
pristine campus and all the majestic spires and sinister gargoyles, and
Princeton becomes the ideal stage for a contemporary tragedy, as
tragedy must always have a most noble backdrop.
To personify the murder of the Great Books, the character of Uncle Walt
was brought in. Uncle Walt is based upon a distinguished, traditional
scholar who was ousted while we were at Princeton--he was more of a
soldier than a philosopher, and Princeton's postmodernists defeated him
and his noble vision via their typical underhanded demagoguery, aided
by their anonymous accomplices in the liberal press. In the novel, the
Nobel-prize winning, villainous Elizabeth Sycorax has murdered Uncle
Walt and replaced him at the helm of Princeton's English department,
which she has transformed into the Cultural Studies and Creative
Writing department. My character, Drake Raft, is a senior at Princeton,
and he is called upon by Uncle Walt's ghost to avenge his murder.
Knowing that the Princeton establishment would be watching my every
move, I feigned suicide and set up a website, drakeraft.com, while
contemplating the method and motivation of my vengeance. This is the
simple premise that lights the blazing glory of the book, and Elliot's
tome proceeds to encompass the center and circumference of the eternal
verities in the language of our generation-- a generation which the
boomer marketing elite have branded generation-x and generation-y or
whatever, but which I prefer to call the renaissance generation.
It would be difficult to compose a classic within the ever-shifting
context offered by the popular culture which is relentlessly
dumbed-down, idolaterized, and commodified by the dominant postmodern
media and academic institutions. All the fleeting brands trumpeted by
the "savvy" postmodern lawyers, accountants, vulture capitalists, and
marketing executives would already be long gone by the time the book
was published--at least ten blockbuster movies would have been raved
about and forgotten by the time it made it into print. Thus Elliot took
care to root The Tragedy of Drakeraft.com in the eternal context that
we are today building at jollyroger.com. This deeper context, defined
by the likes of Shakespeare, Jefferson, Moses, Salinger, and Twain,
shall always form the popular culture of the community of eternal
souls, and those who wish to join it must begin by honoring it. As a
dead poet myself, I have overheard a few truths spoken in this
heretofore undiscovered country--those poets | | | | | |
