BTZ42+Reed

[Ian Livingston]

GR seems to me above all else mythic. Following Campbell's cycle, we are
here called to the journey, and the descent toward zero is under weigh (pun
intended, of course.)


“It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it’s all theatre. There
are no lights inside the cars. No light anywhere."


“The development of the mythical feeling of space always starts from the
opposition of *day* and *night*, *light* and *darkness*." Ernst Cassirer,
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 2: Mythical Thought, 98 (1955).

"Above him lift girders old as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above
that would let the light of day through. But it’s night. He’s afraid of the
way the glass will fall—soon—it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal
palace" GR, 3.


In On Symbols and Society (1989), Kenneth Burke differentiates action and
motion inasmuch as action refers to a sequence attributable to symbol-using
animals, whereas motion refers to the movement of things in the world
[trees swaying in wind, waves rolling in to shore], 53.

However, falling glass can be tremendously symbolic, such as when men raise
the glass as testimony to their great ability and permanence, then cast it
down in a suicidal tantrum of rage.
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