Hadestown

The God of War, in his unforgiving tone turned to you and said “it is time”. Swearing under the undeniable oath you claimed that you will carry out the deeds that must be done. Kill the ones who must be gone, maim the ones who must be maimed. There will be no looking back to yesterday, no droopy eyed search for tomorrow’s peace, there will be war. There will be battles fought, there will be advances, there will be unforgiving strategies, no day, no night. You were summoned, called on, finally made to feel important and under no circumstance were you ever going to relinquish the order, the fate, the duty which you were called on to carry out.  Serious men are to do serious business, the God of War has made sure his voice was heard across mountains, oceans and treacherous lands. It is you who carries his voice inside your own.

Sundown balms the weary bones with soft rays, almost unnoticed, almost too easy to miss. Where light never reaches is where your queen lives. She toils. The plates before her crack as she opens her deep brown eyes and slowly lifts them to light your face. Persephone, the ruler of the underworld is here to speak. Unimaginable is her voice to you, melodious and kind, the hardened deity lures you instantly: “go find him who journeys forever”. There is no time for questions, she turns and as with the steam of a boiling bath she disappears behind the voluptuous nymphs who have pulled each and every string of you heart until now. The underworld is a sacred place to visit and you have come back from it with a mission. Only a few have survived, many have perished in the quest to do what they have been summoned to do. Mortals clench the fragments of myths, most of them die whilst doing so. You can be different or you can cease to exist just the same. The gods could not care less. This challenge is yours and yours alone.

None of your biblical gods have been invented yet. Abraham’s not had Ishmael or Isaac yet, Jacob’s not had his twelve children yet. No prophets have roamed the lands, no scrolls have been recorded with dubious facts. No history and no future to tell. The gods, sometimes out of fury, out of contempt, out of hatred for their own flesh and blood have sent you on an errand you could not have refused to undertake. There is war and there is search. There are traps along the way ever diminishing the chance of a successful outcome. In search of the one who journeys, you embark on your war. Through uneducated people and places, farms where they count the passing of days by how much fish they catch, you learn the evils of war. The beauty in time taken to finish that which could also be done in a haste. The wars have worn you out, the skies turned ever darker, the call of Persephone ever louder, yet the travelling king was bound to never return. You slowly understand the years it took Odysseus to find his way back. From then on you command those who take the long way home.

You were not prepared for what was expected of you. No god in history or in the present could ever hold that against you. Fatefully you do again all that has been asked of you, all that you have already failed to do countless times. They could call you Sisyphus but you are no king. You wretched mortal, you creep of a dying kind, you slow and pitiful man who has been broken by war, broken by promises unkept, broken by your life that has been unkind. The gods do not care about the excuses, about your pains, your blisters, fractures, burns, your bruises. May the wrath of the house of Zeus come thundering down on you! May the wrath of the great God of All evade you! Then and only then do you have a chance to fulfil that which was asked of you. The God of War has instructed you to fight. The Queen of the Underworld has commanded you to search. The King of Epic Journeys have stood silent as you found your own deplorable end. None of them know that you have secretly travelled a great deal to bring them peace. You cried along the way, but in the end you have brought them what they had asked from you. You have brought them your soul. Intact and honest, you are now willing to give them your soul. Hades, take my soul! I long to join the nymphs and sinners in the underworld. I long to roll the boulder up the hill. I long to journey endlessly in this world that you have made for me. I long to live in the world you have made for me.