Matthew, Mark, Luke

By Angus McMahan

In ancient times mythology, clan histories and metaphysical and -phorical tales were handed down by the elders of the tribe, the leaders, or the wisewomen and men. The old religions, folk magick and local lore combined in a dynamic, phantasmagorical stewpot of data that was carefully ladled out even as new flavors and ingredients were stirred in. That was the way things were for thousands of years and so that is the way we are wired.

And then memory's murderer, movable type, was invented and the first bestseller, the Gutenberg Bible, was created (Coincidence? Read the book). The mole movement of the pagans was underway. Sacred texts which could be waved above the head were the hot fad and they swept the uncivitas world. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the two together make a great team.

Time, as always, passed. Not like train tracks that disappear into the horizon, but more like H-O scale tracks that wind a bit but always come back around.

The need for myth is still within us. Your truth may be written down in black on white, but we all still crave a good tale.

Technology, unlike time, has left the station without us. Books great and books bad appeared alongside the book that is good and quickly outnumbered it. Nothing tops a real storyteller but books are pretty good at spinning the tale. They are better than newspapers which were better than telephones were better than radios which were better than television which is better than computers. (The future is in interactive and individual story creating, which is as distancing as it is intriguing. Wrong side of the brain.)

Still we seek out our myths as we always have and crown our thousand faced hero as we always will. Tolkien begats movies serials begats beatnik poets begats Woodstock and Altamont.

One of the cameramen on Gimme Shelter (the documentary of Altamont) would, 7 years later, bequeath us our modern myth, the latter day lore of our western world. Borrowing on the ancient, classic, universal themes (although not the folklore or even the texts, but instead the movie treatments - a distilled irony) this young fellow combined the latest gee-whiz technology with the oldest fire-in-a-cave storytelling and gave to many of us our first g