Joseph Campbell, Robert Bly and many others have talked about how myths can frame lessons or dramas. They need not be literally true in order to contain truths. The Hopi oral history contains a tale of a great flood, for instance, and Rapunzel should warn against pilfering greens from your neighbor's garden.
Finding excuses not to practice my Mozart concerto, which has its last rehearsal with the orchestra tonight, I was looking at the painting which hangs above my piano. The title is "L'Oiseau Chant Avec Ses Doigts" (The Bird Sings With His Fingers), and the picture is supposed to be a boy Orpheus--the Greek God of music--making a lyre in the tree branches. The title comes from an old Jean Cocteau movie.
Who knows if there was ever a real Orpheus? Plays, poems, musical works have been written about the god who charmed the beasts with his playing, who even cast a spell over the Underworld so that it would release his beloved Eurydice from the dead. The film "Black Orpheus" sets the story in Rio and has Orpheus making the sun rise with his song.
All this is a long way from my present chore. All I really want to do is what Nicodemus advises: Try to make it nice for the people.
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