The Minoan Bull Dance! (part one)

So, today's entry really should be about the gajillion awards I'm hoarding (Thanks everyone! I'm honored!)-- but I have a gajillion and three tabs open right now and half of them are about bull leaping from the Minoan to the Modern, and if I don't write this entry they're going to keep staring at me for days.

Unlike my usual research topics, this one isn't a direct result of one of my books. The Bull Dance has been on my mind, however, ever since I read Mary Renault's The King Must Die which spends a significant number of pages chronicling Theseus' life inside the bull ring during his time on Crete. She takes some artistic license with the Minotaur, and has a really fascinating interpretation of the labyrinth, but this isn't meant to be a review of that work, so I'll skip over the specifics for now.

The other day I was surfing the web when I came across this news article. Apparently a matador was arrested for fleeing from his bull in the ring. Now, I'm not really pro-bull fighting. When it comes down to it, it's a highly ritualized animal slaughter for the entertainment of those in the stands. Since, as a culture, we seem to frown on ANY kind of highly ritualized animal slaughter, even those for religious purposes (you'll notice that religions which require animal sacrifice have been forced to the fringe of society over the years), I'm not sure why we're still allowing bull fights. BUT, we do. And having just finished the second half of Mary Renault's opus on Theseus, it occurred to me that this might be a remnant, passed down, warped, evolved, and inherited from the Minoan Bull Dance.

Have you ever watched a Matador? The way they move? The way they dance with the bull, leading it and drawing it out, this way and that? Making the bull practically spin on a dime? But of course, the Minoan Bull Dance was never about the slaughter. It wasn't about killing the bull at all-- and that's a huge difference to set aside even after 3000 years.

 From Wikicommons, a fresco of Knossos, Crete. Wiki dates it anywhere from 17th-15th centuries BCE.

Mary Renault paints the Minoan Bull Dance as a cooperative showcase-- man and bull together in harmony. A team of men and women worked together to keep themselves alive in the ring while they leaped and allowed the bull itself to throw them into the air. The bull, after a time, would know the dance as well as the team. It was a performance of skill which required perfect timing and a relationship (I would even go so far as to say a relationship of TRUST) to the animal they worked with. There are no swords or spears featured in the information we have left of the Bull Dance, but there is plenty of evidence for acrobatics.

Historians suspect that the Minoan Bull Dance was an integral part of the religion of ancient Crete, but we honestly don't know why or what it was for, and it's all further complicated by the fact that the Minoans seemed to emphasize the worship of goddesses over male gods, though they had both. We know it was important because Bull Leaping iconography was everywhere and kind of a lot of it survived in frescoes, figurines, etc. But it could have just as easily been a rite of passage for youths, too, religious in nature or not.

(Side note: This is kind of where I think about how we have all these super hero action figures that will never decompose, and someday, someone is going to dig them up and think Superman was the center of our lives. But generally speaking, when there's this much evidence of something all these years later, before the days of mass production, it did figure pretty centrally in the culture, or so much work and sweat--not to mention resources--wouldn't have gone into it.)

I wish I could tell you more about Bull Leaping and Bull Dancing in Minoan Civilization, but in spite of the fact that I have at least 5 text books on ancient Greece and the Aegean Bronze Age at my fingertips, information on the Bull Dance itself is scarce. (Trust me, I just searched through all of them.) When it comes down to it, we just don't know. We have no real written records outside of linear a and b tablets from that time, and those weren't exactly treatises on religious rites or culture. The Bull Dance is very much still a mystery. Which of course makes it great sport for fiction.

In my next* post, I'll discuss the much more probable descendant of the Minoan Bull Dance-- and it isn't the Spanish Bull Fight.

*next being kind of relative. I'm sure I'll get there eventually, though!

Character Interview Blogfest!

Thanks to Sangu at Echoes of a Wayward Mind for hosting this one! I'm looking forward to going around and getting a chance to meet everyone's characters! Head over to her blog to see the list of participants!

Against my better judgment, my interview was with Adam from The Book of Generations. He's... well. You'll see. I was trying to understand his motives a little bit better. In that regard, he was quite informative. Also, as usual, slightly obnoxious.

Me: So why did you go?

Adam: To give her my blessing, I suppose. To prove that I wouldn't interfere.

Me: That doesn't make any sense.

Adam: I needed her goodwill. You know as well as I do that there was no hope of getting any of the rest of what I wanted. She was pathetically in love with that man, and once she said her vows, once she chose to marry for love, there was no hope for anything else. If it had been another lifetime, I might have tried to take her, but holding Eve against her will isn't an easy thing to accomplish, and it would only have made her even more suspicious of me. Besides, the DeLeon's aren't a family to be trifled with. Maybe if she had been some poor Farmer's wife, it would have been different. But that family wouldn't have rested until she was found. And like I said, she was in love with him already. It wouldn't have mattered.

Me: You DID try to take her in another lifetime. When she was in love, and it didn't stop you.

Adam: That was before she was under the protection of that Norse oaf. The man she was married to… well, he made me look like the better option, no easy feat when she knew me for what I was. And the man she loved was dead.

Me: You couldn't have known that.

Adam: You'd be surprised how quickly word spread then. Rumor, of course, saw to that. The goddesses had more freedom then, and we all knew the story of Helen's abduction. Especially in Troy.

Me: Ah. Of course.

Adam: You think you wouldn't believe a goddess who stood before you in all her glory? Mistrust would have insulted her, and the punishment for that was fierce. You'd have listened too. You DO listen, too.

Me: That's different. And we're not interviewing me. We're interviewing you.

Adam: Are we?

Me: Yes. We are.

Adam: And yet…

Me: If you’re going to be difficult, I’m sure Thor would love to share his thoughts.

Adam: I’m sorry, what were you thinking earlier, about not believing a word spoken by gods and goddesses who entertain themselves with mortal lives?

Me: Olympians. Thor is different. You know he is better than I do. And if he weren’t, Eve never would have loved him.

Adam: Just because he prefers to hand out justice rather than whim doesn’t make him different. He still interferes for his own reasons and to allay his own boredom. It passes the time. And good as she is, it’s no different for Eve. We all need distraction. Sometimes, if you meet the right person, you can even forget you’re going to have to watch fools make the same mistakes generation after generation. At least until that person dies and your left alone to contemplate your fate. Again.

Me: I thought you liked it.

Adam: The alternative is death by flame and lightning. And what waits for an immortal after death? What happens to a god when he dies? I don’t even think Thor knows – does he?

Me: It’s never come up.

Adam: Of course it hasn’t. He wouldn’t want to frighten you.

Me: But you’re not a god. If everyone else God made gets Heaven, why don’t you?

Adam: Who said?

Me: Said what?

Adam: Who said everyone else God made gets anything? God didn’t. I would know. And if you won’t trust Olympians, you can hardly trust Michael any further. Talk about having ulterior motives.

Me: What about Gabriel?

Adam: Gabriel does what he’s told. And says what he’s told to say. How much of that was ordered by Michael, and how much by God Himself is a mystery. But I, for one, won’t stake my life on any of it. And since this is, supposedly, an interview about me, I assume it is my life under discussion?

Me: I knew this was a bad idea.

Adam: You’ll be grateful later when all of this starts spinning stories in your head. And then I’ll be back, and you’ll be glad I didn’t try to shelter you from the truth.

Me: Gee. Thanks.

Adam: The least I could do.

New Layout!

Also, a new About Me tab! Yes, I have finally learned how to give my blog pages! Hooray!

Unfortunately, the customization options as far as text colors go seem to lack the flexibility I desire. This will do for now, but one day, I aspire to having white text in the sidebar for ease of reading. For the time being, you can find all the sidebar "about me" information under the About the Writer tab, plus a little bit extra. So hopefully that will cover it for the moment...

I was kind of going for something Thor-friendly :P

Have a fabulous weekend, one and all!

A Friday Post, With Lots of History!

First of all, I have some important announcements.

1) My writerly friends on Twitter are AWESOMESAUCE.

2) Yesterday, I wrote the greatest query of my LIFE. If was for the wrong book, though.
GENERATIONS previously held the distinction of being the MS with my BEST QUERY LETTER EVER. The title has now been passed onto COST OF LIVING. (I'm not in love with the title for that MS at all. For the record. Mostly I just refer to it as Thairon's book, and pretend it has no title until pressed and even then I only give it up grudgingly. In fact, the filename of this awesome new Query is "Thairon BEST QUERY EVER.")

EDIT: I got a partial request this morning! Clearly my joy and pride was not misplaced!

 3) Oh My God, Chris Hemsworth is HUGE. Thank Goodness, because I wouldn't be able to sit through a movie with a wimpy, twig thing Thor. I think he's given Hugh Jackman a real run for his money in the bulking up department.

Now that those two things are out of the way, I can get to the real matters at hand. Namely, some awesome archaeological and historical finds! For starters, "they" have found the OLDEST LEATHER SHOE EVER in Armenia! (There is a LOT of capslock going on in this post, for which I apologize! It will stop now!)

Apparently the shoe is 5,500 years old, and so remarkably preserved you can see how it was formed to its owners foot. It's the equivalent of a women's size 7, for those of you wondering, but if you haven't clicked the link it is worth it just to see the picture of this shoe and how well it's preserved.

Now, it's not really the shoe itself that compelled me to report on this. I mean, sure it's cool to see how ye olden shoes were constructed. The thing that really gets my goat is the fact that it is 5,500 years old.

Allow me to do the math:
2,010-5,500= -3490

In 3,490 BCE somebody lost their shoe. Or purposely left it behind. Why? And why did they stuff it with straw first? To prevent odors? My friends, this was before Hieroglyphs were even developed in Egypt. JUST about the time when the wheel was invented! The idea of the wheel may not even have had time to MAKE it as far as Armenia! THAT is when this shoe is from. Just think about that for a minute.

Tell me that doesn't blow your mind a little bit.

Happy Friday!

Useless Dialogue

I really love this dialogue, but I can't use it. Or I haven't figured out how to use it. It's part of a scene that I had to backtrack and rewrite, but I couldn't bring myself to delete it because I liked the exchange too much. So. I'm posting it here so that other people can enjoy the ridiculousness. It isn't part of any book. It's just some gratuitous crap I've been working on for myself. And when I say for myself, I mean for my personal entertainment.

The man, Donnar, who Hannah's talking to is, of course, Thor (taken roughly from the old German and modernized). I guess he's trying to keep a low profile. Hannah is in Iceland with a, uh, friend, when Donnar shows up-- the friend, Jake, has no idea who Donnar is, but Hannah knows. In the first bit, Jake is annoyed that Hannah is going to ditch him for Donnar. In the second bit, Donnar becomes involved in the conversation after Jake makes the mistake of attempting to literally shake some sense into her.

I sighed and looked up. "Look, Jake, I'm sorry. But we both knew that whatever this was, it wasn't going to last."

"No," he said, his face hardening into lines I didn't like. I had never really liked his face, but when he laughed, when he was talking, it was easy to forget. His charisma overpowered you. Except when he was angry. Then it was just frightening. "This was my chance. Our chance. After all this time. Now you're going to just throw it away for some pro-wrestler-looking idiot?"

"You really shouldn't call him that," I mumbled.

"Yeah, well, he can grind my bones to make his bread if he's offended."

I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. Because it was true and ludicrous and Jake didn't even realize what he was saying. The lines in his face were deep grooves, now. He wouldn't have found it funny if I started laughing.

Donnar smiled. An altogether different expression from the one he had shown me earlier. This one was dark and smug and threatening, like a wolf stalking prey. He didn't have to say anything. Jake stepped back.

"It is one thing to treat a woman the way she likes to be treated," Donnar said, his voice low. "And quite another thing to manhandle her without respect. Touch her in anger again, and I'll rip out your throat."

My stomach turned to ice. "Donnar!"

"It's all right, Hannah. I'm sure that Jake understands my meaning."

"You can't just go around threatening people with death," I murmured.

Donnar turned to me, one eyebrow raised, and I realized very suddenly that he absolutely could. We stood on his lands. And even if we hadn't, there was very little he could not do.

I took his hand and drew him away. "What you can do, and what you should do are two different things," I said. "And I let him treat me this way. Punish me, not him, for the result."

Donnar smiled, smoothing the frown from my forehead. "I will be many things for you, anything you wish me to be, but not your judge. I am not your god."

"You aren't his, either."

Donnar glanced back at Jake, and I saw what he did. Red hair and enough height that he would have been tall beside anyone else. Anyone but a god. "Viking Irish, I would guess."

"Then only half yours. Let him go."

So yeah. This is me selfishly preserving words I can't even justify keeping in my writing when I'm not writing for anyone else.  For my own amusement. Feel free to disregard!

Are there any awesome one-liners or exchanges that you had to cut from your WIP that you wished desperately you could have kept? Or throw a party with the muse when you can squeeze them back in? And uhm... am I the only one who writes gratuitous crap just for themselves with no intention of ever making it into something publishable?

And The Winner Is....

Thanks so much to everyone who participated in the Dream Sequence Blogfest! I had a great time reading everyone's entries, and you guys made it so much more successful than I ever dreamed it would be! (ha ha. ahem. sorry.)

But I promised one lucky participant an Amazon Gift Certificate in the amount of 10 dollars, and through the random number generation skills of my husband (who did not see the sign up sheet, since he doesn't read my blog. Seriously. At all. I have to pull up the page and make him sit down on my computer if I want him to read stuff), a winner has been chosen!

As stated on the original Dream Sequence Blogfest post, the winner had to have posted a scene, signed up, and commented on the Dream Sequence Blogfest Announcement post. I made my husband generate numbers until one of them matched that criteria.

So without further ado, The Winner!

STUART SHARP!

Please shoot me an email or comment with your email address, and I will e-mail you an Amazon Gift Certificate! 

I hope that everyone learned a little bit about what makes a dream sequence work by reading the other entries and through the comments on your own! I know that I learned a few tricks, and got some good suggestions for my own scene! Thanks so much to everyone who left me a comment-- I couldn't respond individually this time, but know that I totally appreciated all your crits, suggestions, and kind words!! (Yeah, I know. I have an exclamation point problem... :P )

Oh! If by some chance I missed your Dream Sequence post and you didn't get a comment from me, PLEASE let me know so that I can go read it!

DREAMFEST HOOOO!

Welcome One and All to the Dream Sequence Blogfest! 

I am thrilled to host this event for you all! Hopefully we all got to challenge ourselves a little bit, by writing a good sequence, and hopefully we can all learn about what works and what doesn't from the posts of our fellow participants! Please do get around to comment on everyone's posts, and offer them some feedback so that we can all write bigger and better dream sequences in the future!

Thanks so much to everyone who is participating! I'm heading out to read all your posts right now! You can find all the blogs who are participating on the Mr. Linky!



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Thanks for stopping by, for commenting, and for participating!! You guys are awesome! The winner of the Amazon GC, drawn randomly, will be announced on the blog on Tuesday!