Orpheus Is A Sad Sack
Neither tech nor the writing life is survivable without community. I’ve been lucky enough to be around people who know how to build that, even despite my introversion. It’s delightful to be among other Women of A Certain Age (WACAs) (more on that here if you’re interested). In the meantime, here we are, having breakfast with books! Algorithms of Betrayal isn’t officially on sale yet, but you seem to be able to get pre-order copies. But The Divine Comedy of the Tech Sisterhood is out, and Her Golden Coast is on sale for $0.99 all of Pride month.
On a completely different note, let’s get into why Orpheus is such a sad sack, and why I’m thinking about him. The trigger was listening to a song at my gym and knowing immediately that it was being sung by Patrick Page (voice of Hades in Hadestown). I have a pretty strong memory for voices, and am fascinated by the extent to which voice can make or break people’s influence and authority. There are certain people whose voices have credibility and power, and other people who may have excellent arguments and ideas but can’t get their voice heard. It made me wonder why, in both productions of Hadeston I’ve watched, the actor voicing Orpheus was high-pitched, whiny and… forgettable?
Why would you do that to your protagonist? I have to assume it’s intentional, that Hades’ voice was meant to be stronger all along, because the #1 rule of storytelling is that your antagonist must be stronger than your protagonist, otherwise what’s the point of the story?
But let’s get into why Orpheus failed at such a simple task (just walk out of hell and don’t look back), because that’s where the lesson is, for all of us who attempt the impossible.
Was Orpheus truly gifted? Or just privileged?
Orpheus’ mother was the Muse Calliope (patron of epic poetry). Accounts vary about whether his father was Apollo, or a king, but either way, he had a pretty privileged upbringing. It’s not surprising that the birds and trees and even stones danced to his music. It is surprising that his music didn’t really amount to much. Was he really gifted, or was he just a product of good tutors? And what’s the difference?
When I was young, I played a lot of badminton tournaments. One tournament I went to, I’ll never forget. We had a surprise competitor, a man who hadn’t been able to afford the entrance fee. Hell, he couldn’t afford shoes and he played barefoot, in jeans, with a borrowed racket. And won. That’s gifted.
It made me very aware of the number of times people throw around credentials like they actually matter. I don’t care about people’s levels or titles or which fancy school they went to or how high they ranked in their eighth-grade Olympiad. I don’t care about writers’ past prizes or their MFA when I’m reading their current book. Some people have had the privilege of schools and network; doesn’t mean they’re gifted.
Orpheus was a whiny bohemian who couldn’t make his own bed
Okay, Orpheus started off well, but what did he actually achieve in terms of music? Very little is known about this. Why didn’t he amount to much? It’s not as if he was being asked to do chores.
Women often have a whole lot of extra burdens that keep them from fulfilling their potential. Whether it’s caring for children or elders, managing the housework, or societal expectations on how nice they need to be to whoever’s visiting, there is a cognitive load they must bear that infringes upon the time they’d otherwise devote to their art.
I’ve had a few people compare themselves to me, because I write prolifically and get a fair bit done with my day. But I don’t have children, or responsibilities, and I have a LOT of help. I don’t do my own laundry. So no, it’s not surprising that I write around a book a year. What’s surprising is that I don’t write more. Your role-model can’t be someone who doesn’t share your constraints.
He’d rather be a rising star with high potential than risk failure
The Saboteur Assessment identifies ways in which we tend to get in our own way. Our saboteurs can be things like cynicism (this is doomed, it’s no use trying), perfectionism (if I can’t get it right on the first try, I don’t want to do it), or envy and jealousy.
I think Orpheus lacked follow-through. The characterization of Orpheus in both Hadestown and Kaos shows a man who expects success to drop in his lap. He stays out of the fray, avoids the hard work needed to be the kind of man Eurydice deserves, doesn’t want to “compromise his art” by holding down a steady job, and wants sheer talent to win the day, without the rigor and discipline of daily practice.
Because if he did the hard work and still didn’t make it, that’s on him, but if he didn’t do the work, it’s not his fault things aren’t working out. The world just hasn’t recognized his talent yet. This is why it’s so ingenious that Hades makes the task so damn easy. If Orpheus fails, he has no one to blame but himself.
Orpheus doubts himself and others: deep-down he questions whether he deserves his happiness
He doesn’t think it should be so easy to just walk out of hell. He doesn’t think Eurydice is following him because he can’t hear her footsteps. We always project onto others the frailties and faults we see in ourselves. He doubts Eurydice’s loyalty and conviction because he himself has none. Following her into hell was a bit of a spoiled-brat move; he’s used to getting his way, and Hades took one of his toys. But does he actually want Eurydice back? Or is a relationship going to be a lot of work that takes away from his music? He went to hell for her. What’s she done for him? That’s a pretty selfish thought. Orpheus is a selfish person. He knows it. He doesn’t deserve Eurydice. Or, maybe, he doesn’t love her, but he loves the way she makes him feel; she’s always admired his music. It’s been a while since she died. He can’t remember her face that well. Is he certain Hades didn’t trick him and send someone else?
Orpheus engages in something I call having one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake. It’s extremely counterproductive, and extremely common. It’s when we “commit to our writing” by doing a lot of procrastination that’s vaguely writing-related, like researching Greek myths. Or when we “align on the new strategy” but then go back to doing things the same way as before. Or when we say we want to “avoid burnout” but don’t actually change our habits or set boundaries.
I wrote about dealing with this in another post, about how we sabotage or doubt ourselves because we want reassurance of success, which we’re not going to get. Our fear of failure makes us doubt and question all sorts of things, from whether we’re doing enough, or whether the system / others are out to get us, to whether we truly want this thing we’re so close to achieving.
One failure, and he crumbled; where’s the grit?
Once he fails to get Eurydice back, Orpheus kind of loses the plot on life. The Maenads try to seduce him, but he rejects them, and they tear him to pieces. Ovid thinks he gets up to some gay shenanigans, writing, “the only friendship he enjoyed was given to the young men of Thrace.”
Let’s be clear; he’s not actually mourning Eurydice at this point. He’s failed, and he’s mourning his own lost potential. He could have been the guy whose music charmed the god of the underworld and brought his love back to life, something nobody had ever done before. It took a lot of entitlement, walking into hell. He thought it would be easy, because everything in his life at this point had been easy. When the task was so simple that someone without a shred of musical talent could have done it, but he could not, he crumbled. His sense of self was destroyed.
One of my writing teachers once said, “The antagonist is not the enemy. The antagonist is the voice that keeps the protagonist from acting or changing.” Reading with that lens, it becomes obvious that Hades isn’t the antagonist. He never was. Orpheus was always his own worst enemy. Hades just creates accountability, but the entitled son of a king/god has never yet been held accountable.
There were many years between Orpheus’ famous failure and his death. He could have done a whole lot of things in that time if he’d started to take responsibility for his self-sabotaging ways. Instead, he got stuck in the past and then became famous only for his failure.
He’s more famous for failing than others who actually succeeded
Pscyhe, Hercules, and Theseus from Greek mythology all successfully completed their journeys to the underworld (katabasis) without issue. All Orpheus had to do was sing and have conviction. Innana / Ishtar had to arrive naked, and was killed by her sister and hung on a hook, and she still made it out, but people seem to have forgotten about her. Savitri followed Yama, the god of death, and impressed him with her intelligence until he returned her husband Satyavan to life. Fascinatingly, Izanagi in Japanese myth went to the underworld to retrieve his dead wife, but noped out hard when he found out she was decaying.
But while few can list all of Hercules’ twelve tasks off the top of their minds, Orpheus has inspired so many artworks that there’s no complete list. Three of the first four operas ever written were about Orpheus and Eurydice. Why is his story so enduring?
It’s because stories are our way of passing on survival skills to the next generation. In the end, the Orpheus tale isn’t one of great heroism, talent or skill. It is, like all Greek stories, a tragedy based on hamartia – the fatal flaw in one’s character. It’s a warning, one that takes us back to the inscription on the temple of Apollo at Delphi: know thyself.
Orpheus is all of us.