Yesterday I had an Oklahoma scare but I am not going to dwell on it. We raise our kids and let them go and we have to hope they stay safe. I might think about this differently later, but not now, not now, not now… I am trying to remember when I took this picture of Icarus but I think it was in Canberra, when I was there last. I will check, but I am posting it because I am trying to put a new writing project together and this will be a major part of the theme, so fingers crossed that we can get it commissioned. Of course there may be some who wonder where the Icarus connections come from, well it started a long time ago, in a blog I posted when I first started writing 55@55 - it was meant to be 55 posts when I turned 55 but it just kept growing and the Icarus theme happened along until it became a pre-occupation. I got to thinking about the flying boy and his conundrum - did Icarus fall or was he pushed? From Ovid onwards it has almost been a given that the story of Icarus (in its many re-tellings) is a tale of folly; the folly of the boy who didn’t listen to his father’s advice; advice gleaned from experience long stored as memory. Icarus’ folly, as if we needed reminding, was that he flew too close to the sun, from which a lesson can be learned. And the lesson is as much about not getting above yourself as it is a warning against reckless behaviour. Yet this troubled me and the more I thought and dug into the tale the more it became apparent that Daedalus (his father) who was a congenital liar and a bad egg (for a supposed good guy) could be lying in his account of the Icarus story - and so a project that started as a pre-occupation began - watch this space for developments… because I have come a full circle and children, Oklahoma and letting go lingers… sigh, I knew it would. I was listening to this last night while writing and trying to get myself to wind down for the day. There is something uncanny about the piece which I adore, for those down times, its Levon Minassian from the movie, Bab' Aziz (the prince who contemplates his soul) and it has a haunting melancholy:
