Oldenday X

My family was never far from my mind during the seven months I lived in Europe during 1974. (In fact, I so turned off a pretty Flemish girlfriend by admitting I missed my family that she dumped me within hours for a Belgian doofus named Bruno.) One way I could feel connected to my brothers was to think about “The Legend,” and it was easy to be inspired, surrounded as I was by all the fascinating history of feudal conflicts, life on the manor, warring political factions, imperialistic ventures, and Napoleonic exploits. I was constantly encountering the art, architecture, accouterments, and weapons of the general time period we’d chosen to frame our imaginary world of swashbucklers and tyrants. When my brother James sent me a letter mentioning Hedda Keeh, one of our beloved characters (a native of the Western Plaines and Peace Chief of his nation), I plunged into the creation of a comprehensive map and sent it home along with our most ambitious document to date—a long letter from Joncules Dix to his half-brother Jimcus (otherwise known as Chaims-Dan, or Man-With-Flying-Feet, from his years among the outcast monks of Chap). Before long, the nonlinear structure of our narrative was firmly rooted in the idea of producing documents and artifacts that revealed only a portion of the totality, which would then lead to further discussion, attempts at integration, and ongoing creativity (often using dioramas built with the very type of plastic figures that influenced our imagination from the beginning). It became a perfect organizing principle—not original to us, I suspect—and reinforced the historicity of our approach, removing it forever from a strictly oral realm. An explosion of development followed, with numerous drawings, carvings, models, and written fragments. Spinning yarns within “The Legend” has never been the same since.

Olden…

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