Some thoughts on an alien perspective...
Oct. 13th, 2020 06:30 amI've been thinking about culture, as you do, from an extrinsic perspective; inasmuch as it is possible to imagine yourself into an alien viewpoint.
And I think we have been evaluating things pretty poorly.
Homer and Shakespeare and Cervantes and Goethe are very species-specific. Xeno-ethno-anthropologists will spend careers understanding the nuance of the human condition; using literary criticism, no doubt.
But Bach, Bach is not species-specific; appreciating it is sense dependent - a different order of thing; one that crosses species and culture.
So the idea is... excerpts from an alien narrative form akin to a serial; medium as yet undecided. The title being "Bad Headmaster" and set in the St Thomas School under Bach's Cantorship. The narrative explores the bad-tempered Bach and his well-tempered clavier. Then alien humour reveals itself as susceptible to absurdist juxtaposition and overnight the most important human cultural exports to the universe are Bach, Beethoven et al; and Spike Milligan and the Monty Python team.
The rest of it just writes itself. Which is why I can't be bothered.
And I think we have been evaluating things pretty poorly.
Homer and Shakespeare and Cervantes and Goethe are very species-specific. Xeno-ethno-anthropologists will spend careers understanding the nuance of the human condition; using literary criticism, no doubt.
But Bach, Bach is not species-specific; appreciating it is sense dependent - a different order of thing; one that crosses species and culture.
So the idea is... excerpts from an alien narrative form akin to a serial; medium as yet undecided. The title being "Bad Headmaster" and set in the St Thomas School under Bach's Cantorship. The narrative explores the bad-tempered Bach and his well-tempered clavier. Then alien humour reveals itself as susceptible to absurdist juxtaposition and overnight the most important human cultural exports to the universe are Bach, Beethoven et al; and Spike Milligan and the Monty Python team.
The rest of it just writes itself. Which is why I can't be bothered.