xposted – Page 8 – THE LEGEND OF THE GREAT HORSE trilogy

On the Trail of History

If history may be said to be the memory of the human race, it seems subject to many of the same failings of accuracy and interpretation. We see this even in our most recent history: for example a national self-image embraced by some which holds America to be a militaristic warrior-race which “won” WWII, rather than the gentler truth that we were beloved as the good guys who did not continue war-making but instead helped rebuild Europe.

If even recent incidents can be mis-interpreted (or mal-interpreted), can events further in the past can be accurate and valuable?

An answer is in corroborative evidence that points to explanation, such as archaeological remains that support period documentation. Art is a hugely valuable window into the heart of a culture. Diaries, journals, new items, accounting records—there are many forms of documentation that can lend credence to historical truth.

Without honest inquiry none of this matters but, even with this impulse, how can one find relevance to our own experience? Is it relevant, say, that as our Roman forebears grew prosperous, a merchant class rose that militarized the culture, formed corporations to buy up land in Italy and dispossessed the working class farmers, replacing the food crops with vineyards which led to starvation and the grain dole and the creation of the infamous masses?

These things happened … do they matter today? If so, how to talk of this in a corporate world with a focus that leaves such history uncovered? Is it necessary to careen from disaster to disaster as humanity has done for millennia, or can we use history to connect the dots and create a better world for all of us?

History as an afterthought

History is an inexact science to be sure, relying at least partially on hearsay and filtered through the political whims of its era. History is also old in the physical sense of the word, an unattractive quality to some.

But the past isn’t dead. As William Faulkner said, “it isn’t even past.”

Yes, the actors are gone, places have closed or vanished. Attitudes and beliefs have also changed … but it is this sort of mental change that is the value of knowing history: to discover what fails, and what succeeds.

A society’s shared knowledge of history can be compared to a person’s memories. It would be a tragedy for an adult to lose the lessons of youth, to forget what happens when your hand meets a hot stove or a light socket. We could not expect an adult without memories of prior experience to prosper, or even to survive very long. Human society may be no different.

There is nothing inherently needful about human society on Earth: nature proceeds quite well without us. Mankind has the tendency to forget the value of cooperation and commonwealth and retreat to our primitive tribal tendencies as frightened creatures suffering Hobbesian lives–“nasty, brutish, short.” These cycles have been called “dark” ages, and these times of forgetting have occurred throughout human history. The “Middle Ages” are a recent example, a backward era that existed between antiquity’s civilization and our own. Human progress is not a straight line.

If mankind had never discovered fire, or the wheel, or horsemanship, or any of the multiplicity of specializations and customs and insights that make up civilized life–the forests and plains would be there, the world would still turn.

Some may see the world today and mistake success for inevitability. But there is nothing inherently necessary about human civilization on Earth. There is no observable feature of nature to preserve us in our ignorance. We prosper by our hard-learned knowledge, but the cliff is always there to fall from if we forget.

Equestrian Sport: ancestor of Circuses, Fairs, Parades & Festivals

Last weekend I visited our local Boston racetrack, Suffolk Downs, for an instant trip back in time. The white fences, the green landscaped infield, the mixed scents of horses, concessions and people, the growing excitement as a race approaches … it was a scene both nostalgic and modern.

Festivals and horses are an ancient tradition. Milling crowds, vendor booths and concessions, programs and barkers–the moving color and pageantry of our favorite public events trace a lineage through mounted cavalry exhibitions and roaring chariot racing “circuses” of antiquity.

At-The-Cirque-Fernando-Rider-On-A-White-Horse_Toulouse-Lautrec
Not so much has changed: clay tablets were once sold to eager audiences by shouting ushers of Roman times. Triumphal “parades” of horses drawing chariots marked victory in ancient ceremonies, and horseback entourages of through Medieval towns were an occasion of spectator celebration that continues in the parades of today.

Equestrian exhibitions of dressage in Renaissance Europe were the predecessors of the three-ringed Circuses beginning well before modern Barnum & Bailey and others. Even the modern Fair owes its beginning to harvest festivities with horse-racing and other competitive spectacles orbited by farmers’ stands and open-air markets.

Today equestrian sport has reinvented itself to keep pace with the modern world, and the ancients would have been amazed at the level of partnership seen in our modern horses and riders. Today’s international equestrian sports place the welfare of the horse at the core, and the “thrill” of older sports like chariot racing and jousting have been replaced by new thrills in highly competitive, colorful and technical sports that demand the utmost partnership with the animal.

It is amazing–and heartening–to see the reinvention of horsemanship in our modern age. The crowds have changed, the sports have changed, but the atmosphere and tradition of the festival continues in echoes of what has gone before.

Through the Looking Glass of History

Why I wrote “The Legend of the Great Horse”

A tragedy sparked The Great Horse trilogy (of which Eclipsed by Shadow is the first volume). I came to know of this sad event because I lived in Cambridge, MA, where it occurred.

It happened in the 1990’s as a wave of corporatization washed over Harvard Square, which was at the time a vibrant, diverse, spirited bright spot of educational culture situated near the heart of Harvard Yard. Due to the end of rent control, incoming corporate chains and commercial development replaced the great old used bookstores in Harvard Square, which housed decades of professor libraries on their shelves and in high-piled boxes and book stacks.

A trove of civilization’s knowledge, irreplaceable in aggregate, telling the story of the decades of the twentieth century in first person. Walking along the crowded aisles and browsing historical works was like running your fingers through treasure that was never to be yours—or anyone’s.

Happily, people haven’t stopped reading or buying books, and a few of the old stores do still survive around Harvard. You can still stoop and step down to get inside often cave-like entrances, to the honeycomb of ceiling-tall smooth-worn wooden shelves completely filled with reams of books, multi-varied colors in a celebration of thought.

History books can be the most colorful of all, and they noticeably contain horses. In all of human history, since prehistoric times of cave paintings, some successful part of mankind has had horses. Horses have adapted to human needs in every era throughout history, from pack animals to chariot teams–and yet have not essentially changed at all.

Horses are not domesticated in the sense of cats and dogs, but still retain full basic instincts. That inner permanence has made the horse a cultural barometer of sorts: flourishing horsemanship is very often associated with successful society. The reverse is also true, and horsemanship can be lost to barbarism. (ie, Eclipsed by Shadow, Bk 1)

The idea of The Legend of the Great Horse came from the ancient belief that horses were a gift from the supernatural. The time-traveling ability of the Great Horse is inspired and informed by the ancient legends. Flight, mobility and transcendent transportation are symbolized in the horse: time-travel is a development of that role.

The story of human history is one of many worlds, and the horse has galloped through them with us. The Legend of the Great Horse trilogy is a celebration of the adventures our horses have shared with us.

It has been an exciting ride!