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The Sirens’ Song of Endless Streaming
Well, Odysseus is in the news, and given our theme of music, mythology, and the Return phase of the hero’s journey, I remembered the Sirens’ song he faced on his return home. Now, the recent movie didn’t stick perfectly to the original text, and my musing here strays outside the canonical Campbellian lines, but it all set me to musing about things that keep us from getting home to our own Ithacas…and how music can distract us. The Sirens posed a dangerous temptation, and I wondered whether all those wonderful tunes on our playlists might tempt us in the same way. In light of how mythology has described Sirens—and there are other, non-lethal examples—there seems to be a paradox at work in how songs can sidetrack, and/or inspire, our lives.
Let’s do inspiration first.
Sirens’ song as inspiration
When I was in high school, my friend Arnie’s father had the best stereo system anyone had ever seen (heard!) and, after school, we would hightail it over to his house before his dad got home to crank up some Black Sabbath, Steppenwolf, Led Zeppelin, and Yes to completely inappropriate decibel levels. Oh brother, was it good. The experience created a kind of bliss that, honestly, served me well in later years as inspiration for my work, my art, and my thinking; the kind of music-induced bliss that suspends normal consciousness—without the assistance of, say, mescaline or psilocybin, ahem—and allows the mind to wander (and then wonder) about new territories, out there beyond the fences of socially sanctioned careers or lifestyles.
Philosophically speaking, this understanding of music is precisely what you find expressed, at length and in relatively turgid prose, in Schopenhauer's discussion of aesthetic arrest and the role music can play in freeing one from the tyranny and imposition of the will. I think most us went through something like this in the early 70s and, c’mon, nothing much has changed. Cranking up the tunes cracks you open to wonder at a somatic level, bypassing the habituated brain functions that reinforce socially prescribed ways of being. A lot of those old songs (if you haven’t, go back and listen to Steppenwolf’s Monster) are still on my playlist along with stuff like tunes from Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert, Billy Strings and, I guess, The Tales of Hoffmann. Anyway, that’s just me. Music returns me to a place that feels like home, to my authentic self, and to something deeper and truer than what I understand myself to be.
You’ve probably had that experience. Music as a return to your deeper truths. Music that floats your boat.
Outside of Homer’s mythology, Sirens play much happier roles. In Plato (in the completely weird and surprising “Myth of Er” at the end of his Republic—really, go Google it), the celestial spheres are warded by Sirens whose songs harmonize to sustain the architecture of the universe. Cool, right? And in Tolkien (Tolkien counts as contemporary mythology, doesn’t he?) the Ainur sing the cosmos itself into existence. So if we’re talking about Sirens, these examples are pretty desirable ways music can float your boat back to the safety of a home port.
“Having a bad day? Having trouble figuring out the meaning of your life? Just listen to the music of the spheres that created the universe, that’ll sort you out. What, don’t have any? No worries, here’s some Joni Mitchell.”
Anyway, all that sounds great. The Siren song of music can elevate and inspire us to “return” to our higher, better, selves.
Yay!
But.
What about those Sirens in Homer’s Odyssey? They aren’t there to inspire—they do exactly the opposite. Homer’s Sirens are there to tempt you from your adventure, to sidetrack you, to keep you from ever returning home.
So, Sirens can be good and awful? Hm.
Songs of enchantment and ruin
How to make sense of this paradox? As mythological, as metaphors, Sirens should be able to tell us something about our own lives. The inspiring version is pretty familiar, as described, but I started to wonder how that same music, our own Siren-song playlists, might tempt us from our personal adventure, and sidetrack us into non-action.
I kept thinking of that phrase: “music floats your boat” and found a paradox hiding in it—one that’s even worse than the upcoming, horrible pun. When we say something like “music floats your boat,” it follows that there might be a pair-of-docks at which you might disembark.
Whew. Sorry about that.
These two kinds of Siren describe a Muse-ickal pair-of-docks, what Campbell might describe, monomythically, as the razor’s edge between the Two Worlds. Music can inspire us to 1) engage with living-in-the-world and 2) music can amuse-us-to-death. Music can awaken the possibilities of the great adventure or rock you gently to sleep in your parents’ basement … forever. Musical bliss can open the doors of perception that let you see the adventure in front of you or lull you into the dopamine maze of endless streaming in a Fun House of musical mirrors.
Those are the two worlds we’re called to navigate and the ports of call offered by these two different kinds of Siren.
Tricky.
“Don’t worry about that Golden Fleece. Take a nap.”
Interesting, right? Yeah, but there’s more bad news.
I was optimistic when I started musing about all this, but I have to say, we’re in a much more dangerous situation than Odysseus was. Today, the technology that delivers all the blissful music-you-could-ever-want, much less listen to, has made the Sirens’ song industrially efficient. Algorithms are now in place to keep you clicking blissfully away for as long as possible, while continuously monitoring your preferences in order to feed you back your own preferred ear candy, chock full of delicious and nutritionally empty calories. To what end? The same as Homer’s Sirens: to keep you immobilized with the sweet diabetes of candy-corn-music-as-commodity. Homer’s Sirens are now streaming across all the navigable channels of social media, and the Muses have been monetized.
Perhaps we’re doomed? Maybe. But here’s a solution: what if we took a lesson from Odysseus? What would it mean to bind ourselves to the masts of our adventure, plug the crews’ ears with beeswax, and have them row us safely past the shoals, and temptations, of today’s Sirens?
Something to think about.
Thanks for musing along.
MythBlast authored by:
Mark C.E. Peterson is a Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies and past president of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture. Originally from Honolulu, raised in Minneapolis, Uppsala, Sweden, Chicago, Mobile, and Toronto. I’ve lived in Riga and Shanghai and West Bend, Wisconsin. A practitioner of taijiquan and kundalini yoga for over 40 years, I'm also a member of the Ukulele World Congress.
This MythBlast was inspired by the Return stage of the hero's journey and The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
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In this episode of The Podcast With A Thousand Faces we speak with Rupert Spira about the meeting place between the Direct Path and the mythic imagination. Rupert Spira is a teacher, author, speaker, and former ceramic artist whose work explores consciousness, non-duality, meditation, and the nature of lasting peace and happiness. His books include The Nature of Consciousness, Being Aware of Being Aware, You Are the Happiness You Seek, and The Shining of Being. Drawing from Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Sufism, Buddhism, Zen, and mystical Christianity, Rupert’s teaching invites us to look directly into the nature of experience and recognize the awareness that is prior to thought, belief, identity, and the story of the separate self. Before becoming widely known as a teacher of non-duality, Rupert spent decades as a ceramic artist, a background that gives his work a rare sensitivity to form, beauty, silence, and attention. Today, through his books, retreats, conversations, meditations, YouTube channel, Substack, and the Luminous meditation app, he continues to guide people toward what he often calls our true nature: the simple awareness of being. Together, Tyler and Rupert explore Joseph Campbell’s understanding of myth as a symbolic journey beyond the limited ego and into a deeper ground of being. They discuss the relationship between myth and direct recognition, the difference between progressive paths and the pathless path, the separate self as a story, poetry, pottery, beauty, the hero’s journey, spiritual integration, and love as the felt recognition of our shared being. This is a conversation about the stories that help us, the stories that limit us, and the possibility of recognizing what is prior to all stories: the quiet, radiant awareness in which life appears.
This Week's Highlights
"What is the Sirens’ song? It is the song of the mystery of the universe that makes it impossible to go on with mere phenomenal work."
-- Joseph Campbell
