One-on-one with my Maker
- Arnold Hermann
- Jun 8, 2024
- 15 min read
Updated: Oct 7, 2024
Episode 001
Calamity Podcasts presents:
One-on-one with my Maker | Episode 001
(A candid conversation between character and author. The topic is The Ouranian Chronicles Series—the OC, for short. Simulation-script format.)
Credit: Image created by Pit Xeno in MidJourney, with input from Casey Carpenter, enhanced and retouched by Arnold Hermann.
Kayin: “Welcome to Calamity’s Tavern. My name is Kayin the Ariole, and I will be your host for this experimental podcast format. Our aim is to explore the inside story of how the upcoming True Fiction series The Ouranian Chronicles came about, why it was written, and for whom—including background information and character secrets that were omitted from the work. I should also disclose that I’ve been cast as the male lead in the series.
I am pleased to announce that we have secured the participation of the author of the work, Arnold Hermann. Welcome to our premiere. I hope you like our humble design. It wasn’t easy to create the layout of a bar located at the end of time.”
Arnold: “On this side of the end. A little oasis, double-parked alongside Time’s Arrow.”
Kayin: “Yes. Our version of a simulated Refuge from Time.”
Arnold: “Glad to be here, wherever here is. I like what you guys did with the place. I recognize Aušrinė’s touch. Polar bears and stuffed crocodiles.”
Kayin: “So, let us start at the beginning. Why did you write the Ouranian Chronicles?”
Arnold: “Well, primarily I wanted to tell the story of a forgotten world. Our world, yet written from the point of view of someone whose memories have remained faithful and true throughout our time on this Earth, not distorted by culture and societal pressures . . . to say nothing of shame and regret . . .”
Kayin: “In other words, my character? But, speaking as Kayin, I hardly qualify, do I? Just look at the terrible things people have said about the one they call Cain. According to most, he is the worst human being who’s ever lived.”
Credit: Sculpture of Cain by Giovanni Dupre, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Arnold: “Cain is your namesake. Your alter ego supposedly. He is the consummate whipping boy. The world needs someone like Cain. To be the benchmark for the worst in us. But who says the tales about him are true? Shouldn’t we take them with a healthy heaping of salt? Think about it: who actually profits from Cain being the bad guy—as an ethical lesson? His Lord? Or humanity?”
Kayin: “It’s not easy being considered the world’s bad guy.”
Arnold: “Nothing easier than that, especially if there is no bad guy. Look, this is not just about you and some people’s ill-informed beliefs. Those who spread the tale had an agenda. Agendas like to hide. Behind propaganda. In my studies as philosopher, I became painfully aware that most of our history is fictionalized. To say nothing of the staggering gaps in the narrative. As though our record as human beings was cleansed of all the uncomfortable questions. The easy solution was finding a scapegoat to blame so the rest of us could move on. Generation after generation had a hand in this subterfuge. I am not a fan of conspiracies, but if there ever was such a thing as a worldwide conspiracy, it’s the conspiracy of blaming and forgetting. Blaming in order to forget.”
Kayin: “You don’t think much of a society that glorifies forgetting. That is quite clear.”
Arnold: ”Thank you.”
Kayin: “So the Ouranian Chronicles are like an antidote to our self-imposed amnesia? But if the stuff that is being repressed is as shameful and regretful as you say, doesn’t that make for a difficult read? Why should people want to remember painful things?”
Arnold: “Ah, for the beauty of the characters involved. You guys are there to sweeten the medicine. You, Aušrinė the Red, Princess Setenay, brave Niyne, Fair Y’lira, and Kato. Plus the Grandmother of Dreams, Ao the one-eyed Wu-man, Valerius the Thracian, the Sami Aanaar, Bias the sage, warrior-poet Archilochus, Kyniska of Sparta, fierce Khawlah bint al-Azwar, then the Triumviri, Iris, Reginald, and Alarcon, also Lady Dar, Ono no Komachi, little Proxima . . .”
Kayin: “Even Stalin?”
Arnold: “Yes, even the man known as Joseph Vissarionovich Jughashvili. How can I write a comprehensive work and leave out one of the world’s most feared men? How can I allude to Cain but be silent about Stalin? As a philosopher, I had no choice but to try to plumb the man’s human side, to see what made him tick. I was looking for another benchmark. The darkest I could think of. Don’t forget my own father was a victim of Stalinism, ending up a prisoner in a forced labor camp on the shores of the Black Sea. Though just as mortal as his victims, Stalin was capable of monstrosities the rest of us cannot comprehend let alone imitate. Yet the man was loved unconditionally by Kato, his first wife. When he was still Soso—years before he became Stalin. I stood by her grave in Tbilisi. Gazing at her gentle features imprinted on the marble headstone, I pondered the marvel of innocent love . . . Why didn’t she see the monster lurking behind his amber-colored eyes? I had to tell their story . . . lest we forget.”
Credit: (Left) Ekaterine “Ketevan / Kato” Svanidze, Stalin’s first wife, c. 1904, Wikipedia.
(Right) Young Stalin, c. 1902, Wikipedia. Originally, Georgian MIA Academy Archive, II
Division former IMEL Archive [SShSSA].; reproduced in Stalin: Passage to Revolution. Princeton University Press, 1st edition, 2020.
Kayin: “Even if some of it makes us feel uncomfortable . . .?”
Arnold: “Sorry, but that is part of the propaganda. ‘If you think about this or that, it will make you feel bad. So think about something else.’ That is the lie. It’s a diversion. It is for this reason that some people feel manipulated. They sense that they’ve not been told the whole truth. It is why so many are looking for ways to “find themselves,” to discover who they really are, how they got here, and why, and what they are supposed to do next in this world. I came to realize that the perennial philosophical directive “To Know Thyself” is only applicable if the “knowing thyself” part has been obscured or distorted somehow. It’s like we have a functional GPS, but we’ve been given the wrong address. No matter how often we try to get there, we never seem to end up in the right place.”
Kayin: “I think you wrote somewhere that instead of looking for their true Self, people are looking for their soul.”
Arnold: “How can we not know what we are? There is obviously not another you living inside you called soul. I have borrowed the previous question from the movie Blade Runner, since it presents us with an interesting riddle. Referring to a bioengineered individual—who is unaware they were not naturally conceived—the main character Deckard asks: ‘How can it not know what it is?’ Tell me, why is it acceptable to ask how come a “thing”—otherwise endowed with the ability to know—is not able to know itself, yet not acceptable to apply that same question to ourselves?”
Kayin: “You’re speaking of Rachel, the character known as a replicant. They were flesh and blood just like humans, but with genetically enhanced abilities.”
Credit: From the movie “Blade Runner” (1982), Internet.
Arnold: “It is wrong to consider such individuals things, but tellingly, Deckard does. Because of the philosophical implications, I’d rather focus on our own shortcomings. We have the capacity to know everything potentially, but not what we are. Why is that?”
Kayin: “Are you suggesting we have adopted this nebulous idea of soul to obscure our ignorance? A misdirection, or worse, a figleaf?”
Arnold: “The soul has been many things to many people. Like a shadow version of the Self that survives corporal death, or the breath of a deity animating a body, or a single noetic entity fulfilling a particular function as part of a noetic group. The latter configuration is prevalent in some shamanic beliefs.“
Kayin: “You mean specialized spiritual beings, like “body soul, “wandering soul,” “true soul,” “shadow soul,” etc.”
Arnold: “I prefer to speak of such entities as “noetic,” given that the term spirit carries just as much baggage as soul. “Noetic” denotes a mental or intellectual activity, one that can be perceived as separate or even independent. Like one’s conscience. How else should we explain Socrates’ daimon, for instance? The voice in his head holding him back from doing something regrettable. So I would rather side with the shamanic version of the “soul” concept because the idea of task or purpose is stressed.”
Kayin: “Yes, you have underscored the functional aspect of the soul in the OC, especially, its role as intermediary.”
Arnold: “Only to clear up some of the typical inaccuracies associated with it. The soul was viewed as an interface to another world for much longer than it served as a standalone entity—we just didn’t call it that. Instead we made it into a thing we possess and can therefore even lose, or sell. But the OC is primarily about the Self, who we are, where we come from, and why we are here. Still you were right to ask whether the soul is a figleaf. I’d say the soul is a mask behind which we hide ourselves . . . from ourselves. It’s more convenient than to admit we have absolutely no clue who we are.”
Kayin: “Wait! Is this the real meaning of The Masks of God, the title of Book 1? I thought the name referred to the Secret Order of Bane Maidens who fought sex-slavery in the 14th century. Weren’t these Circassian warrior-nuns forced to disguise their exceptional beauty?”
Arnold: “The Masks of God concept has a number of meanings—to be discovered by readers as they progress through the narrative. My overall aim was to point to the greatest mystery of all.”
Kayin: “That we are not of this world?”
Arnold: “Even more fundamental. It goes to our greatest failure as human beings. Tell me, how is it that after 10,000 years of civilizing our kind we’ve been able to put people on the moon, yet we are not an inch closer to understanding ourselves than when we started our curious journey? Why are we incapable of explaining something as common as “consciousness”—though we all have it, we all share it—indeed, it is our most universal feature. It makes us what we are . . . but who are we? So I embarked on an unusual thought-experiment: to tell our story through the eyes of someone whose awareness of self has not been tampered with. You.”
Kayin: “Me? The fratricide? The first murderer—an envious man who killed his own brother because he couldn’t contain his jealousy?”
Credit: “Cain slaying Abel” (1603) by Jacopo Palma Jr., 1548–1628.
Arnold: “A moral tale on the face of it. Nothing more. Anyone could have served as the boogey man in this case. After all, we are supposed to have been cursed with Original Sin at this point of the story, the sin of knowing too much. No, I will let others tell that version of Cain’s tale, if the lesson suits them. But you, you are Kayin the spear maker, a blacksmith—plus the old books say you invented agriculture, settling, and living in cities. You my man, represent the untold story. There are two aspects to your character that are far more intriguing than the old take. The first concerns your calling as farmer, in contrast to that of your “brother,” the shepherd. Your fraternal quarrel is but a simplified version of a much larger conflict—the greatest struggle in the course of human development that began when we were still hunter-gatherers.
Credit: Lascaux Cave, France. Image used under license from stock.adobe.com
For 200,000 years we were content with roaming about in search of food and shelter, never seeking to stay in the same place, always driven about by changes in climate and food shortages. Then, around 12,000 years ago, a miraculous development occurred. The real story we should tell ourselves is bifurcated: It begins with the discovery of agriculture on one side, and the domestication of animals on the other.”
Kayin: “Except for dogs. They were domesticated much earlier.”
Arnold: “You should know—from your life as Kariru the Farseeker. But I am speaking about the taming of wild cattle, sheep, goats, boars, and so on, including focused breeding, which began about 11,000 years ago. Due to changing conditions around the end of the great ice age, humans began to separate into two camps. For the sake of brevity we could call them Cains and Abels. The biblical tale of the two brothers is a simplified metaphor for a conflict of worldwide proportions.
Credit: Göbekli Tepe Archeological Site – Virtual Museum.
Should we live the life of nomads and herders, prone to repeated displacement by seasonal changes? Or should we seek to brave even the harshest of winters by fortifying our shelters and hoarding provisions, so we can tend to our cultivated lands again when the days grow longer, and the earth wakens from its icy slumber? It is this question, more than any other, which forged our beginning. And you, Kayin, not Cain, personify it.”
Kayin: “How so? I have been portrayed not only as brother-killer but also as the consummate outcast, a cursed man, forced to roam the world without rest.”
Arnold: “That is the exquisiteness of your existence, and one of the reasons I was drawn to your character. What the “brother-killer” simile really suggests is that by “murdering” his brother, Cain was forced to become Abel—though not at the expense of one lifestyle over the other. The lesson here is existential because it addresses who we have become, namely civilized humanity, which is a different species of humanity than hunter-gatherer humanity. So different we might as well be living on another planet.”
Kayin: “In other words, we need the settler gene to build our cities, our universities, hospitals, and institutions—allowing us to foster science so we can build space ports and rockets . . .”
Arnold: “Yes. But no more than needing the nomad gene to actually reach out to the stars. Every astronaut is an explorer at heart, burning with curiosity about what might be hiding behind the next hill, the next mountain, the next planet.”
Kayin: “So you are saying that to become civilized we have to be both: settlers and nomads, farmers and herders, growers and breeders—Cains and Abels.”
Arnold: “Precisely. Cain has been portrayed not only as a “man without a country”—exiled to the sinister “Land of Nod” which we are told is “East of Eden”—but as Kayin he is also the world’s first city-builder who named this initial bastion of civilization “Enoch,” after his first son.”
Kayin: “Yet in the OC you have me distancing myself from the biblical account. Especially when Setenay Silver Mask inquires into my notoriety as the brother-killer. I am not quite disavowing the claim, but I am not affirming it either.”
Arnold: “Because it is a myth, or rather a biblical treatment that simplifies a much older legend told in the Sumerian poem, Inanna Prefers the Farmer. In this earlier version, the goddess Inanna is courted both by the shepherd, Dumuzid, and the farmer, Enkimdu.
Credit: (Left) “Inanna receiving offerings” on the Uruk Vase, c. 3,200–3,000 BC. Wikipedia Link”
(Right) “Terracotta figurine of priest.” Babylonian. Middle Bronze Age, 2,000 BC, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston."
Initially, the goddess favors the farmer and his crops, but her brother, Utu, convinces her that the shepherd has more to offer than the simple farmer. No one dies in this tale. After Dumuzid’s marriage to the goddess, he and Enkimdu become friends, and they even exchange gifts. In my judgment, this is a far better end to the story morally speaking, since it accentuates that agriculture and animal husbandry are equally important for humanity. But on the face of it, we are dealing in both versions with a shepherd’s and a farmer’s attempt to be favored by a god, with the shepherd winning the competition in the end.”
Credit: “Inanna and Dumuzid,” c. 14th–12th century BC, Middle Elamite period.
Department of Near Eastern Antiquities of the Louvre, Paris.
Kayin: “Is this why you have me bring up Inanna’s story to Setenay? I was never comfortable with the Cain and Abel allusions.”
Arnold: “I did not want to have you bogged down in biblical disputes and minutiae. Setenay, in her role of a 14th century Circassian princess and worshiper of Ta shkho, is anyhow pagan—a follower of the old Adyge religion. Your character was meant to soar above doctrinal controversies—akin to Tengri’s goose floating above the Waters of Time. As I said before, there is a second aspect connected to Kayin’s persona that seems far more intriguing philosophically, than the allegorical brother-killer angle.”
Kayin: “The chronologer. Serving as humanity’s witness.”
Arnold: “Correct. This aspect is implied even by the biblical account. Doomed to be a fugitive and wanderer, the Cain/Kayin persona becomes both bearer of the divine mark and witness of the repercussions of his crime. His role as the personification of a symbolic warning requires Cain to endure as Kayin. His is a cautionary tale: “Do not do what I have done,” which only works if the warning is carried forth from generation to generation. In this sense, Kayin is cursed with immortality—at least that is what many theological commentaries seem to suggest. Pope Innocent III went so far as to make Kayin’s immortality part of Church doctrine. In his 1208 bull, Ut esset Cain (“To be Cain”), Innocent asserts, “God commanded for Cain to wander the Earth forever repenting the killing of his brother Abel.” Now setting aside the anti-Semitic polemics advanced by the papal bull—seeking to equate all Jews with the brother-murderer—I was naturally drawn to the immortality aspect. Cain is not only the first sinner (after the Fall), but he is the only transgressor who becomes rewarded for his sin with immortality rather than death. That is significant.”
Credit: Unknown. From http://www.fuldaer-nachrichten.de/?p=165890
Kayin: “But you are letting me die in the Ouranian Chronicles, just like everyone else. Only my memories are restored time after time.”
Arnold: “I wanted to write a thinking person’s fiction in the manner of Plato’s dialogues, not magical fantasy. And there are plenty of precedents in Ancient Greek philosophy of how such a marvel could be pulled off. Pythagoras’ ability to remember his previous lives is certainly one solution. Born originally as Aethalides, the son of the god Hermes, he could not obtain immortality from his divine father since his mother, Eupolemeia, was mortal. So he asked Hermes for the next best thing, the ability to retain his memories life after life.
Credit: (Left) Pythagoras, Roman marble head (49.3cm), from an original Greek head from the middle 5th century BC. Collezione Giustiniani, poi Collezione Albani. Museo Capitolino, Sala dei Filosofi (Hall of Philosophers).
Photo by Giovanni Rinaldi for Parmenides Publishing.
(Right) Detail of Hermes on the front of the Euphronios Krater (515 BC), in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sep. 2007; Archaic signed by Euxitheos, as potter; signed by Euphronios, as painter.
After he’s brought back as the Trojan hero Euphorbus, followed by lives as Hermotimus and Pyrrhus, Aethalides becomes finally born as Pythagoras and still capable of remembering everything. This was an attractive explanation of how Kayin could function both as eternal fugitive and witness to key historical events, becoming in time the impartial chronologer of humanity’s transgressions, and of the great upheavals that mark our development. Having seen everything Kayin’s neutrality is a moral one—and the reason I have him turn to skepticism, which teaches the ability to suspend judgment. This is not because he lacks a moral center, but because the memories he has accumulated over so many lives allow him to understand people’s motives and faults better than anyone else.”
Kayin: “You are calling this school of thought “benign skepticism”? With you being one of its members?”
Arnold: “Yes, this is where a biographical trait—or rather my own aspirations—spilled over into your character. I just couldn’t resist.”
Kayin: “In other words, you’ve retooled Cain’s restless wanderings into purposeful peregrinations. You gave me a mission. I became humanity’s witness, but with a 30,000-foot view. Which would make me God’s witness—except the notion is precluded by my skepticism. Is this why you have me compare myself to the Wandering Jew—later, when Setenay wants to know who I am?“
Credit: “The Wandering Jew,” illustration by Gustave Doré, 1856.
Arnold: “Well, the Wandering Jew is also said to be immortal—at least in his own way, if only to bear witness until the Second Coming. You, on the other hand, are the dispassionate witness for the Numen, an otherworldly presence that accompanies you on your wanderings—the very same entity that restores your personal memories, hence individual identity, life after life. This Numen is your “Hermes,” functionally—without being divine, of course. You see, to retell humankind’s story from an impartial and yet comprehensive perspective I needed the persona of an eternal observer, an historical Zelig—the Woody Allen character—or maybe a Forrest Gump-like protagonist who shows up at important historical junctures, ready to record the goings on and capable of preserving these accounts through multiple lives and deaths.
Credit: Merged images from the IMDb pages of the movies “Zelig” (1983) and “Forrest Gump” (1994)
You became a kind of backup drive for the otherworldly. For our muses, let’s say. I cannot reveal more about them here without spoiling the plot. Except for this: Since they cannot take part in our worldly affairs, at least not physically, you’ve functioned as their eyes and ears. But in doing so you’ve also become the most human of humans. It is what makes your story so amazing.
At first, I was trying to grasp your extraordinary objectivity, the result of having lived so many lives. It seemed almost godlike. Yet by taking your numerous “rebirths” into account, I came to realize that you were the perfect template for what it means to be human. I did not plan it that way. It is what my thought experiment revealed. Here was someone who had been born into, and who had witnessed first hand, every conceivable culture, society, and tradition, who at one time or another partook of every tribe, race, color, culture, creed, tongue, nationality, ethnic group, class, caste, gender, sexual orientation, and identity—someone who has seen humanity’s highs and lows, and who was there to both celebrate and to suffer it all. You are my ‘everyone.’”
Credit: “The Vitruvian Man” by Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1490. Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice.
Kayin: “Everyone? That is a tall order. Ask any actor to be ‘everyone’!”
Arnold: “Sure, everyone. Someone who can understand not only what we are, but who we are trying to be. Or become. Only this sort of person would know whether we are doomed, or worth saving. Whether we can save ourselves, from ourselves. So let me turn this interview around. Tell me, Kayin, can we save ourselves?”
Kayin: “You made me a skeptic, so I should not offer definite predictions. Though I could venture a hint. I think the answer will be found in Book 4, The Palace of Regret. Is this why you refuse to finish it?”
Arnold: “On the contrary, the end is already written. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be sitting here at Calamity’s Tavern. It’s the way we are taken to this place that remains to be fully fleshed out, or rather some of its steps. Like Wittgenstein’s ladder, we must climb it first before throwing it away. Putting it differently, there is no point in telling a punch line without the joke. Besides, I promised myself not to complete Book 4 until the previous books are out the door.”
Kayin: “Well, Book 1 should be ready quite soon as I was told. Eliza looks great in her red wig as Aušrinė’s stand-in. The redhead is getting a bit envious, says Setenay—something about, ‘Why can’t I cosplay myself?’”
Arnold: “Ha, Eliza will get a kick out of that. Are our glorious Bane Maidens around?”
Kayin: “That‘s them giggling in the control room. Which brings us to the end of the podcast. Thank you for listening. And thank you for your candid disclosures. This is ‘Everyone’ signing out. Until we meet again for another round of ‘One-on-one with my Maker.’”
Comments