Notes on Return to Xanadu, Chapters 1-4
Oct. 9th, 2014 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stefanie_beanI've never done this for my fanfiction before, but it seemed like it might be fun. Below the cut are some notes, thoughts, inspirations behind some of the story elements in the first four Return to Xanadu chapters.
Chapter 1: The New Jacob
Thomas Traherne (1636-1674) was an English metaphysical poet and writer. I cheated a bit here with the quote; it's actually a prose piece from Centuries of Meditations. I put it in verse form because I heard it sung before I ever read it.
Ben's new clarity of vision serves a twofold purpose. First, it lets Ben know that these good and beautiful things which have surrounded him, but never quite touched him, *can* happen to him. Second, it's an outward and visible sign of Ben's evolving inner transformation: his inner sight is clearing, as well as his outer.
The bird scene was influenced by illustrations for the Sufi poem The Conference of the Birds by Attar. The birds set off for the mountaintop, to find the mysterious simurgh (Jacob.) They are led by the spiritually wise hoopoe (Hugo), and as they pass through trials on the way to the simurgh's "magic mountain," they fall behind, one by one (those on the Island, including the Candidates.) Finally, a handful of remaining birds make it to the mountain-top, but instead of finding the simurgh, they find only their own reflections (think of the mirrors in the Lighthouse.)
Chapter 2: Roses in December
In Catholic lore, some saints have a floral smell about them at death (the "odor of sanctity.") It's also associated with incorruptibility, where the body doesn't decay as it normally would.
In "House of the Rising Sun" (1x06), Jack and Kate find the bodies in the cave, and Jack tells Kate that "it takes 40 or 50 years for clothing to degrade like this." Later we discover that the bodies were there for about two millennia. I know it's probably because in Season 1 the creative team didn't know whose bodies those were going to be, but in my head canon, while the Man in Black and his "mother" weren't saints by a long shot, the Island did preserve them beyond the bounds of nature.
Chapter 3: Flight of the Phoenix
The title comes from the 1964 novel by Elleston Trevor (made into a brilliant 1965 film starring Jimmy Stewart.) An airplane transporting oil-field workers is damaged in a sandstorm and crashes, stranding the survivors in the Libyan Sahara. The only way they'll get out is to accomplish the seemingly impossible task of repairing their plane.
In LOST, mechanical things sometimes work when they shouldn't, like in "Tricia Tanaka is Dead" (3x10), when Hugo successfully starts the VW microbus, which even has vines growing all over its engine.
That scene is echoed in "The End" (6x17) when Frank gets the Ajira jet to start. Frank's "Amen," to me, ratifies that something highly unusual has just taken place, because technically the Ajira plane shouldn't have been able to take off or fly at all.
Chapter 4: Welcome to Tarawa
I wanted to send my travelers to a place where they'd be able to just sit for awhile, to reconnect with themselves and each other. The Republic of Kiribati (pronounced "Kir'-ih-bas") is a remote equatorial Polynesian country whose capitol is on Tarawa Atoll, and whose closest ties are to Australia and New Zealand. So it's relatively independent of both British and American influences. Because Tarawa is so far from everything, in the mid-2000s they still had very limited international radio, television, and internet.
Chapter 1: The New Jacob
Thomas Traherne (1636-1674) was an English metaphysical poet and writer. I cheated a bit here with the quote; it's actually a prose piece from Centuries of Meditations. I put it in verse form because I heard it sung before I ever read it.
Ben's new clarity of vision serves a twofold purpose. First, it lets Ben know that these good and beautiful things which have surrounded him, but never quite touched him, *can* happen to him. Second, it's an outward and visible sign of Ben's evolving inner transformation: his inner sight is clearing, as well as his outer.
The bird scene was influenced by illustrations for the Sufi poem The Conference of the Birds by Attar. The birds set off for the mountaintop, to find the mysterious simurgh (Jacob.) They are led by the spiritually wise hoopoe (Hugo), and as they pass through trials on the way to the simurgh's "magic mountain," they fall behind, one by one (those on the Island, including the Candidates.) Finally, a handful of remaining birds make it to the mountain-top, but instead of finding the simurgh, they find only their own reflections (think of the mirrors in the Lighthouse.)
Chapter 2: Roses in December
In Catholic lore, some saints have a floral smell about them at death (the "odor of sanctity.") It's also associated with incorruptibility, where the body doesn't decay as it normally would.
In "House of the Rising Sun" (1x06), Jack and Kate find the bodies in the cave, and Jack tells Kate that "it takes 40 or 50 years for clothing to degrade like this." Later we discover that the bodies were there for about two millennia. I know it's probably because in Season 1 the creative team didn't know whose bodies those were going to be, but in my head canon, while the Man in Black and his "mother" weren't saints by a long shot, the Island did preserve them beyond the bounds of nature.
Chapter 3: Flight of the Phoenix
The title comes from the 1964 novel by Elleston Trevor (made into a brilliant 1965 film starring Jimmy Stewart.) An airplane transporting oil-field workers is damaged in a sandstorm and crashes, stranding the survivors in the Libyan Sahara. The only way they'll get out is to accomplish the seemingly impossible task of repairing their plane.
In LOST, mechanical things sometimes work when they shouldn't, like in "Tricia Tanaka is Dead" (3x10), when Hugo successfully starts the VW microbus, which even has vines growing all over its engine.
That scene is echoed in "The End" (6x17) when Frank gets the Ajira jet to start. Frank's "Amen," to me, ratifies that something highly unusual has just taken place, because technically the Ajira plane shouldn't have been able to take off or fly at all.
Chapter 4: Welcome to Tarawa
I wanted to send my travelers to a place where they'd be able to just sit for awhile, to reconnect with themselves and each other. The Republic of Kiribati (pronounced "Kir'-ih-bas") is a remote equatorial Polynesian country whose capitol is on Tarawa Atoll, and whose closest ties are to Australia and New Zealand. So it's relatively independent of both British and American influences. Because Tarawa is so far from everything, in the mid-2000s they still had very limited international radio, television, and internet.
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(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-10 04:25 pm (UTC)I had meant to reply back to your note about the Conference of the Birds - I feel like I should have recognized that as an inspiration, since I've read little bits of it, but I didn't. I just loved the scene.
I like Ben's sight returning being a symbol of his inner transformation. There are always so many lovely layers to your work.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-10 04:52 pm (UTC)Forgot to mention under Chapter 1 notes above, that in the Season 6 episode "The Lighthouse," the "conference of the birds" theme comes across strongly when Hugo talks Jack into trekking to the Lighthouse. Jack climbs to the top, and of course Jacob is nowhere to be seen, so Jack demands to know where he is.
Then Hugo starts playing with the pulleys which control the Lighthouse's mirror mechanism, and houses start to appear - the houses of the candidates, including Jack's own. Then at one point we see Hugo's face reflected in the mirror (three-fold, because the mirror has three panels.)
It's kind of obvious if you know the Attar story, and have the benefit of hind-sight: that these two men are in effect the two who "make it" to the mountaintop, and both of them do become protectors (even though Jack's tenure is very short.)