*
The entire purpose of my final project seems to be to serve as a farcical reminder that the end of the world is always simultaneously imminent and incredibly far off. The point of that, then, is to show two things. The first is that those who would predict the end of the world are inherently wrong; despite all of our best guesses, there is simply no way to arrive at a definite answer as to when the world might end, nor is there a definitive guide as to how the end of the world will occur, either. This is not to say that those who believe in stories such as that in the Book of Revelation hold false beliefs. Indeed, far from it – I mean only to say that such stories should probably be taken allegorically so that they can be put into the proper context, both for their own times and for our own. That is to say, a story written nearly 2,000 years ago was surely written without knowledge of the conditions the world would face today (indeed, it seems that John of Patmos thought the end was far fewer than two millennia [and counting] years away) and as such cannot literally apply. The second point of showing the simultaneous imminence and distance of the end times is to give a sense of comfort, as it were – if we know that the end of the world is consistently imminent, then by that very same logic it ought to be so far off that it should not concern us. There will be other stresses throughout our lives, and worrying about the apocalypse should not necessarily be one of them.
My final paper for this class touched somewhat upon that idea – the fear inherent in being faced with constant predictions of the end of the world. Such a fear in a person without any sort of release is dangerous, as their mental state is more likely to conscionably allow them to bring about one of the many ends they’d heard and latched on to. People may find comfort then, I argued, in the music of Bruce Springsteen. He uses a relatively large amount of Catholic/Christian imagery in his music (quite a bit of it coming from that last book of the Bible) in addition to the traditional fast cars, loud guitars and pretty girls inherent in the best Rock music. Seeing (or, more accurately, hearing) this in Springsteen’s songs naturally draws people in, as they’re confronted with the very imagery they’d been running from, albeit in a friendly way, so to speak – there’s something to be said for the ability of someone else speaking/singing about the things you fear to make you feel a bit more comfortable, both with yourself and with those images.
My creative project does not follow this to the letter, per se. What I’ve put together is a “lost book of prophecies” of the end of the world. Or, more accurately, I’ve put together a book of prophecies on the return of Christ to Earth and the beginnings/ends of tribulation periods. I attribute the work to a John of Patmos who has had a falling out with God’s angels, as it were, the book having been written despite their warnings against it because of this anger. I’ve taken the paper and made it look as old as I possibly could, including water and other liquid-damage stains, and perhaps a bit of burning here and there. The idea behind this is that there were several hundred copies of this manuscript in the world, all of which have been traced down by the Church and various other organizations except for this one – and even this one has not perfectly withstood the tests of time; soldiers of Byzantium and the Holy Roman Empire after them have tried to take it way from my family for generations, and I just recently found it in a relative’s attic.
As a concluding sidenote, I’d like to point out that the binding of the book was, while not difficult, a bit time-consuming – to weave the lanyard through the holes punched along the side took a bit of sewing skills.
