"And what did you do during the Time of Chaos, Grandpa?"

This Story Shall the Good Man Teach His Son...

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian

He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’

Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son…

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”

Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV, Scene 3

An odd form of entertainment has emerged in the 21st Century. It is at once narcissistic and poignant, self-aggrandizing and on occasion deeply moving (at least to me). I confess I have become rather addicted to it, as it gives me hope and ignites in my weary heart a spark of love for humanity, brings a tear, and revives my flagging hopes in this darkening time.

I speak, of course, of Fan Reaction Videos on YouTube.

I first came across the phenomenon in the globally-riveted final season of Game of Thrones. Episode Three, The Long Night, wherein the world is about to be overrun by a vast army of undead zombies, featured a stunning deus-ex-machina twist which sent audiences around the globe into a 30-second emotional roller coaster of shock, horror, relief, and ecstasy as the dreaded Night King is killed at the last possible moment by the diminutive but dauntless assassin, Arya Stark.

I don’t recall how I ended up seeing a fan reaction video set in a typical West Side Chicago tavern called The Burlington Bar. But the sight of a crowd of utterly transfixed ordinary people, completely caught up in the denouement of a story they’d followed for years, to see their suspense, their shock, their horror, and their raucous gobsmacked tearful bliss as the ice-blooded villain crumbles in a million fragments, his dreaded soulless lieutenants, dependent on him for their existence, explode to dust, and the vast Army of The Dead itself simply drops in its tracks, the human race saved from annihilation at the last possible moment - all due to the intrepid and obsessed vengeful courage of little Arya - this hit me where I live. As an actor, as a storyteller, as a sacred activist in a dark time, as a student of history (okay, and as a Chicagoan), I found that I could watch this clip (and the dozens like it that I soon discovered) over and over and be deeply stirred, even to tears, nearly every time.

Some of that ability to weep again at something I just wept at five minutes before may be due to those years in the theater, to the paradoxical blend of discipline and carefully channeled emotion whereby an actor is able to experience and convincingly convey authentic spontaneity as he acts out a story he has rehearsed for weeks and then re-experienced eight times a week for months.

But that’s only part of it. I’ve concluded that this is a deep and authentic response to the most beautiful and inspiring aspects of human nature: our innate resonance to the power of story, and our need to believe in the hope of redemption in the midst of bleak times.

And we are in bleak times.

A time of crumbling and chaos appears to be upon us - the necessary precursor (one hopes) to a time of transformative rebirth. Whether it is the threat of war on three fronts (yes, three, as we often forget the China/Taiwan powder keg in our traumatized focus on Ukraine and Gaza), or the conveniently ignored imminent collapse of the U.S. dollar, or the raging environmental crisis, or the relentless worldwide progress of elite crypto-fascism, surveillance, media brainwashing, and Big Pharma terrorism - we appear to be rapidly approaching a tipping point (weeks or even days away?) at which a dizzying acceleration of events is triggered, an epochal date on the calendar akin to the birth of Christ after which everything is recorded as occurring either BC and AC (Before Chaos and After Chaos).

God, as usual, is keeping Her cards close. So many fascinating, hopeful, or horrific timelines to choose from! An electoral tie between Trump and Harris, leading to riots, paralysis, or even a dissolution of the Union? A Kamala tidal wave in which DT is forever buried, imprisoned and the GOP disgraced and fatally crippled, to be replaced by a sane alternative party? Does America then awaken from a hopium binge to discover that our new darling is just the latest charming puppet for the corrupt financial elite and their agenda of gradual enslavement? Or does she lead a genuine peaceful revolution of compassion and courage, as so many begin to hope? Do the pharma-terrorists unleash a new and more terrifying pandemic, to enable the forced vaccination and incarceration of the Truth Movement? Or does the corporate media propaganda machine inexplicably begin to share actual news and revelations of their puppeteers’ crimes, leading to the overthrow of the Cabal?

However this plays out, this time the world will not, I am convinced, somehow avoid upheaval (as it has done in recent decades), will not stumble through with a patch here and an amputation there, via an artificial propping up of the financial system, or a conveniently manufactured crisis or horror designed to distract us all from The Man Behind the Curtain.

The jig is up.

So we need to prepare. Morally, spiritually, financially. We need to reach out to neighbors regardless of politics. We need to create local food banks, active and responsible neighborhood watch groups (like this one in my small mountain town in Colorado), and cultivate good relations with local law enforcement. In America, we need to remember, understand, and champion our precious Constitution. We need to champion health freedom - whether for reproductive rights or the right to refuse vaccination. We need to recognize the likelihood of financial collapse and make prudent investments in emerging decentralized economic systems or in asset-backed cryptocurrencies.

More than anything else we will need to resist fear and choose hope, choose courage, choose love. The present elite-controlled system will not go gently into that good night. We will be asked, it may be, to inform on our neighbors, to fear those who love differently, look differently, or believe differently. We are likely to be severely tested in our moral character, our compassion, and our willingness to stand up for the values we profess to hold. We will almost certainly live through a time which will become, it may be, a time of legend. A time will come after the terrible dust and ash and fire settle into the newly fertile soil of a restored Earth, and then we may look back on the terrible crucible in which our souls were seared and reforged.

And then we will be asked to tell the story to our children and their children. “What did you do during the Time of Chaos, Grandpa?” And the storytellers, perhaps, will weave in the poetry and the pathos of “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” And the unique human capacity to immerse in the higher truth of an unforgettable story may cause us to weep for people we never met, or for characters who never existed, because the truth of the story breaks our hearts and heals them again.

I weep, you see, to watch others weep when they are tears of joy or inspiration. Tear-streaked faces at beer-stained bars, faces tense with fear and suspense lighting up in an instant with ecstatic relief, admiration, and hope - may such scenes always bring me tears as long as I live, though they stream down a face deeply lined with age or disappointments and betrayals. May I always love this most precious and adorable attribute of the human heart.

Frodo and Sam, exhausted, starving, wounded, crawl up the fiery slopes of Mt. Doom as all hope fades. They fall, crawl and then they collapse. This is the end. And Sam looks down at his dying friend and tries, almost absurdly, to revive his hope.

“Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It’ll be Spring soon. They’ll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields, and tasting the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries, Mr. Frodo?”

“No, Sam. I can’t recall the taste of food, or the touch of the grass, or the sound of the water. I’m naked in the dark. There’s nothing, no veil between me and the Wheel of Fire. I can see Him, with my waking eyes!”

“Then let us be rid of it, once and for all! Come on, Mr. Frodo! I can’t carry it for you. But I can carry you!”

They say that whole theaters of people stood up and cheered and grown men wept as Sam lifted his beloved friend on his back and carried him to the Crack of Doom. Even now, even to write the words causes a catch in my throat. This is truth. This is beauty. This makes life worth living. And this may carry us too, through the Fire.

blessings,

Michael