In some ways this is the most obvious tenet of Hyp Prose.
Even with all of its “ravenous splendour of language” Scripture would not work if it only told the story of a reasonably successful insurance salesperson.
Likewise the strange and terrible events of the Gospels would lose all of their effect if they were narrated in the diction of a teenager texting a friend over WhatsApp.
There is however a deeper point.
There must be some reason that scripture has proven so powerful, that gives it the ability to build churches and charities but also to kill and torture so many people, to send such vast armies surging across the seas.
My explanation: the combination of a special kind of hypnotic language, that literally makes people lose their minds, along with uncompromising narratives of heroism and suffering, of love and lives given for love.
This mechanism has been exploited by religion, but may also be available to people who want to preach a much simpler gospel, a gospel of kindness and tolerance based on our shared humanity, a gospel that love is the only thing that really matters.
The sample text I have included is perhaps not as “Hyp” as other sections of Lightbringer but it does address the very human theme of abandonment and heartbreak, not quite at the level of “Lama Sabachthani” but it’s perhaps more relatable for that fact.
If you would like to read more, all of my books are available to read (free!) on my website.
P. Julian
3 March 2018
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When Winnie got home he showered and drank stale coffee and he sat down and wrote another letter to Isabelle, and although he did not begin it as goodbye it very soon turned into such a letter as that. He told her of his manifold feelings for her and how they had been written upon his heart in some long distant time, and that he had known who she was in the instant that he met her. He said that he bore no ill will towards her but that a grave heart-sickness was upon him, and that turning away from her was necessary for him in order to carry on in the world because there were people who needed him to carry on.
He thanked her for showing him what love really was and he ended by saying: if you ever need me Isabelle you need only cry out my name and I will be there for you, because I will surely hear that cry in my heart and it will guide me directly to you. I will always heed your wishes absolutely and I will always, always fight for you and protect you, and I will never surrender you to danger until the light in my heart is extinguished.
He then drew a heart and wrote his name and he saw a single tear drop to the page and roll into the centre of that heart, and from the centre of that heart he did not wipe it away. He rose and gathered his last letter along with the others stacked on his desk, and he put them all into a file that he marked also with a heart and with these words that were his own words in that they were written on his heart, and written on every other kind and courageous heart in the world: You Should Be Loved.
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