/es-cha-to-l-ogy/ - the study of the last things
December 21 marks the speculative end of the Mayan Calendar, which some people believe indicate the end of the world. This hasn't been the first time that the world is supposed to have ended. May 21, 2011 was supposed to be the Rapture, according to Harold Camping, who revised the date to October 21, 2011. We seem to take any sort of claim of the end as something serious to consider. Yet we're still here.
The threat of apocalypse, however, is fluent in our culture. From Buffy the Vampire Slayer's conclusion about the nature of the plural of apocalypse (or why it is necessary) to Slavoj Žižek's analysis of post 9/11 culture in "Welcome to the Desert of the Real," the end of the world is shown to have cultural relevance, permanence, and seeped into our culture's most basic narrative structures. Art keeps bringing about the end of the world, decimating humanity for our entertainment.
Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) by Olivier Messiaen is about the end of time and based on the Book of Revelations. As a member of eschatology, the study of the last things, the work stands out as a vision of hope and faith. Its first performance, in the Prisoner of War Camp of Stalag VIII-A during World War II, generated a powerful and mythical history for the piece. Speaking about the end of the world during WW II was quite relevant and the threat of complete annihilation was just about to enter American culture to new heights with the atom bomb and the Cold War.
Imprisoned, captured, and with little hope, Messiaen presented a piece of music that depicts the final days of humanity and the ascent into heaven, complete with the ever widening gap between life and faith, trauma and hope.
The threat of apocalypse, however, is fluent in our culture. From Buffy the Vampire Slayer's conclusion about the nature of the plural of apocalypse (or why it is necessary) to Slavoj Žižek's analysis of post 9/11 culture in "Welcome to the Desert of the Real," the end of the world is shown to have cultural relevance, permanence, and seeped into our culture's most basic narrative structures. Art keeps bringing about the end of the world, decimating humanity for our entertainment.
Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) by Olivier Messiaen is about the end of time and based on the Book of Revelations. As a member of eschatology, the study of the last things, the work stands out as a vision of hope and faith. Its first performance, in the Prisoner of War Camp of Stalag VIII-A during World War II, generated a powerful and mythical history for the piece. Speaking about the end of the world during WW II was quite relevant and the threat of complete annihilation was just about to enter American culture to new heights with the atom bomb and the Cold War.
Imprisoned, captured, and with little hope, Messiaen presented a piece of music that depicts the final days of humanity and the ascent into heaven, complete with the ever widening gap between life and faith, trauma and hope.