Book 3, Letter 4. To Plato: The Symposium of Gabriel Roccisano

Book 3, letter 4

To Plato: The Symposium of Gabriel

*

Dear Plato,

I wake early to a grey clouded dawn, my head throbs with the after-effects of the beer I drank the night before, and I linger in the soft luxury of my bed for two hours, waiting for the world outside to glow with the bright colours of daylight before I rise and make coffee. A drop of boiling water falls on my naked foot as I pour from the kettle and I swear softly, but the pain passes quickly and I carry my cup back to the bedroom where I open my copy of your collected works, Plato, and I begin to read your Symposium. Love in all its forms is the topic of this dialogue, and Socrates, whom I am fast becoming drawn to for his absolute desire to speak the truth above all other considerations, seems to dominate the conversation with his perfect blend of storytelling and critical thinking.

I think back to last night. The Philosopher, the Alchemist, the Artist, the Poet and the Bard are for the first time in many months, gathered at a symposium of our own at a busy and crowded tavern in the city. The Artist is preparing to leave town, to live in a city on the east coast for half a year or more, seeking work, seeking love. He is heartbroken and world weary and desperate to find better work than can be found in the little city where we currently live, so, he has packed his belongings and is embarking upon his journey to the east.

I find myself surrounded by friends, acquaintances and strangers, all of us talking about art, music, storytelling and philosophy. In a shifting circle we talk about archetypes; the trickster, the mystic, the diplomat, the storyteller and the warrior. These five ideas fit easily in one hand, but quickly we find that they do not hold all that the world has to offer. Someone asks: What about the architect, or the maker? Every pantheon has a god working the forge. Someone else suggests that the archetype of the villain is someone who has no doubt, whose confidence in their own ideals makes them despotic. I name drop Caesar and we talk about the shifting weight of public opinion in deciding whether he was a hero or a villain. So is the hero defined by his quest to overcome doubt? I ask, and we jaw about the characters we know from fiction and their relative traits.

The Alchemist (who is a trickster) describes his personal project to create more tricksters in the world, and of his successes in forming a circle of pranksters who learn the ticks of his merry trade playing games on one another. Another trickster describes her place as the force of stability and reason within her own social circles, as she is the one who can laugh at all their troubles and smooth over the burrs of hurt egos with her clever wit and kindly mirth.

This raises the peculiar suggestion of chaos actually being a force of stability, since all of reality is in fact in flux. All those who create order, do so in opposition to the fluid nature of the world, and their orderly efforts create the friction which must inevitably be managed and subtly manipulated by the clever weaving hands of chaos. I point to the the tall, castle-like walls of the tavern in whose courtyard we sit and we smilingly appreciate the stability of those who built such an edifice, now wreathed in ivy and moss and bursting with the lively energy of a hundred or more people all talking at once in the coloured lamplight of a perfect summer evening.

Circles break and form and break and form as people come and go according to their taste and tall beauty sweeps through the garden where we gather. I speak with a magician who learned his art tending bars. I speak with a lonesome young father whose toddler daughter is his best friend. I speak with storyteller after storyteller and in the throng I see the Artist, dressed in black and surrounded by the thick press of his many friends. He is smiling sadly and I remember a poem I wrote for him on the fifth day of February, in the year Two Thousand and Eighteen.

Oh how heartbreak seem the constant

companion of love

That we who love are cursed and

blessed by the pain of such

delicacies

as to abandon our mind at the first sight of

love and sink willingly into the heartbreak

that is being Known by the other

How we break, are broken, and are remade

all by the same force that seems to cause

the heavens to turn and the rains to fall

we are the earth that force falls upon

we are the space through which the heavens soar

oh heartbreak, oh love's most bounteous gift

Take heed! For this heartbreak is unlike

any other you will know,

or have known.

Stand ready as the night inside you is

pulled apart by the fingers of the sun who

will not be denied their pleasure in you.

At the Symposium of Gabriel the Artist, the clock strikes the half hour as midnight approaches on this, the first day of February in the year Two Thousand and Nineteen.

You, Plato, and Socrates and Alcibiades and all my friends both dead and alive speak of love, speak of love, speak of love, while the Artist is preparing to leave town, heartbroken, world weary, hopeful. We are young, we are old, we are timeless, swimming in the eddies of an ocean deep and dark, seeking always the same things.

We speak of love, we speak of love, we speak of love.

Thank you Plato, your Symposium dialogue is absolutely beautiful. I especially like the part where Alcibiades, drunk as a skunk, crashes the party and delivers the most heartfelt speech of all, intoxicated as he is on both wine, and on the charms of Socrates. I think now that I too, am in love with Socrates. Socrates the war hero, Socrates the deep thinker, the enduring symbol of truth and courage. You make him look super-human, or at least, the best kind of human, possessed of wisdom, fortitude and beauty. Socrates, lover of men and women, friend to all who are seekers after truth.

Now that I have read your 'Symposium' twice through, I will read it a third time, if only so that I might be in the company of such illustrious and honourable friends. You have so much to say, and I have so much to learn.

Thank you Plato.

With gratitude, and love

Morgan.

PS. How strange now, realising that while I reveled in that summer night, the Artist's brother, (Rafael Antonio Roccisano) lay dying in a hospital bed, another philosopher who poisoned himself. Unable to reconcile his heart to the tragedy of life, drowning in booze and cigarettes, his blood so filled with toxins that his liver was no longer able to process them.

We speak of love. We speak of love.

Rafael Antonio Roccisano