So, you might know I have a sort of obsession with the Orphic Hymns; I’m usually memorizing one or another of them. I also have a sort of obsession with the Wheel of Fortune; it’s the closest thing I have to a religious symbol, and I have a Wall of Wheel in my office. Now to be fair, I have a lot of obsessions. But today—a day when I really should’ve been doing lots of other things—these particular two kind of collapsed into one.
The Orphic Hymn I’m in the middle of memorizing right now is #59, the Orphic Hymn to the Fates. It’s slow going. It’s 20 lines long and the Greek is hard (for me). It’s so hard I recorded myself reciting it and uploaded it to my Spotify local files so I could listen to myself on infinite loop (very apropos for the Wheel) and learn it by ear. But since even I can’t listen to myself reading Orphic Hymns 24/7, I also listen to music a lot too.
One of my newest favorites is a 2021 release called “wish you the best,” by Joy Oladokun. I’m listening to it on repeat, thinking What is it! about this tune? when I suddenly realized it’s a dactylic meter song. Occasionally this happens: I notice that a song has kind of a cadence to it that reminds me of the dactylic hexameter rhythm of the Orphic Hymns. The last one was “Funnel of Love,” by SQÜRL, which I ran across while learning the Hymn to Zeus. I don’t know why these things collide in my brain like this, but they do.
Anyway, suddenly I had this problem: I couldn’t listen to my new favorite song without also trying to recite the Hymn to the Fates. This is partly because of the rhythm, sure, but also I think because of the content of the song, which is ostensibly about a past relationship, and how the singer—now older and wiser—has moved on and wishes her ex well. But you can also read it as a meditation on Fate itself: how life treats us roughly or gently, and how we learn. How we always try to respond in the best way possible, even though so often we have no control at all over what happens to us. This, in fact, is one of the tenets of my own praxis: You can’t control exactly what will happen, but there is always a better or a worse way to respond. You can always choose the better way. Not saying I always do. Just that I know the choice is there.
There’s also something about the hypnotic, repetitive pulse of the song that reminds me of spinning a web, casting a spell, drawing out the thread of Fate. When I recite the hymn in sync with the music, it feels like a prayer, an incantation, a desire given form.
Anyway, I had to deal with this earworm problem, so I did the usual and just dove straight down the wormhole. I’m not going to go so far as to do a video, but here’s the (warning!) not-very-edited recording:
And if you want to follow along and see the weird parallels between the hymn text and song lyrics, well, I can’t blame you. I would too. Here you go.
And if you enjoy hearing Orphic Hymns read in reconstructed Erasmian Ancient Greek—I don’t know your life—there are more here and on my YouTube channel.