Happy New Year! It's 2023!
There's probably no greater testament to humanity's magical thinking than New Year's Day—and that's one of those rare statements that's equally true in both directions: On the one hand, the data surrounding the success of New Year's resolutions suggests it's pathetic that anyone still makes them anymore; why do we invest this date with such power? On the other hand, humanity's greatest achievements are built on the exact same kind of magic: The calendar is the foundation of civilization, one of the most magical of all human activities. What's the difference between successfully keeping a promise to ourselves not to eat Doritos all year long, and successfully keeping a promise to ourselves to get up every morning and, say, brush our teeth? Arguably, the only difference is the weight of expectation that we lay down upon that moment. By all appearances, it spoils everything.
If that's true, though, then where do masks get their power from? In the previous post, I introduced Majora's Mask and its role in shamanry. Having worked a little bit with masks myself, I can attest: They have the power to bring things out of us that we never dreamed we had within us. This can be positive or negative but regardless, it's effective. Ringing in the New Year and putting on a mask are both examples of "barrier cues;" why does one seem to turn our effectiveness on and the other one seems to reliably shut it down? What makes the difference?
In my opinion, it's ego. Ego takes the same essential force from one situation and, by virtue of its mere involvement, turns the whole thing inside-out. The mask works because it takes the place of the ego, which in most cases works to effectively absorb most psychic energy thrown its way or transform whatever still gets through.
I have a plan to connect all of these dots together, weaving a powerful spell that has the potential to change myself and the world, and trust me...I'm getting good at that kind of thing.
It starts with a New Year's resolution designed to sabotage "the ego trap."
The Ideal Resolution
If you're going to make a New Year's resolution (and don't lie, you know you're tempted on the inside even if you're posting condescending memes about them this evening), one way to prevent a shameful outcome is to carefully select your resolution. I would bet the most common way to do this is to make the resolution a definite, static goal like, "I will lose 50 lbs." This kind of resolution has 3 advantages:
Success or failure is clearly defined and irrefutable: You either succeed or you don't. If you succeed, congratulations! You reached your goal. If you fail, congratulations! You gave yourself a reason to be angry with yourself.
With a finite limit, the promise of success brings its own inherent motivational boost: We're much more likely to achieve a goal simply by setting it in the first place. One aspect of this motivation is, paradoxically, the motivation to quit, as we know if we actually reach our goal, then we can slack off and feel satisfied with ourselves.
Of course, the specificity also gives us an escape hatch before we're even out the gate, because as long as there's any time left in the year, we can tell ourselves we have not failed yet, that we still have time.
My resolution for the year is to become who I truly am. This resolution can neither fail nor succeed. I know enough about the way this process of "Becoming" works to know that any sincere effort in that direction will yield some result, so it can't fail. It can't succeed because "who I truly am" (if such a thing exists) is a Platonic form, an abstraction in the world of Being that can never be perfectly expressed in this, the world of Becoming. It can be more perfectly expressed, but never perfectly expressed; thus, even the most minuscule progress will be a success. As a plus, because the goal is open-ended, I also can't reach the goal at some point in May, pat myself on the back, and then wait until January 2024 to do anything else for my life. I have to keep going.
Do It Again
Do you know how many times I've re-started my game in Breath of the Wild since starting this blog?
Probably 2 or 3 times at least. I didn't know every picture I wanted to take when I started, and the events I've been covering, being focused on the start of the game, are each one-time events that I can't just keep repeating on the same save file. I've gotten all of that out of my system, however (to the tune of 470 screenshots wiped from my Switch in preparation for tonight). Today, owing to the resolution I've set and how I plan on pursuing that goal, I started a new playthrough. There were a few reasons, but they all boil down to The Champion's Ballad EX, and the magic(k)al power of masks.
If you read my previous post, did you follow the link to the lore page about Majora? I know I cracked a self-effacing joke in that part of the post about my whiteboy cultural appropriation, but this is serious now: That mask isn't there for some power-tripping hero to grab and plaster on his face to fuel his mad quest for self-importance. There's context there. You dug that mask up out of the ground? Get back to your roots and check this out: Majora is such a perfect figure to illustrate the power of masks because, if you checked, you'd see he was the villain of his story. He is the one villain so insane with an unbalanced version of "Beyond good and evil" going on that he's apparently the bad guy clearly for the sake of destruction itself. No rhyme or reason. That, dear reader, would set the context for why monsters leave Link alone when he puts on that mask: Because as far as monsters go, Majora is the daddy of 'em all. He is the Id run rampant. He is Nemesis in the sense of illustrating what can happen when the power of masks overwhelms our ability to control them. That mask may not be meant for actual use at all; its mere presence might be a symbol—a warning.
Even if you heed the lesson above and hold a proper respect for Majora's Mask, one other thing is true: It's arguable I don't deserve it yet. In the previous post, I went with the age-old, "It's in the game, therefore it's legit" loophole. Time for a reality check:
Breath of the Wild was released on March 3, 2017. The Champion's Ballad—which was a later expansion pack—didn't come out until December 7th. Honestly, most Zelda fans really riding the wave of this most current release would have already beaten the game by then, and they did not have the luxury of any of the many special items in EX that make life much easier for Link. Granted, I am playing in Master Mode, which itself wasn't available before EX was released, and there are significant parts of the game that Majora's Mask can't help with. Still, even if an argument can be made that the mask was actually put there to help modulate game difficulty (i.e., err on the side of making Master Mode too hard, but give Link an item that can help him survive in the early game), that's immaterial because the intention-setting here is about changing myself and more of my habits.
Speaking of which, this has just as much to do with another outfit you might have noticed in pictures across recent posts: The Phantom Ganon Armor Set. You know what that is?
That's my character armor.
I like to grab it early on in a playthrough, partially for utility purposes (the full set gives Link an armor rating of 12 for free, plus a full 3-level bonus to stealth/sneaking), and partially as a tongue-in-cheek gag about myself. This armor looks spooky (read: "badass") to the extent that NPCs react with startled fright when Link approaches them while wearing it. Plus, its other stat boost—additional damage done with bone weapons—is functionally worthless and only a bonus if you insist (likely for pretentious aesthetic purposes) on actually using Bokoblin Arms for weapons. Who does that? It makes me think back to my "punk" days...and it also echoes a person whom I no longer want to be.
There's some deeper meaning to the armor: You know that evil monster, Calamity Ganon, whom Link is here to fight? He's not the entire story; throughout previous Zelda lore, there is a distinction between Ganon—the dark monster taking various forms—and Ganondorf, King of the Gerudo, a big-time thief (hence the stealth armor bonus), but ultimately a man. In some versions of the tale, he's the man through whom Ganon incarnated into Hyrule. The story of Ganondorf echoes my own, and it echoes my reasons for playing this game the way I am and writing what I'm writing about it. To tell the first part of the story and to work on my New Years resolution means taking off my mask until I have demonstrated my respect for its power. The resolution of "becoming who I truly am" means the paradoxical act of ritually gathering, wearing, and using a ceremonial garb, a "mask" that somehow reveals me more clearly for who I really am than even my own body and identity. This will require doing the same in the context of this blog, and so I will now temporarily lower the Mask of Gogo Bordello to accomplish this.
Going Green
My story leading up to this post is long and goes back, as I've mentioned before, about 26 years now. In the previous version of this post, I told the story of my Initiation here; however, on this site, I have a whole post devoted to that, The Wind Rose. Aside from that, the only other thing to mention is that when I made my decision to practice Red Magic(k), I tried to hide it from Matt, but I think he knew.
If any of the above sounds familiar, it's because the colors of Matt's system were based on Magic: The Gathering. He used to tell me in all seriousness, regarding magic(k), "I think the people at Wizards of the Coast know something!" He also loved to extemporaneously weave some of our magic lessons into the game Final Fantasy VI, which he'd be playing while we talked. He'd used the elemental magic in the game to talk about real life magic(k) and stuff like that. He seemed to mean most of this literally and take it seriously despite the vehicle for delivery. He was also the first person to teach me about nature spirits, but he held that, by and large, the spirits were retreating into the digital world because that's where human attention was turning.
Where did he learn all this, if you asked him? He said he learned it directly from a Goddess. He told me her name, and it was not a name you would find in a historical mythology book. According to him, we were both members of her clan: "The Raven Clan."
Before too long, after growing apart for a while, my family life took a sudden turn for the worse and I stopped seeing much of my teacher at all; eventually, I was sent by my father to live with my mother in Chicago, and I never saw Matt again. I never became a druid, and I never took a student.
Without his influence, I advanced quite far down the Red Path. It ultimately came to define my entire life, in all the worst ways.
Let's pause; tell me: Where can you see my story thus far reflected in the events of The Great Plateau?
Coming Forth In Green
With my knowledge of the game, I can see many ways, in Breath of the Wild, to symbolically use Link's journey as a means of "turning things around," enacting my own self-Initiation through my work as Gogo Bordello; thus will I "become myself." Today I began the playthrough to which I will commit for the remainder of this project, and I will observe the following rules:
No pulling the Master Sword until 80 Shrines are completed. This means committing to Stamina first, then naturally filling out 13 hearts. No deals with The Horned Statue.
Update 4/3/2023: I ended up breaking this rule. I rationalized that it didn’t make sense to put off freeing the Divine Beasts (see Rule#2 below) for the sake of proving some point to myself involving jumping through the hoops of the Sheikah Shrines, because frankly, there ended up being much greater trials ahead than that—see Rule #4 below).No freeing Divine Beasts until the Master Sword is pulled.
No opening any EX chests until all 120 Shrines are completed; this unlocks the Hero of the Wild armor set, which you may recognize as Link's classic green ceremonial garb, otherwise conspicuously absent from this game in contrast with all other Zelda games. Interesting.
No facing Ganon until all of the above, plus Trial of the Sword, are completed.
I will not set a time limit for this, but it would be nice to get it done this year.
My teacher is not here for me anymore, and I've had to come a long way on my own. Nonetheless, I deserve the kind of rite of passage that only he could give me; I don't know what kind he would have given me, but I know that he would appreciate this little resolution/cybermagical self-Initiation in ways no one else could.
Perhaps, by the time I reach my goal, my readers will appreciate it as well.
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