Let me preface this comment by saying that I spent four years of undergrad (and will spend an indeterminate amount of graduate school) as an English/medieval studies major. I can't read anymore without dismantling text like a clock: to see what makes it tick. (Carmen, destroyer of worlds!) So what I'm saying is that there will be flail and some nerdiness and too many parenthetical comments.
I love this piece. I love it for a lot of reasons, the first being that Castiel is a message. At least at first. He has no initial attachment to his form (this is a vessel...you're possessing some poor schmuck?). He is nothing but what he has been sent to deliver. When he becomes too close to his charge (you), he's demoted. No longer allowed to carry the message. No longer trusted as the Word, from metonymy to mute.
But then, as caesura, as the medial pauses in heroic verse, as the breath between stresses, he finds his melody, and makes words move, and makes new hymns. He sings his own songs (likely not in dactylic hexameter, though who knows, he probably speaks ancient Greek :P). With Dean, who hides within and behind music (Agents Page and Plant etc., and my personal favorite, Bachman and Turner), and who knows a little something about making things move, the songs of the open road.
So Castiel moves (moves his words, sings) from message to meaning to message and meaning. To a message aware of it[him]self. (Side note, since I've been wondering: does Castiel think of himself as male? Probably not. God's child. Anyway.) Or perhaps a message half-inscrutable even to itself, studied and argued and translated a hundred ways (Castiel as Nowell Codex, hehe). Sitting with a man who uses words as weapons, as tools, as tests, who reads the same story over and over (Dad died for me, I died for Sam), and finds new meaning each time. So he understands: sometimes Castiel needs to be re-transcribed, the broken bits filled with conjecture and footnotes, little works of attention and love.
That attention and love that started with God, but ended with his words, spun out and patched and bruised and beaten and returning ever to him.
Anyone, really, would weep.
--
Speaking of weeping, I am so sorry for this whole business, and thus give you the
tl;dr: that was awesome and thinky and beautiful. I've read it fifteen or twenty times and it doesn't get old. Keep fapping!
no subject
I love this piece. I love it for a lot of reasons, the first being that Castiel is a message. At least at first. He has no initial attachment to his form (this is a vessel...you're possessing some poor schmuck?). He is nothing but what he has been sent to deliver. When he becomes too close to his charge (you), he's demoted. No longer allowed to carry the message. No longer trusted as the Word, from metonymy to mute.
But then, as caesura, as the medial pauses in heroic verse, as the breath between stresses, he finds his melody, and makes words move, and makes new hymns. He sings his own songs (likely not in dactylic hexameter, though who knows, he probably speaks ancient Greek :P). With Dean, who hides within and behind music (Agents Page and Plant etc., and my personal favorite, Bachman and Turner), and who knows a little something about making things move, the songs of the open road.
So Castiel moves (moves his words, sings) from message to meaning to message and meaning. To a message aware of it[him]self. (Side note, since I've been wondering: does Castiel think of himself as male? Probably not. God's child. Anyway.) Or perhaps a message half-inscrutable even to itself, studied and argued and translated a hundred ways (Castiel as Nowell Codex, hehe). Sitting with a man who uses words as weapons, as tools, as tests, who reads the same story over and over (Dad died for me, I died for Sam), and finds new meaning each time. So he understands: sometimes Castiel needs to be re-transcribed, the broken bits filled with conjecture and footnotes, little works of attention and love.
That attention and love that started with God, but ended with his words, spun out and patched and bruised and beaten and returning ever to him.
Anyone, really, would weep.
--
Speaking of weeping, I am so sorry for this whole business, and thus give you the
tl;dr: that was awesome and thinky and beautiful. I've read it fifteen or twenty times and it doesn't get old. Keep fapping!