Dear friends,

It’s been a while since my last blog posting, and, in the interim, I’ve realized that it’s pointless to keep apologizing for the long delays between posts. So I won’t. Instead, I’ll simply submit for your consideration the idea that, over the long term, a blog that’s updated every couple of months or so is just as legitimate as one that updates every day, especially if the scale of the endeavour it’s reporting about is of a sufficient magnitude that daily updates would be rendered meaningless.

Indeed, the giganticness of this decades-long Antinoan enterprise sometimes overwhelms me, and I have to continually fortify myself with the reassurance that there’s no rush to see it completed and thus it demands from me no hard deadlines. The project will advance at its own pace, and I’m quite confident it will find and build a natural and loyal audience in good time. Which means there’s no need to blog like a mad-man: I can post an entry whenever the spirit moves me, and over the long run the record of this project’s evolution will stand as authentically as ever.

That being said, October has been a momentous month in a remarkable year of personal growth and discovery. In fact, 2008 is shaping up to be one of my most prolific years yet, and this little missive is the announcement I’ve long been waiting to write.

You may or may not be aware that, elsewhere in my storytelling universe, Sir Richard Wadd started his public life as a 1-act stage play at the 2005 Toronto Fringe Festival. At the time of the play’s debut, Sir Richard was very proud of his imaginary website, and boasted about it to his live audience at every opportunity. Since then, his website has become very real indeed, and, as of October 30th, officially releases the first of his live-action webisodes, featuring content from The Sacred Antinous.

Because I’ve always seen Sir Richard as an ethical, intelligent, classy kind of guy, it was important for me that his erotica stand head and shoulders above the global flood of boring, run-of-the-mill porn. My vision for Sir Richard is that every one of his episodes uses erotica to say something interesting and provocative about what it means to be spiritually aware, intellectually engaged, and comfortably queer at the dawn of the 21st century. To this end, I realized that Sir Richard’s erotic storytelling had to be girded by another, deeper layer of tales that provided a sustainable and compelling through-line designed to keep viewers coming back for more.

This is where The Sacred Antinous comes in. Based on the true story of the Roman Emperor Hadrian and his young, Greek lover, Antinous, this particular narrative universe explores the enduring metaphor of death and resurrection through a distinctly queer lens. With it, I’m trying to define my own set of sacred texts that speak to me through metaphor about the issues I’ve grappled with over my own lifetime about what it means to be gay.

Anyway, the point of all this is to announce that Sir Richard Wadd has now turned his camera toward (a very low-rent version of) ancient Rome, and is beginning to tell the story of Antinous using characters from both worlds. There’s a very intentional blurring of boundaries in this new kind of narrative storytelling. The Internet allows me to create characters and dramatic situations that overlap and connect to each other in novel and wondrous ways. So if you’re confused about where Shawn ends and Sir Richard begins, or where Antinous morphs into an actor on a pornographic film set, that’s okay. It’s part of the experience. My hope is that viewers and readers will come to my storytelling from any entry point, and slowly be enticed to explore deeper and deeper into evermore complex layers of meaning.

Sir Richard’s first two webisodes are available here:

Now Begins a Bold Interrogation

To Suffer is to Slip Unnoticed

Of these, the first link is EXPLICIT (i.e. not work-safe), so take care not to embarrass yourself in front of unsuspecting co-workers. The second doesn’t reveal any naughty bits, but, taken together, these first two episodes let the world know that Sir Richard’s erotica is smart, funny, considerate, and driven by a vision that’s bigger than a lot of mainstream drivel.

I hope and expect that the productions will begin to showcase much of what I find so dazzling and exciting about the Internet as a storytelling medium. It gives me the freedom to play with text, poetry, letters and words in a way that I find really exciting. Viewers who are curious about what was said or written need only scroll down the webpage to find the complete text laid out for their perusal. In effect, the Internet is restoring a sense of balance to the art of storytelling: my written words and filmed images now go hand in hand as part of a complete whole.

I’m also really enjoying the prospect of playing with form and format. The Internet frees my storytelling to create episodes of any length and style, while the character of Sir Richard himself is able to evolve depending on the type of content he frames. My ultimate goal is to see Sir Richard present not only stories from the Sacred Antinous, but from other storytelling universes as well. And then, as the multiverse begins to grow, I’d like to see those stories interconnect in various ways: thematically, spiritually, and physically – through hypertext links and real-world fine arts pieces (on which, more in the coming months…)

Anyhoo, that’s the news for now. I’m currently back at the grindstone trying to hammer out my next batch of webisodes, and I’m also gearing up to plunge back into another round of writing. In the meantime, I very much hope you enjoy this latest round of work!

(This entry has been cross-posted to Sir Richard Wadd)

The last couple of months without update to the blog have been a function of my very busy, real-world life. This is not to say, however, that there haven’t been exciting developments in my online life, especially as relates to Antinous.

The most interesting evolution in my world is that I’ve essentially “come out” as an Antinoan. All of this was precipitated by a rather difficult and transformative 2007, in which many insights were gleaned and a very new Shawn emerged from the emotional wreckage of a spiralling 2006. Although my spiritual journey was for the most part guided by friends, family, and a fantastic therapist, I’d be remiss to leave out that it also involved a small assortment of revelatory moments. And although there was nothing so literal as a personal appearance of the god Antinous himself, I cannot say for certain that I didn’t briefly experience something akin to the Divine. At the very least, I was forced to admit to myself how silly it is to dismiss – from an atheistic viewpoint – the spiritual realm, and I discovered a certain amount of humility in being able to say, “I just don’t know for certain…”

The upshot of all this was that I eventually joined the Ekklesia Antinoou – the Citizenry of Antinous – which is a Yahoo group moderated by a genial fellow named Phillip Bernhardt-House. I’ve mentioned Phillip before on The Sacred Antinous site; he was, in fact, one of the first of the fellows credited with the development of the original Ecclesia Antinoi that played such a large part in inspiring me to create my personal brand of erotic historical fiction (see the Investigations page for more on that). Anyway, it turns out there was a schism in the group about a year ago – something I only “predicted” by virtue of expressing my hope that it would not occur – and Phillip branched off to form his own group.

I have only a vague idea what it was that caused the split; my choice with respect to joining Phillip’s group was simply on account of having established with him a private, intermittent dialogue over the past couple of years, dealing with all kinds of fictional, speculative, and esoteric subject matter.  Thus, his invitation to join was accepted, and, in the course of announcing myself to his small band of seekers, I’ve essentially declared myself to be one of them. I occasionally become agitated at the thought that this public affiliation may one day come back to bite me in the ass – either from a career standpoint or a personal integrity one – but I also realize that such worries are unfounded, for I think I can stand quite solidly in my Antinoan world-view, owing to the fact that much of it is fictionalized, metaphorical, self-generated and, consequently, inviolable. (It seems to me that if everyone were forced to create at least a small part of their personal spiritual beliefs, rather than simply swallowing what was spoon-fed to them, there would be an exceptionally healthy and tolerant religious universe in which we all could travel and get along, no?)

Anyway, all of this is to preface the fact that April 21 marked the observance of the Megala Antinoi, which essentially translates into the “Antinoan Megafest.” As part of its celebrations, members were invited to submit artistic works that celebrated Antinous, and this, obviously, is a realm in which I have no trouble participating. And so I composed a small piece that fits quite happily into the constellation of Psalms, and submitted it to the group. What becomes of it under the auspice of the Ekklesia remains to be seen, but on The Sacred Antinous site it will take its place as one of the first of the Psalms that demonstrates a somewhat anachronistic bent. This is a good thing, for it begins to integrate the site into a much larger project that will eventually encompass much, if not all, of my artistic practice. More on that (I hope) in a few years…

In the meantime, the poem has been posted as Psalm 012 – Antinous of the Earth. I hope you enjoy it.

There’s a whole new pile of content going online today, in the form of The Gospel of Alexander. The process of creating this particular piece was very much modelled on The Isthmian Odes. My starting point was an Epistle of Antinous in progress (Epistle 066 – A Playful Wager), and as it developed I suddenly found myself inspired by the character of Alexander to create an entirely new and detailed conversation between he and Antinous.

This particular sacred text started off as a humble dialogue of no more than five minutes, but it quickly ballooned into an entire one-act play (roughly 30 mintues’ worth) whose theme, when it finally emerged, surprised even me in that it centres around the notion of bottoming. In a world and at a time when homosexual acts had not yet been conflagrated into a Gay Identity, but were simply indulged in as a preferred activity, how did a man psychologically justify the fact that he could occasionally enjoy himself while on the receiving end of anal sex – especially if he was a member of the upper classes, where such receptivity was generally frowned upon? This play attempts to give form and dimension to the thoughts and feelings of Antinous the Willing Bottom. What exactly goes through his mind? How does he make peace with a role that constantly draws scorn from the more conservative enclaves of Roman (and Greek) society?

At the very least, I like to think that the activity of anal sex has been painted with a very poetic brush, and rendered in a rather heroic way by virtue of the fact that it’s championed by Antinous himself. After all, the divinization of sex – making the profane into something sacred – is one of the key objectives of the entire site, and is thus well served by this particular text. I hope you enjoy The Gospel of Alexander, and hope even more to be able to present it soon enough in some kind of staged – or filmed! – performance…

Recent discoveries in the field of my personal, emotional archaeology have unearthed a long-buried spirituality that my rational, intellectual, and industrious mind had only short days ago believed to be non-existent. There’s a very significant shift taking place in my head (and heart) across these depth-of-winter days – one that is seeing me slowly coming to accept the fact that what I’m doing with The Sacred Antinous may not be exclusively artistic and literary – but authentically spiritual as well.

I’m reticent to go into much detail here, mostly because I suspect that much of what I’d end up writing would be unintelligible. Far better, I think, to stick with the programme of developing the site as it was originally conceived, but also begin making minor adjustments here and there to reflect a nascent (and genuinely reverent) awareness of the Divine. Whereas the site was launched with tongue occasionally in cheek, I’m beginning to think that said tongue will, in due course, return to its normal resting place in the centre of my lower jaw.

That’s not to say I’ll be losing my sense of humour: I still expect that a healthy dose of laughs, chuckles, and ironic wit shall ribbon its way through the writing. But I’m not feeling quite so hostile as once I was to the possibility of a bona fide god experience emerging from one’s poetic reading of the texts – albeit an experience that looks and feels considerably different from those prescribed and vetted by the mandarins of organized religion.

In celebration of this increasingly welcome encroachment of spirituality, I’ve composed a new Psalm that reflects my evolving state. Owing to its theme, tone, and intent, I’ve decided to number it as 001, and place it as first among equals (the “Princeps,” if you will) of the Psalms. I imagine that future additions to this part of the site may well occasion more re-numbering as I strive to find the ideal order for the spiritual progression of these little poems. In the meantime, I certainly hope you like the latest, which is entitled, “Now Begins a Bold Interrogation.”

Today’s addition of Epistle 065 – The Eleusian Mysteries, marks the end of a modest dry spell for The Sacred Antinous and its contents. It’s been quite some time since my last update, and I’m happy to have ended what was, in my own mind at least, an embarrassing neglect of my fictional friends (and non-fictional audience – assuming it’s still out there).

As a lame and over-used excuse, I plead “Real Life” – a vague and somewhat euphemistic smokescreen to suggest that I’ve been dealing with some fairly substantial stressors in the bricks-and-mortar world where I eat, sleep, work and play. My personal life has been overrun lately with urgent and unavoidable matters related to living arrangements, career concerns, psychological health, and good-old-fashioned economic survival, and thus I’ve been forced to relegate my online endeavours to the margins.

This period of drought, however, seems to be drawing to a close, and I’ve been able to carve out increasingly longer stretches of time with which to focus on my fictional universe. The majority of my time has been spent in the company of Sir Richard Wadd (specifically, the third act of his theatre experience, which is entitled SRW, Paleographer), but I’ve also claimed for myself some spare moments in which to hammer out Epistle 065.

A friend of mine recently commented that he’s eager for me to update The Bathhouse Frescoes, because he finds the pieces therein to be “hot.” That in itself is both a compliment and an impetus to continue churning out more content, since it confirms that I’m not working in a vacuum, which is a perpetual fear of mine.

As a result of the above-mentioned distractions, I’ve been forced to postpone my production of some of the Sacred Texts until a more opportune time, which will probably turn out to be Februaryish. More on that at a later date.

Also of note, I’ve started to return to my mosaic work, and on the front-burner of that very tactile realm is a trio of pieces that will represent The Oratory of Favorinus when I finally begin to assemble The Temple Mosaics.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy Epistle 065, which turned out to be far more of a physical and sensual piece than I had originally anticipated. It seems Antinous himself is always happy to surprise me with what he chooses to divulge to Lysicles…

There have been several changes these last few weeks, which I happily look upon as the
healthy evolution of the site. One lovely little addition is the creation of a Wallpapers
page to make available free downloads of Sacred Antinous iconography. The inaugural trio
is, I think, quite smart-looking, and I’m looking forward to releasing more as time goes
on.

That being said, there’s a much more significant addition to the site, which is the
creation of two galleries (with a third one on the way) that, taken together, represent the
visual arts component of the Sacred Texts. (As a side-note, given that these galleries
are to be populated with works mainly done by myself, I decided to remove the call for
illustrators.)

The first gallery is one in which I’ll be assembling all the “Frescoes” that I’m in the
process of making — most of them illustrations of the Epistles of Antinous. My fictional
vision for The Bathhouse Frescoes is that they were “discovered” on some glorious archaeological dig
– most romantically, of course, in Antinoopolis — in the miraculously-preserved remains
of a bathhouse. As far as their erotic and explicit content, I’m taking my cue from John
Clarke’s twin books, Looking and Lovemakng and Roman Sex — both of which feature
explicit bathhouse sex scenes done in fresco.

The second gallery, which is one I hinted at many moons ago, is The Gospel of Vitalis.
This one will be assembling the collected drawings of Vitalis, a relatively easy
narrative accomplishment as they were mostly kept safe in the stables by Anaxamenos. I
envision these as fairly casual pen & ink drawings, which is a style that will allow me
to create a bit more loosely than the frescoes, and far more loosely than the mosaics.

Which brings me to the third gallery, which is not yet launched, but will likely be
called The Temple Mosaics. As the Antinous and Hadrian mosaics have proven to be such
successful pieces (see my personal website for the pic of the two lovers staring at each
other across my living room wall), and as I have ambitious plans to actually integrate
them into my staged performances one day, it occurred to me that other Sacred Texts
deserve mosaics of their own, and so I’ve set out for myself a program of work in which
I’ll be creating iconic mosaic imagery for each of the Texts that I post to the web (or
produce to the stage). Naturally, this will probably take a rather long time, but that’s
never been a problem for me before. Besides, I don’t imagine most of the other mosaics
will be quite so ambitious as the first two.

Otherwise, both the site and its audience continues to grow, and I am steadily plugging
away at getting more and more good content off the ground. I’m also happy to report that
the inaugural performance is looming: I’ve been talking to actors and have already booked
a small space to get the first collection of Sacred Texts onto their feet. If all goes
well, the performance will take place in mid-November, here in Toronto. More news on this
front coming soon…

Though nothing has been posted to The Sacred Antinous site in about a month, that is not to be taken as evidence that I haven’t been working on it! Yesterday’s update brings to the Sacred Texts a completed draft of The Oratory of Favorinus.

I say “draft” because that’s exactly what it is: an as yet un-produced play that will likely undergo various tweaks as I work toward getting it mounted. And that, as it turns out, is what I intend to do over the coming months. In anticipation of producing The Oratory of Favorinus, I’ve already spoken with an actor whom I’ve identified as a perfect candidate to play the titular role, and I’ve also secured a small, intimate venue in order to premiere it. The locale will be a “micro-theatre” – a space that exists pretty much under the radar of most of Toronto’s mainstream theatre critics and audiences alike. But that’s exactly what I love about it, given the fact that the Oratory probably won’t have broad, mainstream appeal anyway. It will thus be a select few who know about the play, much less come to see it.

For those unable (or unwilling) to see the production, the complete text has now been posted to the site. Structurally, the play is multi-layered and thus somewhat demanding – for both actors and audience alike. From a starting point in the year 128 CE, Favorinus takes his Roman listeners (who is in fact the modern-day audience) back to about 700 BCE. While there, he presents an imaginative little one-man show by re-enacting the various voices from three competing clans as they debate the pros and cons of legalizing and formalizing the practice of Athenian pederasty. This in turn is used as “evidence” toward his argument that simple and uncomplicated lust can serve a heroic function, as it is his lust for Timarchus that ultimately compels the winning argument of Nyanthes. In effect, Favorinus “syncretises” Antinous (who is in his Roman audience) with the Greek youth Timarchus, and thus presents Hadrian’s failure to have sex with Antinous as a shirking of his Emperor’s heroic duty. Convoluted? You bet! But hey – this is Favorinus we’re talking about… complex and twisting arguments are to be expected, no?

Anyway, given that actual historical data of how and when pederasty came about is relatively scarce (I’ve consulted in this regard the book Pederasty and Pedagogy in Ancient Greece – see the Investigations page for more info), I’ve taken incredible liberties with not only the characters present in the Athenian Assembly, but also their formulations, tribal affiliations, governing structure, viewpoints, and arguments. In other words, if the “history” as recounted by Favorinus were a straight-ahead attempt at telling it “like it really was,” I’d probably be walking on very thin ice indeed. But I’m absolved, as it were, by the fact that this perspective is not exactly my own view on the matter. Rather, it’s the intentionally biased view of Favorinus, as “faithfully recorded” by me. So if Favorinus fudges a bit of the history in order to deliver a more successful oratory, who am I to call him on it? I’m just the messenger! (How’s that for shirking responsibility?)

Furthermore, in addition to the questionable historicity of his story, even the most amateur historian will probably also note how recklessly Favorinus deviates from the established formal custom of giving an oratory. The concept of a “one-man show” would probably have been utterly alien to his ancient Roman audience, and it’s unlikely he (or any of his contemporaries) would ever have resorted to such a device. Then again, can anyone say with the utmost certainty that he didn’t? And given that Favorinus – the effeminate and hermaphroditic foreigner – was generally celebrated for the fact that he was so famously different from all the other “normal” orators, the probability that his speaking style and methodology also differed from his peers is, although not high, perhaps a bit higher than if he had simply been one of the “good-old-boys” of rhetoric.

All of this to say that The Oratory of Favorinus, while intended to be performed under the pretension of “historical authenticity,” is probably quite inaccurate from an historical perspective. Its purpose is much more about creating an artistically interesting and dramatically significant “turning point” for the mind of Hadrian within the semi-fictionalized world of The Sacred Antinous. In fact, were I approaching this purely from a factual and historical place, I’d be willing to bet a vast sum of money that, some 1900 years ago, the famous hermaphrodite had absolutely nothing to do with getting Antinous into Hadrian’s bed. But as a modern-day storyteller, I deliberately constructed the Oratory to bring to a climactic close the protracted drama of Hadrian’s “abstinence,” as well as coincide Antinous’ “de-flowering” with Hadrian’s assumption of pater patriae. In other words, it was important to me that they both had their (ahem…) “peak experience” on the same day.

Not surprisingly, the Epistles have been put on hold this past month while I’ve worked toward completing the Oratory. And given that they were also put on hold for The Isthmian Odes, it’s been some time since the addition of 063. While I regret this, I must also admit that I feel better knowing that I’m tying up loose ends as I go along, rather than leaving many Sacred Texts unfinished. This suggests to me that I really ought to be concentrating on wrapping up The Gospel of Gryllus too, before moving on with the Epistles. Not only will this give the entire site a more “completed” feel (at least for the year 1 launch phase), but it will also open up the possibility of following up a performance of the Oratory with one for The Gospel of Gryllus.

So there’s lots to think about (and do!) in the coming weeks. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy The Oratory of Favorinus, and look forward to giving you more details about when and where it will be mounted…

In what has emerged as a model of how I’d like this mighty project to progress, the creation of the latest Epistle of Antinous (#063) has spawned an entirely new (and unanticipated) collection of Sacred Texts, called The Isthmian Odes.

As usual, I came to the task of writing the next Epistle with only a vague sense of what it would contain: Vitalis’ declining health, the Isthmian Games, and perchance a bit of hot sex between Antinous and a cute athlete (or several). But in creating the draft Epistle, the character of Antinous himself told me that, although he had had his fun with a few of the athletes, his exchanges with them weren’t half so worthwhile as the symposium he enjoyed with the Poets. This, of course, sent my imagination spinning as I tried to envision the shape of that particular evening between them. And then it occurred to me that here indeed was the raison d’etre of The Sacred Antinous: an opportunity to spontaneously and playfully script that single night as a completely separate set of Texts. And so I did, which necessitated co-ordinating the names and events “touched on” in Epistle 063 with the actual, full-on rendering of The Isthmian Odes.

The Odes took me about two weeks to compose, and the result is something I’m quite pleased with. They are, for the most part, complete. I may tinker here and there with some of the connective tissue between the four poems, or revise a line or two, but in my mind there’s little else to add by way of words. Illustrations, however, are another matter – there’s still lots to do on that front – but that’s nothing new: I’d eventually like to illustrate everything.

The most satisfying part of the process, as hinted in the opening of this post, is the fact that – at last! – the writing has unfolded exactly as I imagined it would when I first envisioned The Sacred Antinous: a single Epistle has spawned a complete set of Texts. This is the longed-for model that I didn’t quite capture with either The Gospel of Gryllus or The Oratory of Favorinus – mostly, I think, because I didn’t have time to complete those (arguably, much bigger) Texts before the launch of the site. (I was racing to arrive, at the very least, to Epistle 056 – The First Night with Hadrian). Regardless, what this experience has revealed to me is that I feel much better knowing that a particular “tangent” Text is complete before I continue on with the Epistles. Thus I suspect my focus for the next month or so should be to finish (or at least make a serious dent in) both Gryllus and Favorinus.

Perhaps it’s owing to my impatience, or my desire to maintain control over almost every aspect of The Sacred Antinous creative. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve always enjoy making 2D art, and this is just another excuse to do so.

Regardless of the reason, the fact is that I’ve begun to illustrate the Epistles of Antinous on my own, and have even started to slowly create some drawings for the upcoming Gospel of Vitalis. I’ve decided not to remove the Call for Illustrators, however, because there may still be folks out there who feel like they want to contribute.

For the Epistles, I’ve thus far created two paintings, with several more planned over the coming weeks. Upon completion of these inaugural pieces, I scanned them into the computer and then experimented for some time with Adobe Illustrator to try to achieve an effect that was reminiscent of a fresco. I wanted the illustrations to appear as if they had been created on the textured walls of a rich Roman villa, then were buried for 1800 years, and then were excavated and cleaned. Here’s the result:

Gryllus and Antinous riding together (from Epistle 001)

Antinous and Anaxamenos post-sex (from Epistle 018)

I’m quite happy with the look and feel of these pieces, and will use it as the “standard” for all subsequent paintings. 

For the Gospel of Vitalis, which is still in preliminary stages and has not yet been released, I’ve chosen to work in a pen and ink style that, it seemed reasonable to me, might be accessible and appealing to young Vitalis. Here is his first drawing, which (naturally) depicts Antinous writing:

Obviously, there’s still a long way to go toward the creation of a robust and meaty collection of illustrations. But I’m excited to have started.

Epistle illustrations will be posted to the appropriate place as they are created. Gospel of Vitalis illustrations will be kept under wraps until the actual collection is released.

I was bored today at work, with nothing really pressing to do, and so I wrote a little poem.

The piece was partly inspired by that famous story, often repeated among the modern-day evangels, about those 2 sets of footprints in the sand that suddenly become only one. The storyteller laments that Jesus has abandoned him. “No,” comforts Jesus, “That’s when I carried you.” I first encountered this tale many years ago. I was young, so it made an impression. But I wasn’t impressed in a religious sense (I really didn’t see what all the fuss was about with respect to this Jesus guy): what really moved me was the poetics of the image.

Another source, which is an inspirational story I encountered years ago in a Reader’s Digest (yeah, I know — but hey, I was extremely young, okay?), is about someone who wrote their troubles in the sand, knowing that the tide was coming in. Once again, the inspirational message was less impressive to me than the actual poetics of the image, which stuck with me.

So, with the present poem (which I’ve added to The Sacred Antinous as Psalm 004), I fused the concept of a religious saviour to the unburdening of one’s worries, and the connective tissue between them is, appropriately, the sexual eroticism of young Antinous.

You can read the poem here.