Hey, Minoh! It seems my intuition is working well at the moment, because I caught this within a few hours, and before any notifications came up! I just had to get some sleep and a day’s work before being able to reply, haha.
It’s nice to hear that you’ve been thinking of me, and of our musical conversations! I’m doing well, thanks. I’ve had a few tricky things to get through this year, but I’ve come out at the other end alright, and I’m doing fine now. Good to hear that you’re still working away at the Hotel behind the scenes, of course!
I’m not sure if you wanted to talk privately or not. If you do, you can find me on various social media platforms under this name, but without the space (or the punctuation). Not every account under that name is me, but most are; look for a Charizard in the profile pictures! (I appreciate that's confusing. I didn't quite have the foresight to leave out the space when I made this account!)
I’m still working on historic music too! I haven’t seen too much ancient music since last year, sadly, but I have been doing a fair amount of work on English Renaissance pieces, many of which reference mythology. Some of myths featured aren’t too surprising: Venus and Adonis, Acis and Galatea, etc., but some are less well-known. For example, I've found a great unique madrigal about Pan, which is basically an excuse for the writer to make a stream of phallus jokes, wrapped up in high-brown literary language!
I’ve also come across references I don’t recognise, which might tantalisingly imply myths that have been lost in the past 500 years. Although in our time, it’s hard to judge the authenticity of these! And some of these require a bit of interpretation and guesswork to piece together.
For instance, there’s the story of a nereid/"sea-nymph", who loved a human fisherman called Dio. Dio would take his boat out on the ocean, and sail to her island home to meet her. On one occasion, the nereid was resting on the beach, waiting for Dio to arrive. But a fierce storm came up and wrecked his boat, and Dio drowned. For some reason that’s not clear, the nereid was unable to help – presumably that would have been made explicit in the original myth. As a result, the whole sea wept for the fisherman’s passing.
There’s also the tragedy of Phenitium’s Lover. The Lover receives a prophecy which states that Phenitium will forever be parted from them (or possibly murdered – it’s unclear), and that the Lover will be tormented by the furies thereafter. But the Lover loves Phenitium truly and honestly. It’s implied that this is some sort of manipulation on the part of the gods, a self-fulfilling prophecy designed to spite the Lover, but again the reasons for this are unclear. Interestingly, the gender of neither person is revealed (although the name Phenitium might imply a gender – my knowledge of language isn’t good enough to know for sure!).
It’s sobering to think sometimes of how much knowledge has been lost over the centuries!