BILL MESNIK'S MESMERIZED, VOL. II: THE STORY OF O & E - BILL'S PANDEMIC ERA MUSICAL RETELLING OF THE STORY OF ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE, EPISODES 1-3

THE STORY OF O AND EMany writers and film makers have gone back to Virgil's classic for inspiration over the decades: Tennessee Williams with Orpheus Descending (1957); Marcel Camus' timeless film,  Black Orpheus (1959) is a Brazilian Carnavale take,  Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice is a theatrical staple, and more recently, the Broadway hit, Hadestown.My offering was composed in the early months  of the pandemic, and still retains the urgency of those days. Here are the first 3 songs/episodes, with my spoken introductions. EP 1: OBSESSION - sets the neurotic scene.EP 2: GET OUT! - O fantasizes an escape from the city.EP 3: CHOP WOOD, CARRY WATER - Ensconced upstate, O takes some bucolic counsel.for more reading on the original tale... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus_and_EurydiceIn Virgil's classic version of the legend, it completes his Georgics, a poem on the subject of agriculture. Here the name of Aristaeus, or Aristaios, the keeper of bees, and the tragic conclusion was first introduced.[2]Ovid's version of the myth, in his Metamorphoses, was published a few decades later and employs a different poetic emphasis and purpose. It relates that Eurydice's death was not caused by fleeing from Aristaeus, but by dancing with naiads on her wedding day.Other ancient writers treated Orpheus's visit to the underworld more negatively. According to Phaedrus in Plato's Symposium,[3] the infernal deities only "presented an apparition" of Eurydice to him. Plato's representation of Orpheus is in fact that of a coward; instead of choosing to die in order to be with his love, he mocked the deities in an attempt to visit Hades, to get her back alive. As his love was not "true"—meaning that he was not willing to die for it—he was punished by the deities, first by giving him only the apparition of his former wife in the underworld and then by having him killed by women.[3]