The Sirens' Song

I didn't like school. Most lessons held little interest for me. My attitude was: why should I waste time tuning in to double maths when I could be daydreaming?

Suffice to say, school didn't much like me either, and I left with a string of low-grade qualifications. My only decentish result was a grade 'C' O-Level in Classical Studies.

That was my favourite subject. The teacher, Mr Hamlet, was brilliant. He made the tales of ancient Greece and Rome seem vibrantly alive. I found Homer's Iliad and Odyssey so captivating that I may actually have done some revision for the Classical Studies exam. CSE Physics, not so much.

With all that in mind, I eagerly booked tickets for Christopher Nolan's film version of The Odyssey, in all its stunning IMAX glory.

One episode in Odysseus's epic journey home especially struck me. The sirens bit. You know, those beautiful creatures who sang a song so alluring that passing sailors were drawn to shore, where their ships were promptly dashed on the rocks.

Odysseus desperately wanted to hear the sirens' song, but he didn't especially want to be shipwrecked. The solution? He had his crew stop their ears with wax and had himself lashed to the ship's mast. That way, he could hear the song but wasn't able to grab the tiller and send his ship careering towards the rocks. Clever, eh?

It worked. When they were safely out of earshot, Odysseus was set free, and the crew removed the wax from their lugholes. In the film version, our hero explains to his curious shipmates what the Sirens' song was all about:

"It was all the things you wanted it to be… then, all the things you wished you'd never wished for.... It told you what you most want is what you most can't have. And what you most can't have is what you already had and lost. It was the song of all the promises I failed to keep. And it told me I don't really want to go home."

You won't find a song like that on Spotify. It speaks of the restless longing of the human heart.

In the end, the pull of home won out for Odysseus. He risked all to get to his island kingdom of Ithaca and his beloved Penelope, who awaited him there.

On the Sunday after watching The Odyssey, we sang a song in church that was, to my mind, more wonderful than that of Homer's sirens:

There is a hope that lifts my weary head,

A consolation strong against despair,

That when the world has plunged me in its deepest pit,

I find the Saviour there!

Through present sufferings, future’s fear,

He whispers ‘courage’ in my ear.

For I am safe in everlasting arms,

And they will lead me home.

— Stuart Townend

*For various local parish magazines