https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=lGoLsD9-jpk
This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world. Hello, friends. Welcome. Thank you all for coming for making time today to chat with Jonathan Peugeot who has himself been so gracious as to make time to come to this exclusive interview about his wonderful new project, God’s Dog. I’m very excited to talk to you, Jonathan, about this. I had the pleasure of reading the entire thing, or rather volume one, beforehand, and I read it in one big gulp, so to speak. I couldn’t put it down. It was fantastic. And this is even though it was on a computer screen, which I hate. I would much rather have it, you know, in paper form, but still I gulped it up. So I’m very happy to talk to you about it. Welcome to our little Zoom room inside Nicholas Cotar’s Patreon community. Thanks. I know I appreciate you reaching out. I’m really happy. This is the first like discussion I’m going to have publicly about it, so I’m happy that this is perfect. I win. Jonathan, you don’t need to be introduced to these people. They are here to see you. However, I would like you to introduce yourself not as Jonathan Peugeot, but as Jonathan Peugeot writer, because this is a new manifestation of you as a person. So tell us a little bit about Jonathan Peugeot, come a writer. Who is he? Who is he? So it’s funny that a long time ago I was more of a writer. So when I was a young adult, I guess, starting around 17, 18, I was part of a theatre group, this like big Christian theatre group, and it was like, like 50 people in like massive production and musical and stuff. And so they asked me to write a play for them. And which brought me to end up actually writing three plays. So I wrote three plays for them. It was like, it was a musical plays with Matt and I also directed them. So I kind of started in this weird slash theatre world. So that’s where I developed, let’s say my writing, but then I kind of gave it up for quite a while. Well, writing, I was writing mostly theory stuff and not writing fiction, but I always knew that I would come back to it. And then this idea came to me. I think it started around the first time I had the idea was probably in 2003, 2002, 2003. And so I really wanted to write it down, but my life was so crazy and messy and so I kind of asked my brother if he would do it with me. And that’s what we did. We just kind of wrote it slowly in our spare time. But for me, this is like an opening. I want to see how people react to this and how they like the story. And if they do, then I have a lot more storytelling that I would like to be involved in. Aha. So you’re presenting yourself to the masses. And if the masses turn up their nose and say, Jonathan, I don’t want any more of this, you’re going to be like, I’m not going to write anymore. I don’t believe you. Well, it’s not that I’m, it’s just that I have so many things that I’m doing. So at the same time, so it’s like, I always have to decide what is most, what is worth my attention, you could say. So people will say, Jonathan, now the rewriting is not so good and that project’s not so good. I was like, you know what, I’m doing this icon carving thing. I can just do that and I’ll be fine. All right, fair enough, fair enough. So let’s let’s start talking a little bit about about the story. So there’s a lot going on in this, in the story you say you say that you started to have the idea in 2002 2003, but this manifestation of it is clearly influenced by things that have been happening over the last year or two. And there’s a lot, a lot to unpack. You think so, but no, this is really what we wrote, and we finished writing 10 years ago. It’s also because we knew what was coming in terms of, of just worldview and everything. And so the fact that Giants are now back on the menu, let’s say, since this is just complete insane coincidence, but what’s there is what we wrote as a screenplay, you know, 10 years ago. Yeah. Wow, because it reads like an episode of, of the Lord of Spirits. Yeah, it does. It’s one of the reasons why I was so excited about Lord of Spirits and so excited about Father Stephen’s work. It was because I was, this is the stuff that I’ve been thinking about in terms of story form. This is what I wanted to plunge into. But I was always nervous to talk about some of the traditions because of how the Book of Enoch was kind of suspicious, but I just feel like Father Stephen has solved the Book of Enoch problem for everybody. Like now there’s nothing weird about talking, talking about it. Like there’s no, there’s no strangeness about the whole coupling of angels and, and men, it’s just, oh no, it’s just a ritual, you know, and it’s no big, it’s like, well it’s not a no big deal. It’s not a big deal. It doesn’t, it doesn’t confound metaphysics. Like it doesn’t create a strange rupture between, you know, the traditional way we understand the relationship between the invisible and the visible, let’s say. Okay, so the, the central conceit of everything is the garments of skin, right? So for those who may not have listened as much to your podcast as they should, would you, would you please expand on the idea? What are the garments of skin? Where do they come from? What’s the deal? So, the guy I discovered kind of the idea of the garments of skin was when I read St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Gregory Nyssa talks about the garments of skin as something that you need to kind of get rid of, you know, these garments that are given to Adam and Eve, really being our biological bodies in a way like the body of death, you could say. And so it includes the idea of the body of death, but then it also includes pretty much everything that is added to the body in order to protect you. And so this is Panagiotis Nellis in his book, Deification in Christ, really goes into this in a really interesting way where he talks about all of civilization basically being versions of these garments of skin. And so it’s basically just anything added to human nature, so it includes all technology, all, you know, all medicine, all weapons, all of this is included in the concept of the garments of skin. But then in the story form, what it ends up being is something like the first relic that ever existed, that is the first thing that was made. So God makes these garments for Adam and Eve, gives them to them. And so now this outer covering becomes the first object in the history of humanity. And so it has a kind of power that is the power of the border, you could say, the power of deciding what’s on the inside and what’s on the outside. And so that’s the conceit of the story. This garment has a kind of power to define inside and outside, and so it gets transmitted from generation to generation. So this may seem like a simple question or maybe not a sufficiently well thought out one, but I think I’m going to ask it for the people who are going to be embarrassed to. Are the garments of skin good or bad? That’s right. They’re both. That’s the whole idea of the garments of skin is that they are ambiguous. And every time they bring something positive, there’s something negative in the outset. And every time they bring something negative, there’s a way to turn it into positive. And so that’s really the notion of the of technology or any human action really is something that’s something like that. It’s a it’s an outer action, and so it has a death to it because it’s it’s kind of crystallized and it’s outside you. But then so it can become an idol or can become a tool. And and it just depends on how it’s used. And so that’s why the garments in the story will move you move between the sides like go to the bad side, go to the good side. And people are fighting to keep the garments on their side, let’s say, to be able to have the power to define the limit. So then how would you answer somebody who says, why are you calling it a relic then if relics are supposed to not simply be bearers of power? And this is not this is not a trivial question, because the question of grace versus power is something that’s very strong in contemporary storytelling. And I’m sure you noticed this. You’ve talked about this a lot. Any sort of world that’s built in a fantasy setting that involves divine powers most of the time is expressed by writers who are not Christian as as a fairly pagan outlook, a very pagan worldview of humanity trying to either placate angry deities or kill them in any way, shape or form. And the traditional Christian worldview then would look at relics and other objects of power, so to speak, to put it crudely, not as manifestations of power for humanity to grab and then use for their benefit, but rather artifacts of grace that can help one enter into a deeper reality. So how does that work within the world of the story then? Well, it actually tries to encompass both of what you said at the same time. And so the idea is that the garments of skin are of grace. That is, we always we have to remember that God gave the garments of skin to Adam as a gift. They’re not. They’re not part of the curse. They’re actually a way to to circumvent the curse. But in that, but it’s also a kind of roundabout, right? It’s like God is giving Adam and Eve a roundabout to ultimately come back to the same place. But that roundabout has certain consequences. And those consequences are basically, you know, the, the lineage of Cain and the lineage of civilization, which God is constantly covering, constantly transforming. So that’s I think that’s the way to understand it is really that God, whatever action we pose, even if it’s fallen or if it’s evil, God can cover it and bring it back into glory. So in a way it actually so the garments of skin ends up being both at the same time, they end up being something like an evil power that can kind of act on the world and impose itself. But then there’s a way in which God can cover that and then make it participate in a a more a more real unity, you could say. So obviously none of that is going to be explored theoretically in this story. It’s a story about about the relic will will manifest itself in the narrative form, like not in a theoretical form. Right. You’re not you’re not writing propaganda. You’re writing a story. Yeah, there are very little few explanations in this story. They just it’s just the story. You just just deal. You just deal with it. Just deal with the story. So tell me, is this a historical story? Is it a fantastical story? What is it? And this is also the same problem is that in a way we’re trying to bridge. We’re trying to create something which is going to encompass both at the same time. It is definite. So in a way, it treats certain that say biblical aspects or kind of traditional aspects as very take them very seriously. And then on the other hand, there is a very loose capacity we have to dive into the story. And for example, like there are certain characters which exist together, which obviously are completely anachronistic. Like you St. George and St. Simeon, the style I did not exist at the same time. We all put them in the story kind of to create something which in which the same becomes like a type and becomes like a character. And hopefully we I know it’s tricky and I and I know some people are going to get angry at this like for sure. But we hope that ultimately what’s going to come out of it is going to be something like a surprise. Like if I tell you the impetus of what made us want to do made me want to do this, you can maybe understand what it is I’m trying to do. When when I started thinking about this, this was right at the time when there were all these stories and movies coming out which were using Christian imagery and Christian mythology to destroy it. Right. It was at the time of that movie. I remember I don’t know if you’re not a yeah Stigmata, Constantine. Then a little later, Dan Brown and Da Vinci Code. It was like we had a slew of these stories and images which were using the Christian mythology to to basically destroy. There was also there was also Neil Gaiman’s season of Miss, which was earlier. But there was something in that where was using Lucifer as a character and this hierarchy of heaven and earth, but ultimately to really destroy the Christian the Christian worldview. And so my conceit at first when I thought of the story, I had this idea of like St. George and St. Christopher like a buddy story of two, like warrior saints you know fighting monsters and I, I just saw it like I was like, they could do like I thought of a really subversive Hollywood type coming up with this idea, and I and I thought it would be such a great idea for a subversive Hollywood type, and then they kept playing on me and I thought what if I did the opposite. What if I put up a story that people think looks completely subversive. Yeah, but that ultimately it’s actually going to turn back towards a truly kind of Christian worldview and so that’s why there’s going to be some trickiness to some of the elements that as people encounter it but hopefully they can trust enough to know that we’re going towards a place. Well, it requires a kind of a historically accurate engagement with Hageography that we’ve lost. Right. Hageography is history and it is not history, it’s both right and they, you’re not, it’s not supposed to exist in some in two completely different and completely distinct spheres you’re supposed to be comfortable with going in and out of it. And even though the medieval mindset certainly would not have accepted a fantasy story that would have considered it to be a falsehood and considered to be sinful, still you have legends that were written during that time that are clearly a historical and some of which are not even Hageographical, but they exist in this uneasy kind of tension with the existing canon and also with the larger canon of scripture and the writings of the Holy Fathers. It’s really, it’s strange, it would be strange to a traditional Christian from long ago to think about the gradations of truth that we talk about all the time. Like scriptures are the most true and then Hageography is a little less true and the writings of the Fathers, they’re, most of the time are pretty true and then you have the legends, those are like, they’re not true at all. Yeah, exactly. No, I mean, they would, they would never relate to it that way. So you’re trying to kind of push people back into that kind of way of seeing the world. Yeah, and the story of St. Christopher is the perfect place to push back into that because it has so much of that problem inside it like the problem of dogheaded men, the problem of legends which appear in the 12th century, the problem, all these problems that when you when you when you are able to kind of pull back a little bit and look at the story, the big story of St. Christopher, you realize that in a certain manner it’s addressing the very question, right, the addressing this border place like this place in between. And so this is, this is what our story is about the whole, the whole way through, even in its form like not just in its content, but in the manner in which it’s structured and the elements which are put inside of it. And the discomfort that the that the extremely right people are going to have is actually something they should probably lean into because it’s, it breaks that comforting sense that we know everything already so we don’t need to learn anymore, because everything’s already clear, we’ve already been told everything that we need to know, which is death. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it’s death. Exactly. But we’re hoping that it will be like I’m what my my big hope is that if this is mostly get people excited about Christian legends and realize how much fodder it is for storytelling, and not just for those that want to destroy us like, you know, those that want to destroy us have been diving into this, all these legends and using them now, why can’t we and use them in a way that is that is more celebratory, you could say. Yeah, and that of course, again, and again, this we’re talking about the the medium of the story as opposed to the medium of straight up telling or or scripture or sermonizing that this this form of transmission of truth is one that for whatever reason we’ve abandoned, by and large as a Christian culture, or that we’ve embraced in very limiting fashion. So, there, the discomfort is not, it’s historically contingent reality, it’s not something that Christians would have necessarily subscribed to in ages past. So let’s talk about the Giants. What is it? What is it about the Giants that people keep coming back to? Why, why has there been a resurgence in interest? I want to present you a new series of graphic novels called God’s Dog. God’s Dog is a very loose and epic exploration of the legend of the dog headed warrior Saint Christopher, one of the most surprising and peculiar traditions of the ancient medieval world. It was written as a screenplay by myself and my brother Mathieu over 10 years ago. And the story was taken up and even recommended by script scouting agency was requested by several Hollywood studios. But this story was of course too big, too strange, too surprising for Hollywood. And so now, with all the control of its potential, we bring you this groundbreaking story in full color as a series of graphic novels. The story is set in a token style mythical version of the biblical world, filled with hidden codes, ancient relics, angels, giants, dragons, and populated with fictional versions of mysterious monks, warrior saints, and more symbolism than you can imagine. God’s Dog contains all the intensity and subtlety of our symbolic thinking, the world class layouts and artwork of Korn Nielsen. All of this bound in a mysterious and powerful story arc, which is available to all, from wide eyed 10 year olds to the most seasoned of readers. The entire story with all its action and complexity is already completely worked out. And the first book is near completion. Now all we need to do is deliver it to you. We’re crowdfunding this because it is only the first step. We’ve already been contacted by even international publishers for this. But we want to knock this out of the park so that our artists can do this full time and deliver the oncoming books at a regular and steady pace under our control. I myself will personally not be taking any profit from this first book, but rather I want to use this to build what we need to tell this full epic with all its cosmic proportions. So along with the graphic novel, we are also producing a crowdfunding only add-on, The Secrets of God’s Dog’s Source Book. A beautiful volume in which you will find my original drawings from more than 10 years ago, an exploration of the symbolism of St. Christopher, and an exclusive text by Mathieu Peugeot on the symbolism of the Biblical Samson. This is the first thing that Mathieu has published since his groundbreaking book, The Language of Creation. So jump into the margins with us. Be part of this shift in storytelling, where the end becomes the beginning and where the monster carries the king into a new world. What is it about the Giants that people keep coming back to? Why has there been a resurgence in interest? Starting by the way with Darren Aronofsky, right? I mean, that’s kind of where the thing started to show up. Yeah, when the Noah movie, it’s so funny because we had this story that we were writing, and then all these stories would pop up in popular culture and we think, okay, we can’t tell this story anymore. It’s being told. You know, and there are several examples. And that was one when Darren Aronofsky put his Noah movie out, I wrote my brother and I said, okay, our story is finished, we can’t tell anymore. But yeah, you realize that’s actually not how it works. It doesn’t work that way. It was already completely written by the time the Noah movie came out. You know, I think that there’s something about our time that, you know, we feel like the clock is winding down, let’s say, to a certain respect. And there are many elements which are popping up in culture. You know, the obsession with hybrids, the obsession with the obsession with also this kind of fall into passions and has fallen to degeneracy and, you know, all these kind of wild desires that are let loose on the world. There’s that and then there’s also this sense of a growing power, right of a state power and corporate power which is becoming so powerful that all of a sudden you realize that you can’t, there’s nothing to do in the shadow of this power. And so that I think is that is, let’s say, what’s going on in the world mythologically is bringing back the image of these giants, but not just the giant right also the hybrids and the monsters on the edge of the world in general, but of course in Christian terms in biblical terms those monsters that are on the edge. They are the giants, but a lot of the images we see are all about these monsters on the edge of the world that even Wonder Woman as the, you know, and the, the Amazons like all this imagery of Amazonian women is very strong right now. And so there’s many many images of this of this going on I think that the giants are are like the, the Christian one, and it’s actually probably going to start to focus towards giants. As this moves forward let’s say, I think that even in popular culture there’ll be more about giants. So that there’ll be more depictions of 15 foot tall, hybridized human animal Minotaur kind of things as being the main main thrust of evil. Or maybe not of evil, like for us will on our side yes, but maybe not of evil rather maybe other things. Yeah, of enlightenment of, of something which is frightful but it which is inevitable. There’s going to be that type of imagery. I think so. Yeah, that’s really that’s a really interesting thought. Yeah, I’ll be interested to see how that comes out, and whether or not the sort of rising tide of storytellers amongst the Christians will be able to in some way put that in the proper context and avoid it, avoid popular culture being able to take those images and use them for their own means which is something that I hope will happen. I hope that this, that this is the continuation if not a beginning of a kind of movement of more proper storytelling and more old kind of rooted storytelling that didn’t necessarily used to be in the modern sense, limited to the Christian. I don’t like to say that but that’s how the world views it right this used to be just the way people thought. Right. So, so I would, I would hope that that there’s enough of a spurging movement that would allow us to start telling stories like this on a larger scale I certainly hope that’s what’s going to happen with this because this is not necessarily intended only for Christian audience is it. Not at all like there is there definitely be unapologetically Christian elements in it, but there won’t be much of the type of moralizing or evangelizing or telling the story of salvation or whatever it is that you usually find in kind of bad Christian art there’ll be nothing of that it’s going to be a straight up adventure story, you know with stakes and arcs and giant you know it’s like it all the characters have their arcs and all the units, it’s just a story basic, and we submitted it to a script scouting agency. At the outset that’s how it just kind of started. We wrote it we submitted a script scouting agency they gave us a few recommendations we fixed it up. And then they ended up recommending it to studios, and the studios were requesting the screenplay Yeah. And so it’s like if if if Hollywood studios are willing to request the screenplay obviously once they read it they’re like yeah there’s no way. Like at the end of it it’s like a Lord of the Rings, it’s like, oh yeah I’m gonna have armies of giants like fighting Byzantine soldiers like okay that’s not, that’s not something we’re going to put you know 10, we can buy the PDF as well. So those will be like the major, the major ways that people can support it. Well, the end the good thing about Indiegogo is that whatever you make you make. It’s not an all or nothing kind of platform so everybody who’s listening and who are going to be listening to the recording of this later. You needn’t worry about this reaching a certain threshold, which is the, the one problem with kickstarter is that if you don’t make it up to a certain level, the whole thing kind of collapses so that’s that’s a good thing, whatever you whatever we are managed to scrounge up for this project, it’s going to be there. But what I like about about the whole crowdfunding thing is that it’s a it’s a way of gathering a tribe together a community. So, this is, in some ways, it’s, it’s a pure form of contributing to the written word then buying stuff at Amazon. You’re immediately it’s it’s a you know it’s an unmediated experience and helping craftsmen and artisans get their workout, it’s more medieval, isn’t it. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that’s how it feels we wanted to just we also wanted to do it ourselves and stay in control of everything. Yeah, because obviously, once you start getting involved with editors, you know they have their own opinions they have the marketing and we feel like this story, this is the story like this is the story we want to tell we feel like it’s been proven in terms of having it read it by enough people so we don’t want it to be changed so this is the story we’re telling that’s why that’s one of the reason why we’re doing it on our own. I already had some editors some publishing companies write me and ask if we’d be interested to submit it or whatever but Well, no, it’s better, you know, unfortunately, the reality is now that if you don’t, if you don’t skew to a certain cultural line, you’re not ever going to get published and yeah, this is the way to do it and I honestly hope and I think that this will happen to this is going to be the beginning of a bunch of different projects. And as soon as this becomes, as soon as people see how it can work, I think this is going to be an avenue for a lot of creatives to start experimenting because it’s a harsh taskmaster if you do a bad product, nobody’s going to buy it. So this is, it’s a hum it can be a humbling thing, but it can also be a very exciting thing so I wish you a lot of luck and a lot of Providence and I think I think it’s going to do great. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. And thanks for the support and all this it’s, it’s great. I’m happy to know that I have like, I feel like I even have people like I have a team in a way it’s not directly but kind of an indirect team, you know, there’s you and Paul Kingsnorth and there’s all the and even Rod Dreher and there’s people around that are like yeah Jonathan go do it and I’m like, so I feel like I’m being, I have a I have a good good amount of people around me that so that I’m really grateful for that so thanks. Yeah, absolutely.