Vinary Binyl | Dante's Inferno: Canto 1

Blending the time-tested audio drama's from the golden age of Orson Wells, with modernity's visual style, creating a timely concoction in this podcast/audio golden age anew.

Using Wordsworth's translation, this production is a one-human show: effects, music, and visualizations put together myself, whose interest in media, story-telling, and literature I hope are made prominent with the end result. I hope you enjoy my own tribute to a piece of work which has inspired me my entire life. Thanks for listening.

Dante, political exile (many of us can relate), scribed his words in his mother-tongue instead of the weaponized Latin, of tribal parties Guelph, both Black and White. Many of his contemporaries reside as denizens in the fiery empire, a literary reflection to the political threats made to Dante; if ever he were to return to Florence, he would be burnt at the stake.

The politics of old are not old, nor new, but timeless. The petty wedges which we choose for one another never ceases. Amongst our suffering, we can suffer needlessly, beyond the abyss which seems inevitable; the one which can justly and overwhelmingly fill our souls with such despair.

Hell doesn't have to be a destination, but a layover, a pitstop. Albeit, it will require profound exposure to the worst of our thoughts: about ourselves, others (both foe and friend). Many a circles are engineered in our minds that jail our deepest faculties of regret, shame, hatred, and psychological miasma. Descent alludes to ascent, otherwise, it might simply be considered eternity. Each one of us possesses a divine comedy to sojourn, to make sense of, to illustrate and make valuable.

Canto 1 is Dante's metaphorical charge to descend into his own depths, affixed to his mentor of choice, Virgil. The prologue is situated into a wooded vertigo, populated by fierce earthly beasts, soon silenced by the shaded poet from ancient Mantua.