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Writer's pictureKory James

What is Your Ithaca?

Updated: Mar 8, 2022



At its core, my song Ithaca (Going Home) is a love song to mythology for its influence on my life and countless others across millennia. Stories are nothing less than the needle and thread by which society was composed and whose stitchings hold it sturdy today.


In a pattern akin to evolution, culture builds on its own shoulders—adapting when conditions require but always, and inextricably, tied to the past.


This is why in 2022 ancient stories still hit us in the feels. They touch a primordial part of our psyche, providing guiding lights to self-constructive desires and caution signs to temptation.


Of course, not all myths were made equal, which is why I chose Homer’s The Odyssey as the underlying premise of this song. Like everyone, Odysseus is a flawed being born to a world and circumstances he didn’t choose but, nonetheless, he sets a goal – returning to his family in Ithaca – and pursues it with his entire being, battling demons within and without to get there.


Writing this song forced me to peer inward, to pinpoint what exactly Ithaca signified—as well as my personal purpose for each step forward.


What I uncovered is this:


To me, Ithaca is the abstract and unreachable state of self-perfection, a striving for perpetual improvement in pursuit of a moral ghost who changes form throughout the years. It is the overcoming of obstacles, the voyage into darkness, the return from Hell, and the will to press on—no matter how difficult things become.


Ithaca is the paradox of destination and journey being one in the same, and of discovering home in a footstep.


So, if I may be so bold to ask...What is 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 Ithaca?


Link to music streaming services: https://linktr.ee/koryjames

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