Of Daemon Lovers and Nerd Lovers

I was helping an artist friend of mine sell his work at a popular media convention in a large city in Ohio, which focused on science fictional, fantasy, and alternative history themes explored through novels, comic books, electronic games and movies. There were many people dressed up in costume to celebrate their favorite imaginative universe, and there were also just as many who merely wore t-shirts and sweatshirts that advertised their specific interests in this diversified subculture. One young lady in particular caught my eye, because she wore a t-shirt that proudly proclaimed that she was a "nerd lover". The "everyman" caricature of a nerd in a colorful bull's-eye logo on her shirt did not evoke the kind of "nerd" now celebrated by the middle-brow magazine and newspaper press (i.e., the instant-millionaire entrepreneurial suave computer geek). This was definitely an attractively comical image of the kind of person my generation was talking about back in the 1980s when we meant "nerd" (i.e., a person enthusiastic about socially obscure matters). The most basic social division growing up was between nerds and jocks. Jocks were not necessarily the absurd numskulls portrayed in crappy Hollywood adolescent flicks. Jocks in the place where I grew up were often quite intelligent, but it was a different kind of intelligence. Jocks had a natural understanding of certain laws of physics in relation to their own anatomical mechanics and with inter-spacial relationships between objects and bodies in movement. That's why they were gifted as athletes. They didn't have brutish brains, but they could be brutish toward people they didn't understand. And not all nerds were intelligent, whatever Hollywood B-movies might claim. Nerds were most generally people who were more interested in doing other things than sports. However, as I said, this was only the most basic division. There were nerds of high reputation among nerds! These were the cool artists, skilled role-playing gamers, experts on science fiction and fantasy authors, creative writers, poets, musicians, science geeks, mathematical wizzes, etc. I have often wondered: are nerds as a group of social underdogs merely a product of 20th and 21st century culture, or have there always been nerds as long as there have been human beings? Well, historically there have been nerds as we know them today in all basic essentials of personality and obscure bents of enthusiasm at least since the 1920s, when adolescents began building crystal radio sets and collecting pulp science fiction, fantasy and weird tales magazines. Ham radio operators, locomotive fans, model rocket builders are also durable nerding avocations from the healthy heart of the 20th century. Then there were (and are) the comic book enthusiasts, classic horror fans, science fiction movie-goers, and aficionados of rare folk, jazz and blues recordings. What about before that? Well, the Romantic Period of the first half of the nineteenth century was probably the finest hour of the nerd, for in what other time could a poet be the macho lover, the admired celebrity, the tragic hero -- and for what? Well, they wrote a lot about nature and natural forces, transcendent hopes, mad visions, pantheistic intimations, star-crossed love, the supernatural, old legends, weird folklore and how life was just too darned short! Then, there was some talk of pedants in the eighteenth century: people obsessed with the obscure details of arcane subjects. But what about before even these relatively recent historical phases? And what about whether and what kind of woman would love the type of nerd that might have existed in earlier eras of human history? Well, there are a set of folk ballads from all over Europe that were told and retold from the Middle Ages and through the Early Modern Period, which are generally assigned the classification type known as "The Daemon Lover". Notice here we're not talking about "demon", meaning, "an evil spirit". We're talking about an otherworldly being with human traits who is wholesome enough to attract the love of a mortal woman. Daemon lovers were different than the other sorts of lovers you encounter in the folk ballads. For one thing, daemons were loyal to their lovers, they did not murder their ladies in fits of jealous rage, and if there was any tragedy to be had, it was usually theirs for taking the risk of loving a woman not of their own species. And why would a human woman take up with such a supernatural being for a lover? Well, in addition to the fact that they were well-treated by these creatures, the daemon was also usually quite skilled at some attractive art, such as music (i.e., both singing and playing a musical instrument exceedingly well), and taking their lovers on wonderful journeys through imaginatively beautiful worlds. If we are not going to try to force a literalistic interpretation here (i.e., that there were actually such supernatural -- or perhaps extraterrestrial? -- creatures), but apply a little handy-dandy Jungian analysis (as well as some good social-historical sense), the daemon lover seems like an archetype of some kind, and I posit that perhaps what we have here is the ancient psychological symbol of the nerd, and an explanation as to why nerds of nerdish excellence (unlike in Hollywood movies) do find wonderful women to love them! Of course, there are ladies who love men of physical prowess and recreational intelligence, and this must go back to Stone Age times when skilled hunters were seen as the best providers for women who wanted to have children just like these robust, adventurous men they admired. But there must always have been other sorts of men, because Nature likes diversity, and these were the ones who probably became the skilled toolmakers, the inspired shamans, the transporting musical performers, the talented storytellers, the ingenious totem carvers and cave painters, and eventually, as time passed, the folk ballad singers themselves. It seems obvious that the daemon lover is an avatar of the folk ballad singer himself. And who else is the folk ballad singer but the Medieval version of the nerd. What would the armored jocks have done without these singers and strummers of wild adventure and romance as the knights lounged on their benches with their silk-gowned babes of an evening by the hearth-side sharing a tankard of bubbling ale? Fortunately for us nerds, there were other sorts of sweet lasses waiting for us in the corridor after the performance was over. Some women naturally prefer men of skilled mind over men of skilled body. And that is what we nerds of today have to remember. There are women born to like us, and they are typically equally skilled in some form of art or intellect. They are the lovely nerdinas of the world! I myself found a truly wonderful and delightful woman of this sort a few years ago. What we as a group must remember is to take pride in who we are, and not fret over what we are not. So if you have a nerdish interest, develop it into a form of excellence, and as Jimi Hendrix sang, "let your freak flag fly!"