The 45th Annual Schmolaris Prize is awarded to...

A good story can be – and will be – told a thousand different ways. Its themes may change, its characters may change, its setting would undoubtedly change – and yet the story will remain somewhat recognizable; there will be some kernel of the original idea (perhaps the original truth) that is always maintained.

I have stacked beside me Bulgakov’s The Master and the Margarita, Banville’s Mefisto, Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Mann’s Doctor Faustus (an English first edition (1948)), and both Nye’s and Turgenev’s Faust (and, I guess, the Old Testament {the story of Eve and the Tree of Knowledge is fairly Faustian}) – and there may be others hidden throughout my elaborately large, multi-level library. [I knocked out a large portion of the main floor ceiling and expanded the library upwards, sacrificing the master bedroom in the process. A narrow, metal spiral staircase now twists up to the second floor. I thought it would take years for me to fill its empty shelves, but, alas, the books now spill over the carved oak railings. I am now pondering whether I actually need the adjacent dining room – expansion here would allow for at least seven more (floor-to-ceiling) bookcases. I relate all of this not because I wish to brag about the size (and extent, its girth and thickness) of my weighty library (although I kind of do), but because, like Faust (or The Margarita, or Adrian Leverkuhn, or Gabriel Swan, or Dorian Gray, or Vera), I have a desire for a certain kind of knowledge (musical or otherwise)]. How easy it would be for the Devil to take my soul. All he would need to do is offer me more books, more music, more stuff – and I would accept his bargain in a second.

And, although that could be the kernel that’s maintained in each iteration of the Faust story (that kernel being a deal with the devil, like Robert Johnson at the crossroads), I think what compels us to keep reading (and keep writing about) the Faust legend has more to do with disbelief. We simply can’t believe that someone could be so innately talented, so knowledgeable, so much better than us everyday ignoramuses that we attribute such unparalleled abilities to supernatural deeds. It must have been the devil that allowed it – otherwise such feats would be impossible. It is devilry, it is witchcraft, it is inhuman. 

Listening to Mahogany Frog’s Faust, I am filled with this same feeling of disbelief. How could they make an album so good? How does it get better each time I listen to it? What devil gifted them so? What did they trade? And, given such disbelief, how could I not award the 45th annual Schmolaris Prize to them? (For it is with great pleasure that I do.)

Mahogany Frog’s Faust, recorded half a decade ago, presaged our current plague. And although doom and gloom may be one of the easiest things to predict, I find this is significant. Murnau’s 1926 film, Faust, came on the heels of the Spanish flu. Plagues, long seen as punishments for our – most often moral – behaviour, are instrumental in societal collapse. Ignoring the interpersonal drama of Faust (as a younger man) and Gretchen, it is the plague that propels the larger anxiety in the community – and it is this anxiety that compels them to burn Gretchen at the stake. It was the Justinian plague that helped Rome fall. It was smallpox that devastated the Aztecs and Mayans (and North American in general). Disease may have also contributed (among other things) to the end of the Bronze Age. With Faust, Mahogany Frog is questioning whether we, too, are on the verge of a collapse.

What then is our moral failing that we deserve such punishment? What deal with the devil have we – collectively – made?

Of course, there is no devil and no god to judge – or punish – us. And yet I don’t think it is a coincidence that our minds shift to conspiracy as the most likely explanation. Like Murnau’s Faust (and the Faust legend in general), the easy explanation is that it is all caused by the devil (or god) – which is the most common conspiracy theory that exists. Rather than recognize plague as a natural phenomenon (one caused by very material viruses or bacteria), its source is argued to be not-of-this-world. This is the disbelief I speak of – our failing to accept scientific materialism (true knowledge). Both the good (superhuman knowledge and/or abilities) and the bad (plagues, &c.) are, instead, explained away with conspiracies. We are refusing scientific explanations and arguments for why/how things happen. Instead: vaccines are evil; climate change is a hoax; consciousness continues after death.

The devil could be Shell or Exxon. The devil could be capitalism. The devil could be nature herself. But the devil always collects what’s owed. Faust – like us – knew the risks, but the rewards (computers and cars and films and rock ‘n roll and homes and heating and plumbing and food and health and happiness and love) - knowledge, in other words - proved too great to pass up. 

With Faust, Mahogany Frog warns that we will one day have to face the consequences of such a deal. We will fight others to preserve ourselves. We will leave our babies to die in the snow. We will kill and burn the Gretchens of the world. And when we do, we will have no one to blame but ourselves. 

Not gods. Not devils. Humans. Us. You. Me. And my giant, two-storey library.

Congratulations Mahogany Frog,

Steve Schmolaris

September 19th, 2022