Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988) was a British painter, poet, and occultist, long identified as a pioneer of the Surrealist movement in the UK. While her work is increasingly recognized for its mystical themes and innovative use of automatic techniques, deeply influenced by her esoteric studies, it also inspired extensive research on its broader cultural and spiritual contexts. Amy Hale, an anthropologist, folklorist, and author, has dedicated much of her career to exploring Cornwall, the fabled region of southwest England that became Colquhoun’s spiritual home. Hale’s book, Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern-Loved Gully, published by Strange Attractor Press, offers a profound biographical study of Colquhoun, examining the historical and spiritual forces that influenced her work. In this episode, she joins JF and Phil to discuss Colquhoun, Cornwall, and the transformative power of research and writing.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nAmy Hale, Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern-Loved Gully
\nAgnes Callard, I Teach the Humanities, and I Still Don’t Know What Their Value Is
\nSteven Feld, Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra
\nAlbert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
\nLionel Snell, My Years of Magical Thinking
Special Guest: Amy Hale.
","summary":"Independent scholar Amy Hale joins Phil and JF to discuss the life and work of esoteric artist Ithell Colquhoun.","date_published":"2024-04-17T10:30:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/7fb96d1e-7b88-4738-98d6-809e7a60b5f5.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":128204565,"duration_in_seconds":5339}]},{"id":"635ca340-2295-4a05-94c9-260f206d168e","title":"Episode 166: Make Believe: On the Power of Pretentiousness","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/166","content_text":"In culture and the arts, labeling something you don't like (or don't understand) \"pretentious\" is the easy way out. It's a conversation killer, implying that any dialogue is pointless, and those who disagree are merely duped by what you've cleverly discerned as a charade. It's akin to cynically revealing that a magic show is all smoke and mirrors—as if creative vision doesn't necessitate a leap of faith. In this episode, Phil and JF explore the nuances of pretentiousness, distinguishing between its fruitful and hollow forms. They argue that the real gamble, and inherent value, of daring to pretend lies in recognizing that imagination is an active contributor to, rather than a detractor from, reality.\n\nPierre-Yves Martel's EPHEMERA project\n\nIt isn't too late to join JF's upcoming course on the films of Stanley Kubrick, which goes until the end of April, 2024.\nSupport us on Patreon.\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop\nFind us on Discord\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!\n\nREFERENCES\n\nBrian Eno, A Year with Swollen Appendices \nDan Fox, Pretentiousness: Why it Matters \nRamsay Dukes, How to See Fairies \nJohan Huizinga, Homo Ludens \nGilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition \nWeird Studies, Episode 49 on Nietzsche’s idea of “untimely” \nSokal Affair, scholarly hoax \nWeird Studies, Episode 75 on ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ \nStanley Kubrick, “Notes on Film” \nFriedrich Nietzsche, On the Uses and Abuses of History \nVladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak \nMary Shelley, “Introduction to Frankenstein” \nMatt Cardin, A Course in Demonic Creativity \nPlayboy interview with Stanley Kubrick ","content_html":"In culture and the arts, labeling something you don't like (or don't understand) "pretentious" is the easy way out. It's a conversation killer, implying that any dialogue is pointless, and those who disagree are merely duped by what you've cleverly discerned as a charade. It's akin to cynically revealing that a magic show is all smoke and mirrors—as if creative vision doesn't necessitate a leap of faith. In this episode, Phil and JF explore the nuances of pretentiousness, distinguishing between its fruitful and hollow forms. They argue that the real gamble, and inherent value, of daring to pretend lies in recognizing that imagination is an active contributor to, rather than a detractor from, reality.
\n\nPierre-Yves Martel's EPHEMERA project
\n\nIt isn't too late to join JF's upcoming course on the films of Stanley Kubrick, which goes until the end of April, 2024.
\nSupport us on Patreon.
\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\n\nBrian Eno, A Year with Swollen Appendices
\nDan Fox, Pretentiousness: Why it Matters
\nRamsay Dukes, How to See Fairies
\nJohan Huizinga, Homo Ludens
\nGilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
\nWeird Studies, Episode 49 on Nietzsche’s idea of “untimely”
\nSokal Affair, scholarly hoax
\nWeird Studies, Episode 75 on ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’
\nStanley Kubrick, “Notes on Film”
\nFriedrich Nietzsche, On the Uses and Abuses of History
\nVladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak
\nMary Shelley, “Introduction to Frankenstein”
\nMatt Cardin, A Course in Demonic Creativity
\nPlayboy interview with Stanley Kubrick
"Let the red dawn surmise / What we shall do, / When the blue starlight dies / And all is through." This short poem, an epigraph to "The Yellow Sign," arguably the most memorable tale in Robert W. Chambers' 1895 collection The King in Yellow, encapsulates in four brief lines the affect that drives cosmic horror: the fearful sense of imminent annihilation. In the four stories JF and Phil discuss in this episode, this affect, which would inspire a thousand works of fiction in the twentieth century, emerges fully formed, dripping with the xanthous milk of Decadence. What’s more, it is here given a symbol, a face, and a home in the Yellow Sign, the Pallid Mask of the Yellow King, and the lost land of Carcosa. Come one, come all.
\n\nJoin JF's upcoming course on the films of Stanley Kubrick, starting March 28, 2024.
\nSupport us on Patreon.
\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\n\nRobert W. Chambers, The King in Yellow
\nWeird Studies, Episode 100 on John Carpenter films
\nAlgernon Blackwood, “The Man Who Found Out”
\nSusannah Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
\nWalter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
\nAnnie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, Thought Forms
\nWeird Studies, Episode 140 on “Spirited Away”
\nVladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak
\nCharles Taylor, A Secular Age
\nDavid Bentley Hart, “Angelic Monster”
\nM. R. James, Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to you my Lad”
\nWilliam Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow
What is expressionism? A school? A movement? A philosophy? At the end of this episode, Phil and JF agree that it is, above all, a sensibility, one that surfaces periodically in history, punctuating it with occasional bursts of frenetic colour and eruptions of light and shadow. Whenever it appears, expressionism challenges our tendency to divide the world up into neat quadrants: mind and matter, subject and object lose their legitimacy as they start to bleed into one another. Prior to recording, your hosts agreed to focus on two pieces of writing: Victoria Nelson's The Secret Life of Puppets and a recent Internet post on eighties and nineties American films entitled "Neo-Expressionism: The Forgotten Studio Style." Though focused on a number of films, the conversation includes forays into the world of the visual arts, literature, and music.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon.
\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\n\ncomrade_yui, “neo-expressionism: the forgotten studio style”
\nVictoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets
\nFrancis Ford Coppola, Bram Stoker’s Dracula
\nWeird Studies, Episode 161 on ‘From Hell’
\nBram Stoker, Dracula
\nE. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art
\nJean-Francois Millet, “Gleaners”
\nKathe Kollwitz, “Need”
\nRobert Weine, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
\nArnold Schoneberg, Pierrot Lunaire
\nGilles Deleuze, Cinema 1
\nPeter Yates (dir.), Krull
\nWilhelm Worringer, German art historian
\nWeird Studies, Episode 136 on ‘The Evil Dead’
\nIn Camera The Naive Visual Effects of Dracula
\nKenneth Gross, Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life
\nWeird Studies, Episode 121 ‘Mandwagon’
"The Devil's finest ruse," Baudelaire wrote, "is to persuade you that he doesn't exist." In this episode, JF and Phil peer through a buzzing haze of lies, illusions, and mirages, in hopes of catching a glimpse, however brief, of the figure standing at its center. With a focus on the fifteenth major arcanum of the tarot, they try to make sense of this archetype which feels, at once, remotely distant and uncomfortably close to us, all while heeding the warning from the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot that one ought not look too deeply into the nature of evil, which is "unknowable in its essence."
\n\nSupport us on Patreon.
\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\nOur Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot
\nThe Gnostic Tarot
\nJohann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust, Part 1
\nRamsey Dukes, SSOTBME
\nEdgar Allan Poe, The Imp of the Perverse
\nAleister Crowley, Magic, Book 4
\nLeigh McCloskey, Tarot Re-Visioned
\nAleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth
\nThe Library of Esoterica, Tarot
\nFederico Campagna, Technic and Magic
In this second of two episodes on "scenes," Phil and JF set their sights on Greenwich Village in the wake of the Second World War. Focusing on two works on the era – Anatole Broyard's Kafka Was the Rage and John Cassavetes' Shadows – the conversation further develops the mystique of urban scenes and explores the weirdness of cities. The city, long considered the human artifact par excellence, comes to seem like something that comes from outside the ambit of humanity.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon.
\nBuy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\nAnatole Broyard, Kafka Was the Rage
\nJohn Cassavetes, Shadows
\nKazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World
\nPhil Ford, Dig
\nWeird Studies, Episode 90 on “Owl in Daylight”
\nKult, role-playing game
\nTom Delong and Peter Lavenda, Secret Machines: Gods, Men, and War
\nChandler Brossard, Who Walk in Darkness
\nYukio Mishima, Japanese artist
\nAnatole Broyard, “Portrait of the Hipster”
Listener discretion advised: This episode delves into the disturbing details of the Whitechapel murders of 1888, and may not be suitable for all audiences.
\n\nSerialized from 1989 to 1996, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's graphic novel From Hell was first released in a single volume in 1999, just as the world was groaning into the present century. This is an important detail, because according to the creators of this astounding work, the age then passing away could not be understood without reference to the gruesome murders, never solved, of five women in London's Whitechapel district, in the fall of 1888. In Alan Moore's occult imagination, the Ripper murders were more than another instance of human depravity: they constituted a magical operation intended to alter the course of history. The nature of this operation, and whether or not it was successful, is the focus of this episode, in which JF and Phil also explore the imaginal actuality of Victorian London and the strange nature of history and time.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon.
\nBuy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\n\nDaniel Silver, Terry Nichols Clark, and Clemente Jesus Navarro Yanez, “Scenes: Social Context in an Age of Contingency”
\nAlan Moore and Eddie Campbell, From Hell
\nFloating World, Edo Japanese concept
\nPhil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture
\nJohn Clellon Holmes recordings
\nArthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes Collection
\nYacht Rock, web series
\nStephen Knight, Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution
\nColin Wilson, Jack the Ripper: Summing Up and Verdict
\nManly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages
\nPeter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor
\nWeird Studies, Episode 89 on “Mumbo Jumbo”
\nCharles Howard Hinton, mathematician
\nJ. G. Ballard, Preface to Crash
\nWilliam Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine
Every off-week, listeners who have chosen to support Weird Studies by joining our Patreon at the Listener's Tier get to enjoy a bonus episode. These episodes are different from the flagship show. Less formal and entirely improvised, they offer Phil and JF a different way of exploring the weird in art, philosophy and culture. To tide our listenership over until the next new episode drops on January 24th, here is a recent example of a Weird Studies audio extra, recorded as the holiday season was getting under way. Happy New Year.
","summary":"A bonus episode, previously exclusive to our Patreon supporters.","date_published":"2024-01-10T10:30:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/48a90bc7-82e4-4ece-aaf8-47a528a85267.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":78283505,"duration_in_seconds":3260}]},{"id":"ccf228ab-1309-4031-bdcb-f7cf430d8dd4","title":"Episode 160: The Way of All Flesh: On John Carpenter's 'The Thing'","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/160","content_text":"As a horror movie, John Carpenter's The Thing seems to have it all: amazing practical effects, body horror, psychological drama, Kurt Russell ... Indeed, there is only one element this movie lacks, and that is anything at all corresponding to the titular villain. There is no thing in The Thing! What we have instead is a process, a pattern, a way for which the term \"thing\" is as good as any other. (What is a thing anyway?) In this episode, Phil and JF, having decided that Carpenter's film qualifies as a Christmas movie because there is snow (and a dog) in it, explore the metaphysical implications of a cult classic.\n\nSupport us on Patreon.\nBuy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop\nFind us on Discord\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!\n\nREFERENCES \n\nJohn Carpenter, The Thing \nWeird Studies, Episode 100 on Carpenter Films \nWeird Studies, Episode 157 on Videodrome \nRidley Scott, Blade Runner \nRidley Scott Alien \nThomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence \nHaecceity \nErnest Fenollosa, The Chinese Written Characters as a Medium for Poetry \nWeird Studies, Episode 89 on ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ \nWeird Studies, Episode 127 on ‘The Impossibility of Automating Ambiguity’ \nWikipedia, “Quiddity” \nVilhelm Hammershøi, Danish painter \nJez Conolly, The Thing \nArthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation \nDylan Trigg, The Thing a Phenomenology of Horror \nPlato, The Timaeus \nLucretius, “On the Nature of Things” \nClive Barker, The Great and Secret Show ","content_html":"As a horror movie, John Carpenter's The Thing seems to have it all: amazing practical effects, body horror, psychological drama, Kurt Russell ... Indeed, there is only one element this movie lacks, and that is anything at all corresponding to the titular villain. There is no thing in The Thing! What we have instead is a process, a pattern, a way for which the term "thing" is as good as any other. (What is a thing anyway?) In this episode, Phil and JF, having decided that Carpenter's film qualifies as a Christmas movie because there is snow (and a dog) in it, explore the metaphysical implications of a cult classic.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon.
\nBuy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\n\nJohn Carpenter, The Thing
\nWeird Studies, Episode 100 on Carpenter Films
\nWeird Studies, Episode 157 on Videodrome
\nRidley Scott, Blade Runner
\nRidley Scott Alien
\nThomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence
\nHaecceity
\nErnest Fenollosa, The Chinese Written Characters as a Medium for Poetry
\nWeird Studies, Episode 89 on ‘Mumbo Jumbo’
\nWeird Studies, Episode 127 on ‘The Impossibility of Automating Ambiguity’
\nWikipedia, “Quiddity”
\nVilhelm Hammershøi, Danish painter
\nJez Conolly, The Thing
\nArthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
\nDylan Trigg, The Thing a Phenomenology of Horror
\nPlato, The Timaeus
\nLucretius, “On the Nature of Things”
\nClive Barker, The Great and Secret Show
Every once in a while, JF and Phil like to do a “song swap.” Each picks a song, and the ensuing conversation locates linkages and correspondences where none was previously thought to exist. In this episode, they are joined by the music scholar Meredith Michael – Weird Studies assistant, and co-host of Cosmophonia, a podcast about music and outer space – to discuss songs by Lili Boulanger, Vienna Teng, and Iron & Wine. Before long, this disparate assortment personal favourites occasions a weirdly focused dialogue on time, impermanence, control, (mis)recognition, and the affinity of art and synchronicity.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon.
\nBuy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\nIron and Wine, “Passing Afternoon”
\nVienna Teng, “The Hymn of Acxiom”, (and here is the live version)
\nLili Boulanger, Vieille Priére Bouddhique
\nStar Trek: Deep Space Nine
\nKarol Berger, Bach’s Cycle Mozart’s Arrow
\nWilliam Shakespeare, Hamlet
\nCharles Darwin, The Origin of Species
\nImmanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
\nVladimir Jankelevitch, Music and the Ineffable
\nHector Berlioz, Fugue on “amen” from La Damnation du Faust
\nSlavoj Zizek, A Pervert’s Guide to Idiology
\nFederico Campagna, Technic and Magic
\nShepard Tone
\nRudolf Steiner, The Influces of Lucifer and Ahriman
Special Guest: Meredith Michael.
","summary":"Music scholar Meredith Michael joins Phil and JF to discuss songs by Vienna Teng, Lili Boulanger, and Iron & Wine.","date_published":"2023-12-06T11:15:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/1a326131-a99d-42fe-96d4-df6673bfea65.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":130472868,"duration_in_seconds":5434}]},{"id":"bbaf69ec-ce49-4e6a-b5b3-aa06ae06c697","title":"Episode 158: As Above, So Below: On Plato's 'Timaeus'","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/158","content_text":"In this episode of Weird Studies, we delve into the mysterious depths of Plato's Timaeus, one of the foundational texts of our civilization. In his characteristic brilliance, Plato blends cosmology and metaphysics, anatomy and politics to tell a creation story that rivals the most fantastical mythologies, yet he does it while remaining grounded in a philosophical rigor that announces a radically new way of thinking the world. Here, Phil and JF try unravel the layers of the dialogue, revealing how Plato's vision of a divinely ordered cosmos echoes through the corridors of esoteric thought from antiquity to modern times.\n\nSupport us on Patreon.\nBuy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop\nFind us on Discord\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!\n\nREFERENCES\n\nPlato, [Timaeus](https://hackettpublishing.com/history/history-of-science/timaeus](Donald Zeyl Edition) \nEarl Fontenelle, The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast \nThe Book of Thoth \nGraham Hancock, British journalist \nHesiod, Theogony \nHermes Trismegistus, {Emerald Tablet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Tablet) \nPierre Hadot,, scholar of classical philosophy \nEugene Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences” \nJean-Pierre Vernant, The Origins of Greek Thought \nLionel Snell, SSOTBME ","content_html":"In this episode of Weird Studies, we delve into the mysterious depths of Plato's Timaeus, one of the foundational texts of our civilization. In his characteristic brilliance, Plato blends cosmology and metaphysics, anatomy and politics to tell a creation story that rivals the most fantastical mythologies, yet he does it while remaining grounded in a philosophical rigor that announces a radically new way of thinking the world. Here, Phil and JF try unravel the layers of the dialogue, revealing how Plato's vision of a divinely ordered cosmos echoes through the corridors of esoteric thought from antiquity to modern times.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon.
\nBuy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\n\nPlato, [Timaeus](https://hackettpublishing.com/history/history-of-science/timaeus](Donald Zeyl Edition)
\nEarl Fontenelle, The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast
\nThe Book of Thoth
\nGraham Hancock, British journalist
\nHesiod, Theogony
\nHermes Trismegistus, {Emerald Tablet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Tablet)
\nPierre Hadot,, scholar of classical philosophy
\nEugene Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences”
\nJean-Pierre Vernant, The Origins of Greek Thought
\nLionel Snell, SSOTBME
"Death to Videodrome! Long live the New Flesh!"
\n\nIt was perhaps inevitable that the modern Weird, driven as it is to swallow all things, would sooner or later veer into the realm of political sloganeering without losing any of its unknowable essence. David Cronenberg's 1983 film Videodrome is more than a masterwork of body horror: it is a study in technopolitics, a meditation on the complex weave of imagination and perception, and a prophecy of the now on-going coalescence of flesh and technology into a strange new alloy. In this episode, recorded live after a screening of the film at Indiana University Cinema in Bloomington, JF and Phil set out to interpret Cronenberg's vision... and come to dig the New Flesh.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon.
\nBuy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\nDavid Cronenberg, Videodrome
\nMaurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible
\nPaul Virilio, The Information Bomb
\nWeird Studies, Episode 75 on “2001: A Space Odyssey”
\nRichard Porton and David Cronenberg, "The Film Director as Philosopher: An Interview with David Cronenberg"
\nGeorge Hickenlooper and David Cronenberg, "The Primal Energies of the Horror Film: An Interview with David Cronenberg"
\nWeird Studies, Episode 144 with Connor Habib
\nWilliam Friedkin (dir.), The Exorcist
\nPlato, Timaeus
\nWilliam Gibson, Idoru
\nCBC, Yorkville: Hippie Haven
\nLinda Williams, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess”
There are works of weird fiction that dispense their strangeness so subtly that many readers never pick up on it, books that allow themselves to be pass for mundane, the better to haunt us after we put them down. Donna Tartt's debut novel The Secret History, published in 1992, is such a work. On the surface, it is a brilliant, yet completely naturalistic, telling of the lead-up and aftermath of a murder. But The Secret History is also a work of the depths, and readers who go in seeking the Weird will find it lurking on every page. More than a masterpiece of psychological exploration, it is a story about the resurgence of the old god Dionysus, and a chronicle of fate; fate conceived, in the manner of the Ancient Greeks, as a cosmic force.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon.
\nBuy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\n\nDonna Tartt, The Secret History
\nRobertson Davies, Canadian novelist
\nWeird Studies, Episode 98 on Exotica
\nM. R. James, English author
\nWeird Studies, Episode 3 on “The White People”
\nE. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational
\nJean Cocteau, La Machine Infernale
\nJohn Crowley, Little, Big
\nStar Trek: The Next Generation, “The Outrageous Okana”
\nWeird Studies, Episode 110 on “The Glass Bead Game”
\nGabriel Faure, Nocturne No. 11
\nPierre-André Boutang, L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze
\nDonna Tartt, The Goldfinch
One of the most surprising aspects of paranormal experience is how often it takes on a storylike form, unfolding exactly as you would expect it to in, say, a Hollywood horror film. Viewers of Karl Pfeiffer's film The Unbinding will get a sense of this in the early sequences of Greg and Dana Newkirk's latest occult adventure. The haunting comes on strong and takes rather familiar forms. But the almost too-good-to-be-true frights -- effective as they are in an almost fairy-tale way -- soon give way to a procedural that invites us to ponder the ethics and methodologies of paranormal investigation in the age of Global Weirding. What do we owe the Others we encounter? What do they owe us? In this episode, JF and Phil discuss some of the questions haunting this brilliant documentary from the creators of Hellier.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon.
\nBuy the Weird Studies sountrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\n\nPlanet Weird, The Unbinding
\nWeird Studies, Episode 67 on “Hellier”
\nAlexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall, “Sovereignty and the UFO”
\nDuncan Barford, “Magick Versus Content”
\nGilles Deleuze, Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty
William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land is without a doubt one of the weirdest entries in the annals of weird fiction. Set in the earth's distant future, after the sun has gone out and the planet has been cleaved in two by an unspecified disaster, a telepathic scientist dons his armour and weapons to brave the monster-haunted yet strangely monotonous wastes that engirdle the massive pyramid in which the last humans took refuge, hundreds of thousands of years earlier. If Samuel Beckett tripped hard on ayahuasca, he might have come up with something like Hodgson's genre-defying novel, which reads more like a report to committee of 17th-century heretics than a piece of speculative fiction from the early twentieth century.
\n\nMIT Press recently released a (blessedly) abridged edition of The Night Land as part of their Radium Series. Journalist, scholar, and lecturer Erik Davis, who penned a brilliant foreword for the new edition, was kind enough to join Phil and JF to discuss this underrated masterpiece.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon and gain access to Phil's podcast on Wagner's Ring Cycle.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nDownload Pierre-Yves Martel's new album, Mer Bleue.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
SHOW NOTES
\n\nWilliam Hope Hodgeson, The Night Land
\nWeird Studies, Episode 37 with Stuart Davis
\nWalter Ong, Orality and Literacy
\nCharles Taylor, A Secular Age
\nWilliam Hope Hodgeson, House on the Borderland
\nSamuel Beckett, Molloy
\nSumptuary Laws
\nArcosanti, arcology
\nOlaf Stapledon, Last and First Men
\nPierre Schaeffer, “Traité des objets musicaux”
\nSchitzophonia
\nH.G. Wells, The Time Machine
Even learned commentators on the tarot are likely to point out at the fourteenth major arcana, Temperance, is a bit of a boring card. At least, it comes off as dull until you look at it closely, as JF and Phil do in this episode. What they find is that the Temperance card is actually a diagram, a kind of blueprint for a celestial machine that underlies human technology, beckoning us to restore even the most mechanical contraption to the raw weirdness at the source of everything.
\n\nHeader image by Rolf Dietrich Brecher via Wikimedia Commons
\n\nIt's not too late to join JF's Nura Learning course, ["Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence."](www.nuralearning.com)
\n\nSupport us on Patreon and gain access to Phil's podcast on Wagner's Ring Cycle.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nDownload Pierre-Yves Martel's new album, Mer Bleue.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
SHOW NOTES
\n\nAnonymous, Meditations on the Tarot
\nAleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth
\nAdrien Lyne, Jacob’s Ladder
\nWeeping Angels, Dr. Who creatures
\nJoel Schumacher, Flatliners
\nLawrence Halprin, The RSVP Cycles
\nGregory Bateson, Steps To an Ecology of Mind
\nHesychasm, monastic practice
\nYoav Ben-Dov, Tarot: the Open Reading
\nThe Gnostic Tarot
\nJeffrey Kripal, Authors of the Impossible
\nNagarjuna, Verses of the Middle Way
In this bonus episode, originally released on July 26th on the Weird Studies Patreon, Phil and JF explore a few ways in which artificial intelligence will impact the arts. The podcast returns with a new official episode on September 13th. Enjoy.
","summary":"Another Patreon bonus, released for your listening pleasure as we prepare the first episode of the new season, which begins on September 13th.","date_published":"2023-09-08T10:15:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/8608c480-cd5d-498e-8ef5-72984f33e08f.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":73679193,"duration_in_seconds":3066}]},{"id":"c743e87c-5583-45b9-b110-dd7f2955c2f9","title":"Summer Bonus: On Affectation, with a Special Announcement","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/152b","content_text":"A bonus offering to break up the summer hiatus, this episode contains a conversation on the virtues of affectation originally available only to third- and fourth-tier members of the Weird Studies Patreon (\"Putting on the Bow-Tie,\" Apr 5, 2023). The episode opens with a short piece on JF's upcoming Nura Learning course, Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, starting on September 12th. Enjoy.\n\n[Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence](www.nuralearning.com), a seven-week online course with JF Martel.","content_html":"A bonus offering to break up the summer hiatus, this episode contains a conversation on the virtues of affectation originally available only to third- and fourth-tier members of the Weird Studies Patreon ("Putting on the Bow-Tie," Apr 5, 2023). The episode opens with a short piece on JF's upcoming Nura Learning course, Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, starting on September 12th. Enjoy.
\n\n[Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence](www.nuralearning.com), a seven-week online course with JF Martel.
","summary":"Phil and JF discuss the virtues of affectation in this bonus episode, previously available only to Patreon members.","date_published":"2023-08-15T10:00:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/c743e87c-5583-45b9-b110-dd7f2955c2f9.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":47833541,"duration_in_seconds":2986}]},{"id":"4c2a0f03-edd3-4e75-931d-255395b78a2e","title":"Episode 152: The Science of Things Spiritual: Live in Lily Dale","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/152","content_text":"On the last week of July, 2023, Phil and JF were delighted to speak at Shannon Taggart's Science of Things Spiritual Symposium in Lily Dale, the nerve centre of the Spiritualist movement. As speakers, your hosts were part of an inspiring lineup of scholars, artists, and researchers committed to exploring the borderlands of art, science, religion, and the paranormal. They also had the honour of launching the symposium with a live recording held on the evening of the July 27th. The topic was Frederic W. H. Myers' autobiographical essay, \"Fragments of Inner Life,\" first published in full in 1961, some sixty years after the author's death. Myers was one of the original members of the Society for Psychical Research in England. A poet and classicist, he remained committed to the scientific promise of paranormal investigation until the end of his life. His book Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, also published posthumously, argues that psychical studies have confirmed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that death is just the beginning. In this talk, JF and Phil discuss Myers' relevance to 21st-century thinking on the Weird.\n\nSupport us on Patreon and gain access to Phil's podcast on Wagner's Ring Cycle.\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.\nDownload Pierre-Yves Martel's new album, Mer Bleue.\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop\nFind us on Discord\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!\n\nREFERENCES\n\nThe Science of Things Spiritual Symposium: July 27-29, 2023\nFrederic Myers, Fragments of Inner Life\nAlan Bennett, History Boys \nArthur Machen, A Fragment of Life \nAlan Gauld, The Founders of Psychical Research \nDonna Tartt, The Secret History \nArthur Machen, The Great God Pan \nFrans de Waal, Mama’s Last Hug \nDaniel Dennett, American cognitive scientist\nFrederic Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death \nGabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being \nPhil Ford, Dig \nWilliam James, Principles of Psychology \nAkashic Record, Theosophical idea \nJeff Kripal, Authors of the Impossible ","content_html":"On the last week of July, 2023, Phil and JF were delighted to speak at Shannon Taggart's Science of Things Spiritual Symposium in Lily Dale, the nerve centre of the Spiritualist movement. As speakers, your hosts were part of an inspiring lineup of scholars, artists, and researchers committed to exploring the borderlands of art, science, religion, and the paranormal. They also had the honour of launching the symposium with a live recording held on the evening of the July 27th. The topic was Frederic W. H. Myers' autobiographical essay, "Fragments of Inner Life," first published in full in 1961, some sixty years after the author's death. Myers was one of the original members of the Society for Psychical Research in England. A poet and classicist, he remained committed to the scientific promise of paranormal investigation until the end of his life. His book Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, also published posthumously, argues that psychical studies have confirmed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that death is just the beginning. In this talk, JF and Phil discuss Myers' relevance to 21st-century thinking on the Weird.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon and gain access to Phil's podcast on Wagner's Ring Cycle.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nDownload Pierre-Yves Martel's new album, Mer Bleue.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\n\nThe Science of Things Spiritual Symposium: July 27-29, 2023
\nFrederic Myers, Fragments of Inner Life
\nAlan Bennett, History Boys
\nArthur Machen, A Fragment of Life
\nAlan Gauld, The Founders of Psychical Research
\nDonna Tartt, The Secret History
\nArthur Machen, The Great God Pan
\nFrans de Waal, Mama’s Last Hug
\nDaniel Dennett, American cognitive scientist
\nFrederic Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death
\nGabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being
\nPhil Ford, Dig
\nWilliam James, Principles of Psychology
\nAkashic Record, Theosophical idea
\nJeff Kripal, Authors of the Impossible
In The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light, the cultural historian William Irwin Thompson predicted the rise of a new form of knowledge building, a direly needed alternative to the Wissenshaft of standard science and scholarship. He called it Wissenskunst, "the play of knowledge in a world of serious data processors." Wissenskunst is pretty much what JF and Phil have been aspiring to do on Weird Studies since 2018, but in this episode they are joined by a master of the craft, the computational sociologist and physicist Jacob G. Foster of UCLA. Jacob is the co-founder of the Diverse Intelligence Summer Institute (DISI), a gathering of scholars, scientists, and students that takes place each year at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. It was there that this conversation was recorded. The topic was the Possible, that dream-blurred vanishing point where art, philosophy, and science converge as imaginative and creative practices.
\n\nClick here or here for more information on Shannon Taggart's Science of Things Spiritual Symposium at Lily Dale NY, July 27-29 2023.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon and gain access to Phil's podcast on Wagner's Ring Cycle.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nDownload Pierre-Yves Martel's new album, Mer Bleue.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\n\nDiverse Intelligences Summer Institute
\n"Deconstructing the Barrier of Meaning," a talk by Jacob G. Foster at the Santa Fe Institute
\nWilliam Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture
\nFrederic Rzewski, “Little Bangs: A Nihilist Theory of Improvisation”
\nBrian Eno, Oblique Strategies
\nThe accident of Bob in Twin Peaks
\nCarl Jung, “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry
\nAugust Kekule,, German chemist
\nRobert Dijkgraaf, “Contemplating the End of Physics”
\nRichard Baker, American zen teacher
\nGian-Carlo Rota, Indiscrete Thoughts
\nWilliam Shakespeare, Macbeth
\nShoggoth, Lovecraftian entity
Special Guest: Jacob G. Foster.
","summary":"Jacob G. Foster joins Phil and JF to discuss art, science, and the reality of the possible. ","date_published":"2023-07-19T09:00:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/fbece783-976d-4b1f-b564-75a340460128.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":72656386,"duration_in_seconds":4538}]},{"id":"a24251bc-fe94-45c1-800e-c3a0089b1393","title":"Episode 150: Sacramental Reality: On Arthur Machen's \"A Fragment of Life\"","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/150","content_text":"\"A Fragement of Life\" opens with Mr. Darnell waking up from a dream and going down to breakfast, where it is described that \"before he sat down to his fried bacon he kissed his wife seriously and dutifully.\" He then proceeds to take the tram to visit a friend, with whom he has a long and tedious conversation about plants, clothes, kids, and how best to spend ten pounds. The story continues on in this mundane manner for quite some time, which is probably not what we would expect from Arthur Machen, virtuoso of the weird. But, as Phil and JF discuss, this writing style intentionally draws attention to the absurdity of modern, materialist life, creating a striking contrast with the mysterious other world that Mr. and Mrs. Darnell eventually begin to pursue. \n\nSupport us on Patreon and gain access to Phil's podcast on Wagner's Ring Cycle.\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.\nDownload Pierre-Yves Martel's new album, Mer Bleue.\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop\nFind us on Discord\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!\n\nREFERENCES\nArthur Machen, A Fragment of Life \nWeird Studies, Episode 3 on “The White People and Episode 87 on “Heiroglyphics” \nKarl Marx, Capital \nJames Machin, Weird Fiction in Britain \nThomas Ligotti, “The Order of Illusion” in Noctuary \nWeird Studies, Episode 20 on the Trash Stratum \nArtur Schnitzler, Traumnovelle \nWeird Studies, Episode 59 on Walking \nCarl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections ","content_html":""A Fragement of Life" opens with Mr. Darnell waking up from a dream and going down to breakfast, where it is described that "before he sat down to his fried bacon he kissed his wife seriously and dutifully." He then proceeds to take the tram to visit a friend, with whom he has a long and tedious conversation about plants, clothes, kids, and how best to spend ten pounds. The story continues on in this mundane manner for quite some time, which is probably not what we would expect from Arthur Machen, virtuoso of the weird. But, as Phil and JF discuss, this writing style intentionally draws attention to the absurdity of modern, materialist life, creating a striking contrast with the mysterious other world that Mr. and Mrs. Darnell eventually begin to pursue.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon and gain access to Phil's podcast on Wagner's Ring Cycle.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nDownload Pierre-Yves Martel's new album, Mer Bleue.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\nArthur Machen, A Fragment of Life
\nWeird Studies, Episode 3 on “The White People and Episode 87 on “Heiroglyphics”
\nKarl Marx, Capital
\nJames Machin, Weird Fiction in Britain
\nThomas Ligotti, “The Order of Illusion” in Noctuary
\nWeird Studies, Episode 20 on the Trash Stratum
\nArtur Schnitzler, Traumnovelle
\nWeird Studies, Episode 59 on Walking
\nCarl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Occasionally, JF and Phil do a song swap. Each host chooses a song he loves and shares it with the other, and then they record an episode on it. This time, JF chose to discuss "Jesus, Etc." from Wilco's 2001 album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and Phil picked Judee Sill's ethereal "The Kiss," from Heart Food (1973). It was in the zone of Time, in all its strangeness, that the two songs began to resonate with one another. Sill's song is a fated grasping at the eternal that is present even when it eludes us, and "Jesus, Etc." is a leap across time that captures, in jagged shards and signal bursts, the events of the day on which Wilco's album was scheduled to drop: September 11, 2001.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon and gain access to Phil's podcast on Wagner's Ring Cycle.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nDownload Pierre-Yves Martel's new album, Mer Bleue.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\n\nJudee Sill, “The Kiss”
\nJames Elkins, Pictures and Tears
\nBrian Wilson and the Beach Boys, “Surf’s Up”
\nWeird Studies, Episode 148 on “Twin Peaks”
\nWilco, “Jesus Etc.”
\nJeff Buckley, singer-songwriter
\nWilliam Gibson, Forward to Dhalgren
\nL. E. J. Brouwer, Concept of “two-ity”
\nDogen, Genjokoan
\nDavid Bowie, “Heroes”
\nPhilip K. Dick, Valis
\nWeird Studies, Episode 147 “You Must Change Your Life”
\nTheodore Adorno, Aesthetic Theory
\nJames Longley, Iraq in Fragments
\nSam Jones, I am Trying to Break your Heart
\nNumber Stations
David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks has been a touchstone of Weird Studies since the podcast's inception. Back in 2018, Phil and JF recorded Episode 1: Garmonbozia while still reeling from the series' third season, which aired on Showtime the year before. Now, in preparation for their upcoming course on Twin Peaks, they watched the third season again and recorded this episode. Their conversation touched on the virtues of late style in the arts, the divergence of knowing and understanding, the fate of Agent Dale Cooper, and the dream logic of the _Twin Peaks _universe.
\n\nLast change to sign up for The Twin Peaks Mythos, a 4-week Weird Studies view-along starting June 8th, 2023.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nSupport us on Patreon and gain access to Phil's podcast on Wagner's Ring Cycle.
\nDownload Pierre-Yves Martel's new album, Mer Bleue.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\n\nSymposium at Lily Dale, July 27-29, 2023
\nDavid Lynch and Mark Frost (creators), Twin Peaks
\nDavid Lynch (dir.), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
\nGilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?
\nChris Carter (creator), The X-Files
\nErik Davis, American scholar, lecturer, and journalist
\nThomas Ligotti, American writer
\nStephen King, American writer
\nJoshua Brand and John Falsey (creators), Northern Exposure
\nJames Elkins, Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings
\nDavid Lynch (dir.), Mulholland Drive
\nRobert Aickman, English writer of "strange stories"
\nManuel DeLanda on signification vs significance
\nWeird Studies, episode 105: Fire Walk With Tamler Sommers
\nKyle McLachlan interview in Vanity Fair
Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "Archaic Torso of Apollo" ends on a note that has puzzled and inspired readers for more than a century: "For there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life." In this episode, JF and Phil search for the meaning of this ethico-aesthetic imperative that Rilke heard resounding from a fragment of Greek statuary. This episode is special because the hosts were able to record it in person while on a writing retreat in Western Quebec.
\n\nEnroll in THE TWIN PEAKS MYTHOS, a 4-week Weird Studies view-along starting June 8th.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nSupport us on Patreon and gain access to Phil's podcast on Wagner's Ring Cycle.
\nDownload Pierre-Yves Martel's new album, Mer Bleue.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\n\nRainer Maria Rilke, “Archaic Torso of Apollo”
\nPeter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life
\nMichel Foucault, The Order of Things
\nHe Man, superhero
\nMunich Terrorist Photo
\nAlbert Camus, The Rebel
\nFranz Kafka, "The Trial" and “In the Penal Colony"
\nAuguste Rodin, French sculptor
Of the twenty-two figures that make up the major arcana of the tarot, the Chariot is probably the most commonplace. While the tenth arcanum is a wheel, it's The Wheel of Fortune, not just any old wagon wheel. But arcanum VII is neither the Chariot of Fire or the Chariot of the Gods – just the plain old chariot. Usually, it is interpreted as a symbol of the will in its lower and higher aspects. In this episode, Phil notes that the Chariot can also symbolize something as ordinary as new car. Of course, here on Weird Studies, no car is just a car, and we like to think that Youngblood Priest, the protagonist of the 1972 film Super Fly, would agree. A car also a tool, a medium, a token of mastery, an atmospheric disturbance, a means of manifestation, a spaceship...
\n\nEnroll in THE TWIN PEAKS MYTHOS, a 4-week Weird Studies view-along starting June 8th.
\nListen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia.
\nSupport us on Patreon and gain access to Phil's podcast on Wagner's Ring Cycle.
\nDownload Pierre-Yves Martel's new album, Mer Bleue.
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
REFERENCES
\n\nRachel Pollack, Tarot Wisdom
\nJordan Parks Jr., Super Fly
\nOur Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot
\nWeird Studies, Episode 144 on “Hellraiser”
\nPlato, Phaedrus
\nVanessa Onwuemezi, Dark Neighborhood
\nJ. G. Ballard, Crash
\nPaul Virilio, War and Cinema
\nKarl Marx, Grundrisse
\nWeird Studies, Episode 26 with Michael Garfield
In this episode, Phil and JF discuss Vanessa Onwuemezi's, "Dark Neighbourhood," a tale of scintillant darkness from her debut collection of the same name. This strangest of strange stories is set in a vast encampment of destitute yet hopeful people whose lives consist entirely of waiting for their turn to step through the iron gates of the Beyond. Living off the dregs of civilization, they seem the last of our kind. They are the ones who, having made it to the front of the line, have the dubious honour of contemplating directly the mystery that awaits us all. Unlike anything we've covered on the show, "Dark Neighbourhood" is a chilling and moving story that elicits interpretation as elegantly as it resists it.
\n\nPierre-Yves Martel's album Mer bleue drops on May 1st, 2023!
\n\nSupport us on Patreon and gain access to Phil's ongoing podcast on Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle.
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
REFERENCES
\n\nShow Notes.docx
\n\nVanessa Omwuemezi, Dark Neighbourhood
\nPeter Breugel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
\nWeird Studies, Episode 140 on “Spirited Away”
\nKarl Marx, Capital
\nPhil Ford, Dig
\nMurray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism
\nWeird Studies, Episode 98 on “Taboo”
\nMichael Wadleigh (dir.), Woodstock
\nSamuel R. Delaney, Dahlgren
\nLeonard Cohen, “Waiting for the Miracle
\nMartin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd
\nOne red paperclip, story of guy who traded a paper clip for a house
\nWeird Studies, Episode 101 on Tanizaki
\nJames Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld
\nGeorge Steiner, Real Presences
\nH. P. Lovecraft, “Nyarlothotep”
\nAlexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall, “Sovereignty and the UFO”
\nWeird Studies, Episode 144 on Hellraiser
\nWeird Studies, Episode 29 on Lovecraft
In the 1980s, Clive Barker burst onto the cultural scene with The Books of Blood, collections of unforgettable tales of horror, depravity, and decadence the likes of which had been seldom seen since the days of Lautréamont's Les Chants de Maldoror and Huysmans' Là-Bas. In the decades that followed, he went on to create an astounding body of work in fantasy and horror as a writer, artist, and film director. In this episode, author, lecturer, and podcaster Conner Habib joins JF and Phil to discuss what is arguably Barker's best-known work, the 1987 horror classic Hellraiser, as well as the novella that inspired it, "The Hellbound Heart."
\n\nPreorder Pierre-Yves Martel's album Mer bleue.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon and gain access to Phil's ongoing podcast on Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle.
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
References
\n\nClive Barker, The Hellbound Heart
\nClive Barker (dir.), Hellraiser
\nTod Browning (dir.), Freaks
\nClive Barker, “In the Hills, The Cities” in Books of Blood
\nWes Craven, A Nightmare on Elm Street
\nAngela Carter, English writer
\nSusan Sontag, “Happenings: An Art of Radical Juxtaposition”
\nGilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What is Philosophy?
\nSturm und Drang, 18th-century artistic movement
\nGayle Rubin, American cultural anthropologist
\nStephen King, It
\nRobert Wise (dir.), The Sound of Music
\nSlavoj Zizek, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema
\nRobert Wise (dir.), The Haunting
\nDavid Mamet, On Directing Film
\nMark Hedsel and David Ovason, The Zealotor
\nDavid Lynch (dir.), Mulholland Drive
\nStanley Kubrick, The Shining
\nCoil, Hellraiser Themes
\nBela Bartok, Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
\nGolden Section, mathematical ratio
\nKevin Williamson,, American screenwriter
\nSusan Sontag, Against Interpretation
Special Guest: Conner Habib.
","summary":"Conner Habib joins Phil and JF to discuss Clive Barker's classic horror film, and the novella it was based on.","date_published":"2023-04-12T10:30:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/69b43bb3-8fb1-4c52-a871-a8b5939be3f3.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":98528595,"duration_in_seconds":6155}]},{"id":"f9df13f2-fad7-489a-9082-b079bef69843","title":"Episode 143: On UFOs","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/143","content_text":"In the 1950s, Carl Jung expressed frustration at the impenetrability of the UFO mystery, the \"strange, unknown, and indeed contradictory nature\" of this \"ostensibly physical phenomenon\" with \"an extremely important psychic component.\" Throughout his writings on the topic, he marvels at the impossibility of coming to even preliminary conclusions. Fastforward to 2023, after a series of astounding disclosures on the part of qualified government people, and we have as much reason to be baffled as we ever had. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss the mercurial, tricksterish fact of ortherwordly things seen in the sky.\n\nLearn more about the Ohio UFO Heritage Conference on May 5-6, 2023.\n\nPreorder Pierre-Yves Martel's album Mer bleue. \n\nSupport us on Patreon and gain access to Phil's ongoing podcast on Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle.\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel\nFind us on Discord\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) \nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop\n\nREFERENCES\n\nPatrik Harpur, Daimonic Reality \nJohn Keel The Mothman Prophecies \nJaques Vallee Passport to Magonia \nWilliam Shakespeare, Macbeth \nUFO Rabbit Hole Podcast \nCarl Jung, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky \nWeird Studies, Episode 141 on SSOTBME \nHenri Bergson, Matter and Memory \nWeird Studies, Episodes 73 and 74 on Jung \nWeird Studies, Episode 44 on William James’s Psychical Research \nJacques Vallée and Paola Leopizzi, Harris, Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret \nJacques Vallée, \"Physical Analyses in Ten Cases of Unexplained Aerial Objects with Material Samples\" \nShepard tone \nMark Fisher, Capitalist Realism \nTwin Peaks \nMark Pilkington, Mirage Men \nGraham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy \nWeird Studies, Episode 59 on Walking \nWeird Studies, Episode 142 on “Last and First Men” ","content_html":"In the 1950s, Carl Jung expressed frustration at the impenetrability of the UFO mystery, the "strange, unknown, and indeed contradictory nature" of this "ostensibly physical phenomenon" with "an extremely important psychic component." Throughout his writings on the topic, he marvels at the impossibility of coming to even preliminary conclusions. Fastforward to 2023, after a series of astounding disclosures on the part of qualified government people, and we have as much reason to be baffled as we ever had. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss the mercurial, tricksterish fact of ortherwordly things seen in the sky.
\n\nLearn more about the Ohio UFO Heritage Conference on May 5-6, 2023.
\n\nPreorder Pierre-Yves Martel's album Mer bleue.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon and gain access to Phil's ongoing podcast on Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle.
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
REFERENCES
\n\nPatrik Harpur, Daimonic Reality
\nJohn Keel The Mothman Prophecies
\nJaques Vallee Passport to Magonia
\nWilliam Shakespeare, Macbeth
\nUFO Rabbit Hole Podcast
\nCarl Jung, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky
\nWeird Studies, Episode 141 on SSOTBME
\nHenri Bergson, Matter and Memory
\nWeird Studies, Episodes 73 and 74 on Jung
\nWeird Studies, Episode 44 on William James’s Psychical Research
\nJacques Vallée and Paola Leopizzi, Harris, Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret
\nJacques Vallée, "Physical Analyses in Ten Cases of Unexplained Aerial Objects with Material Samples"
\nShepard tone
\nMark Fisher, Capitalist Realism
\nTwin Peaks
\nMark Pilkington, Mirage Men
\nGraham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy
\nWeird Studies, Episode 59 on Walking
\nWeird Studies, Episode 142 on “Last and First Men”
Jóhann Jóhannsson was one of contemporary cinema's greatest score composers when he passed away in 2018 at the young age of 48. Last and First Men, his enigmatic directorial debut, was released shortly after in 2020. Based on a novel by the same name by the British science fiction writer Olaf Stapleton, the film offers a sustained meditation on the prospect of extinction, the eventuality of humanity's disappearance from the comos. In this episode, JF and Phil discuss the images and sounds of the film as they flicker and swell against the backdrop of nonbeing that envelops us all. The conversation touches on the idea of beauty, Brutalist architecture, modernism, and futurity.
\n\nPreorder Pierre-Yves Martel's album Mer bleue.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon and gain access to Phil's ongoing podcast on Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle.
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
REFERENCES
\n\nJóhann Jóhannsson, Last and First Men
\nUnfrozen Caveman Lawyer, SNL character
\nSpomeniks, Yugoslavian monuments
\nOlaf Stapleton, The Last and First Men
\nWoody Allen, Hannah and Her Sisters
\nThe Last of Us, television show
\nRay Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction
\nWeird Studies, Episode 2 on Garmonbozia
\nAlexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize Speech
\nWeird Studies Episode 139 on Art Power
\nNumenius, Platonist philosopher
\nGilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?
\nJia Tolentino, “The Overwhelming Emotion of Hearing Toto’s “Africa”
\nWeird Studies, Episode 110 on “The Glass Bead Game”
\nD. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Ramsey Dukes, also known by his real name of Lionel Snell, may be one of the most important thinkers on magic since Aleister Crowley. In the impishly-titled Sex Secrets of the Black Magicians Exposed (or SSOTBME for short), Dukes accomplishes something few writers on the topic have been able to do: he gives us magic without asking us to sacrifice anything that makes us sensible modern people. He makes magic seem like the most obvious thing in the world, and he does it without taking away any of its, well, magic. How he does it and what it means are questions that would take several episodes to unpack. In this one, Phil and JF begin the work by discussing how Dukes situates magic in an epistemic compass that also includes science, art, and religion. This set of tools is as essential to a holistic view of reality as the four suits in a deck of cards are essential to a proper poker game. In other words, when we lose magic, we lose a way of dealing with reality.
\n\nSign up for JF's upcoming course on Macbeth
\n\nSupport us on Patreon and gain access to Phil's ongoing podcast on Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle.
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
REFERENCES
\n\nDavid Lynch (dir.), Mulholland Drive
\nRamsey Dukes, SSOTBME
\nSlavoj Žižek, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema
\nC. P. Snow, The Two Cultures
\nWeird Studies, Episode 139 on Art Power
\nMarshall McLuhan, Gutenberg Galaxy
\n“Virtual” and “Actual”, as developed by Bergson and Deleuze
\nPragmatism, philosophical school
\nJack Parsons, American rocket scientist
\nMircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return
\nWilliam Shakespeare, Macbeth
Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away is one of those rare films that is both super popular and super weird. Rife with cinematic non sequiturs, unforgettable imagery, and moments of horror, it is an outstanding example of a story form that goes all the way back to the myth of Psyche and Eros from Apuleius's Golden Ass, if not earlier. In this type of story, a girl on the cusp of maturity steps into a magical realm where people and things from waking life reappear, draped in the gossamer of dream and nightmare. Musicologist and WS assistant Meredith Michael joins JF and Phil to discuss a strange jewel of Japanese animated cinema.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon and get early access to Phil Ford's new podcast series on Wagner's Ring Cycle.
\n\nSign up for JF's upcoming online course on Shakespeare's Macbeth on Nura Learning.
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
REFERENCES
\n\nHayao Miyazaki, Spirited Away
\nKyle Gann, Robert Ashley
\nRobert Ashely, Perfect Lives
\nApuleius, “Psyche and Eros” from The Golden Ass
\nHenri Bergson, Time and Free Will
\nKentucky Route Zero, video game
\nLegend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, video game
\nJean Sibelius, 5th Symphony
\nQuentin Tarantino, film maker
\nMark Rothko, American painter
\nGiles Deleuze, “What is the Creative Act?”
\nGK Chesterton, Orthdoxy
\nHerman Hesse, Siddhartha
\nAndrew Osmond, BFI Guide to Spirited Away
Special Guest: Meredith Michael.
","summary":"Meredith joins Phil and JF to discuss the 2001 Studio Ghibli masterpiece.","date_published":"2023-02-15T11:30:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/8695fc61-ce10-43a9-885d-558542b9451a.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":77696155,"duration_in_seconds":4853}]},{"id":"3c60c817-1d2d-4bc7-a81e-b57e6d814291","title":"Episode 139: Sex, Money, and Power are YOURS with our SECRET Art-Power Formula!","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/139","content_text":"\"YOU MUST CHANGE YOUR LIFE!\"\n\nTired of failure and self-loathing? Want to be rich and famous while having a good time all the time? Wondering how to turn your banal opinions into Transcendent Truths? Look no further than this special, exclusive episode of Weird Studies, where we reveal, once and for all, the secrets of ART-POWER! \n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel\nSupport us on Patreon \nFind us on Discord\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) \nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop\n\nSHOW NOTES\n\nRamsey Dukes, BLAST Your Way to Megabuck$ with My SECRET Sex-Power Formula\nJames Raggi's statements on artistic freedom in tabletop roleplaying games: Proud to Commit Commercial Suicide 2023 and On Potential Inclusivity/Morality Clauses in RPG Licenses\nDavid Cronenberg, \"I Would Like to Make a Case for the Crime of Art\"\nOscar Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Grey \nAlfred Gell, The Art of Anthropology \nSusanne Langer, “On the Cultural Importance of the Arts” \nWeird Studies, Episodes 73 and 74 on Carl Jung’s Theory of Art \nKodo Sawaki, Japanese zen teacher \nEric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics \nGilles Deleuze, Pure Immanence \nWerner Herzog, Cave of Forgotten Dreams \nJohn Dewey, Art as Experience \nSusanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key \nNeil Gaiman, “Make Good Art” \nLeon Wieseltier, “Perhaps Culture is Now the Counterculture” \nEugene Vodolazkin, Laurus ","content_html":""YOU MUST CHANGE YOUR LIFE!"
\n\nTired of failure and self-loathing? Want to be rich and famous while having a good time all the time? Wondering how to turn your banal opinions into Transcendent Truths? Look no further than this special, exclusive episode of Weird Studies, where we reveal, once and for all, the secrets of ART-POWER!
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
SHOW NOTES
\n\nRamsey Dukes, BLAST Your Way to Megabuck$ with My SECRET Sex-Power Formula
\nJames Raggi's statements on artistic freedom in tabletop roleplaying games: Proud to Commit Commercial Suicide 2023 and On Potential Inclusivity/Morality Clauses in RPG Licenses
\nDavid Cronenberg, "I Would Like to Make a Case for the Crime of Art"
\nOscar Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Grey
\nAlfred Gell, The Art of Anthropology
\nSusanne Langer, “On the Cultural Importance of the Arts”
\nWeird Studies, Episodes 73 and 74 on Carl Jung’s Theory of Art
\nKodo Sawaki, Japanese zen teacher
\nEric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics
\nGilles Deleuze, Pure Immanence
\nWerner Herzog, Cave of Forgotten Dreams
\nJohn Dewey, Art as Experience
\nSusanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key
\nNeil Gaiman, “Make Good Art”
\nLeon Wieseltier, “Perhaps Culture is Now the Counterculture”
\nEugene Vodolazkin, Laurus
What better way to ring in the New Year than with a freeranging discussion of the dreaded thirteenth arcanum of the tarot? Of all topics, surely death needs the least introduction. Or does it? To those of us who inhabit the castellated compounds of post-industrial privilege, it is perhaps too easy to forget the uninvited guest who skulks in the shadows, touching each of us in turn as he sidles past. "Nothing is certain except death and taxes," Benjamin Franklin once wrote. He was joking, of course. The truth is that death is the only certainty.
\n\nClick here for information about JF's upcoming talk at the Last Tuesday Society.
\n\nHeader image: Detail from Harry Clarke's illustration for "The Masque of the Red Death," from the 1919 edition of Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination.
\n\nSHOW NOTES
\n\nBrian George, Masks of Origin
\nChris Leech, The Gnostic Tarot
\nOur Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot
\nRachel Pollack, Tarot Wisdom
\nRachel Pollack, 78 Degrees of Wisdom
\nEdgar Allen Poe, “The Masque of the Red Death”
\nWeird Studies, Episode 2 on Garmonbozia
\nSteven Spielberg (dir.), Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
\nWeird Studies, Episode 137 on Sunn O)))’s “Life Metal”
\nAleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth
\nThomas Browne, “Urn Burial”
\nFederico Campagna, Technic and Magic
\nAlejandro Jodorowsky, The Way of Tarot
\nSallie Nichols, Tarot and the Archetypal Journey
\nClive Barker, Hellraiser
\nWeird Studies, Episode 116 on “Blade Runner”
\nGeorge Gurdjieff, Armenian mystic
\nBody without organs, philosophical concept
\nElizabeth Le Guin, Boccherini’s Body
\nG. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
\nWeird Studies, Episode 126 with Matt Cardin
We recorded this episode in early December for our Patreon subscribers, but as it's the closest thing to a Christmas special we're ever likely to make, we thought we'd slip it into everyone's stocking this year. In it, we discuss the Ford family's most recently acquired Christmas ornament (which Phil mistakenly calls a luminaria), gazing into the Christmas tree, the loneliness of little worlds, the mystery of incarnation, Colin Wilson's "Faculty X," and the utter weirdness of British Christmas specials.
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
REFERENCES
\n\nErik Davis, A Brief History of the Phantasm
\nColin Wilson, The Occult
\nThe Dog House UK, TV series
\nThe Christmas Lantern
What Evil Dead 2 is to the Baroque, Sunn O))) is to Brutalism. Or more like: if the likening of Evil Dead 2 to the Baroque felt like a stretch in episode 136, the brutalist bona fides of Sunn O)))'s drone metal are incontestable. In this episode, their 2019 masterpiece Life Metal frames a conversation touching on 20th-century avant garde music, the tactility of sound, the metaphysics of the Kickass Riff, Aztec aesthetics, the virtues of impermanence, and of course, the sublime beauty of brutalist buildings.
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
REFERENCES
\n\nSunn O))), Life Metal
\nTheatre of Eternal Music, musical group
\nDaniel Albright, Panaesthetics
\nBrian Eno, Imaginary Landscapes
\nJohn Wray, “Heady Metal”
\nNyarlathotep, Lovecraft character
\nByung-Hul Chan, The Philosophy of Zen Buddhism
\nFred Wilcox (dir.), Forbidden Planet
\nH. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
\nGodfrey Reggio (dir.), [Koyaanisquatsi](imdb.com/title/tt0085809/)
"We are the things that were and shall be again." So a demonic flesh puppet tells Ash and his allies in a memorable scene from the classic splatstick flick Evil Dead II. In addition to being a rollicking piece of entertainment, Evil Dead II is an expertly crafted film whose director used every tool and technique to generate a cinematic experience that is – as the tagline went – "2 terrifying, 2 frightening ... 2 much!" In this episode, JF and Phil court the absurd by turning a fun 80s horror movie into a statement on the dread aspirations of matter and a shining example of the modern baroque.
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
SHOW NOTES
\n\nSam Raimi (dir.), The Evil Dead II
\nWeird Studies, Episode 121 on Mandy and the Bandwagon
\nJoe Bob Briggs, American movie critic
\nChalres Ludlam, American actor
\nWeird Studies, Episode 88 on Mr Punch
\nKenneth Gross, Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life
\nEduardo Viveiros de Castro, Cannibal Metaphysics
\nBruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles
\nVictoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets
\nJoseph Cermatori, Baroque Modernity
Victoria Nelson saw it first: Popular culture teems with occult ideas, vestiges of bygone belief, fragments of ancient magic disguised as common entertainment. Her 2001 work The Secret Life of Puppets is in many ways the ur-text of weird studies, so prescient and probing it is even more relevant now than it was when it first appeared. In episode 128, Phil and JF discussed Nelson's wonderful first novel Neighbor George (2021). In this episode, Nelson joins the hosts of Weird Studies to talk about the vision that drove her to write Secret Life along with its equally insightful follow-up, Gothicka.
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
SHOW NOTES
\n\nVictoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets, Gothicka, Neighbor George
\n\nM. R. James, Collected Ghost Stories
\nTzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre
\nSigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents
\nCarol Clover, Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film
\nBruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles
\nStephenie Meyer, Twilight series
\nWilliam P. Young, The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity _
\nAgainst Everyone with Conner Habib, episodes 202 & 203
\nJames R. Lewis, _The Gods Have Landed
\nAnne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
\nHonoré de Balzac, "Séraphîta"
\nL. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology
Special Guest: Victoria Nelson.
","summary":"Independent scholar and novelist Victoria Nelson joins JF and Phil to discuss her masterpiece of weird studies, The Secret Life of Puppets.","date_published":"2022-11-16T10:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/1ba83f96-45e0-41e9-8848-c6ff65ccf209.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":60957981,"duration_in_seconds":3807}]},{"id":"266c0bec-87ea-4dcc-8b1f-4c72c45e9e5c","title":"Episode 134: On Federico Campagna's 'Technic and Magic'","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/134","content_text":"In Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality, the philosopher Federico Campagna argues that we moderns have exhausted the reality system we devised at the dawn of our age, a system he calls Technic. Technic has one goal: to reduce all things to language by naming, tagging, measuring, and quantifying them, by turning every parcel of the physical and psychic universe into a \"unit\" defined by its position in the system. The result has been an erasure of the mere \"suchness\" of things, the singularity of things simply existing as they are. To replace a worldview that is now revealing its endemic nihilism, Campagna proposes Magic, a way of seeing that reestablishes a balance between the measurable and the ineffable. JF and Phil discuss Campagna's magisterial performance in this episode. \n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel\nSupport us on Patreon \nFind us on Discord\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) \nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop\n\nSHOW NOTES\n\nFederico Campagna, Technic and Magic \nBill Hicks, “Bit on Marketing” \nFredric Jameson, The Seeds of Time \nPlotinus, Neoplatonist philosopher \nFrancis Bacon, Irish artist \nSamuel Beckett, Irish author \nWilliam S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch \nWeird Stuides, Episode 87 on Arthur Machen \nNorthrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism ","content_html":"In Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality, the philosopher Federico Campagna argues that we moderns have exhausted the reality system we devised at the dawn of our age, a system he calls Technic. Technic has one goal: to reduce all things to language by naming, tagging, measuring, and quantifying them, by turning every parcel of the physical and psychic universe into a "unit" defined by its position in the system. The result has been an erasure of the mere "suchness" of things, the singularity of things simply existing as they are. To replace a worldview that is now revealing its endemic nihilism, Campagna proposes Magic, a way of seeing that reestablishes a balance between the measurable and the ineffable. JF and Phil discuss Campagna's magisterial performance in this episode.
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
SHOW NOTES
\n\nFederico Campagna, Technic and Magic
\nBill Hicks, “Bit on Marketing”
\nFredric Jameson, The Seeds of Time
\nPlotinus, Neoplatonist philosopher
\nFrancis Bacon, Irish artist
\nSamuel Beckett, Irish author
\nWilliam S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
\nWeird Stuides, Episode 87 on Arthur Machen
\nNorthrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism
With the term "weird studies" gaining currency inside and outside academia, Phil and JF thought it was time to discuss the philosophical method they've been developing on the podcast since 2018. Borrowing a term from Erik Davis, they call it weirding, and here set about trying to understand what it is, and what it means. David Lynch's fondness for crying, the practice of queering in cultural theory, the all-too-real phenomenon of "global weirding,"the spooky agency of artworks, and the tragic death of E.T. at the hands of Damien Hirst are just a few of the subjects touched on in the conversation. "Weirding" also happens to be the working title of the book your hosts are writing for Strange Attractor Press, as well as an eight-week series of lectures and discussions starting October 25th, 2022, on the Nura Learning platform.
\n\nHeader image: David Lynch, Mulholland Drive
\n\nLink to the upcoming course: Weirding: An 8-Week Course With the Hosts of the Weird Studies Podcast
\n\nSHOW NOTES
\n\nLudwig van Beethoven, 9th Symphony
\nJames Elkins, Pictures and Tears
\nEugenie Brinkema, The Form of the Affects
\nDavid Lynch (dir.), Mulholland Drive
\nGilkes Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What is Philosophy?
\nWeird Studies, Episode 121 on “Mandy”
\nErik Davis and Timothy Morton, “Uncanny Objects” episode of Expanding Minds
\nCoen brothers (dir.), Hail Caesar
\nEsther Williams, American swimmer
\nWeird Studies, Episode 120 on Radical Mystery
\nDouglas Rushkoff, Survival of the Richest
\nWilliam Shakespeare, Macbeth
\nErik Davis, “Weird Shit”
\nPete Docter and Bob Peterson (dir.), Up
\nSteven Spielberg (dir.), E.T.
\nAlejandro Jodorowsky, Psychomagic
\nMartin Buber, I and Thou
\nGilbert Simondon, Imagination and Invention
\nWeird Studies, Episode 106 the Wanderer
\nCharles Ludlam, “On Camp” in Ridiculous Theater
\nWeird Studies, Episodes 14 and 15 on “Stalker
\nWeird Studies, Episode 35 on M. C. Richards’ “Centering”
With his 2010 film Cave of Forgotten Dreams, the German filmmaker Werner Herzog peeled away the veneer of familiarity on the Chauvet cave paintings, restoring them to their original eldritch sparkle. In this conversation, Phil and JF discuss a cinematic jewel that was wrought under tremendous pressure – and is all the more dazzling for it. The episode was recorded live at the Supernormal Festival in Oxfordshire, England, where your hosts were also subjected to unexpected pressure as the band Plastics started their set at the same time as the talk! Though we feel the musical accompaniment adds depth to the dialogue, listeners who find it distracting can skip to the end of the Plastics' set around 41:30. All listeners are urged to visit the band's Bandcamp page to sample some choice hardcore.
\n\nWeird Studies thanks Strange Attractor Press, the Supernormal Festival , and Plastics. JF Martel gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts in making this live recording possible.
\n\nHeader image via Wikimedia Commons.
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
SHOW NOTES
\n\nWerner Herzog, “The Minnesota Declaration”
\nTom Waits, “Step Right Up”
\nHerman Melville, Moby Dick
\nWeird Studies, Episode 76 on “Hellier”
\nStanley Kubrick (dir.), 2001: A Space Odyssey
\nPaul Bahn, Images of the Ice Age
\nWeird Studies, Episode 101 on “In Praise of Shadows
\nWeird Studies, Episode 129 on “The Fall of the House of Usher”
\nMatthew Barney, The Cremaster Films
\nStanley Kubrick, The Shining
In this bonus episode, originally released for Listener's Tier Patreon supporters, a discussion of the books Phil and JF are reading leads to a debate about the place of plot, story, and worldbuilding in narrative art. The episode contains information on "Weirding," a new course that the hosts of Weird Studies will be teaching together at Nura Learning, starting in late October. Visit nuralearning.com for more information.
","summary":"After announcing a new online course they will be teaching together, JF and Phil talk storytelling and worldbuilding. ","date_published":"2022-09-27T15:00:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/975f89b1-b894-447f-a2b1-15da38a3f83e.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":55150944,"duration_in_seconds":3436}]},{"id":"08668453-0248-4080-a657-e5956b6a65a9","title":"Episode 131: Knocking on the Abyssal Door: Live at the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/131","content_text":"The historian of religion Jeffrey J. Kripal writes, \"The world is one, and the human is two.\" The line captures the riddle of reality. What is it with our species? Equipped with an intellect able to grok the basic laws that govern the physical universe, we seem unable to wrap our heads around as simple a question as \"What is real?\". Recorded live before a learned audience at the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) in August of 2022, this episode approaches the enigma by teasing the Weird out of the very idea of intellection. If the architects of DISI are right to say that mind, far from being confined to human skulls, enjoys wide distribution across nature, what might such ideas as magic, synchronicity, and prophecy tell us about intelligence and meaning?\n\nDISI is a three-week interdisciplinary event held each year at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. The hosts are grateful to Jacob Foster and Erica Cartmill of UCLA for inviting them to speak at the institute.\n\n**Header image: **Detail of The Ancient of Days by William Blake.\n\nSHOW NOTES\n\nDiverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI)\nEarlier iteration of Jacob Foster's talk, \"Toward a Social Science of the Possible\"\n\nPauline Oliveros's Tuning Meditation\nNorbert Wiener, American mathematician\nJoshua Ramey, \"Contingency Without Unreason: Speculation After Meillassoux\"\nE. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande\nAristotle, Physics and Metaphysics\nJeffrey J. Kripal, \"The World is One, and the Human is Two: Tentative Conclusions of a Working Historian of Religion\"\nJeffrey Kripal on Weird Studies: episodes ## and ##\nAleister Crowley, See The Vision and the Voice and Magick in Theory and Practice\nThe \"Unwritten Doctrines\" of Plato\nPlato, Republic, \"Seventh Letter\" & Phaedrus\nPhil's prophetic dream report (Patreon supporters only)\nH. P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (for description of Azathoth)\nC. G. Jung, Synchroncity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Alchemical Studies & Mysterium Coniunctionis\nCharles Taylor, A Secular Age\nNew York Times article on 2022 UFO hearings","content_html":"The historian of religion Jeffrey J. Kripal writes, "The world is one, and the human is two." The line captures the riddle of reality. What is it with our species? Equipped with an intellect able to grok the basic laws that govern the physical universe, we seem unable to wrap our heads around as simple a question as "What is real?". Recorded live before a learned audience at the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) in August of 2022, this episode approaches the enigma by teasing the Weird out of the very idea of intellection. If the architects of DISI are right to say that mind, far from being confined to human skulls, enjoys wide distribution across nature, what might such ideas as magic, synchronicity, and prophecy tell us about intelligence and meaning?
\n\nDISI is a three-week interdisciplinary event held each year at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. The hosts are grateful to Jacob Foster and Erica Cartmill of UCLA for inviting them to speak at the institute.
\n\n**Header image: **Detail of The Ancient of Days by William Blake.
\n\nSHOW NOTES
\n\nDiverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI)
\nEarlier iteration of Jacob Foster's talk, "Toward a Social Science of the Possible"
Pauline Oliveros's Tuning Meditation
\nNorbert Wiener, American mathematician
\nJoshua Ramey, "Contingency Without Unreason: Speculation After Meillassoux"
\nE. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande
\nAristotle, Physics and Metaphysics
\nJeffrey J. Kripal, "The World is One, and the Human is Two: Tentative Conclusions of a Working Historian of Religion"
\nJeffrey Kripal on Weird Studies: episodes ## and ##
\nAleister Crowley, See The Vision and the Voice and Magick in Theory and Practice
\nThe "Unwritten Doctrines" of Plato
\nPlato, Republic, "Seventh Letter" & Phaedrus
\nPhil's prophetic dream report (Patreon supporters only)
\nH. P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (for description of Azathoth)
\nC. G. Jung, Synchroncity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Alchemical Studies & Mysterium Coniunctionis
\nCharles Taylor, A Secular Age
\nNew York Times article on 2022 UFO hearings
In August, 2022, JF and Phil flew to the UK to attend the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) at the University of St. Andrews and the Supernormal Festival in Oxfordshire. In addition to recording two live shows (to be released in the coming weeks), they encountered billiant minds, novel ideas, and arresting works of art that opened new avenues for thought. It's these encounters that anchor this conversation, which branches off to touch ideas such as the elusive ideal of intersciplinarity, Hakim Bey's temporary autonomous zone, the legacy of the 20th-century counterculture, the fate of revolutionary movements, non--human intelligences, and the weirdness of human thought.
\n\nHeader Image by RomitaGirl67 via Wikimedia Commons.
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
References
\n\nDial M for Musicology, Interdisciplinarity
\nHakim Bey, The Temporary Autonomous Zone
\nEntitled Opinions Podcast
\nWilliam Gibson, Foreword to Samuel Delaney’s Dhalgren
\nDISI Podcast, Many Minds
\nJohn Krakauer, professor of nuerology and neuroscience
\nHunter S. Thompson, American journalist
\nThe Great Ape Dictionary, specific database used by Cat Hobaiter
Edgar Allan Poe can be lauded as a major inspiration for many innovative artists, genres, and movements, from horror fiction to the music of Maurice Ravel. He has also been a major inspiration for Weird Studies, particularly his short story "The Fall of the House of Usher." In this episode, JF and Phil try to pinpoint just what it is about this tale that is so compelling, discovering in the process that whatever it is cannot be pinpointed. Instead, the haunting mood of the story emerges from the peculiar arrangement of all its parts, becoming something entirely new.
\n\nClick here for more information on the Supernormal Festival, Aug 12-14, in Oxfordshire, England.
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
References
\n\nEdgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”
\nEdgar Allan Poe, “The Masque of the Red Death
\nKlangfarbenmelodie, musical technique
\nEdgar Allan Poe, "The Poetic Principle"
\nGraham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy
\nLovecraft without adjectives
\nWeird Studies, Development of Circle vs. Spiral: Wheel of fortune, Blade Runner, The Star, Birhane
\nMatei Calinescu, The Five Faces of Modernity
\nWeird Studies, Episode 101 on ‘In Praise of Shadows’
\nPhanes, deity
\nJames Herbert, The Dark
\nJoseph Adamson, “Frye and Poe”
\nLucien Lévy-Bruhl, French anthropologist
\nJames Machin, Weird Fiction in Britain
\nEdgar Allan Poe, “Eureka”
The American writer and thinker Victoria Nelson is justly revered by afficionados of the Weird for The Secret Life of Puppets and its follow-up Gothicka. Both are masterful explorations the supernatural as it subsists in the "sub-Zeitgeist" of the modern secular West. In 2021, Strange Attractor Press released Neighbor George, Nelson's first novel. In this episode, JF and Phil discuss this gothic anti-romance with a mind to seeing how it contributes to Nelson's overall project of acquainting us with the eldritch undercurrents of contemporary life.
\n\nClick here for more information on the Supernormal Festival, Aug 12-14, in Oxfordshire, England.
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
References
\n\nVictoria Nelson, Neighbor George
\nVictoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets
\nVictoria Nelson, Gothicka
\nWendy Lesser, American critic
\nWard Sutton Onion cartoons
\nExtension, metaphysical concept
\nTerry Castle, The Female Thermometer
\nCessation of Miracles, theological belief
\nE. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande
\nGreg Anderson, “Retrieving the Lost Worlds of the Past: A Case for the Ontological Turn”
\nOrcus Grotto, sculpture
\nMargaret Atwood, The Edible Woman
\nNathalie Cooke, Margaret Atwood: A Biography
\nWeird Studies, Episode 96 on Beauty and the Beast
\nM. C. Richards, “Wrestling with the Daemonic”
Like Caligula declaring war on Neptune and ordering his troops to charge into the Mediterranean Sea, our technological masters are designing neural networks meant to capture the human soul in all its oceanic complexity. According to the cognitive scientist Abeba Birhane, this is a fool's errand that we undertake at our peril. In her paper "The Impossibility of Automating Ambiguity," she makes the case for the irremediable fluidity, spontaneity, and relationality of people and societies. She argues that ongoing efforts to subsume the human (and the rest of reality) in predictive algorithms is actually narrowing the human experience, as so many of us are excluded from the system while others are compelled to artificially conform to its idea of the human. Far from paving the way to a better world, the tyranny of automation threatens to cut us off from the Real, ensuring an endless perpetuation of the past with all its errors and injustices. Phil and JF discuss Birhane's essay in this episode.
\n\nHeader image from via www.vpnsrus.com (cropped). Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
REFERENCES
\n\nAbebe Birhane, "The Impossibility of Automating Ambiguity”
\nJ. F. Martel, “Reality is Analog: Philosophizing with Stranger Things”
\nMelissa Adler, Cruising the Library: Perversities in the Organization of Knowledge
\nWeird Studies, Episode 75 on 2001: A Space Odyssey
\nWeird Studies, Episode 114 on the Wheel of Fortune
\nWilliam James, American philosopher
\nMidjourney, AI art generator
\nRhine Research Center, parapsychology lab
\nGeorge Lewis, “Improvised Music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives”
\nAbebe Birhane, “Descartes was Wrong: A Person is a Person Through Other Persons”
\nGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, German philosopher
\nJ. R. R. Tolkein, “On Fairy-Stories”
\nMartin Buber, I and Thou
Returning guest Matt Cardin is a writer of fiction and nonfiction whose focus on numinous horror places him in the literary lineage as Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood. His new book, What the Daemon Said, collects two decades' worth of meditations on literature, cinema, mysticism, philosophy, and the weird. He joins Phil and JF to talk about a range of topics including dark enlightenment, the idea that fear and trembling are the only sensible reactions to direct exposure to cosmic truth.
\n\nHeader image: detail of cover design for What the Daemon Said, by Dan Sauer Design.
\n\nListen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
REFERENCES
\n\nMatt Cardin's website
\nMatt Cardin, What the Daemon Said: Essays on Horror, Fiction, Film and Philosophy
\nMatt Cardin, Dark Awakenings
\nJulia Cameron, The Artist’s Way Morning Pages Journal
\nNatalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones
\nThe Gospel of Thomas
\nMatt Cardin, Dark Awakenings
\nRobert Frost, “The Figure a Poem Makes”
\nJohn Horgen, Rational Mysticism
\nWeird Studies, Episode 41 with Matt Cardin
\nOswald Chambers, My Utmost for his Highest
\nWeird Studies ep. 124: Dark Night Radio of the Soul, with Duncan Barford
\nTheodore Roszak, American scholar
\nM. C. Richards, Centering
\nFriedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
\nHuston Smith, American religious scholar
\nMartin Buber, I and Thou
\nJohn Lee Hancock (dir.), The Rookie (2002)
\nEckart Tolle, German spiritual teacher
\nRichard Wagner, Parsifal
\nPeter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion
\nAlan Watts, English writer and teacher
\nRichard Rose, After the Absolute: The Inner Teachings of Richard Rose
Special Guest: Matt Cardin.
","summary":"Matt Cardin joins JF and Phil to discuss daimonic reality and the idea of dark enlightenment.","date_published":"2022-06-22T11:00:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/339dd268-ebc8-40cf-a2c7-b6734510b087.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":68891993,"duration_in_seconds":4917}]},{"id":"cf92405a-33af-49e2-9af2-658963f267bc","title":"Episode 125: Strange Brews: Weird Studies Live at Illuminated Brew Works","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/125","content_text":"On May 23, 2022, Meredith Michael joined JF and Phil for a live recording at Illuminated Brew Works, a craft brewery in Chicago, Illinois.The occasion was the launch of Weird Studies Black IPA, the fruit of a collaboration with IBW brewmaster Brian Buckman and his team of beer alchemists. The game plan was to talk about potions, but the final conversation ranges over a number of topics including singularity and repetition, time and eternity, alchemy and ritual, Okakura Kakuzō's The Book of Tea, cooking and pickling, and the cultural phenomenon Phil calls \"weedhead sh*t.\"\n\nPurchase the Weird Studies Black IPA from Beer on the Wall or visit the Illuminated Brew Works website.\n\nBuy volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel\nSupport us on Patreon \nFind us on Discord\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) \nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop\n\nSHOW NOTES\n\nOkakura Kakuzō, The Book of Tea\nOscar Wilde on absinthe\nMircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History\nToni Morrison. Song of Solomon\nThe Suzuki Method\nRobert Fink, Repeating Ourselves: American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice\nDavid Cronenberg (dir.), Scanners (1981)\nLars von Trier (dir.), Dancer in the Dark (2000)\nAlan Watts, Beat Zen, Square Zen and Zen\nWilliam Shakespeare, MacbethSpecial Guest: Meredith Michael.","content_html":"On May 23, 2022, Meredith Michael joined JF and Phil for a live recording at Illuminated Brew Works, a craft brewery in Chicago, Illinois.The occasion was the launch of Weird Studies Black IPA, the fruit of a collaboration with IBW brewmaster Brian Buckman and his team of beer alchemists. The game plan was to talk about potions, but the final conversation ranges over a number of topics including singularity and repetition, time and eternity, alchemy and ritual, Okakura Kakuzō's The Book of Tea, cooking and pickling, and the cultural phenomenon Phil calls "weedhead sh*t."
\n\nPurchase the Weird Studies Black IPA from Beer on the Wall or visit the Illuminated Brew Works website.
\n\nBuy volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
SHOW NOTES
\n\nOkakura Kakuzō, The Book of Tea
\nOscar Wilde on absinthe
\nMircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History
\nToni Morrison. Song of Solomon
\nThe Suzuki Method
\nRobert Fink, Repeating Ourselves: American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice
\nDavid Cronenberg (dir.), Scanners (1981)
\nLars von Trier (dir.), Dancer in the Dark (2000)
\nAlan Watts, Beat Zen, Square Zen and Zen
\nWilliam Shakespeare, Macbeth
Special Guest: Meredith Michael.
","summary":"Phil, Meredith, and JF discuss ritual and potion-making in a live recording hosted by Illuminated Brew Works in Chicago.","date_published":"2022-06-08T10:00:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/cf92405a-33af-49e2-9af2-658963f267bc.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":93035461,"duration_in_seconds":5812}]},{"id":"1862b464-36ff-4a88-aaa0-7bb8e28ddeff","title":"Episode 124: Dark Night Radio of the Soul, with Duncan Barford","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/124","content_text":"For several episodes now, Phil and JF have been circling what St. John of the Cross called the Dark Night of the Soul, that moment in the spiritual journey where all falls a way and an abyss seems to crack open beneath our feet. When it came time to go there in earnest, they could think of no better guide than Duncan Barford, host of the excellent Occult Experiments in the Home podcast. As a master magician, long-time meditator, psychotherapeutic counsellor and writer on spirituality and the occult, Barford is uniquely endowed with the tools, experience, and language to discuss even the most difficult spiritual topics with wisdom and warmth. A Virgil for any Inferno.\n\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack: Volume 1 and Volume 2\nSupport us on Patreon \nFind us on Discord\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) \nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop\n\nSHOW NOTES \n\nOccult Experiments in the Home, Duncan Barford's excellent solo podcast\nDuncan's other website, focusing on his work as a psychotherapeutic counselor\nDuncan's books on Amazon US\n\nWeird Studies, Episode 67 on Hellier \nImmanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Judgement \nKeats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” \nDogen’s Bendowa \nTibetan Book of the Dead \nDaniel Ingram, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha \nSt. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel \nSpinoza, Ethics \nLionel Snell, My Years of Magical Thinking Special Guest: Duncan Barford.","content_html":"For several episodes now, Phil and JF have been circling what St. John of the Cross called the Dark Night of the Soul, that moment in the spiritual journey where all falls a way and an abyss seems to crack open beneath our feet. When it came time to go there in earnest, they could think of no better guide than Duncan Barford, host of the excellent Occult Experiments in the Home podcast. As a master magician, long-time meditator, psychotherapeutic counsellor and writer on spirituality and the occult, Barford is uniquely endowed with the tools, experience, and language to discuss even the most difficult spiritual topics with wisdom and warmth. A Virgil for any Inferno.
\n\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack: Volume 1 and Volume 2
\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
SHOW NOTES
\n\nOccult Experiments in the Home, Duncan Barford's excellent solo podcast
\nDuncan's other website, focusing on his work as a psychotherapeutic counselor
\nDuncan's books on Amazon US
Weird Studies, Episode 67 on Hellier
\nImmanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Judgement
\nKeats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
\nDogen’s Bendowa
\nTibetan Book of the Dead
\nDaniel Ingram, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha
\nSt. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel
\nSpinoza, Ethics
\nLionel Snell, My Years of Magical Thinking
Special Guest: Duncan Barford.
","summary":"Spiritual practitioner Duncan Barford joins JF and Phil to talk about the Dark Night of the Soul. ","date_published":"2022-05-25T10:15:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/1862b464-36ff-4a88-aaa0-7bb8e28ddeff.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":84350842,"duration_in_seconds":5268}]},{"id":"f3cec4ff-c444-4b09-9e53-34ed711c446b","title":"Episode 123: Off-Week Patreon Bonus: On Modern Miracles","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/123","content_text":"Every off-week, JF and Phil record a bonus episode for Patreon supporters. The conversations on that stream are shorter, less formal, and more improvisitory than those of the flagship show. To give the wider public a glimpse of this hidden dimension of the WS universe, we decided to make this week's \"audio extra\" available to everyone. As it happens, this episode also contains an important announcement concerning next week's event at Illuminated Brew Works in Chicago: tickets must be purchased via Eventbrite using the link below. No tickets can be sold at the door. \n\nClick here to purchase tickets to the Weird Studies beer launch at Illuminated Brew Works in Chicago on May 23.\n\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack\nSupport us on Patreon \nFind us on Discord\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) \nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop","content_html":"Every off-week, JF and Phil record a bonus episode for Patreon supporters. The conversations on that stream are shorter, less formal, and more improvisitory than those of the flagship show. To give the wider public a glimpse of this hidden dimension of the WS universe, we decided to make this week's "audio extra" available to everyone. As it happens, this episode also contains an important announcement concerning next week's event at Illuminated Brew Works in Chicago: tickets must be purchased via Eventbrite using the link below. No tickets can be sold at the door.
\n\nClick here to purchase tickets to the Weird Studies beer launch at Illuminated Brew Works in Chicago on May 23.
\n\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack
\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
The Star is one of the most iconic of the major trumps of the traditional tarot deck. It is also one of the most ambiguous. A woman is shown emptying two urns of water onto the parched ground. She is flanked by nascent plant life. Shining above her are those nocturnal luminaries whose "eternal silence" so frightened the philosopher Blaise Pascal at the dawn of modernity. Are the stars pointing the way to a brighter future, or are they stars of ill omen, warning us of what lies ahead? And what does that little bird in the background signify? In this episode, Phil and JF try to get to the bottom of the starry heavens, only to find out that starry heavens have no bottom.
\n\nClick here to purchase tickets to the Weird Studies beer launch at Illuminated Brew Works in Chicago on May 23.
\n\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack
\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
REFERENCES
\n\nOur Known Friend (Valentin Tomberg), Meditations on the Tarot
\nAlejandro Jodorowsky, The Way of the Tarot
\nPink Floyd, “Astronomy Domine”
\nAleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth
\nAleister Crowley, The Book of the Law
\nHeimarmene, Greek goddess of fate
\nWeird Studies, Episode 121 on Mandy
\nUrsula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
\nSamuel Delaney, Dahlgren
\nJ R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
\nJuan Eduardo Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols
\nWeird Studies, Episode 103 on the Tower
\nWeird Studies, [Episode 114 on the Wheel of Fortune]
\nJoni Mitchell, “Ladies of the Canyon”
In this episode, each of your hosts bullies the other into watching a movie he would normally not touch with a bargepole. Phil has been (unsuccessfully) trying to get JF to watch Vincente Minnelli's 1953 musical comedy The Band Wagon and JF has been (also unsuccessfully) trying to get Phil to watch Panos Cosmatos's 2018 psychedelic horror film Mandy. For this episode, they decided they would compromise and watch both. What started as a goof ended up a fascinating Glass Bead Game from which emerge occulted correspondences between films that, on the surface, could not be more dissimilar. One film is a dream of song and dance, the other a dream of blood and violence. Either way, though, watch out: as Deleuze says, "beware of the dreams of others, because if you are caught in their dream, you are done for."
\n\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack
SHOW NOTES
\n\nIluminated Brew Works, Chicago
\nJF's new course, [Groundwork for a Philosophy of Magic](www.nuralearning.com)
Vincente Minnelli (dir.), The Bandwagon
\nPanos Cosmatos (dir.), Mandy
\nWeird Studies, Episode 73 on Carl Jung
\nNorman Jewison (dir.), Moonstruck
\nDavid Thompson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film
\nGilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement Image) and Cinema 2: The Time Image
\nHenri Bergson, “The Cinematographical Mechanism of Thought and the Mechanistic Illusion”, from Creative Evolution
\nTerry Gilliam (dir.), The Fisher King
\nClaudia Gorbman, Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music
\nRaymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity
\nRichard Dyer, “Entertainment and Utopia” in Only Entertainment
\nGilles Deleuze, “What is the Creative Act”
Though it is seldom acknowledged in the weirdosphere, there is a difference between weirdness and mystery. Most of the time, the Weird confronts us with a problem, an impersonal epistemic obstacle which we can always believe would go away if we just closed our eyes and whistled past it with our hands in our pockets. Mystery, however, is always personal. It envelops us; it addresses us as persons. Mystery is as present within us as it is out there. It is there when you open your eyes, and even more so when you shut them tight. Maybe it had us in its grip before we were even born. In this episode, JF and Phil make radical mystery the focus of a discussion ranging over everything from unique kinds of tea and spelunking mishaps to antisonic demon pipes and malevolent radiators.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack
REFERENCES
\n\nFor information on JF's new course, Groundwork for a Philosophy of Magic, go to [Nura Learning](www.nuralearning.com).
\n\nPhil Ford, “Radical Mystery: A Preliminary Account”
\nJ.F. Martel, “Reality is analog”
\nJohn Keel, The Mothman Prophecies
\nGabriel Marcel, Being and Having
\nImmanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
\nEugene Paul Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics”
\nLouis Sass, Madness and Modernism
\nPeter Kingsley, Catafalque
\nRudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy
\nSteven Spielberg (dir.), Raiders of the Lost Ark
\nDogen, “Instructions for the Cook”
\nAlan Watts, The Way of Zen
\nWeird Studies, Episode 56 with Jeremy Johnson
Over the last several centuries, there has been one thing on which science and religion have generally agreed, and that is the fixity of the laws under which the universe came to be. At the moment of the Big Bang or the dawn of the First Day, the underlying principles that govern reality were already set, and they have never changed. But what if the laws of nature were not as chiseled in stone as Western intellectuals on both sides of the magisterial divide have assumed them to be? What if creation was an ongoing process, such that our universe in its beginning might have behaved very differently from how it does at present? This is the central conceit of Stanislaw Lem's story "The New Cosmogony," the capstone of his metafictional collection A Perfect Vacuum, originally published in 1971. In this episode, Meredith Michael joins JF and Phil to discuss the metaphysical implications of the idea that nature is an eternal work-in-progress.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack
REFERENCES
\n\nFor more information JF's new course, Groundwork for a Philosophy of Magic, visit Nura Learning.
\n\nStanislaw Lem, “A New Cosmogony” in A Perfect Vacuum
\nWeird Studies, Episode 118 The Unseen and Unnamed
\nRamsey Dukes, SSOTBME
\nQuentin Meillassoux, After Finitude
\nM. John Harrison, The Course of the Heart
\nMichael Harner, The Way of the Shaman
\nRichard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
\nStanislaw Lem, Solaris
\nStanislaw Lem, His Master’s Voice
\nDavid Pruett, Reason and Wonder
\nAndrei Tarkovsky (dir.), Solaris
\nPhilip K. Dick, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”
\nAndrew W.K., “No One to Know”
Special Guest: Meredith Michael.
","summary":"Meredith, Phil, and JF dig into Stanislaw Lem's short story, \"The New Cosmogony.\"","date_published":"2022-03-30T10:30:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/c77ca652-1bfa-4db4-8f3f-c2b4e7606c69.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":64823699,"duration_in_seconds":4044}]},{"id":"c891e995-0508-4c9d-b81c-4a50afc3b2c2","title":"Episode 118: The Unseen and the Unnamed, with Meredith Michael","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/118","content_text":"In this episode, Phil and JF are joined by music scholar and Weird Studies assistant Meredith Michael to discuss two strange and unsettling short stories: J.G. Ballard's \"The Gioconda of the Twilight Noon\" (1964) and Ursula K. Le Guin's \"She Unnames Them\" (1985). Their plan was to talk about three stories, but they never got to Phil's pick, which will be the focus of episode 119. The reason is that Le Guin and Ballard's stories share surprising resonances that merited close discussion. From opposite perspectives, both tales put words to a region of reality that resists discursive description, a borderland where that which is named reveals its unnamed facet, and that which must remain unseen reveals itself to the inner eye.\n\nSupport us on Patreon \nFind us on Discord\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) \nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack\n\nREFERENCES\n\nJ. G. Ballard, “The Giaconda of the Twilight Noon,” from The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard\nUrsula K. Le Guin, \"She Unnames Them,\" from The Real and the Uneal\nAlfred Hitchcock (dir.), The Birds\nJung's concept of the collective unconscious\nWalter Pater, The Renaissance\nUrsula K. Le Guin, “She Unnames Them” in The Real and the Unreal\nHenri Bergson, Creative Evolution\nM. C .Richards, Centering\nWeird Studies, Episode 35 on Centering\nWeird Studies, Episode 81 on The Course of the Heart\nWeird Studies, Episode 84 on the Empress\nLinguistically deprived children\nWalter Ong, Orality and Literacy\nSamuel Taylor Coleridge's thoughts on on imagination and fancy can be found in Biographia Literaria Special Guest: Meredith Michael.","content_html":"In this episode, Phil and JF are joined by music scholar and Weird Studies assistant Meredith Michael to discuss two strange and unsettling short stories: J.G. Ballard's "The Gioconda of the Twilight Noon" (1964) and Ursula K. Le Guin's "She Unnames Them" (1985). Their plan was to talk about three stories, but they never got to Phil's pick, which will be the focus of episode 119. The reason is that Le Guin and Ballard's stories share surprising resonances that merited close discussion. From opposite perspectives, both tales put words to a region of reality that resists discursive description, a borderland where that which is named reveals its unnamed facet, and that which must remain unseen reveals itself to the inner eye.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack
REFERENCES
\n\nJ. G. Ballard, “The Giaconda of the Twilight Noon,” from The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard
\nUrsula K. Le Guin, "She Unnames Them," from The Real and the Uneal
\nAlfred Hitchcock (dir.), The Birds
\nJung's concept of the collective unconscious
\nWalter Pater, The Renaissance
\nUrsula K. Le Guin, “She Unnames Them” in The Real and the Unreal
\nHenri Bergson, Creative Evolution
\nM. C .Richards, Centering
\nWeird Studies, Episode 35 on Centering
\nWeird Studies, Episode 81 on The Course of the Heart
\nWeird Studies, Episode 84 on the Empress
\nLinguistically deprived children
\nWalter Ong, Orality and Literacy
\nSamuel Taylor Coleridge's thoughts on on imagination and fancy can be found in Biographia Literaria
Special Guest: Meredith Michael.
","summary":"Meredith Michael joins JF and Phil to discuss short fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin and J.G. Ballard.","date_published":"2022-03-16T11:30:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/c891e995-0508-4c9d-b81c-4a50afc3b2c2.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":73058446,"duration_in_seconds":4563}]},{"id":"bff3e7ab-183d-461d-a960-cf216f98788f","title":"Episode 117: Time is a Child at Play: On the Mystery of Games","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/117","content_text":"The topic of games and play has fascinated JF and Phil since the launch of Weird Studies. Way back in 2018, they recorded back-to-back episodes on tabletop roleplaying games and fighting sports, and more recently, they did a two-parter on Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game, a philosophical novel suggesting that all human culture tends toward play. In this episode, your hosts draw on a wealth of texts, memories, and nascent ideas to explore the game concept as such. What is a game? What do games tell us about life? What is the function of play in the formation of reality? \n\nSupport us on Patreon \nFind us on Discord\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) \nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack\n\nREFERENCES\n\nRoger Caillois, Man, Play, and Games \nJohan Huizinga, Homo Ludens \nLudwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations \nBernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia \nJobe Bittman, The Book of Antitheses US version, EU version\nWeird Studies, Episode 6, Dungeons and Dragons \nWeird Studies, Episode 7, Boxing \nC. Thi Nguyen, Games: Agency as Art \nEduardo Vivieros de Castro, Cannibal Metaphysics \nBF Skinner, American psychologist \nHeraclitus, Fragments ","content_html":"The topic of games and play has fascinated JF and Phil since the launch of Weird Studies. Way back in 2018, they recorded back-to-back episodes on tabletop roleplaying games and fighting sports, and more recently, they did a two-parter on Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game, a philosophical novel suggesting that all human culture tends toward play. In this episode, your hosts draw on a wealth of texts, memories, and nascent ideas to explore the game concept as such. What is a game? What do games tell us about life? What is the function of play in the formation of reality?
\n\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack
REFERENCES
\n\nRoger Caillois, Man, Play, and Games
\nJohan Huizinga, Homo Ludens
\nLudwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
\nBernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia
\nJobe Bittman, The Book of Antitheses US version, EU version
\nWeird Studies, Episode 6, Dungeons and Dragons
\nWeird Studies, Episode 7, Boxing
\nC. Thi Nguyen, Games: Agency as Art
\nEduardo Vivieros de Castro, Cannibal Metaphysics
\nBF Skinner, American psychologist
\nHeraclitus, Fragments
In his 1978 bestseller The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins described humans as "survival machines" whose sole purpose is the replication of genes. All of culture needed to be understood as a side-effect, if not an epiphenomenon, of that defining function. Four years after Dawkins' book was published, Warner Brothers released Blade Runner, an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's dystopian novel Do Androis Dream of Electric Sheep?. Ridley Scott's film presents us with a different kind of survival machine: the replicant, a technology whose sole function is the replication of human beings. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss the ethical, metaphysical, and aesthetic dimensions of one of the greatest and most prophetic science fiction films of all time.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack
REFERENCES
\n\nRidley Scott (dir.), Blade Runner
\n\nPhilip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
\nPhilip K. Dick, “The Android and the Human”
\nPhilip K. Dick, “Man, Android, and Machine”
\nDennis Villeneuve (dir.), Blade Runner 2049
\nWeird Studies, Episode 114 on the Wheel of Fortune
\nScott Bukatman, Blade Runner: BFI Film Classics
\nAlan Nourse, The Bladerunner
\nWeird Studies, Episode 115 on Brian Eno
\nRichard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
\nTodd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage
\nFredric Jameson, Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
\nWeird Studies, Episode 5 on “When Nothing is Cool”
\nJF Martel, “Reality is Analog: Philosophizing with Stranger Things”
\nJohn Carpenter (dir,), The Thing
\nBeyond Yacht Rock podcast
\nSigmund Freud, “The Uncanny”
\nWeird Studies, Episode 86 on “The Sandman”
\nOrson Welles (dir.), Touch of Evil
\nGeorge Orwell, 1984
Soft, soothing, and understated as a rule, ambient music may seem the least weird of all musical genres. Not so, say JF and Phil, who devote this episode to Brian Eno's Ambient 1: Music for Airports, the 1978 album in whose liner notes the term "ambient music" first appeared. In this conversation, your hosts explore the aesthetic, metaphysical, and political implications of a kind of music designed to interact with the listener -- and the listener's environment -- below the threshold of ordinary, directed awareness. Eno and Peter Schmidt's famous Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards designed to heighten and deepen creativity, lends divinatory support to the endeavor.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack
REFERENCES
\n\nBrian Eno, Ambient 1: Music for Airports
\nGabriella Cardazzo, Duncan Ward, and Brian Eno, Imaginary Landscapes
\nOblique Strategies Deck
\nTheodore Adorno, Introduction to the Sociology of Music
\nMarc Auge, Non-Places
\nAnahid Kassabian, “Ubiquitous Music”
\nSigmund Freud, “On Transience”
\nWeird Studies, Episode 104 on Sgt. Pepper
\nJoris Karl Huysmans, A Rebours
\nRoger Moseley, Keys to Play
Season five kicks off with a new installment in the ongoing series on the Tarot's twenty-two major arcana. This time, your hosts overcome the trials that fortune has dealt them -- a hangover in the case of Phil, a sleepless night for JF -- to discuss the Wheel of Fortune. Not surprisingly, the conversation is a mess, albeit a beautiful one that comes full circle in the end, tying up all its loose ends in something like a bow (or a coiled serpent). Topics include the challenges of improvised philosophical discussion, the importance of exposing oneself to difficult ideas, the serpentine nature of immanentist discourse, and the doctrine of the Fall. As usual, the anomymously-authored Meditations on the Tarot gets pride of place, although occult luminaries such as Alejandro Jodorowsky, Aleister Crowley, and Pat Sajak make notable appearances.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet the new T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack
REFERENCES
\n\nOur Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot
\nPints with Aquinas
\nJaroslav Hašek, Czech author
\nLon Milo Duquette, Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot
\nTrue Detective, tv show
\nThomas Ligotti, Conspiracy Against the Human Race
\nHenri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
\nAlexander Jodorowsky, The Way of Tarot
\nJessica Hundley et. al., Tarot. Library of Esoterica
\nPierre Teilhard de Chardin, French priest and scientist
\nHerman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
\nBruno Latour, French philosopher
\nDavid Bentley Hart interview
Shannon Taggart's book Seance is a landmark in art photography and the history of psychical research. Taggart spent years photographing practitioners of spiritualism in the U.S. and Europe in an effort to capture the mysteries of mediumship, ectoplasm, and spirit photography. In this episode, she joins JF and Phil for a conversation on the often-misunderstood tradition of spiritualism, the investigation of the paranormal, and the real magic of photography. If the technological medium is the message, then perhaps the spiritual medium is the messenger.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon:
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack
**REFERENCES
\n\n*Shannon Taggart, Séance *
\nRead the introduction to the book here
\nVisual companion page for this episode
Shannon and her work are featured in Peter Bebergal's excellent book, Strange Frequencies: The Extraordinary Story of the Technological Quest for the Supernatural
\n\nWeird Studies, Episode 24 with Lionel Snell
\nLionel Snell, “The Charlatan and the Magus”
\nGeorge P. Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal
\nDiane Arbus, American photographer
\nWarner Herzog (dir.), Cave of Forgotten Dreams
\nJeffrey Mishlove, Interview with James Tunney on Francis Bacon
\nEva C, French medium
\nAndrew Jackson Davis, American spiritualist
\nHenry Alcott, American Theosophist
For further reading on women, spiritualism, and the art of the invisible:
\nAnn Braude, Radical Spirits
\nGuggenheim, Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future
Special Guest: Shannon Taggart.
","summary":"Phil and JF talk spiritualism and photography to American artist and paranormal researcher Shannon Taggart.","date_published":"2021-12-22T11:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/ff3be505-dfa2-4cb2-9884-5b8359ac63e6.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":77961985,"duration_in_seconds":4868}]},{"id":"61f8bb43-3c2e-4964-8c5b-cf609a1a4a1c","title":"Episode 112: Readings from the 'Book of Probes': The Mysticism of Marshall McLuhan","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/112","content_text":"The Book of Probes contains a assortment of aphorisms and maxims from the work of the Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, each one set to evocative imagery by American graphic designer David Carson. McLuhan called the utterances collected in this book \"probes,\" that is, pieces of conceptual gadgetry designed not to disclose facts about the world so much as blaze new pathways leading to the invisible background of our time. In this episode, Phil and JF use an online number generator to discuss a random yet uncannily cohesive selection of of McLuhanian probes.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nMarshall Mcluhan and David Carson, The Book of Probes \n\nVirginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse \nMarshall Mcluhan, The Mechanical Bride \nAristotle, System of causation \nG. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy \nEric A. Havelock, Preface to Plato \nWeird Studies, Episode 71 on Marshall Mcluhan \nWalter Ong, Orality and Literacy \nChristiaan Wouter Custers, A Philosophy of Madness \nGilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense \nMarshall Mcluhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy \nHarry Partch, American composer \nMarc Augé, Non-Places \nSapir-Whorf Hypothesis \nDenis Villeneuve (dir.), Arrival \nGilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus \nHarry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit ","content_html":"The Book of Probes contains a assortment of aphorisms and maxims from the work of the Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, each one set to evocative imagery by American graphic designer David Carson. McLuhan called the utterances collected in this book "probes," that is, pieces of conceptual gadgetry designed not to disclose facts about the world so much as blaze new pathways leading to the invisible background of our time. In this episode, Phil and JF use an online number generator to discuss a random yet uncannily cohesive selection of of McLuhanian probes.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nMarshall Mcluhan and David Carson, The Book of Probes
\n\nVirginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
\nMarshall Mcluhan, The Mechanical Bride
\nAristotle, System of causation
\nG. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
\nEric A. Havelock, Preface to Plato
\nWeird Studies, Episode 71 on Marshall Mcluhan
\nWalter Ong, Orality and Literacy
\nChristiaan Wouter Custers, A Philosophy of Madness
\nGilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense
\nMarshall Mcluhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy
\nHarry Partch, American composer
\nMarc Augé, Non-Places
\nSapir-Whorf Hypothesis
\nDenis Villeneuve (dir.), Arrival
\nGilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
\nHarry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit
A wish-fulfilment fantasy for pubescent boys of all ages, or a subtle disquisition on the ethics of a sorcerous world? John Milius' Conan the Barbarian (1982) manages to be both, although one may be easy to overlook. In this episode, JF and Phil leave the heights of Hesse's The Glass Bead Game with a headlong dive to the trash stratum. Their wager: that Conan the Barbarian, a film without a hint of irony, is a spiritual statement that is equal parts empowering and disquieting, and a prime of example of how fantasy is sometimes the straightest way to the heart of reality.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nJohn Milus (dir.), Conan the Barbarian (1982)
\nRichard Fleischer (dir.), Conan the Destroyer (1984)
\nRobert E. Howard, American writer, author of the Conan stories
\nJack Smith, "On the Perfect Filmic Appositeness of Maria Montez"
\nWeird Studies #3: Ecstasy, Sin, and "The White People"
\nH. P. Lovecraft, "Supernatural Horror in Literature"
\nFritz Leiber, American writer
\nWeird Studies #95: Demon Seed: On Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child
\nDungeons & Dragons
\nWeird Studies #20: The Trash Stratum (part 1, part 2)
\nMasaki Kobayashi (dir.), Kwaidan
\nJerry Zucker (dir.), Ghost (1990)
\nRoget's Thesarus of English Words and Phrases
\nMaria Montez, Dominican-American actress
In the current "attention economy," which has resulted in plummeting literacy rates and the almost wanton neglect of various cultural practices, what significance does culture even have? Why seek to preserve something our age has decided doesn't have to exist? Perhaps Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game can be read as an answer to those questions. The order of monastic scholars in the novel exists mainly to remember what others were happy to consign to oblivion. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss Hesse's ideas on the order and its sacred game in terms of how they might help us meet the challenge facing anyone who believes the value of culture can't be expressed in dollars and cents.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nHerman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
\nPope Benedict XVI, former head of the Catholic church
\nJ.S. Bach, Well Tempered Clavier, Rosalyn Tureck interpretation and Glenn Gould interpretation
\nWalter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
\nChauvet Cave
\nPeter Bebergal Strange Frequencies
\nAndy Goldsworthy, British artist
\nAlain de Botton, Religion for Atheists
\nWilliam Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light
JF and Phil have been talking about doing a show on The Glass Bead Game since Weird Studies' earliest beginnings. It is a science-fiction novel that alights on some of the key ideas that run through the podcast: the dichotomy of work and play, the limits and affordances of institutional life, the obscure boundary where certainty gives way to mystery... Throughout his literary career, Hesse wrote about people trying to square their inner and outer selves, their life in the spirit and their life in the world. The Glass Bead Game brings this central concern to a properly ambiguous and heartbreaking conclusion. But the novel is more than a brilliant work of philosophical or psychological literature. It is also an act of prophecy -- one that seems intended for us now.
\n\nHeader image by Liz West, via Wikimedia Commons.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nHerman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
\n\nPaul Hindemith, German composer
\nMorris Berman, The Twilight of American Culture
\nAlfred Korzybski, concept of Time Binding
\nChristopher Nolan, Memento
\nWilliam Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light
\nThomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
\nDavid Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism
\nJeremy Johnson, Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness
\nTeilhard de Chardin, French theologian
\nMathesis
\nJoshua Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze
\nWeird Studies, Episode 22 with Joshua Ramey
\nJoseph Needham, British historian of Chinese culture
\nJames Carse, Finite and Infinite Games
Modern skeptics pride themselves on being immune to unreason. They present themselves as defenders of rationality, civilization, and good sense against what Freud famously called the "black mud-tide of occultism." But what if skepticism was more implicated in the phenomena it aims to banish than it might appear to be? What if no one could debunk anything without getting some of that black mud on their hands? In this episode, Phil and JF discuss the weird complicity of the skeptic and the believer in the light of George P. Hansen's masterpiece of meta-parapsychology, The Trickster and the Paranormal.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nGeorge P. Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal
\nJames Randi, stage magician and paranormal debunker
\nMichael Shermer, American science writer
\nCSICOP, Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, Publisher of the Skeptical Inquirer
\nRune Soup, Interview with George P. Hansen
\nWeird Studies, Episode 24 with Lionel Snell
\nWeird Studies, Episode 89 on Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo
\nVictor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure
\nWouter Hanegraaff, Dutch professor of esoteric philosophy
\nShannon Taggart, Seance
\nSociety for Psychical Research
\nWeird Studies, Episode 44 on William James’s Psychical Research
\nG. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
\nRobert Anton Wilson, American author
\nAleister Crowley, Magic Without Tears
Joy Williams' third novel, Breaking and Entering, is the story of lovers who break into strangers' homes and live their lives for a time before moving on. First published in 1988, it is a book impossible to describe, a work of singular vision and sensibilty that is as infectious in its weird effect as it is unforgettable for the quality of its prose.
\n\nIn this episode, the novelist, spiritual thinker, and acclaimed podcaster Conner Habib joins JF and Phil to explore how the novel's enchantments rest on the uniqueness of Williams' style, which is to say, her bold embrace of ways of seeing that are hers alone. Williams is an artist who refuses to work from within some predetermined philosophical or political idiom. As Habib tells your hosts, she goes her own way, and even the gods must follow.
\n\nDiscover Against Everyone with Conner Habib on Patreon
\n\nSupport Weird Studies on Patreon:
\nBuy the soundtrack
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
Photo by Wolfgang Moroder via Wikimedia Commons
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nConner Habib, "Joy Williams: The Best Fiction Writer Alive"
\n\nJoy Williams, Breaking and Entering
\nJoy Williams, The Quick and the Dead
\nThe Paris Review, Interview with Joy Williams
\nHeraclitus, Fragments
\nJoy Williams, “Breakfast” in Taking Care
\nBret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
\nThe Phantom Stranger, DC Comics character
\nJames Joyce, Ulysses
\nEugene Ionesco, Rhinoceros
\nDeleuze and Guatarri, What is Philosophy?
\nQuentin Meillassoux, French philosopher
\nDavid Mamet, On Directing Film
\nDavid Mamet, True and False
\nNicholas Winding Refn (dir.), The Neon Demon
\nJoy Williams, “Congress”
\nJoy Williams, “Hawk”
\nStephen Sexton, If All the World and Love Were Young
\nScott Burnham, Mozart’s Grace
Special Guest: Conner Habib.
","summary":"Writer, podcaster, and spiritual thinker Conner Habib joins Phil and JF to discuss Williams' novel and the primacy of style in literature.","date_published":"2021-09-29T10:30:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/9fd17b00-a5f8-4c7a-98d5-1a5aa2365074.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":83228057,"duration_in_seconds":5199}]},{"id":"13dd5696-cdff-4bfa-991a-d2e2585afcc2","title":"Episode 106: The Wanderer: On Weird Studies","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/106","content_text":"In this episode, Weird Studies turns meta, reflecting on the peculiar medium that is podcasting, and how it has shaped the Weird Studies project itself. JF and Phil provide a glimpse into what it feels like to create the show from the inside, where each recording session is like a journey into an unknown Zone. The conversation also occasions sojourns into the flow state, or experience of pure durée, its implications for our conception of free will, and surprising parallels between modern materialists’ adherence to nihilism and ancient religious ascetic practices. Ultimately, JF and Phil explore the archetypal image of the wanderer as representative of Weird Studies’s existence so far, and of the kind of impact and legacy this project can have. \n\nN.B. Weird Studies will be on a haitus for the month of September, and will return on September 29. In the meantime:\n\nSupport us on Patreon: \nFind us on Discord\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) \nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack\n\nReferences\n\nRobert Sapolsky, Interview with Pau Guinart \nBruno Latour, French philosopher \nRichard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene \nPeter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life \nMihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow \nPaul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith \nNina Simone, “Feeling Good” \nRobert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus \nRichard Wagner, Siegfried\nLewis Carol, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland \nJohn David Ebert, American cultural critic \nPatrick Harpur Daimonic Reality \nMarshall McLuhan, The Global Village \nPhil Ford, “What was Blogging?” \nWeird Studies, Episode 71 on Marshall McLuhan ","content_html":"In this episode, Weird Studies turns meta, reflecting on the peculiar medium that is podcasting, and how it has shaped the Weird Studies project itself. JF and Phil provide a glimpse into what it feels like to create the show from the inside, where each recording session is like a journey into an unknown Zone. The conversation also occasions sojourns into the flow state, or experience of pure durée, its implications for our conception of free will, and surprising parallels between modern materialists’ adherence to nihilism and ancient religious ascetic practices. Ultimately, JF and Phil explore the archetypal image of the wanderer as representative of Weird Studies’s existence so far, and of the kind of impact and legacy this project can have.
\n\nN.B. Weird Studies will be on a haitus for the month of September, and will return on September 29. In the meantime:
\n\nSupport us on Patreon:
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack
References
\n\nRobert Sapolsky, Interview with Pau Guinart
\nBruno Latour, French philosopher
\nRichard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
\nPeter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life
\nMihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow
\nPaul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith
\nNina Simone, “Feeling Good”
\nRobert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus
\nRichard Wagner, Siegfried
\nLewis Carol, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
\nJohn David Ebert, American cultural critic
\nPatrick Harpur Daimonic Reality
\nMarshall McLuhan, The Global Village
\nPhil Ford, “What was Blogging?”
\nWeird Studies, Episode 71 on Marshall McLuhan
The Twin Peaks mythos has been with Weird Studies from the very beginning, and it is only fitting that it should have a return. In this episode, Phil and JF are joined by Tamler Sommers, co-host of the podcast Very Bad Wizards to discuss Fire Walk with Me, the prequel film to the original Twin Peaks series. Paradoxically, David Lynch’s work both necessitates and resists interpretation, and the pull of detailed interpretation is unusually strong in this episode. The three discuss how Fire Walk with Me, and the series as a whole, depicts two separate worlds that sometimes begin to intermingle, disrupting the perceived stability of time and space. Often this happens in moments of extreme fear or love. Through their love for Laura Palmer and for the film under consideration, JF, Phil, and Tamler enact their own interpretation, entering a rift where the world of Twin Peaks and the “real” world seem to merge, demonstrating how Twin Peaks just won’t leave this world alone, and can become a way for disenchanted moderns once again to live inside of myth.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon:
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack
References
\n\nDavid Lynch, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
\nThe Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness, Netflix documentary
\nDavid Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
\nAntonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double
\nMark Frost, The Secret History of Twin Peaks
\nMark Frost, Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier
\nJason Louv, occultist
\nDuncan Barford, Occult Experiments in the Home podcast
\nWeird Studies, Episode 67 on “Hellier”
\nWeird Studies, Episode 78 on “The Mothman Prophesies”
\nSound mass, musical technique
\nMichael Hanake (dir.), Caché
\nCourtenay Stallings, Laura’s Ghost
Special Guest: Tamler Sommers.
","summary":"Phil and JF are joined by philosophy professor Tamler Sommers to discuss the film \"Fire Walk with Me.\"","date_published":"2021-08-18T10:30:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/01d12ee6-3900-4993-9a53-d6948985cbe7.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":118971962,"duration_in_seconds":5545}]},{"id":"4064bd31-ceb0-4bf2-a78c-c1acd9721f3a","title":"Episode 104: We'd Love to Turn You On: 'Sgt. Pepper' and the Beatles","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/104","content_text":"It is said that for several days after the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in the spring of 1967, you could have driven from one U.S. coast to the other without ever going out of range of a local radio broadcast of the album. Sgt. Pepper was, in a sense, the first global musical event -- comparable to other sixties game-changers such as the Kennedy assassination and the moon landing. What's more, this event is as every bit as strange as the latter two; it is only custom and habit that blind us to the profound weirdness of Sgt. Pepper. In this episode, Phil and JF reimagine the Beatles' masterpiece as an egregore, a magical operation that changes future and past alike, and a spiritual machine for \"turning us on\" to the invisible background against which we strut and fret our hours on the stage.\n\nSupport us on Patreon: \nFind us on Discord\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) \nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack\n\nREFERENCES\n\nWeird Studies, Episode 31 on Glenn Gould’s ‘Prospects of Recording’ \nNelson Goodman, Languages of Art \nBrian Eno, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) \nWeird Studies, Episode 33 On Duchamp’s Fountain \nEmmanuel Carrère, La Moustache \nRob Reiner, This is Spinal Tap \nRichard Lester, A Hard Day's Night \nGilles Deleuze, Cinema 2 \nJames Carse, Finite and Infinite Games \nFelix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, What is Philosophy? \nArthur Machen, “A Fragment of Life” \nDavid Lynch, Lost Highway \nZhuangzi (Butterfly dream) \nIan MacDonald, Revolution in the Head ","content_html":"It is said that for several days after the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in the spring of 1967, you could have driven from one U.S. coast to the other without ever going out of range of a local radio broadcast of the album. Sgt. Pepper was, in a sense, the first global musical event -- comparable to other sixties game-changers such as the Kennedy assassination and the moon landing. What's more, this event is as every bit as strange as the latter two; it is only custom and habit that blind us to the profound weirdness of Sgt. Pepper. In this episode, Phil and JF reimagine the Beatles' masterpiece as an egregore, a magical operation that changes future and past alike, and a spiritual machine for "turning us on" to the invisible background against which we strut and fret our hours on the stage.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon:
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
\nBuy the Weird Studies soundtrack
REFERENCES
\n\nWeird Studies, Episode 31 on Glenn Gould’s ‘Prospects of Recording’
\nNelson Goodman, Languages of Art
\nBrian Eno, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)
\nWeird Studies, Episode 33 On Duchamp’s Fountain
\nEmmanuel Carrère, La Moustache
\nRob Reiner, This is Spinal Tap
\nRichard Lester, A Hard Day's Night
\nGilles Deleuze, Cinema 2
\nJames Carse, Finite and Infinite Games
\nFelix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, What is Philosophy?
\nArthur Machen, “A Fragment of Life”
\nDavid Lynch, Lost Highway
\nZhuangzi (Butterfly dream)
\nIan MacDonald, Revolution in the Head
Continuing their series on the tarot, Phil and JF discuss the card nobody wants to see in a reading – The Tower. Featuring lightning bolts, plumes of ominous smoke, and figures plummeting from the windows, the Tower’s meaning at first glance seems clear: “pride comes before a fall,” as the old adage goes. But as JF and Phil delve into the details, they note not only the card’s connection to the Biblical tower of Babel and the fall of man, but also its relevance to the present era’s systems of control and communication breakdown. This discussion leads them to search for an antidote to the Tower's message of destruction.
\n\nReferences
\n\nAnonymous, Meditations on the Tarot
\nAlejandro Jodorowsky, The Way of the Tarot
\nThomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
\nArnold Schoenberg, Austrian composer
\nGilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control”
\nWilco, “Radio Cure”
\nRichard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies
\nGeorge Cukor (dir.), A Star is Born
\nPerformativity, sociological concept
\nGuy Debord, Society of the Spectacle
\nJaques Ellul, The Technological Society
"What was he doing, the great god Pan, down in the reeds by the river?" With this question, the Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning opens her famous poem "A Musical Instrument," which explores nature's troubling embrace of savagery and beauty. It seems that Pan always raises questions: What is he doing? What does he want? Where will he appear next? Linked to instinct, compulsion, and the spontaneous event, Pan is without a doubt the least predictable of the Greek Gods. Small wonder that he alone in the Greek pantheon sports human and animal parts. In this episode, Phil and JF are joined by Gyrus, author of the marvellous North: The Rise and Fall of the Polar Cosmos, to capture a deity who, though he has made more than one appearance on Weird Studies, remains decidedly elusive.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon:
\nFind us on Discord
\nGet your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop
REFERENCES
\n\nGyrus, "Sketches of the Goat God in Albion"
\nGyrus, North
\nJames Hillman, Pan and the Nightmare
\nPharmakon, philosophical term
\nStanley Diamond, In Search of the Primitive
\nPhilippe Borgeaud, The Cult of Pan in Ancient Greece
\nHellier, television docuseries
\nWeird Studies, Episode 98 on exotica
\nPink Floyd, Piper at the Gates of Dawn
\nKenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
\nClayton Eshelman, Juniper Fuse
\nPlutarch “On the Silence of the Oracles”
\nPeter Levine, Waking the Tiger
\nD.H. Lawrence, “Pan in America”
\nJim Brandon, The Rebirth of Pan
In modern physics as in Western theology, darkness and shadows have a purely negative existence. They are merely the absence of light. In mythology and art, however, light and darkness are enjoy a kind of Manichaean equality. Each exists in its own right and lays claim to one half of the Real. In this episode, JF and Phil delve into the luxuriant gloom of the Japanese novelist Jun'ichirō Tanazaki's classic meditation on the half-forgotten virtues of the dark.
\n\nGet your Weird Studies MERCH! https://www.redbubble.com/people/Weird-Studies/shop?asc=u
\nSupport us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies
\nFind us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies
REFERENCES
\n\nJunichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows
\nChiaroscuro, Renaissance art style
\nJohn Carpenter (dir.), Escape from L.A.
\nWeird Studies, Episode 13 on Heraclitus
\nWalter Benjamin, The Work of Art in Age of Mechanical Reproduction
\nYasujiro Ozu (dir.), Late Spring
\nWabi Sabi, Japanese idea
\nJohn Carpenter (dir.), Escape from NY
\nJonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the End of Sleep
\nEric Voegelin, German-American philosopher
Central to the tradition of cosmic horror is the suggestion that the ultimate truth about our universe is at once knowable and unthinkable, such that one learns it only at the cost of one's sanity and soul. John Carpenter is one of a handful of horror directors to have successfully ported this idea from literature to cinema. This episode is an attempt to unearth some of the eldritch symbols buried in a selection of Carpenter's apocalyptic works, including Escape from New York, The Thing, They Live,_ In the Mouth of Madness_, and the little known Cigarette Burns.
\n\nSupport us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies
\nFind us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp
\nVisit the Weird Studies Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies
REFERENCES
\n\nJohn Carpenter films discussed:
\nThe Thing
\nCigarette Burns
\nIn the Mouth of Madness
\nPrince of Darkness
\nHalloween
\nThey Live
\nEscape from New York
\nEscape from L.A.
\nBig Trouble in Little China
Other References:
\n\nPascal Laugier (dir.), Martyrs
\nSrdjan Spasojevic (dir.), A Serbian Film
\nWeird Studies, Episode 90 on The Owl in Daylight
\nRoger Corman, American director
\nNorthrup Frye, Words with Power
\nJ. R. R. Tolkien, forward to The Fellowship of the Ring
\nGilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri, “Percept, Affect, and Concept” in What is Philosophy
\nWeird Studies, Episode 72 on the Castrati
\nWeird Studies, Episode 46, Thomas Ligotti’s Angel
\nGabriel Garcia Marquez, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”
\nChina Mieville, British author
\nKarlheinz Stockhausen, comments on 9/11
\nH. P. Lovecraft, Nyarlothotep
\nH. P. Lovecraft, “The Haunter of the Dark”
\nNick Land, Fanged Noumena
\nZack Snyder, American director
\nHaeccaity and Quiddity, philosophical concepts
\nSamuel Delaney, Dahlgren
\nWeird Studies, Episode 98 on Exotica
\nQuentin Meillasoux, After Finitude
\nRainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies
In this never-before-released episode recorded in 2019, Phil and JF travel to rural Oregon through the Netflix docu-series, Wild Wild Country. The series, which details the establishment of a spiritual community founded by Bhagwan Rajneesh (later called Osho) and its religious and political conflicts with its Christian neighbors, provides a starting point for a wide-ranging conversation on the nature of spirituality and religion. What emerges are surprising ties between the “spiritual, not religious” attitude and class, cultural commodification, and the culture of control that pervades modern society. But they also uncover the true “wild” card at the heart of existence that spiritual movements like that of Rajneesh can never fully control, no matter how hard they try.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nChapman and Maclain Way (dirs), Wild Wild Country
\nRichard Dawkins, The God Delusion
\nPierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
\nCarl Wilson, Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste
\nPeter Sloterdijk, German cultural theorist
\nWeird Studies, Episode 47, Machines of Loving Grace
\nSlavoj Žižek, On Western appropriation of Eastern religions
\nWilliam Burroughs, American writer
\nGilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control”
\nBhagwan Rajneesh/Osho, Speech on friendship
\nDaniel Ingram, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha
\nPaul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith
\nJames Carse, The Finite and Infinite Games
Exotica is a kind of music that was popular in the 1950s, when it was simply known as "mood music." Though somewhat obscure today, the sound of exotica remains immediately recognizable to contemporary ears. Its use of "tribal" beats, ethereal voices, flutes and gongs evoke a world that is no more at home in the modern West than it is anywhere else on earth. With its shameless stereotyping of non-Western cultures and its aestheticization of the other, exotica rightly deserves the criticism it has drawn over the years. But as we shall see in this episode, if you stop there, you just might miss the thing that makes exotica so difficult to expunge from Western culture, and also what makes it a prime example of how the "trash stratum" sometimes becomes the site of strange visions that transcend culture altogether.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nPhil Ford, “Taboo: Time and Belief in Exotica”
\nFuture Fossils, Episode 157
\nWeird Studies, Episode 21: The Trash Stratum
\nWeird Studies, Episode 79: Love, Death and the Dream Life
\nJack Smith, “The Perfect Filmic Appositeness Maria Montez”
\nYma Sumac, Peruvian singer
\nLes Baxter, "The Oasis of Dakhla"
\nSteely Dan, "I Heard the News"
\nStravinsky, Rite of Spring
\nLes Baxter, “Hong Kong Cable Car”
\nJacques Riviere, review of The Rite of Spring
\nNenao Sakaki, Japanese poet
\nLew Welch, American Beat poet
\nJF Martel, “Stay with Mystery: Hiroshima Mon Amour, Melancholia, and the truth of extinction”
\nJeffrey Kripal, Mutants and Mystics
\nCaptain Beefheart, “Orange Claw Hammer”
\nMartin Buber, I and Thou
The question of art has been of central concern for JF and Phil since Weird Studies began in 2018. What is art? What can it do that other things can't do? How is it connected to religion, psyche, and our current historical moment? Is the endless torrent of advertisements, entertainment, memes, and porn in which seem hopelessly immersed a manifestation of art or of something else entirely? In this exploration of the main ideas in JF's book Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice, your hosts focus on these burning questions in hopes that the answers might shed light on our collective predicament and the paths that lead out of it.
\n\nPhoto by Petar Milošević via Wikimedia Commons
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nJF's upcoming course on the nature and power of art, starting May 10th, 2021
\n\nJF Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice
\n\nWeird Studies, Episode 84 on the Empress card
\nWalter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
\nWerner Herzog, Cave of Forgotten Dreams
\nStanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey
\nAdam Savage, Special effects designer
\nDeleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
\nKabbalistic emanationist cosmology
\nHenry Corbin’s concept of the “imaginal”
\nWilliam Shakespeare, The Tempest
\nTibetan book of the Dead
\nJames Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
\nJames Hillman, The Thought of the Heart and The Soul of the World
\nPhil Ford, “Battlefield medicine”
\nJaques Ellul, idea of “technique”
\nAlain de Botton, Religion for Atheists
\nPaul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith
Jean Cocteau's visionary rendition of Madame de Beaumont's fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast," itself the retelling of a story that may be several millennia old, is the topic of this Weird Studies episode, which proposes a journey down lunar paths to the crossroads where love and death intersect. Drawing on Surrealism, myth, and the occult, Cocteau's 1946 film transcends the limitations of media to become a living poem, a thing that is also a place, a place that is also a mind. This conversation touches on the genius of the child, the mysteries of Eros, the monstrosity of consciousness, and the sorcery of cinema.
\n\nPhoto by Ivan Jevtic on Unsplash
\n\nClick here to register for JF's upcoming course on art.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nJean Cocteau (dir.), La Belle et la Bête
\n\nJaques Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry
\nSergei Diaghilev, Russian impresario
\nGary Trousdale and Kirk Wise (dir.), Beauty and the Beast
\nDavid Thomson, Have You Seen?
\nBram Stoker, Dracula
\nJohannes Vermeer, Dutch painter
\nPhilip Glass, La Belle et la Bête (opera)
\nGame of Thrones, Television series
\nWeird Studies, Episode 84 on the Empress Card
\nWeird Studies, Episode 94 on the Moon Card
Doris Lessing's uncategorizable oeuvre reached strange new heights in 1988 with the publication of her short novel The Fifth Child. The story couldn't be simpler. In the England of the 1970s, a couple determined to live out a dream that many of their generation have rejected -- the big family in the old house with the pretty garden -- conceive a child that may or may not be human. From that moment on, the boy, their fifth, becomes the alien force that will tear their dream to pieces. Profoundly ambiguous and unsettling, The Fifth Child is a weird novel that raises questions about parenthood, family, and the impenetrable depths of nature.
\n\nHeader Image: The Changeling by Henry Fuseli (1780)
\n\nAdditional music: "Fast Bossa Nova: Falling Stars" by Dee Yan-Key
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nDoris Lessing, The Fifth Child
\nDoris Lessing, Shikasta
\nM. R. James, weird fiction author
\nAnne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
\nWeird Studies, Episode 67 on “Hellier”
\nVictoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets
\nDavid Icke, conspiracy theorist
\nDeros, underground beings from the fiction of Richard Sharpe Shaver
\nHieronymus Bosch, Dutch Renaissance painter
\nWeird Studies, Episode 86 on “The Sandman”
\nSlavoj Žižek, The Puppet and the Dwarf
\nLouis Sass, “The Land of Unreality: On the Phenomenology of the Schizophrenic Break”
\nLouis Sass, Madness and Modernism
\nGiorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life
\nRichard Thorpe (dir.), The Wizard of Oz
\nFrank L. Baum, The Wizard of Oz
\nWeird Studies, bonus episode on Adventure Time
\nJames Hillman, The Soul’s Code
\nDoris Lessing, Ben in the World
\nRoman Polanski (dir.), Rosemary’s Baby
\nRichard Donner (dir.), The Omen
\nDonald Cammell (dir.), Demon Seed
"Here is a weird, deceptive life." Thus does Aleister Crowley describe the meaning of one of the most sinister and spectral cards in the tarot. In this episode, Phil and JF continue their ongoing series on the twenty-two major trumps with a deep dive into the hopelessly enigmatic world of Arcanum XVIII: The Moon. After a brief chat about Voltron and professional wrestling, your hosts start on the lunar path beset by traps and illusions, in hopes that their half-blind perambulation will lead to startling insights.
\n\nImage by Damien Deltenre via Wikimedia Commons.
\n\nReferences
\n\nRoland Barthes, Mythologies
\nAnonymous, Meditations on the Tarot
\nColin Wilson, The Occult
\nEliphas Levi,_ French esotericist
\nIshmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo
\nWeird Studies, [Episode 86 on The Sandman](weirdstudies.com/86)
\nPlato, Republic
\nAntoine Faivre, scholar of esoteric studies
\nWouter Hanegraaff, historian of philosophy
\nAlastair Crowley, Book of Thoth
\nHenri Bergson, Creative Evolution
\nCarl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis
\nPeter Kingsley, historian of philosophy
\nSt. John of the Cross, The Dark Night of the Soul
\nJ.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
\nWeird Studies, Episode 93 on Charles Taylor
\nAlgis Uždavinys, Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth
In A Secular Age, the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor tries to come to grips with the seismic development that transformed the world after the Renaissance, namely the secularization of the society and soul of Western humanity. What does it mean to live in an age where religion, once the very matrix of social existence, is relegated to the realm of private and personal choice? What defines secularity? Are modern people really as "irrelegious" as we make them out to be? In this episode, JF and Phil squarely train their sights on a question that continues to haunt them, with Taylor as their Virgil in what amounts to a descent into the ordinary inferno of modern unknowing.
\n\nHeader Image by Pahudson, via Wikimedia Commons
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nPierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page
\n\nCharles Taylor, A Secular Age
\nCharles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity
\nWeird Studies, ep 71: The Medium is the Message
\nPenn & Teller, Bullshit
\nRené Descartes, Meditations
\nTheodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter-Culture
\nThomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
\nJacques Ellul, The New Demons
\nDavid Foster Wallace's essay on David Letterman
\nRichard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
\nEric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics
\nKarl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History
With his latest film, a meditation on what it means to believe we live in a computer simulation, Rodney Ascher has once again placed himself among the most innovative and visionary filmmakers working in the documentary form today. While the "Simulation Hypothesis" has been a hot topic ever since The Matrix came out in 1997, it is Ascher's ability to suspend judgement, training his camera on the experience of believers rather than the value of their beliefs, that makes A Glitch in the Matrix such a unique and significant exploration, a strange work of "phantom phenomenology."
\n\nWeird Studies listeners will recall that Phil and JF devoted an episode to Ascher's films -- most notably Room 237 and The Nightmare -- back in the early days of the podcast. In this episode, Rodney Ascher joins them to discuss his cinematic vision, his take on the weird, and his thoughts on what is real and why it matters.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\n[Rodney Ascher](www.rodneyascher.com), American filmmaker
\n-- [A Glitch in the Matrix](www.aglitchinthematrixfilm.com)
Jay Weidner's theories on Kubrick
\nBuddhist idea of the the Arising and Passing Away
\n[Dungeons & Dragons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons%26_Dragons), tabletop roleplaying game
\nJames Machin, _Weird Fiction in Britain 1880-1939
\nMagic Eye pictures
\nParmenides, Greek philosopher
\nWachowskis, The Matrix
\nAlan Moore, "Superman: For the Man Who Has Everything"
\nConway's Game of Life
\nJoshua Clover, The Matrix (BFI Film Classics)
\nJonathan Snipes, American composer
\nClipping, experimental hip hop band
\n"Shining" romantic comedy recut
\nMichael Curtiz (dir.), Casblanca
\nJohn Boorman (dir.), [Point Blank](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062138/?ref=fn_al_tt_2)_
\nLouis Sass, Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought
Special Guest: Rodney Ascher.
","summary":"JF and Phil are joined by American filmmaker Rodney Ascher to discuss film, music, mood, and his new documentary about people who believe we are in living in a computer simulation.","date_published":"2021-02-17T10:45:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/7f9685e9-82ab-4c5a-8218-b1a35c6926ee.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":83975649,"duration_in_seconds":5246}]},{"id":"339efcd2-190e-43c8-b0d6-f84616e3f261","title":"Episode 91: On Susanna Clarke's 'Piranesi'","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/91","content_text":"In this episode, Phil and JF explore the vast palatial halls of Susanna Clarke's novel Piranesi. Set in an otherworld consisting of endless galleries filled with enigmatic statues, Piranesi is the story of a man who lives alone -- or nearly alone -- in a dream labyrinth. As usual, our discussion leads to unexpected places every bit as strange as Clarke's setting, from Borge's infinite library and Lovecraft's alien cities to Renaissance Europe, where the art of memory was synonymous with wisdom and magic. \n\nSHOW NOTES\n\nSusanna Clarke, Piranesi\nJoshua Clover, 1989: Dylan Didn't Have This to Sing About , The Matrix (BFI Modern Classics\nJohn Crowley, Little, Big\nChristopher Priest, The Prestige (+Christopher Nolan's screen adaptation)\nSusanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell\nJF Martel, \"The Real as Sacrament\" (forthcoming?)\nFrances Yates, The Art of Memory\nMary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture\nPlato, Phaedrus\nHenri Bergson, Matter and Memory\nJorge Luis Borges, \"The Library of Babel\"\nGiovanni Battista Piranesi, Carceri d'invenzione\nMaurits Cornelis Escher, Duch artist\nH. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness\nGaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space\nGyrus, North: The Rise and Fall of the Polar Cosmos\nEmerald Tablet, foundational Hermetic text\nJoshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything\nWeird Studies ep. 42 - On Pauline Oliveros, with Kerry O'Brien\nGiovanni colleague?\nAllen Ginsberg, \"America\"\nRodney Ascher, A Glitch in the Matrix\nWalter J. Ong, American philosopher \nWeird Studies ep. 71: The Medium is the Message\nThomas Ligotti, \"The Night School\"\nThomas Aquinas, Christian philosopher and theologian\nErasmus, Christian philosopher\nMarsilio Ficino, Christian philosopher","content_html":"In this episode, Phil and JF explore the vast palatial halls of Susanna Clarke's novel Piranesi. Set in an otherworld consisting of endless galleries filled with enigmatic statues, Piranesi is the story of a man who lives alone -- or nearly alone -- in a dream labyrinth. As usual, our discussion leads to unexpected places every bit as strange as Clarke's setting, from Borge's infinite library and Lovecraft's alien cities to Renaissance Europe, where the art of memory was synonymous with wisdom and magic.
\n\nSHOW NOTES
\n\nSusanna Clarke, Piranesi
\nJoshua Clover, 1989: Dylan Didn't Have This to Sing About , The Matrix (BFI Modern Classics
\nJohn Crowley, Little, Big
\nChristopher Priest, The Prestige (+Christopher Nolan's screen adaptation)
\nSusanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
\nJF Martel, "The Real as Sacrament" (forthcoming?)
\nFrances Yates, The Art of Memory
\nMary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture
\nPlato, Phaedrus
\nHenri Bergson, Matter and Memory
\nJorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel"
\nGiovanni Battista Piranesi, Carceri d'invenzione
\nMaurits Cornelis Escher, Duch artist
\nH. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
\nGaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
\nGyrus, North: The Rise and Fall of the Polar Cosmos
\nEmerald Tablet, foundational Hermetic text
\nJoshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
\nWeird Studies ep. 42 - On Pauline Oliveros, with Kerry O'Brien
\nGiovanni colleague?
\nAllen Ginsberg, "America"
\nRodney Ascher, A Glitch in the Matrix
\nWalter J. Ong, American philosopher
\nWeird Studies ep. 71: The Medium is the Message
\nThomas Ligotti, "The Night School"
\nThomas Aquinas, Christian philosopher and theologian
\nErasmus, Christian philosopher
\nMarsilio Ficino, Christian philosopher
Weird Studies has so far devoted just one show to Philip K. Dick, and that was way back in April 2018, with episode 10, "Adrift in the Multiverse." Last fall, as another foray into Dickland began to feel urgent, Phil and JF talked about which of his books they should tackle. The answer that seemed obvious was VALIS, the semi/pseudo-autobiographical masterpiece that constitutes PKD's most explicit attempt to make sense of the theophanic experiences that altererd his life in 1974. But then Phil suggested The Owl in Daylight, a novel on which PKD worked feverishly in the last years of his life but left unwritten. And sure enough, reviewing and analyzing a book that doesn't exist proved to be the best way of getting to the heart of Dick's incomparable oeuvre.
\n\nSHOW NOTES
\n\nGwen Lee, What if Our World is Their Heaven? The Final Conversations of Philip K. Dick
\nThe Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick, volume 6
\nPhilip K. Dick, The Exegesis
Anonymous, Meditations on the Tarot
\nSecondary qualities, philosophical concept
\nSamuel Barber, Adagio for Strings
\nBurt Bacharach, American musician
\nPhilip K. Dick, "The Preserving Machine"
\nJorge Borges, "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim"
\nThe Good Place, American television series
\nPhilip K. Dick, Valis
\nWeird Studies, Episode 78 on John Keel's 'Mothman Prophesies'
\nRichard Wagner, Parsifal
\nWeird Studies, Episode 73 on Carl Jung
Ishmael Reed's 1972 novel Mumbo Jumbo is a conspiracy thriller, a postmodern experiment, a revolutionary tract, a celebration, and a magical working. It is a novel that, over and above prophetically describing the world we live in, creates a whole new world and invites us to move in. For Phil and JF, Mumbo Jumbo exemplifies art's creative power to generate new possibilities for life. It is also the perfect occasion for pinpointing the difference between the kind of magical thinking that fuels virulent conspiricism, and the more profound magical thinking which alone can save us from it.
\n\n**Image: **Albrecht Dürer, Two Pairs of Hands with Book
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nIshmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo
\n\nHarold Bloom, The Western Canon
\nFor more on Colin Wilson's concept of lunar religion, see The Occult
\nWeird Studies, episode 36: "On Hyperstition"
\nWilliam S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
\nCarl Van Vechten, American writer
\nRobert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, Illuminatus!
\nMC5, "Kick Out the Jams"
\nKarl Pfeiffer (dir.), Hellier, webseries
\nJasun Horsley, 16 Maps of Hell
\nRamsey Dukes (Lionel Snell), SSOTBME
\nAnonymous, Meditations on the Tarot
\nFats Waller, American jazz musician
\nOwen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry
\nWeird Studies, episode 57 - "Box of Gods: On Raiders of the Lost Ark"
\nHans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity
\nGilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature
Weird Studies will launch its fourth season on January 6th, 2021. But to celebtrate the end of very strange year, we thought we'd release a conversation which until now was available only to our top-tier Patreon backers. Therein we discuss the philosophical underpinnings of "Puhoy," memorable episode of the brilliant animated series Adventure Time. This was JF's introduction to a show that Phil has often recommended for its novel treatment of complex ideas and downright weirdness.
\n\nWatch "Puhoy" on YouTube:
\nPart 1
\nPart 2
Before Coraline, before American Gods, in the early days of the Sandman series, Neil Gaiman collaborated with Dave McKean on some truly groundbreaking graphic novels: Violent Cases (1987), Signal to Noise (1989), and the work discussed in this Weird Studies episode. The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr Punch (1994) is the story of a boy whose initiation into the dark realities of life, death, and family plays out in the shadow of the (in)famous Punch & Judy puppet show. Unlike some of Gaiman's more overtly marvellous offerings, Mr Punch is a subtle fantasy whose weirdness hides in the gaps and folds of lost time. It is in Dave McKean's brilliant art that the magic shines through, letting us know that the narrative is only part of a vaster, hidden thing. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss the themes, ideas, and mysteries of an unparalleled piece of comics art.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nWatch Aaron Poole's 9-minute short film "Oracle"
\n\nNeil Gaiman and Dave McKean, _The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch
\n\n"That's the Way to Do It! A History of Punch and Judy", Victoria Albert Museum
\n_
Ronald Briggs, Father Christmas
\nClement Greenberg, American art critic
\nMarcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
\nScott McCloud, Understanding Comics
\nJ. F. Martel, Patreon Post on The Untimely
\nWeird Studies, Episodes 20 and 21 on the Trash Stratum
\nWeird Studies, Episode 72 on the Castrati
\nSamuel Pepys, English administrator and diarist
\nNick Lowe, The Beast in Me
It would be wrong to describe Arthur Machen's Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy in Literature (1902) as a work of nonfiction, since the book features a narrative frame that is as moody and irreal as the best tales penned by this luminary of weird fiction. But if the eccentric recluse at the centre Hieroglyphics is a fictional philosopher, he is one who, in Phil and JF's opinion, rivals most aesthetic thinkers in the history of philosophy. The significance of this text lies in its willingness to disclose a function of art that few before Machen had dared to touch, namely its capacity to generate ecstasy by confronting us with the mystery that beats the heart of existence. In this episode, your hosts discuss a work which, in their opinion, comes as close to scripture as the nonexistent field of Weird Studies is likely to get.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nArthur Machen, Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy in Literature
\n\nThomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer
\nWeird Studies, Episode 3 on the White People
\nJ.F. Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice
\nWeird Studies, Episode 63 on Colin Wilson’s 'The Occult'
\nWilliam Shakespeare, Hamlet
\nIndra’s Net, philosophical concept
\nJames Machin, Weird Fiction in Britain, 1880 – 1939
\nWeird Studies, Episode 5 on Lisa Ruddick's 'When Nothing is Cool'
\nOscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism
\nRudolph Otto, German theologian
The German polymath E. T. A. Hoffmann is one of the founding figures of what we now call weird literature. In this episode, JF and Phil discuss one of his most memorable tales, "Der Sandmann." Originally published in 1816, it is the story of a young German student whose fate is sealed by a terrifying encounter with the eponymous figure during his youth. The story packs several tropes that would later become staples of the weird: the protean monster, the double, the automaton... Your hosts discuss how Hoffmann uses these tropes without letting any of them coalesce into a stable thing in the reader's mind, thereby effecting a slowbuild of ambiguity upon ambiguity that culminates in a true paroxysm of dread. The argument is made that Freud does essentially the same thing in his famous essay "The Uncanny," wherein Hoffmann's story plays an important role.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nE. T. A. Hoffmann, The Sandman
\nHorace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
\nEdgar Allan Poe, American writer
\nSunn o))), American metal band
\nLa Monte Young,, American composer
\nStuart Davis, Aliens and Artists
\nSigmund Freud, The Uncanny
\nNeil Gaiman, Mr. Punch
\nJaques Offenbach, Tales of Hoffmann
\nFrank Zappa, American musician
\nErnst Jentsch,, German psychiatrist
\nE. T. A. Hoffmann, The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr
\nWeird Studies, episodes 73 and 74 on Carl Jung
Since its release in 1973, Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man has exerted a profound influence on the development of horror cinema, a rich vein of folk music, and the modern pagan revival more generally. Anthony Shaffer's ingenious screenplay gives us a thrilling yarn that is also a meditation on the nature of religious belief and practice. Just in time for Halloween, Phil and JF discuss the philosophical ideas that undergird this folk horror classic, focusing on the perennial role of sacrifice in religious thought.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nRobin Hardy (director), The Wicker Man
\n\nStanley Kubrick (director), The Shining
\nTerence Fisher (director), The Devil Rides Out
\nPiers Haggard (director), Blood on Satan’s Claw
\nJohn Boorman (director), Deliverance
\nRob Young, Electric Eden
\nGerald Gardner, English wiccan
\nMargaret Murray, English anthropologist
\nCecil Sharp, English ethnomusicologist
\nPhil Ford, "Taboo: Time and Belief in Exotica"
\nFriedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations
This second instalment in our series on the major trumps of the traditional tarot deck features the Empress. As Aleister Crowley writes in The Book of Thoth, this card is probably the most difficult to decipher, since it is inherently "omniform," changing shapes continuously. In a sense, the Empress is variation itself. Her card becomes the occasion for a conversation about the less knowable side of reality, the one that tradition associates with the Yin, nature, potential, and -- controversially -- the feminine. This in turn leads to a discussion of white versus black magic, and how the two may not always be as diametrically opposed as we might believe.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nP.D. Ouspensky, The Symbolism of the Tarot
\nAnonymous, Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism
\nWeird Studies episode 82 on the I Ching
\nPatrick Harper, The Secret Tradition of the Soul
\nAleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth
\nSimon Magus, religious figure
\nHenri Gamache, The Mystery of the Long Lost 8th, 9th, and 10th Books of Moses
\nSolomon grimoires
\nLionel Snell/Ramsay Dukes, English magician
\nWeird Studies episode 3 on Arthur Machen's "The White People"
\nJoséphin Péladan, French magician
\nSusanna Clarke Piranesi
\nShawshank Redemption, film
\nFranz Liszt, musician
\nTwin Peaks: The Missing Pieces
David Lynch's Lost Highway was released in 1997, five years after Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me elicited a fusillade of boos and hisses at Cannes. The Twin Peaks prequel's poor reception allegedly sent its American auteur spiralling into something of an existential crisis, and Lost Highway has often been interpreted as a response to -- or result of -- that crisis. Certainly, the film is among Lynch's darkest, boldest, and most enigmatic. But of course, we do the film an injustice by reducing it to the psychological state of its director. Indeed, one of the contentions of this episode is that all artistic interpretation constitutes a kind of injustice. But as you will hear, that doesn't stop Phil and JF from interpreting the hell out of the film. Just or unjust, fair or unfair, interpretation may well be necessary in aesthetic matters. It may be the means by which we grow through the experience of art, the way by which art makes us something new, strange, and other. Perhaps the trick is to remember that no mode of interpretation is, to borrow Freud's phrase, the one and only via regia, but that every one is just another highway at night...
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nDavid Lynch (dir.), Lost Highway
\n\nAlfred Hitchcock (dir.), Vertigo
\nArnold Schoenberg, Three Keyboard Pieces, op. 11
\nJames Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake
\nWeird Studies, Episode 81 on The Course of the Heart
\nJacques Lacan, French psychoanalyst
\nSlavoj Žižek, Slovenian philosopher
\nArnold Schoenberg, Pierrot Lunaire
\nCabinet of Dr. Caligari
\nDavid Foster Wallace, "David Lynch Keeps his Head" in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never do Again
\nLeonard Bernstein, West Side Story
\nPatreon audio extra on Penderecki's "Threnody"
\nTrent Reznor, American musician
\nDavid Bowie, "Deranged"
\nBrian Eno and Peter Schmidt, "Oblique Strategies"
\nTim Powers, Last Call
\nManuel DeLanda, Mexican-American philosopher
The Book of Changes, or I Ching, is more than an ancient text. It's a metaphysical guide, a fun game, and -- to your hosts at least -- a lifelong, steadfast friend. The I Ching has come up more than once on the show, and now is the time for JF and Phil to face it head on, discussing the role it has played in their lives while delving into some of its mysteries.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nI Ching, Wilhelm-Baynes translation
\nI Ching, Stephen Karcher translation
\nGame of Thrones, HBO series
\nGeorge R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire
\nGeorge R. R. Martin, “Sandkings” in: Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
\nH. P. Lovecraft, American writer
\nGraham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy
\nAleister Crowley, “777”
\nEduardo Viveiros de Castro, Cannibal Metaphysics
\nJoel Biroco, Calling Crane in the Shade (website)
\nPhilip K. Dick, American novelist
\nLionel Snell, a.k.a. Ramsey Dukes, British occultist
\nRichard Rutt, _Zhouyi: A New Translation with Commentary _
\nMervyn Peake, Gormenghast
\nRedmond and Hon, Teaching the I Ching
\nWeird Studies, episode 72, On the castrati
\nWeird Studies, episode 77, On the fool tarot card
\nAnonymous, Meditations on the Tarot
\nThe Usual Suspects (movie)
\nColin Wilson, The Occult
The British writer M. John Harrison is responsible for some of the most significant incursions of the Weird into the literary imagination of the last several decades. His 1992 novel The Course of the Heart is a masterful exercise in erasing whatever boundary you care to mention, from the one between reality and mind to the one between love and horror. Recounting the lives of three friends as they play out the fateful aftermath of a magical operation that went horribly wrong, Harrison's novel gives Phil and JF the chance to talk contemporary literature, metaphysics, Gnosticism, zones (see episodes 13 & 14), myth, transcendence, history, and arachnology. Together, they weave a fragile web of ideas centered on that imperceptible something that forever trembles at the edge of our perception, beckoning us to step into its world, and out of ours.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nM. John Harrison, The Course of the Heart
\nM. John Harrison, "The Great God Pan"
\nArthur Machen, The Great God Pan
\nPhilip K. Dick, Ubik
\nPhilip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
\nWeird Studies, Episode 14 on Stalker
\nJonathan Carrol, American novelist
\nRobert Aickman, British writer
\nMagic Realism, literary genre
\nPhil Ford, “An Essay on Fortuna, parts 1 and 2,” Weird Studies Patreon
\nJohn Crowley, Ægypt
\nJorge Borges," The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim"
\nStrange Horizons, Interview with M. John Harrison
\nM. John Harrison on worldbuilding
\nThomas Ligotti, American horror writer
\nWeird Studies subreddit
\nAlbert Camus, French philosopher
\nDavid Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous
\nSpiders’ nervous systems
\nValentinus, gnostic theologian
\nSimon Magus, religious figure
\nWiccan goddess and god
\nBruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles
\nWeird Studies, Episode 37 with Stuart Davis
Your hosts' exploration of mysticism and vision in pop music continues with two powerful pieces of popular music: Radiohead's "Pyramid Song" from the 2001 album Amnesiac, and Fran Landesman and Tommy Wolf's "Ballad of the Sad Young Men," from the 1959 Broadway musical The Nervous Set. Synchronicity rears its head as the dialogue reveals how these two gems, selected by JF and Phil with no expectation that they might form a set, begin to glow when placed side by side, amplifying and focussing each other's eldritch light. This episode touches on Neoplatonic myths of spiritual ascent, African-American spirituals, Plato's realm of Forms, Gnosticism, dream visitations by the dearly departed, the travails of the Beat generation, the objectivity of hope, the implosion of America, and that particularly modern condition of the soul which Phil calls the "Philosopher's Blues."
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nRadiohead, "Pyramid Song"
\nFran Landesman and Tommy Wolf, "The Ballad of the Sad Young Men"
Edgar Allan Poe, "The Pit and the Pendulum"
\nCharles Mingus, Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus
\nPlato, Phaedrus
\nPlato, Republic
\nPlato's Unwritten Doctrines
\nThe Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast, episode 69: "Plutarch's Myths of Cosmic Ascent"
\nWilliam James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
\nPierre Hadot, French philosopher
\nAlgis Uzdavynis, Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth: From Ancient Egypt to Neoplatonism
\nCharles Taylor, Canadian philosopher
\nPhil Ford, "The Philosopher’s Blues" (Weird Studies Patreon exclusive)
\nPeter Sloterdijk, German philosopher
\nFerdinand de Saussure, French linguist
\nJF Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice
\nJF Martel, "Stay With Mystery: Hiroshima Mon Amour, Melancholia, and the Truth of Extinction" in Canadian Notes & Queries, issue 106: Winter 2020, edited by Sharon English and Patricia Robertson
\nRay Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction
\nJay Landesman and Theodore J. Flicker, The Nervous Set, musical
\nPhil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture
\nJay Landesman, American publisher and writer
\nMarshall McLuhan, "The Psychopathology of 'Time & Life'"
\nMarshall McLuhan, The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man
\nWilliam Butler Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium"
\nJoel and Ethan Coen, No Country For Old Men
\nMike Duncan (Twitter)
\nJeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
\nKarl Marx, Capital: Volume I
In this episode of Weird Studies, an improvised analysis of two pop songs -- Nina Simone's version of James Shelton's "Lilac Wine" and Ghostface Killah's visionary "Underwater" -- becomes the occasion for a deep dive to the weird wellspring of artistic creation. In trying to understand these songs and why they love them so much, your hosts touch on themes such as necromancy, decadence, liebestod, visionary experience, the Muslim image of paradise, the necessity of rifts, Norman Mailer's concept of "dream life," and the magical operation that is sampling.
\n\nHeader image: Boris Kasimov, Wikimedia Commons
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nJames Shelton, "Lilac Wine"
\nNina Simone, "Lilac Wine" from the album WIld is the Wind (1966)
\nGhostface Killah, "Underwater, from the album Fishscale (2006)
\nMF Doom, "Orange Blossoms," from the album Special Herbs, Volume 4, 5 & 6
\nRichard Strauss, [Salome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salome(opera))_
\nWeird Studies, episode 25: David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch
\nC. G. Jung's practice of active imagination
\nJF Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice
\nThomas Mann, Death in Venice
\nPaul Horn, Visions
\nAlexander Mackendrick (dir.), The Sweet Smell of Success
\nLes Baxter, American composer
\nLes Baxter, "Papagayo"
\nDebussy, [Nocturnes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturnes(Debussy))_
\nRebecca Leydon, music scholar
\nWeird Studies episodes 73 and 74, on C. G. Jung's aesthetic vision
\nAlexander Courage, Theme from Star Trek ("Where No Man Has Gone Before")
\nRichard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
\nNorman Mailer, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket"
\nJames Joyce, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake
At the time The Mothman Prophecies' was released in 1975, and again when he penned an afterword for the 2001 edition, John Keel appeared to have made up his mind about the "ultraterrestrials" that he had tracked and hunted for most of his adult life. They were unconcerned about the welfare of the people whose lives they threw into disarray, he said. They were liars, cheats, and frauds who refused to play fair. They saw good and evil as synonymous and they were dangerous. Like many other explorers of reality's uncharted waters, John Keel returned to port knowing less than he did (or thought he did) when he set out. And this led him to ponder the possibility that only thing to know about such matters is that there is nothing to know -- that the universal mind, as Charles Fort had suggested before him, was insane. In this episode of Weird Studies, JF and Phil share their thoughts on The Mothman Prophecies, focusing less on the creatures and events that haunted Point Pleasant in 1966-67 than on how these things affected the brilliant writer who was chosen to be their baffled chronicler.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nJohn A. Keel, The Mothman Prophecies: A True Story
\nWilliam S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
\nStephanie Quick's blog
\nWeird Studies talks to Jeffrey J. Kripal: episode 39 and episode 45
\nH. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"
\nNeil Gaiman, American Gods
\nJeffrey J. Kripal, Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal
\nDavid Lynch's Twin Peaks
\nDavid Lynch, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
\nBob Lazar, American engineer (?)
\nWilliam James, American philosopher
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man can reason away." This line from a Doobie Brothers song is probably one of the most profound in the history of rock-'n'-roll. It is profound for all the reasons (or unreasons) explored in this discussion, which lasers in on just one of the major trumps of the traditional tarot deck, that of the Fool. The Fool is integral to the world, yet stands outside it. The Fool is an idiot but also a sage. The Fool does not know; s/he intuits, improvises a path through the brambles of existence. We intend this episode on the Fool to be the first in an occasional series covering all twenty-two of the major trumps of the Tarot of Marseilles.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nThe Fool in the tarot
\nSt. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians
\nMeditations on the Tarot: A Journey Into Christian Hermeticism
\nAleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth
\nPlato, Phaedrus
\nWeird Studies episode 60 - Space is the Place: On Sun Ra, Gnosticism, and the Tarot
\nTill Eulenspiegel, folk figure
\nAleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears
\nWeird Studies episode 75 - Our Old Friend the Monolith: On Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey
\nWeird Studies episode 76 - Below the Abyss: On Bergson's Metaphysics
\nRider-Waite Tarot Deck
\nRichard Wagner, Parsifal
\nG. W. F. Hegel, German philosopher
\nRamsey Dukes, Words Made Flesh: Information in Formation
\nGeorge Spencer Brown, Laws of Form
\nAlain Badiou, Deleuze: The Clamor of Being
\nPunch and Judy, British puppet show
\nGeorge P. Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal
\nLin Yutang, The Importance of Living
\nThomas Mann, Death in Venice
\nPhil Ford's lecture on Death in Venice (Patreon exclusive!)
\nFyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
\nHal Ashby (dir.), Being There
\nAlejandro Jodorowsky and Marianne Costa, The Way of the Tarot
\nFrank Pavich (dir.), Jodorowsky’s Dune
\nTarot of Marseilles
\nAndré Breton, French surrealist artist
According to the French philosopher Henri Bergson, there are two ways of knowing the world: through analysis or through intuition. Analysis is our normal mode of apprehension. It involves knowing what's out there through the accumulation and comparison of concepts. Intuition is a direct engagement with the absolute, with the world as it exists before we starting tinkering with it conceptually. Bergson believed that Western metaphysics erred from the get-go when it gave in to the all-too-human urge to take the concepts by which we know things for the things themselves. His entire oeuvre was an attempt to snap us out of that spell and plug us directly into the flow of pure duration, that primordial time that is the real Real. In this episode, JF and Phil discuss the genius -- and possible limitations -- of his metaphysics.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nHenri Bergson, "Introduction to Metaphysics"
\nWeird Studies episode 13 -- The Obscure: On the Philosophy of Heraclitus
\nWeird Studies episode 16: On Dogen Zenji's 'Genjokoan'
\nBertrand Russel's critique of Bergson's philosophy
\nDōgen Zenji, Shōbōgenzō
\nWiliam James, Principles of Psychology
\nPlato, Theaetetus
\nMeillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency
\nAleister Crowley, British occultist
\nGraham Harman, "The Third Table"
\nWeird Studies episode 8 - On Graham Harman's "The Third Table"
\nBergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
\nWittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
When the quarantine began, professors around the world raced to put their classes online, and for the Jacobs School's big undergraduate music history course (M402 represent!) Phil created a series of solo podcasts, many of which have been appearing on the Weird Studies Patreon site. Our patrons seem to be enjoying them, so we thought we'd publish the first one ("The Duke of Ellington") as an off-week bonus for all our listeners, partly as a teaser for the subscriber-only stuff on Patreon and partly because Duke Ellington is cool. There's a bit of technical music talk in this, but you can ignore it and still get the main point: Ellington's early short film Symphony in Black and his subsequent orchestral suite Black Brown and Beige represent his lifelong project of using his "beyond category" music to articulate a vision of African American past and future.
\n\nPlease note: this was Phil's first attempt at doing a solo podcast in far-from-ideal circumstances, and the sound is pretty unpolished in places. He got his act together for the later ones; go check them out at https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nFred Waller (dir.), Symphony In Black - A Rhapsody of Negro Life
\nDuke Ellington, Black, Brown, and Beige
\nDudley Murphy (dir.), Black and Tan Fantasy
\nJohn Howland, Ellington Uptown: Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and the Birth of Concert Jazz
"You don't find reality only in your own backyard, you know," Stanley Kubrick once told an interviewer. "In fact, sometimes that's the last place you'll find it." Oddly, this episode of Weird Studies begins with Phil Ford hatching the idea of putting a replica of the monolith from 2001 in his backyard. As the ensuing discussion suggests, this would amount to putting reality -- or the Real, as we like to call it -- in the place where it may be least apparent. Perhaps that is what Kubrick did when he planted his monolithic film in thousands of movie theatres back in 1968. Moviegoers went in expecting a Kubrickian twist on Buck Rogers; they came out changed by the experience, much like the hominids of great veld in the "Dawn of Man" sequence that opens the film. This is what all great art does, and if you look closely, maybe 2001 can tell you something about how it does it. Because in the end, the film is the monolith, and the monolith is all art.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nStanley Kubrick (dir.), 2001: A Space Odyssey
\nArthur C. Clarke, "The Sentinel"
\nArthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey (novel)
\nClement Greenberg, American art critic
\nStanley Kubrick (dir.), The Shining
\nSergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory
\nWeird Studies episode 62: It's Like "The Shining," But With Nuns: On "Black Narcissus"
\nLigeti, Atmosphères
\nGerard Loughlin, Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology
\nJay Weidner, Kubrick's Odyssey: Secrets Hidden in the Films of Stanley Kubrick
\nRob Ager's analysis of 2001 (Ager was criticized for not citing Loughlin above)
\nEric Norton's Playboy interview with Stanley Kubrick
\nJ. F. Martel, "The Kubrick Gaze" in Daniel Pinchbeck & Ken Jordan (eds.), Toward 2012: Perspectives on the Next Age
\nJ. F. Martel, "The Future is Immanent: Speculations on a Possible World"
\nHenri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
\nSid Meier's Civilization V
\nStanley Kubrick (dir.), Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
\nStanley Kubrick (dir.), A Clockwork Orange
\nDziga Vertov, Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov
\nMarshall McLuhan, Understanding Media
\nMartin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology"
\nGilbert Ryle, "Improvisation"
In this second part of their exploration of C. G. Jung's essay "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry," JF and Phil try to discern the psychological and metaphysical implications of the great Swiss psychologist's theory of art. For one, this involves discussing what Jung meant by archetypes, and how these relate to the artists who bring them forth in artistic works. This in turn leads to a discussion of the emergent artwork as an "autonomous complex," that is, as a self-moving spirit that requires the artist merely as a conduit for its manifestation in human -- and cosmic -- history.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nCarl Gustav Jung, "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry"
\nArthur Machen, "Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy"
\nRick Riordan, [Percy Jackson & the Olympians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Jackson%26_the_Olympians)_ series of novels
\nRobert Altman (director), Nashville
\nHomer, The Odyssey
\nJacques Offenbach, The Tales of Hoffmann
\nE. T. A. Hoffmann, "The Sandman"
\nDavid Lynch, American filmmaker (the Dionysian!)
\nStanley Kubrick, American filmmaker (the Apollonian!)
\nRichard Wagner's idea of Gesamtkunstwerk
\nWilliam S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
\nJohannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance, and JF's analysis thereof
\nLisa Ruddick, "When Nothing is Cool"
\nWeird Studies episode 5: Reading Lisa Ruddick's "When Nothing is Cool"
This is the first of two conversations that Phil and JF are devoting to C. G. Jung's seminal essay, "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry," first delivered in a 1922 lecture. It was in this text that Jung most clearly distilled his thoughts on the power and function of art. In this first part, your hosts focus their energies on Jung's puralistic style, opposing it not just to Freud's monism (which Jung critiques in the paper) but also to the monism of those other two "masters of suspicion," Marx and Nietzsche. For Jung, art is not a branch of psychology, economics, philosophy, or science. It constitutes its own sphere, and non-artists who would investigate the nature of art would do well to respect the line that art has drawn in the sand. Weird Studies listenters will know this line as the boundary between the general and the specific, the common and the singular, the mundane and the mystical...
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nC. G. Jung, "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry"
\nJoshua Gunn, Modern Occult Rhetoric: Mass Media and the Drama of Secrecy in the Twentieth Century
\nPeter Kingsley, Catafalque: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity
\nSigmund Freud, Austrian psychologist
\nKinka Usher (director), Mystery Men
\nTheodor Adorno, “Bach Defended Against his Devotees”
\nAleister Crowley, English magician
\nC. G. Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus
\nBill Moyers and Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
\nC. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
\nC. G. Jung, The Portable Jung
\nFriedrich Nietzsche, "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life" in: Untimely Meditations
\nWeird Studies, episode 49: Nietzsche on History
\nWeird Studies, episode 70: Masks All the Way Down, with James Curcio
\nChristian Kerslake, Deleuze and the Unconscious
\nJoshua Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal
\nPaul Ricoeur, French philosopher
\nRudolph Steiner, Austrian esotericist
For over two centuries in early modern Italy, boys were selected for their singing talent castrated before the onset of puberty. The goal was to preserve the qualities of their voice even as they grew into manhood. The procedure resulted in other physiological changes which, combined with an unnaturally high voice, made the castrati the most prodigious singers on the continent. As Martha Feldman shows in her book The Castrato, a masterpiece of cultural history, the castrated singer was such a singular figure that he invited comparisons with angels, animals, and kings, attracting adoration and ridicule in equal measures. The castrato was a true liminal being, and as JF and Phil discover in this episode of Weird Studies, an unlikely herald of the present age.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nMartha Feldman, The Castrato: Reflections on Natures and Kinds
\n\nStanley Kubrick, American filmmaker
\nAlessandro Moreschi, the last castrato, singing "Ave Maria"
\nBaruch Spinoza, Ethics
\nX-Men
\nGabriel Garcia Marquez, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings"
\nThomas Ligotti, "Mrs Ligotti's Angel", read by horror writer Jon Padgett
\nWeird Studies, Episode 48: Thomas Ligotti's Angel
\nThomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
\nGenesis P-Orridge, American musician and occultist
On the surface, the phrase "the medium is the message," prophetic as it may have been when Marshall McLuhan coined it, points a now-obvious fact of our wired world, namely that the content of any medium is less important than its form. The advent of email, for instance, has brought about changes in society and culture that are more far-reaching than the content of any particular email. On the other hand, this aphorism of McLuhan's has the ring of an utterance of the Delphic Oracle. As Phil proposes in this episode of Weird Studies, it is an example of what Zen practitioners call a koan, a statement that occludes and illumines in equal measures, a jewel whose shining surface is an invitation to descend into dark depths. Join JF and Phil as they discuss the mystical and cosmic implications of McLuhan's oracular vision.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nMcLuhan, Understanding Media
\nThe Playboy interview
\nMcLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects
\nGraham Harman, American philosopher
\nClement Greenberg, American critic
\nDale Pendell, Pharmako/Poeia: Plant Powers, Poisons, and Herbcraft
\nBrian Eno, British composer
\nMarshall and Eric McLuhan, The Laws of Media: The New Science _
\nJonathan Sterne, _The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction
\nEric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone (editors), The Essential McLuhan
\nCharles A. Reich, The Greening of America
\nDavid Fincher (director), The Social Network _
\nGilles Deleuze, _Cinema I _and _Cinema II
\nJean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin
\nEric Havelock,_ Preface to Plato_
\nWalter J. Ong, American theorist
\nPlato, [Republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic(Plato))_
James Curcio is an American multidisciplinary artist and nonfiction writer whose works include the novels Join My Cult, The Party at the World's End, and the upcoming Tales from When I Had a Face. Recently, Curcio edited Masks: Bowie and Artists of Artifice, an anthology of essays by various thinkers and artists on the complex interplay of fact and fiction, self and other, in the life of the modern creator of artistic works. David Bowie's career, from the early experimentations to the great working that was his final album Blackstar, provides the book's gravitational field. In his effort to better plumb the mysteries of the aesthetic universe, Curcio penned the anthology's opening essay, "Masks All the Way Down," and it is on that piece that this conversation focuses. Join James, Phil and JF as they discuss the terrifying and liberating idea of an aesthetic cosmos as seen from the vantage point of the artist who learns that with new each work comes a new face, an amalgam of symbols and forces drawn from a depth of surfaces, a paper-thin dream that goes ever so deep...
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nJames Curcio (editor), [Masks: Bowie and Artists of Artifice](www.intellectbooks/masks)
\nJames Curcio's website: https://www.jamescurcio.com
\nJames Curcio's new novel, [Tales from When I Had a Face](www.TalesFromWhenIHadAFace.com)
David Bowie, Blackstar
\nJudith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex
\nPoppy, American singer
\nAnatta, the Buddhist concept of no-self
\nNagarjuna, Indian philosopher
\nYukio Mishima, Japanese writer
\nHunter S. Thompson, American writer
\nLewis A. Sass, Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought
\nFriedrich Nietzsche, "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life" in Untimely Meditations
\nOrnette Coleman, Change of the Century
\nThomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu
\nVladimir Nabokov, Russian novelist
\nNicholas Roeg (director), The Man Who Fell to Earth
\nRaphael Bob-Waksberg (creator), BoJack Horseman
\nRichard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society
\nEuripides, The Bacchae
Special Guest: James Curcio.
","summary":"James Curcio joins Phil and JF for a discussion on the concept of the mask as elaborated in his anthology, \"Masks: Bowie and Artists of Artifice\".","date_published":"2020-04-01T12:00:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/a067499c-66f2-49b8-ac59-5bfac4d44b79.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":73607571,"duration_in_seconds":4598}]},{"id":"3b513b94-c9a1-4280-be15-264b035312a4","title":"Episode 69: Special Episode: On Some Mental Effects of the Pandemic","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/69","content_text":"What is there to say about the COVID-19 virus that hasn't already been said, over and over again, all around the world, in quaratined houses and on TV and social media and countless Zoom chats ... what can we say that you haven't heard? Well, probably nothing. But we are now at the point where we realize that the real importance of the things we say is not their content, but the mere fact of saying them. As Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message, and at a time when we have been driven into separate solitudes, we are discovering that the real meaning of our utterances might be something like \"hello, are you there?\" and \"I am here, talking to you.\" In that spirit, Phil and JF have a conversation about William James's essay \"On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake,\" partly to discuss the ways that it's relevant to our present circumstances and the ways it's not, but mostly to make human connections, both with each other and with Weird Studies listeners. \n\nAs JF says, stay close, but keep your distance. \n\nREFERENCES\n\nWilliam James, \"On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake\"\nWilliam James, Writings 1902-1910\nNoel Black (director), \"To See the Invisible Man\", 2nd segment of episode 16 of The Twilight Zone (1985-86)\nWeird Studies no. 29, “On Lovecraft”\nWeird Studies no. 64, “Dreams and Shadows: On Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea”\nWeird Studies no. 67, “Goblins, Goat-Gods and Gates: On Hellier”\nMartin Heidegger, “‘Only a God Can Save Us’: The Spiegel Interview\"\nBruno Latour, \"An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns\"\nH.P. Lovecraft, “Nyarlathotep”","content_html":"What is there to say about the COVID-19 virus that hasn't already been said, over and over again, all around the world, in quaratined houses and on TV and social media and countless Zoom chats ... what can we say that you haven't heard? Well, probably nothing. But we are now at the point where we realize that the real importance of the things we say is not their content, but the mere fact of saying them. As Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message, and at a time when we have been driven into separate solitudes, we are discovering that the real meaning of our utterances might be something like "hello, are you there?" and "I am here, talking to you." In that spirit, Phil and JF have a conversation about William James's essay "On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake," partly to discuss the ways that it's relevant to our present circumstances and the ways it's not, but mostly to make human connections, both with each other and with Weird Studies listeners.
\n\nAs JF says, stay close, but keep your distance.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nWilliam James, "On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake"
\nWilliam James, Writings 1902-1910
\nNoel Black (director), "To See the Invisible Man", 2nd segment of episode 16 of The Twilight Zone (1985-86)
\nWeird Studies no. 29, “On Lovecraft”
\nWeird Studies no. 64, “Dreams and Shadows: On Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea”
\nWeird Studies no. 67, “Goblins, Goat-Gods and Gates: On Hellier”
\nMartin Heidegger, “‘Only a God Can Save Us’: The Spiegel Interview"
\nBruno Latour, "An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns"
\nH.P. Lovecraft, “Nyarlathotep”
In preparation for an upcoming special episode on living in the early days of the Covid-19 Pandemic, here's Phil Ford reading an essay William James wrote on his experience of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nWilliam James, "On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake"
","summary":"Phil reads an essay by William James on the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.","date_published":"2020-03-23T11:00:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/f02e7eea-8f0e-494c-82b8-006ea45b0d55.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":21519270,"duration_in_seconds":1344}]},{"id":"65a24606-9755-4f99-bc7b-2ae7dd071e3a","title":"Episode 68: On James Hillman's 'The Dream and the Underworld'","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/68","content_text":"In 1979, the American psychologist James Hillman published The Dream and the Underworld, a polemical meditation on the nature of dreams. Rejecting the orthodoxies of both Freud and Jung, Hillman argued that the the \"nightworld\" of dream should not play second fiddle to the \"dayworld\" of waking life, because in the soul as on earth, day and night are equally essential, and equally real. To reduce a dream to a message or interpretation is to fail the dream. In order for dreams to do their work on us, says Hillman, we must cease to regard them as hallucinations, mere metaphors, epiphenomena, or illusions, and instead see them as the imaginal other life we all must live. Every night, for Hillman, each of us descends into the underworld to encounter those forces that shape us and our surroundings. The way down is the way up.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nJames Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld\nT. S. Eliot, \"The Hollow Men\"\nWalter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry\nGeorge Steiner, Real Presences\nHakim Bey, Orgies of the Hemp Eaters: Cuisine, Slang, Literature and Ritual of Cannabis Culture\nErik Davis, High Strangeness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies\nBrad Warner on drugs and Buddhism\nAldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception\nJonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep\nChristopher Nolan (dir.), Inception\nJorge Luis Borges, \"Nightmares\" in Seven Nights\nHenri Bergson, Dreams","content_html":"In 1979, the American psychologist James Hillman published The Dream and the Underworld, a polemical meditation on the nature of dreams. Rejecting the orthodoxies of both Freud and Jung, Hillman argued that the the "nightworld" of dream should not play second fiddle to the "dayworld" of waking life, because in the soul as on earth, day and night are equally essential, and equally real. To reduce a dream to a message or interpretation is to fail the dream. In order for dreams to do their work on us, says Hillman, we must cease to regard them as hallucinations, mere metaphors, epiphenomena, or illusions, and instead see them as the imaginal other life we all must live. Every night, for Hillman, each of us descends into the underworld to encounter those forces that shape us and our surroundings. The way down is the way up.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nJames Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld
\nT. S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
\nWalter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry
\nGeorge Steiner, Real Presences
\nHakim Bey, Orgies of the Hemp Eaters: Cuisine, Slang, Literature and Ritual of Cannabis Culture
\nErik Davis, High Strangeness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies
\nBrad Warner on drugs and Buddhism
\nAldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception
\nJonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep
\nChristopher Nolan (dir.), Inception
\nJorge Luis Borges, "Nightmares" in Seven Nights
\nHenri Bergson, Dreams
On the night before this episode of Weird Studies was released, a bunch of folks on the Internet performed a collective magickal working. Prompted by the paranormal investigator Greg Newkirk, they watched the final episode of the documentary series Hellier at the same time -- 10:48 PM EST -- in order to see what would happen. Listeners who are familiar with this series, of which Newkirk is both a protagonist and a producer, will recall that the last episode features an elaborate attempt at gate opening involving no less than Pan, the Ancient Greek god of nature. If we weren't so cautious (and humble) in our imaginings, we at Weird Studies might consider the possibility that this episode is a retrocausal effect of that operation. In it, we discuss the show that took the weirdosphere by storm last year, touching on topics such as subterranean humanoids, the existence of "Ascended Masters," Aleister Crowley's secret cipher, the Great God Pan, and the potential dangers of opening gates to other worlds ... or of leaving them closed.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nKarl Pfeiffer (director), Hellier
\nPhilip K. Dick, Valis
\nWeird Studies episode 12 - The Dark Eye: On the Films of Rodney Ascher
\nJohn Benson Brooks, American musician
\nPhil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture
\nThelema
\nAllen H. Greenfield, The Complete Secret Cipher of the Ufonauts
\nSecret cipher online tool
\nAleister Crowley, The Book of the Law
\nGematria
\nJohn Keel, The Mothman Prophecies
\nEric Wargo, Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious
\nGrant Morrison, The Invisibles
\nGenesis P. Orridge, American artist
\nAlex Reed, Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music
\nHelena Blavatsky, Russian theosophist
\nAnnie Besant, British theosophist
\nPeter J. Carroll, British occultist
\nKenneth Grant, British occultist
\nC. G. Jung, The Red Book
\nAlan Chapman and Duncan Barford, "Chinese Whispers: The Origin of LAM" in The Blood of the Saints
\nRichard Sharpe Shaver, American writer and contactee
\nJames Hillman, Pan and the Nightmare
\nOccultist Paul Weston's blog post on Hellier
\nJohn Keel, The Mothman Prophecies
\nPeter Kingsley, Catafalque
\nEric Voegeln, The New Science of Politics: An Introduction and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism
\nAuguste Comte, French philosopher
\nColin Wilson, The Occult: A History
In the paper discussed in this episode, Phil Ford coins the term "diviner's time" to denote a particular feeling that will be familiar to anyone who has engaged in divinatory or magical practice, namely the feeling that it all means something, that the universe, with all its chaos and randomness, nevertheless contains -- or is itself -- a kind of music. This episode goes deep down the rabbit hole as Phil and JF try to wrap their heads around conceptions of time, causality, and meaning that are very different from our usual understanding of those terms.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nPhil Ford, "Diviner’s Time" (Patreon exclusive)
\n\nKarl Pfeifer (director), Hellier
\nJoshua Ramey, "Contingency Without Unreason: Speculation After Meillassoux"
\nE. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande
\nJung, "On Synchronicity"
\nJung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle
\nBruno Latour, An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns
\nGrant Morrison on chaos magic, the occult, and sigil creation
\nAustin Osman Spare's sigil theory
\nEric Wargo, Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious
\nAlan Chapman, Advanced Magick for Beginners
\nWilliam James's essays in psychical research: bibliography
\nMeillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency
\nToronto World Youth Day 2002
\nCrowley, Magick Without Tears
\nLeibniz's concept of pre-established harmony
\nMatthew Segall on the Greek concepts of time, "Minding Time: Chronos, Kairos and Aion in an Archetypal Cosmos"
\nRichard Lester (director), Hard Day's Night
\nFreud, "The Uncanny"
\nRudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy
\nEric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics: An Introduction
\nMircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, or, Cosmos and History
\nCharles Taylor, A Secular Age
B. W. Powe is a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and professor at York University, in Toronto. His work, though it covers an immense range of topics from politics and poetics to magic and technology, proceeds from a mystical apprehension of the universe as the locus of magical operations, the site of experiments in cosmic becoming. In his various books and essays, Powe continues a uniquely Canadian form of the visionary tradition whose luminaries include his former teachers Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye. In this episode, he joins JF and Phil for an exploration of the meaning, potency, and danger of the visionary in art and literature.
\n\nHeader image: Detail of "Green Color" by Gausanchennai (Wikimedia Commons).
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nB. W. Powe's website
\nB. W. Powe, The Charge in the Global Membrane
\nB. W. Powe, Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy
Frank Lentricchia, "Last Will and Testament of an Ex-Literary Critic"
\nLorca's concept of duende
\nHildegard of Bingen's concept of viriditas
\nGilles Deleuze, Cinema II
\nErnest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
\nMarshall McLuhan, Understanding Media
\nMarshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy
\nMarshall McLuhan, "Notes on William Burroughs"
\nPhil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture
\nJohn Clellon Holmes, beatnik
\nNorthrop Frye, Canadian literary critic
\nHildegard von Bingen, Ordo Virtutum
\nJoni Mitchell, "Woodstock"
\nGenesis 32, Jacob and the Angel
\nR. D. Laing, Scottish psychologist
\nPierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man
\nWilliam James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
\nSylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus"
\nSylvia Plath, "Daddy"
\nJack Kerouac, American writer
\nAllen Ginsberg, American poet
\nLionel Snell, British philosopher and magician
Special Guest: B. W. Powe.
","summary":"Phil and JF discuss the visionary tradition in art and literature with Canadian poet and scholar, B. W. Powe.","date_published":"2020-02-05T10:30:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/db09ef8a-454b-4644-9061-fc3528298649.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":76477330,"duration_in_seconds":4777}]},{"id":"3a1a256c-1e8d-4836-9889-1df22e12afe8","title":"Episode 64: Dreams and Shadows: On Ursula Le Guin's 'A Wizard of Earthsea'","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/64","content_text":"In her National Book Award acceptance speech in 2014, Ursula K. Le Guin intimated that, far from being superseded by digital technology, fantastic fiction has never been more important than it is about to become. Soon, she prophesied, \"we will need writers who can remember freedom -- poets, visionaries, realists of a larger reality.\" In this episode, Phil and JF plumb the prophetic depths of one of her most famous books, A Wizard of Earthsea. A discussion of the novel's style and lore leads us into the politics and metaphysics of fantasy as developed by Le Guin and her predecessor, J. R. R. Tolkien. In the end, we realize that fantasy is not the literary ghetto it's been made out to be, but the sine qua non of all fiction.\n\nSHOW NOTES\n\nJohn Keats, \"Ode on a Grecian Urn\"\nHeidegger, \"On the Origin of the Work of Art\"\nBeowulf, An Anglo-Saxon epic poem\nWeird Studies, episode 41 -- On Speculative Fiction, with Matt Cardin\nWeird Studies, episode 61 -- Evil and Ecstasy: On 'The Silence of the Lambs'\nWeird Studies, episode 62: Like 'The Shining,' But With Nuns: On 'Black Narcissus'\nThe Complete Romances of Chretien de Troyes (translated by J.F.'s mentor, David Staines)\nSir Thomas Malory, La Morte d'Arthur\nLewis Carroll, British fantasist\nUrsula K. Le Guin's acceptance speech at the National Book Awards, 2014\nDavid Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and A Treatise of Human Nature","content_html":"In her National Book Award acceptance speech in 2014, Ursula K. Le Guin intimated that, far from being superseded by digital technology, fantastic fiction has never been more important than it is about to become. Soon, she prophesied, "we will need writers who can remember freedom -- poets, visionaries, realists of a larger reality." In this episode, Phil and JF plumb the prophetic depths of one of her most famous books, A Wizard of Earthsea. A discussion of the novel's style and lore leads us into the politics and metaphysics of fantasy as developed by Le Guin and her predecessor, J. R. R. Tolkien. In the end, we realize that fantasy is not the literary ghetto it's been made out to be, but the sine qua non of all fiction.
\n\nSHOW NOTES
\n\nJohn Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
\nHeidegger, "On the Origin of the Work of Art"
\nBeowulf, An Anglo-Saxon epic poem
\nWeird Studies, episode 41 -- On Speculative Fiction, with Matt Cardin
\nWeird Studies, episode 61 -- Evil and Ecstasy: On 'The Silence of the Lambs'
\nWeird Studies, episode 62: Like 'The Shining,' But With Nuns: On 'Black Narcissus'
\nThe Complete Romances of Chretien de Troyes (translated by J.F.'s mentor, David Staines)
\nSir Thomas Malory, La Morte d'Arthur
\nLewis Carroll, British fantasist
\nUrsula K. Le Guin's acceptance speech at the National Book Awards, 2014
\nDavid Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and A Treatise of Human Nature
At its simplest, what Colin Wilson calls Faculty X is "simply that latent power in human beings possess to reach beyond the present." Yet its existence is evinced in all those phenomena that modernity files under "supernatural" or "occult." As difficult to explain as it is impossible to omit from any honest survey of human existence, the occult haunts the modern, not just as a vestige of the past but also, perhaps, as a promise from a time to come. For Wilson, magic isn't the living fossil the arch-rationalists would like it to be, but a "science of the future." Faculty X is an evolutionary power, innately positive, inseparable from the will to live and the unshakeable conviction that, somehow, this world has some real, ineffable meaning. In this episode, JF and Phil discuss Wilson's concept of Faculty X as elaborated in his monumental 1971 work, The Occult.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nColin Wilson, The Occult: A History
\nRick and Morty, American sitcom
\nColin, Wilson, Dreaming to Some Purpose
\nColin Wilson, The Outsider
\nGary Lachman, Beyond the Robot
\nCamus, The Myth of Sisyphus
\nDavid Benatar, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence
\nMaking Sense, episode 107: Is Life Actually Worth Living?
\nPeter Wessel Zapffe, Norwegian philosopher
\nThomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
\nFrancisco Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
\nEmil Cioran, Franco-Romanian essayist
\nArthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher
\nAt the Fights: American Writers on Boxing, Library of America collection
\nJoe Frazier, American pugilist
\nHenri Bergson, Matter and Memory
\nEdouard Schuré, [The Great Initiates: A Study of the Secret History of Religions](Edouard Schuré, _The Great Initiates: A Study of the Secret History of Religion
\nWeird Studies, episode 8: On Graham Harman's "The Third Table"
\nThomas Merton, American monk
\nGary Snyder, American poet
The 1947 British film Black Narcissus is many things: an allegory of the end of empire, a chilling ghost story with nary a spook in sight, a psychological romance, and a meditation on the nature of the divine. Its weirdness is as undeniable as it is difficult to locate. On the surface, the story is straightforward: five nuns are tasked with opening a convent in the former seraglio of a dead potentate in the Himalayas. But on a deeper level, there is a lot more going on, as Phil and JF discover in this conversation touching on the presence of the past, the monstrosity of God, the mystery of the singular, and the eroticism of prayer, among other strangenesses.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nMichael Powell and Emeric Pressburged (dirs.), Black Narcissus
\nRumer Godden, author of the original novel
Stanley Kubrick, The Shining
\nGilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
\nTim Ingold, British anthropologist -- lecture: "One World Anthropology"
\nJonathan Demme (dir.), The Silence of the Lambs
\nPierre Bourdieu, French sociologist
\nBruno Latour, On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods
\nDon Barhelme, American short story writer
\nPaul Ricoeur, French philosopher
\nWeird Studies episode 16: On Dogen Zenji's Genjokoan
\nThe King and the Beggar Maid
\n Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers
\n “Painting with Light,” featurette on the Criterion Collection DVD of Black Narcissus
The Welsh writer Arthur Machen defined good and evil as "ecstasies." Each one is a "withdrawal from the common life." On this view, any artistic investigation into the nature of good and evil can't remain safely ensconced our modern, common-life construal of thinigs. It must become fantastic and incorporate aspects of "nature" that feel "supernatural" from a modern standpoint. Jonathan Demme's screen adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs is a powerful example. The film oscillates undecidably between a straightforward crime story and a work of supernatural horror. In this episode, JF and Phil cast Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling as figures in a myth that pits the individual against the institution, the singular against the type, and the forces of light against the forces of darkness.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nJonathan Demme (dir.), The Silence of the Lambs
\nThomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs (original novel)
\nCarl Jung on the doctrine of Privatio Boni
\nJohann Sebastian Bach, The Goldberg Variations
\nWilliam Gibson, Pattern Recognition
\nRolling Stones, "Sympathy for the Devil"
\nHoward Shore, Canadian composer
\nArthur Machen, The White People
\nWeird Studies, episode 3: Ecstasy, Sin, and "The White People"
\nMachen, The White People
\nMachen, Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy in Literature
Somebody once said, "No prophet is welcome in his own country." Whether this was true in the case of jazz musician and composer Sun Ra depends on whom you ask. With most, the dictum probably bears out. But there are those who can make out certain patterns in Ra's life and work, patterns that place him among the true mystics and prophets. Of course, these people already believe in mysticism and prophecy, but Sun Ra's total devotion to his myth does not leave much wiggle room on this front. He is asking us to choose: believe or disbelieve. And if you go with disbelief, you'll need to explain the sustained coherence and lucidity of his message, and the transformative power of his music. In this episode, Phil and JF take a look at Sun Ra's unforgettable film Space is the Place, interpreting it as a document in the history of esotericism, using gnostic thought and the tarotology as instruments to bring some of his secrets to light.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nSun Ra, Space is the Place
\nSun Ra: Brother from Another Planet_
\nDeleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus and [Kafka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority(philosophy))_ (for the concept of minority)
\nAntoine Faivre, French historian of esotericism
\nMichel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences
\nEliphas Lévi, French occultist
\nEdward O. Bland (director) The Cry of Jazz
\nMircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, or, Cosmos and History
\nIngmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal
\nStanley Kubrick, Dr Strangelove, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
\nAleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice
\nJackson Lears, Something for Nothing: Luck in America
"Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around a lake." This line from Wallace Stevens' "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" captures something of the mysteries of walking. It points to the undeniable yet baffling relationship between walking and thinking, between putting one foot in front of the other and uncovering the secret of the soul and world. In this episode, JF and Phil exchange ideas about the weirdness of this thing most humans did on most days for most of world history. The conversation ranges over a vast territory, with zen monks, novelists, Jesuits and more joining your hosts on what turns out to be a journey to wondrous places.
\n\nHeader image by Beatrice, Wikimedia Commons
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nDogen, The Mountains and Waters Sutra
\nWeird Studies listener Stephanie Quick on the Conspirinormal podcast
\nWeird Studies episode 51, Blind Seers: On Flannery O'Connor's 'Wise Blood'
\nLionel Snell, SSOTBME
\nHenry David Thoreau, "Walking"
\nArthur Machen, "The White People"
\nHerman Melville, Moby Dick
\nVladimir Horowitz, Russian panist
\nGregory Bateson, cybernetic theorist
\nThe myth of the Giant Antaeus
\nWallce Stevens, "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction"
\nDeleuze, Difference and Repetition
\nMichel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life
\nJohn Cowper Powys, English novelist
\nWill Self, English writer
\nGuy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle
\nArcade Fire, “We Used to Wait”
\nPaul Thomas Anderson (director), Punch Drunk Love
\nViktor Shklovsky, Russian formalist
\nPatreon blog post on Phil’s dream
\nDavid Lynch (director), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
What is the role of the critic in the world of art? For some, including lots of critics, the figure exudes an aura of authority: her task is to tell us what this or that work of art means, why it matters, and what we are supposed to think and feel in its presence. Cast in in this mold, the critic is an arbiter, not just of taste, but also of sense and meaning. The American art critic Dave Hickey categorically rejects this interpretation, which he says gives off a mild stench of fascism. For Hickey, the critic plays a weak role, and it's this weakness that makes it essential. In his essay "Air Guitar," published in 1997, Hickey argues that criticism can never really penetrate the mystery of any artwork. Criticism is rather a way to capture the "enigmatic whoosh" of art as one instance of the more pervasive "whoosh" of ordinary experience. So, no act of criticism can ever exhaust an artwork. The critic interprets a singular experience of art into words so that others might be encouraged to have their own, equally singular experiences. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss what criticism has to do with art, life, politics, and ordinary experience.
\n\nHeader image: Caravaggio, The Calling of Saint Matthew (1599-1600)
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nDave Hickey, Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy
\nPlato, Republic
\nOscar Wilde, "The Decay of Lying"
\nPhil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture
\nGilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature
\nDeleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?
\nDave Hickey, "Buying the World"
\nClinton e-mails exhibition at the Venice Biennale
\nOscar Wilde, The Portrait of Dorian Gray
Raiders of the Lost Ark is more than a Hollywood movie made in the summer blockbuster mold. As Phil says in his intro to this popping Weird Studies episode, the film is "a Trojan horse of the Weird, easy to let in but once inside, apt to take over." This conversation sees him and JF discuss a movie we dismiss at our own risk, a cinematic masterpiece replete with enigmas that reach back to the foundations of Western civilization. What does the Ark of the Covenant signify? What does it contain? What happens if you open that box of god(s)? And whose god is this, anyway? These are questions that have puzzled theologians and mystics for centuries, and Steven Spielberg's great work asks them anew for an age gone nuclear.
\n\nImage by arsheffield
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nSteven Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Ark
\nSteven Soderbergh’s version of Raiders with sound and color removed
\nWeird Studies Patreon extra, “Weird Genius”
\nWeird Studies episode 28, “Weird Music Part 2”
\nCamille Saint-Saëns, Danse Macabre
\nM. Night Shyamalan, Signs
\nBuck Rogers, Flash Gordon
\nNeil Jordan (dir.), The End of the Affair
\nWeird Studies episode 29, “On Lovecraft”
\nNicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism
\nHoward Carter, British archaeologist
\nJorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel”
\nClaude Levi Strauss, French anthropologist
\nClement Greenberg's concept of medium specificity
\nD. W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation
\nDavid Mamet, On Directing Film
\nDumbo (1941 film)
\nH. P. Lovecraft, “The Strange High House in the Mist”
\nJan Fries, Helrunar: A Manual of Rune Magick
\nNeil Gaiman, American Gods
\nGIF of the soldier moving funny at the end of Raiders
\nWeird Studies episode 2, “Garmonbozia”
\nAaron Leitch, occultist
\nAustin Osman Spare, The Book of Pleasure
\nGene Wolfe, [Soldier of the Mist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoldieroftheMist)_
The German poet and philosopher Jean Gebser's major work, The Ever-Present Origin, is a monumental study of the evolution of consciousness from prehistory to posthistory. For Gebser, consciousness adopts different "structures" at different times and in different contexts, and each structure reveals certain facets of reality while potentially occluding others. An integral human being is one who can utilize all of the structures according to the moment or situation. As Gebserian scholar Jeremy Johnson explains in this episode, modern humans are currently experiencing the transition from the "perspectival" structure which formed in the late Middle Ages to the "aperspectival," a new way of seeing and being that first revealed itself in the art of the Modernists. Grokking what the aperspectival means, and what it might look like, is just one of the tasks Jeremy, Phil and JF set themselves in this engaging trialogue.
\n\nJeremy D. Johnson is the author of the recently released Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nJeremy Johnson, Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and the Integral Consciousness
\nJean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin
\nWilliam Irwin Thompson, Coming Into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness
\nKen Wilber, integral theorist
\nLionel Snell, “Spare Parts”
\nNagarjuna, “Verses of the Middle Way” (Mulamadhyamakakarika)
\nPeter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life
\nThomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
\nObject-oriented ontology (OOO)
\nDogen, Uji (“The Time-Being”), from the Shobogenzo (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye)
Special Guest: Jeremy D. Johnson.
","summary":"JF and Phil talk to Jeremy Johnson about his new book, \"Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness.\"","date_published":"2019-09-25T11:30:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/2670fca2-8b91-4d66-8532-4daca533408f.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":75579527,"duration_in_seconds":4721}]},{"id":"360cdc39-110f-4f39-b568-a0d3d05bbf88","title":"Episode 55: The Great Weird North: On Algernon Blackwood's 'The Wendigo'","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/55","content_text":"No survey of weird literature would be complete without mentioning Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951). As with all masters of the genre, Blackwood's take on the weird is singular: here, it isn't the cold reaches of outer space that elicit in us a nihilistic frisson, but the vast expanses of our own planet's wild places -- especially the northern woods. In his story \"The Wendigo,\" Blackwood combines the beliefs of the Indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woodlands with the folktales of his native Britain to weave an ensorcelling story that perfectly captures the mood of the Canadian wilderness. In this conversation, JF and Phil discuss their own experience of that wilderness growing up in Ontario. The deeper they go, the spookier things get. An episode best enjoyed in solitude, by a campfire.\n\nHeader Image: \"Highway 60 Passing Through the Boreal Forest in Algonquin Park\" by Dimana Koralova, Wikimedia Commons\n\nSHOW NOTES\n\nGlenn Gould, The Idea of North\nAlgernon Blackwood, \"The Wendigo\"\nGame of Thrones (HBO series)\nWeird Studies, Episode 29: On Lovecraft\nH. P. Lovecraft, \"Supernatural Horror in Literature\"\nEdgar Allan Poe, \"The Philosophy of Composition\"\nFritz Leiber, The Adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser\nRichard Wagner, Parsifal\nDavid Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return\nPeter Heller, The River: A Novel\nThe Killing of Tim McLean (July 30, 2008)\nWeird Studies, Episode 3: Ecstasy, Sin, and \"The White People\"\nMysterious Universe: Strange and Terrifying Encounters with Skinwalkers\nJacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia: On UFOs, Folklore, and Parallel Worlds\nGraham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy \nArthur Machen, Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy","content_html":"No survey of weird literature would be complete without mentioning Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951). As with all masters of the genre, Blackwood's take on the weird is singular: here, it isn't the cold reaches of outer space that elicit in us a nihilistic frisson, but the vast expanses of our own planet's wild places -- especially the northern woods. In his story "The Wendigo," Blackwood combines the beliefs of the Indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woodlands with the folktales of his native Britain to weave an ensorcelling story that perfectly captures the mood of the Canadian wilderness. In this conversation, JF and Phil discuss their own experience of that wilderness growing up in Ontario. The deeper they go, the spookier things get. An episode best enjoyed in solitude, by a campfire.
\n\nHeader Image: "Highway 60 Passing Through the Boreal Forest in Algonquin Park" by Dimana Koralova, Wikimedia Commons
\n\nSHOW NOTES
\n\nGlenn Gould, The Idea of North
\nAlgernon Blackwood, "The Wendigo"
\nGame of Thrones (HBO series)
\nWeird Studies, Episode 29: On Lovecraft
\nH. P. Lovecraft, "Supernatural Horror in Literature"
\nEdgar Allan Poe, "The Philosophy of Composition"
\nFritz Leiber, The Adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
\nRichard Wagner, Parsifal
\nDavid Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return
\nPeter Heller, The River: A Novel
\nThe Killing of Tim McLean (July 30, 2008)
\nWeird Studies, Episode 3: Ecstasy, Sin, and "The White People"
\nMysterious Universe: Strange and Terrifying Encounters with Skinwalkers
\nJacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia: On UFOs, Folklore, and Parallel Worlds
\nGraham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy
\nArthur Machen, Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy
"All things feel," Pythagoas said. Panpsychism, the belief that consciousnes is a property of all things and not limited to the human brain, is back in vogue -- with good reason. The problem of how inert matter could give rise to subjectivity and feeling has proved insoluble under the dominant assumptions of a hard materialism. Recently, the American filmmaker Errol Morris presented his own brand of panpsychism in a long-form essay entitled, "The Pianist and the Lobster," published in the New York Times. The essay opens with an episode from the life of Sviatoslav Richter, namely a time where the famous Russian pianist couldn't perform without a plastic lobster waiting for him in the wings. In Morris's piece, the curious anecdote sounds the first note of what turns out to be a polyphony of thoughts and ideas on consciousness, agency, Nerval's image of the the "Hidden God," and the deep weirdness of music. Phil and JF use Morris's essay to create a polyphony of their own.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nErrol Morris, "The Pianist and the Lobster"
\n\nSviatoslav Richter, Russian pianist
\nNick Cave., Red Hand Files #53
\nThomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
\nBruno Monsaingeon (dir.), Richter: The Enigma
\nBon Jovi, "Livin’ on a Prayer"
\nBrad Warner, "The Eyes of Dogen"
\nGilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
\n Edgard Varèse, composer
\nBenjamin Libet, neuroscientist
\nRobin Hardy (dir), The Wicker Man
\nFrans De Waal, Mama’s Last Hug
\nGilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
\nSartre, The Transcendence of the Ego
\nTarot de Marseille - XVIII: The Moon
\nMarsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life
\nCarl Jung, "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry", The Red Book
\nTerence McKenna, Food of the Gods
William Gibson's Pattern Recognition was published in 2003, in the wake of 9/11. You would think that a novel about the early Internet's effects on the collective psyche would feel dated today. But Gibson's insight into the deeper implications of digital culture and soul-rending consumerism are such that we are still catching up with Cayce Pollard, the novel's protagonist, as she journeys into the hypermodern underworld, searching for the secrets of art, time, and death. In this episode, JF and Phil read Pattern Recognition as an exploration of the attention economy, an ascent of the all-seeing pyramid, a subtle rewilding of postmodern culture, and a handbook for the magicians of the future.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nWilliam Gibson, Pattern Recognition
\nMalcolm Gladwell, "The Coolhunt"
\nDouglas Rushkoff, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now
\nAlvin and Heidi Toffler, Future Shock
\nWeird Studies Episode 30 -- On Stanley _Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut_
\nWeird Studies Episode 50 -- Demogorgon: On _Stranger Things_
\nAustin Osman Spare, The Focus of Life: The Mutterings of AOS
\nDouglas Rushkoff, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age
The idea that beauty might denote an actual quality of the world, something outside the human frame, is one of the great taboos of modern intellectual thought. Beauty, we are almost universally told, is a cultural contrivance rooted in politics and history, an illusion that exists only in human heads, for human reasons. On this view, a world without us would be a world without beauty. But in this episode Phil and JF explore two texts, by James Hillman and Peter Schjeldahl, that dare to challenge the modern orthodoxy. For Hillman and Schjeldahl, to experience the beautiful is precisely the break out of human bondage and touch the Outside. Beauty may even be one of the few truly objective experiences anyone could hope for.
\n\nPeter Schjeldahl, “Notes on Beauty,“ in Uncontrollable Beauty: Toward a New Aesthetics
\nJames Hillman, “The Practice of Beauty,” in Uncontrollable Beauty: Toward a New Aesthetics
\nC.G. Jung's retreat, Bollingen Tower
\nUgly public art in Palo Alto
\nDave Hickey, Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy
\nDeleuze and Guattari, “Of the Refrain,” from A Thousand Plateaus
\nRoger Scruton, Beauty
\nWeird Studies, Episode 36 -- On Hyperstition
\nWeird Studies, Episode 33 -- The Fine Art of Changing the Subject: On Duchamp's "Fountain"
\nLionel Snell, My Years of Magical Thinking
\nGeorge Santayana, The Sense of Beauty
\nIngri D'Aulaires, D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths
\nMessiaen, Quartet for the End of Time
\nChristian Wiman, He Held Radical Light
\nGod, Book of Job
Through her fiction, Flannery O'Connor reenvisioned life as a supernatural war wherein each soul becomes the site of a clash of mysterious, almost incomprehensible forces. Her first novel, Wise Blood, tells the story of Hazel Motes, a young preacher with a new religion to sell: the Church Without Christ. In this episode, JF and Phil read Motes's misadventures in the "Jesus-haunted" city of Taulkinham, Tennessee, as a prophetic vision of the modern condition that is at once supremely tragic and funny as hell. As O'Connor herself wrote in her prefac to the book: "(Wise Blood) is a comic novel about a Christian malgré lui, and as such, very serious, for all comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nFlannery O'Connor, Wise Blood
\nJames Marshall, George and Martha (here's a great NYT piece on the books)
\nGraham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods
\nPaul Elie, The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage
\nJonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind
\nG. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
\nDaniel Ingram, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha
\nGeorge Santayana, The Sense of Beauty
\nAmy Hungerford's lecture on Wise Blood (Yale University)
The Duffer Brothers' hit series Stranger Things is many things: an exemplary piece of entertainment in the summer blockbuster mold, a fresh take on the "kids on bikes" subgenre of science fiction, a loving pastiche of 1980s Hollywood cinema. And as Phil and JF attempt to show in this episode, Stranger Things is also a deep investigation into the metaphysical assumptions of our times, and a bold statement on the ontology of the analog real. This, at least, was the thesis of JF's three-part essay "Reality is Analog: Philosophizing with Stranger Things," which appeared on Metapsychosis after the first season dropped in 2016. Here, Phil and JF revisit that essay in order to expand on its arguments and discuss how it hoilds up in light of the series continued unfolding. The conversation touches on Apple's famous 1984 ad for the first Macintosh, the 2016 election of Donald Trump, the otherworldliness of airports, the ensorcelments of consumerism, and much more.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nStranger Things
\n"Reality is Analog: Philosophizing with Stranger Things" available at Metapsychosis or in ebook format
\nSamuel Delaney, Dhalgren
\n1984 Apple commercial for Macintosh
\nWild Wild Country, Netflix documentary series
\nTom Frank, “Why Johnny Can’t Dissent”
\nPhil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture
\nArcade Fire, “We Used to Wait”
\nWilliam S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
\nJack Kerouac, Visions of Cody
\nWilliam James, A Pluralistic Universe
\nMarc Augé, Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity
\nWeird Studies, episode 2: Garmonbozia
\nHomer, Odyssey
\nMatt Cardin, Dark Awakenings
\nThe Wachowskis, The Matrix
\nJonathan Haight and Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind
In his essay "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life," Nietzsche attacks the notion that humans are totally determined by the historical forces that shape their physical and mental environment. Where other philosophers like Plato saw virtue in remembering eternal truths that earthly existence had wiped from our memories, Nietzsche extolled the virtues of forgetting, of becoming "untimely" and creating a zone where something new could arise. For Nietzsche, history was useful only if it served Life. Because we live in an age which constantly reifies history (through movies, news, social media, etc.) while also tricking us into thinking we somehow exist outside of history, the essay remains as relevant today as it was when Nietzsche wrote it a century and a half ago.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nNietzsche, "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life" in Untimely Meditations
\nEpic Rap Battles of History: Eastern Philosophers vs Western Philosophers
\nErnest Newman, Life of Wagner
\nAlexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature
\nAlfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity
\nMichael Foucault, "What is Englightenment?"
\nAntinatalism
\nFriedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
\nJames Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility
\nP. J. O’Rourke, American writer
\nRichard Pryor, American comedian
Journalist and historian of religion Erik Davis joins Phil and JF to talk about his latest magnum opus, High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies. In this masterwork of weird scholarship, Davis explores the simultaneously luminous and obscure worlds of three giants of Seventies counterculture: Terence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson, and Philip K. Dick. Their psychonautical legacy serve as fuel for a deep-delving conversation on Davis' own ontological leanings, yearnings, and hesitations. We touch on his philosophical development since the release of Techgnosis in 1998, the meaning of "weird naturalism," the primacy of the aesthetic, the uses and abuses of anthropotechnics, the challenges of tightrope-walking across bottomless chasms, and lots more.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nErik Davis, High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Expreience in the Seventies
\nErik Davis, Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information
Philip K. Dick, American science fiction writer
\nRobert Anton Wilson, American writer
\nTerence McKenna, Half-elf bard
\nGraham Harman, American philosopher
\nTimothy Morton, British philosopher
\nJeffrey J. Kripal, The Serpent’s Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion
\nWilliam James, American philosopher and psychologist
\nHee-jin Kim, Eihei Dogen: Mystical Realist
\nDogen, "Instructions for the Cook"
\nSteve Reich, "Music as a Gradual Process"
\nPeter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life
\nAlbert Hofman’s famous bicycle ride
\nErowid LSD vault
\nGeorge Lackoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By
\nAlexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist, Syntheism: Creating God in the Internet Age
Special Guest: Erik Davis.
","summary":"JF and Phil sit down with Erik Davis to discuss his new book, \"High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies.\"","date_published":"2019-06-05T13:30:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/ee263597-4c78-4b27-ba17-b84d7415ac92.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":70986633,"duration_in_seconds":5069}]},{"id":"a5e5028a-efe0-4ec7-b736-b02a27d04087","title":"Episode 47: Machines of Loving Grace: Technology and the Unabomber","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/47","content_text":"Made in 2003, Lutz Dammbeck's documentary The Net: The Unabomber, LSD, and the Internet is a film about many things, but the gist of it is something like what William Burroughs called the doctrine of control. We live in a world governed by technologies designed with a particular idea of society in mind, one that has its roots in the trauma of global war and the utopian dreams of modern thinkers. The viability of this ideal is, of course, an important question, and it was made all the more urgent by recent developments at the intersection of technology and politics. In this episode, JF and Phil discuss the doctrine of control as imagined by one of its fiercest -- and most insane -- critics: Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. Kaczynski's thoughts on technological society form the through-line of Dammbeck's film, which in turn serves as a through-line for this jam on everything from one-world government and cybernetics to the archetype of the magus and the Whole Earth Catalog.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nLutz Dammbeck (director), The Net: The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet (2003)\nChuck Klosterman, \"FAIL\" in Eating the Dinosaur\nJacques Ellul, French theorist\nSuzanne Treister, HEXEN Tarot Deck\n-- Seven of Swords\n-- Justice\n-- The Sun\nNorbert Wiener, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and Machine and The Human Use of Human Beings\nBertrand Russell, The Scientific Outlook\nAldous Huxley, Brave New World\nKevin Kelly, What Technology Wants\nWeird Studies Episode 2: Garmonbozia\nStewart Brand, writer and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog\nUrsula Le Guin, Always Coming Home\nGary Snyder's idea that \"we are primitives of an unknown culture\" is explored in Phil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture\nRichard Brautigan, \"All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace\" (poem)\nSan Francisco Oracle\nHeidegger, The Question Concerning Technology","content_html":"Made in 2003, Lutz Dammbeck's documentary The Net: The Unabomber, LSD, and the Internet is a film about many things, but the gist of it is something like what William Burroughs called the doctrine of control. We live in a world governed by technologies designed with a particular idea of society in mind, one that has its roots in the trauma of global war and the utopian dreams of modern thinkers. The viability of this ideal is, of course, an important question, and it was made all the more urgent by recent developments at the intersection of technology and politics. In this episode, JF and Phil discuss the doctrine of control as imagined by one of its fiercest -- and most insane -- critics: Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. Kaczynski's thoughts on technological society form the through-line of Dammbeck's film, which in turn serves as a through-line for this jam on everything from one-world government and cybernetics to the archetype of the magus and the Whole Earth Catalog.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nLutz Dammbeck (director), The Net: The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet (2003)
\nChuck Klosterman, "FAIL" in Eating the Dinosaur
\nJacques Ellul, French theorist
\nSuzanne Treister, HEXEN Tarot Deck
\n-- Seven of Swords
\n-- Justice
\n-- The Sun
\nNorbert Wiener, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and Machine and The Human Use of Human Beings
\nBertrand Russell, The Scientific Outlook
\nAldous Huxley, Brave New World
\nKevin Kelly, What Technology Wants
\nWeird Studies Episode 2: Garmonbozia
\nStewart Brand, writer and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog
\nUrsula Le Guin, Always Coming Home
\nGary Snyder's idea that "we are primitives of an unknown culture" is explored in Phil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture
\nRichard Brautigan, "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" (poem)
\nSan Francisco Oracle
\nHeidegger, The Question Concerning Technology
In his short story "Mrs. Rinaldi's Angel," contemporary horror author Thomas Ligotti contrasts the chaotic monstrosity of dreams with the cold, indifferent, and no less monstrous purity of angels. It is the story of a boy whose vivid dream life is sapping his vital force, and who resorts to esoteric measures to rectify the situation. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss the beauty and horror of dreams, the metaphysical signifiance of angels and demons, and the potential dangers of seeking the peace of absolute "purity" in the wondrous flux of lived experience.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nThomas Ligotti, "Mrs. Rinaldi's Angel" (read by Jon Padgett)
\n\nRoger Scruton, The Face of God
\nThomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer
\nThomas Ligotti, "The Last Feast of Harlequin" in Grimscribe: His Lives and Works
\nRobert Aickman, English author
\nH. P. Lovecraft, American author
\nH. R. Giger, Swiss artist
\nJean Giraud a.k.a. Moebius, French comic book artist
\nDonald Barthelme, American author
\nPierre Soulages, French artist
\nBruno Schulz, Polish author
\nThomas Bernhard, Austrian author
\nEdgar Allan Poe, American author
\nJ. F. Martel, "The Beautiful Madness: Primacy of Wonder in the Works of Thomas Ligotti" (Forthcoming in James Curcio (ed.), Masks: Bowie and the Artists of Artifice from Intellect Books)
\nAlgernon Blackwood, "The Wendigo"
\nThomas Ligotti, "The Dark Beauty of Unheard of Horrors" in The Thomas Ligotti Reader: Essays and Explorations
\nDogen Zenji, Zen master
\nManichaeism
\nSpencer Brown, The Laws of Form
\nRamsey Dukes, Words Made Flesh: Information In Formation
\nDeleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical
\nThomas Ligotti, "Purity," in Teatro Grottesco
\nJames Joyce, Ulysses
\nAdvaita Vedanta
\nJoshua Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal
\nLewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
\nJames Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld
\nP. J. O’Rourke, political satirist
"May the present 'you' not survive this little book," Jeffrey Kripal writes in the prologue to The Flip. "May you be flipped in dramatic or quiet ways." Indeed, Kripal's latest is a kind of manifesto, a call to embrace the metaphysical expanses that reveal themselves to many who dare dip a toe outside the materialist lifeboat we've been rowing away in for a couple of centuries now. In this conversation, Phil and JF talk to the eminent scholar of religion about the life-changing epiphanies that have convinced many a hardboiled materialist that bouncing billiard balls is probably not the best metaphor for what is actually going on in the universe. In essence, this is a conversation about stories, about the fictions we tell ourselves to make sense -- or nonsense -- of our world.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nJeffrey J. Kripal, The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge
\nHenri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
\nSigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents
\nWeird Studies, Episode 37: Entities, with Stuart Davis
Special Guest: Jeffrey J. Kripal.
","summary":"JF and Phil talk to Jeffrey Kripal about his new book, \"The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge\"\r\n","date_published":"2019-04-24T11:30:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/b69c71a5-1430-42e8-b4ab-194c511d6def.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":67037615,"duration_in_seconds":4187}]},{"id":"823f71ce-1524-4379-87ba-96ec48a5953d","title":"Episode 44: Doomed to Enchantment: The Psychical Research of William James","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/44","content_text":"The great American thinker William James knew well that no intellectual pursuit is purely intellectual. His interest in the \"supernormal,\" whether it take the form of spiritual apparition or extrasensory perception, was rooted in a personal desire to uncover the miraculous in the mundane. Indeed, the early members of the British Society for Psychical Research and its American counterpart (which James co-founded in 1884) were united in this conviction that certain phenomena which most scientists of their day considered unworthy of their attention were in fact the frontier of a new world, an avenue for humanity's deepest aspirations. In this episode, JF and Phil discuss two papers that James wrote about the first phase in the history of these research societies. James lays bare his conclusions about the reality of psychical phenomena and its scientific significance. The bizarre fact that psychical research has made little progress since its inception lays the ground for an engaging discussion on the limits of the knowable.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nFyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment\nFrederic W. H. Myers, theorist of the \"subliminal self\"\nWeird Studies, Episode 37: Entities\nThomas Henry Huxley, aka \"Darwin's Bulldog\"\nPatrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld\nMervyn Peake, The Gormenghast Trilogy\nThomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions\nJames Randi, professional skeptic\nDean Radin, Real Magic\nEric Wargo, Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious\nLionel Snell a.k.a. Ramsey Dukes, British magician\nChangeling: The Lost tabletop roleplaying game\nRupert Sheldrake's morphic resonance\nQuentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency\nJoshua Ramey, \"[Contingency Without Unreason: Speculation After Meillassoux](\"Contingency Without Unreason: Speculation After Meillassoux\")\"\nC.G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle ","content_html":"The great American thinker William James knew well that no intellectual pursuit is purely intellectual. His interest in the "supernormal," whether it take the form of spiritual apparition or extrasensory perception, was rooted in a personal desire to uncover the miraculous in the mundane. Indeed, the early members of the British Society for Psychical Research and its American counterpart (which James co-founded in 1884) were united in this conviction that certain phenomena which most scientists of their day considered unworthy of their attention were in fact the frontier of a new world, an avenue for humanity's deepest aspirations. In this episode, JF and Phil discuss two papers that James wrote about the first phase in the history of these research societies. James lays bare his conclusions about the reality of psychical phenomena and its scientific significance. The bizarre fact that psychical research has made little progress since its inception lays the ground for an engaging discussion on the limits of the knowable.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nFyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
\nFrederic W. H. Myers, theorist of the "subliminal self"
\nWeird Studies, Episode 37: Entities
\nThomas Henry Huxley, aka "Darwin's Bulldog"
\nPatrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld
\nMervyn Peake, The Gormenghast Trilogy
\nThomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
\nJames Randi, professional skeptic
\nDean Radin, Real Magic
\nEric Wargo, Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious
\nLionel Snell a.k.a. Ramsey Dukes, British magician
\nChangeling: The Lost tabletop roleplaying game
\nRupert Sheldrake's morphic resonance
\nQuentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency
\nJoshua Ramey, "[Contingency Without Unreason: Speculation After Meillassoux]("Contingency Without Unreason: Speculation After Meillassoux")"
\nC.G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle
Shirley Jackson's stories and novels rank among the greatest weird works produced in America during the 20th century. However, unlike authors such as Philip K. Dick and H.P. Lovecraft, Jackson didn't cut her teeth in the pulps but among the slick pages of such illustrious publications as The New Yorker. On the other hand, whether because her most famous novel uses the traditional ghost story form or because she was a woman, Jackson only rarely appears in the litanies of weird literature, where she most definitely belongs. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss two of Jackson's short works, "The Lottery" and "The Summer People." The conversation touches on such cheerful topics as human sacrifice, the use of tradition to license evil, and the alienness that can infect even the most familiar things ... when the stars are right.
\n\nHeader image by Hussein Twabi, Wikimedia Commons
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nThe Weird Studies Patreon
\nShirley Jackson
\nZoë Heller, “The Haunted Mind of Shirley Jackson,” review of Ruth Franklin, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life
\nAmerican writer Mitch Horowitz
\nRhonda Byrne, The Secret
\nStuart Wilde, The Trick to Money is Having Some
\nSeymour Ginsburg, Gurdjieff Unveiled
\nRandall Collins, Violence: A Microsociological Theory
\nJames Hillman, A Terrible Love of War
\nHomer, The Iliad
\nPhil & JF at Octopus Books in Ottawa, 2015
\nMarcus Aurelius, Meditations “Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you.”
\nDavid Lynch, Blue Velvet
In the mid-1960s, Pauline Oliveros was a composer of experimental electronic music. But at the end of the 1960s, shocked by the political violence around her, she turned away from electronic technology and towards to a different kind of experimentation, which Dr. Kerry O'Brien calls "experimentalisms of the self." The immediate result of this turn was Oliveros's Sonic Meditations, a series of instructions for group bodymind practice. This work became the seed of Deep Listening, a sort of musical yoga Oliveros developed throughout the rest of her long career. Dr. O'Brien joins JF and Phil for a conversation on practice, "gaining mind," the ritual value of art, the wisdom of the body, and whether Deep Listening is really best understood as art at all.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nKerry O'Brien, "Listening as Activism: The 'Sonic Meditations' of Pauline Oliveros"
\nPauline Oliveros, American composer
\nJohn Cage, 4'33"
\nDead Territory performing Cage's 4'33"
\nAlvin Lucier, "Music for a Solo Performer"
\nPeter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life
\nWalter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
\nLawrence Weschler, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees
Special Guest: Kerry O'Brien.
","summary":"Music scholar Kerry O'Brien join Phil and JF for a conversation on the work of American composer Pauline Oliveros.","date_published":"2019-03-13T00:00:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/0412bb7a-c2e3-482d-994a-675ed848133b.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mp3","size_in_bytes":88398787,"duration_in_seconds":3822}]},{"id":"c764dbc0-2072-4535-89f8-9ed9c9c151e1","title":"Episode 41: On Speculative Fiction, with Matt Cardin","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/41","content_text":"Neil Gaiman wrote, \"If literature is the world, then fantasy and horror are twin cities, divided by a river of black water.\" Flame Tree Publishing underwrites this claim with their recent publication, The Astounding Illustrated History of Fantasy and Horror. The book is a veritable gazetteer of these two cities in the heartland of the imaginal world. Writer and scholar Matt Cardin, founding editor of the marvellous [Teeming Brain](www.teemingbrain.com), wrote a chapter for the book focusing on the books and films of the Sixties and Seventies. In this episode, he joins JF and Phil to discuss the kinship of horror and fantasy, the modern ghettoization of mythopoeic art, the prophetic reach of speculative fiction, and the \"cauldron of cultural transformation\" that was the Sixties and Seventies.\n\nHeader Image by Moralist, Wikimedia Commons\n\nREFERENCES\n\nThe Astounding Illustrated History of Fantasy and Horror\nMatt Cardin's website\nThe Teeming Brain\n\nAmerican literary critic S. T. Joshi\nBritish writer and scholar Roger Luckhurst\nNeil Gaiman, introduction to The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft: Dreams of Terror and Death\nThe concept of \"folk psychology\"\nH. P. Lovecraft, \"The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath\"\nH. P. Lovecraft, \"Through the Gates of the Silver Key\"\nJames Curcio, Masks: Bowie and the Artists of Artifice (forthcoming)\nAmerican author Thomas Ligotti\nBritish author Arthur Machen\nMary Shelley, Frankenstein\nIan McEwen, Enduring Love\nWeird Studies, Episode 36: On Hyperstition\nJ. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion\nTerry Brooks, The Sword of Shannara\nStephen R. Donaldson, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever\nNight of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968)\nThe Lord of the Rings animated film (Ralph Bakshi, 1978)\nLloyd Alexander, The Chronicles of Prydain\nMadeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time\nThe Call of Cthulhu Role-Playing Game (Chaosium)\nRay Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes\nInvasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978)\nWilliam Irwin Thompson, At the Edge of History\nInterview with Twilight Zone luminary George Clayton Johnson\nThe Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)\nThe Omen (Richard Donner, 1976)\nStephen King, Salem's LotSpecial Guest: Matt Cardin.","content_html":"Neil Gaiman wrote, "If literature is the world, then fantasy and horror are twin cities, divided by a river of black water." Flame Tree Publishing underwrites this claim with their recent publication, The Astounding Illustrated History of Fantasy and Horror. The book is a veritable gazetteer of these two cities in the heartland of the imaginal world. Writer and scholar Matt Cardin, founding editor of the marvellous [Teeming Brain](www.teemingbrain.com), wrote a chapter for the book focusing on the books and films of the Sixties and Seventies. In this episode, he joins JF and Phil to discuss the kinship of horror and fantasy, the modern ghettoization of mythopoeic art, the prophetic reach of speculative fiction, and the "cauldron of cultural transformation" that was the Sixties and Seventies.
\n\nHeader Image by Moralist, Wikimedia Commons
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nThe Astounding Illustrated History of Fantasy and Horror
\nMatt Cardin's website
\nThe Teeming Brain
American literary critic S. T. Joshi
\nBritish writer and scholar Roger Luckhurst
\nNeil Gaiman, introduction to The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft: Dreams of Terror and Death
\nThe concept of "folk psychology"
\nH. P. Lovecraft, "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath"
\nH. P. Lovecraft, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key"
\nJames Curcio, Masks: Bowie and the Artists of Artifice (forthcoming)
\nAmerican author Thomas Ligotti
\nBritish author Arthur Machen
\nMary Shelley, Frankenstein
\nIan McEwen, Enduring Love
\nWeird Studies, Episode 36: On Hyperstition
\nJ. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion
\nTerry Brooks, The Sword of Shannara
\nStephen R. Donaldson, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever
\nNight of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968)
\nThe Lord of the Rings animated film (Ralph Bakshi, 1978)
\nLloyd Alexander, The Chronicles of Prydain
\nMadeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
\nThe Call of Cthulhu Role-Playing Game (Chaosium)
\nRay Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
\nInvasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978)
\nWilliam Irwin Thompson, At the Edge of History
\nInterview with Twilight Zone luminary George Clayton Johnson
\nThe Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)
\nThe Omen (Richard Donner, 1976)
\nStephen King, Salem's Lot
Special Guest: Matt Cardin.
","summary":"JF and Phil talk fantasy and horror with writer and editor Matt Cardin.","date_published":"2019-02-27T10:30:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/c764dbc0-2072-4535-89f8-9ed9c9c151e1.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mp3","size_in_bytes":71858635,"duration_in_seconds":3592}]},{"id":"24808743-3250-4417-bb1e-05ad1cba597f","title":"Episode 40: On Jonathan Glazer's 'Under the Skin'","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/40","content_text":"In Jonathan Glazer's loose screen adaptation of Michel Faber's novel Under the Skin, a creature of mysterious origin drives around Scotland in a white van, collecting lonely men and spiriting them away to an otherworld where they are turned into food.... or something. Drawing on a deep well of literary, visual, and musical tradition, Glazer (with help from his score composer Mica Levi) create a vivid work of tragedy and horror, masterfully executed for maximal weirdness and unwaveringly true to the auteur's intent to reveal our world from an \"alien perspective.\" In this episode, Phil and JF discuss some themes and ideas they've pried from this exquisite tangle of image and sound. Along the way, they discuss the role that serendipity, coincidence, and fate play in both art-making and scholarship.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nUnder the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013)\nOther films by Glazer: Sexy Beast (2000), Birth (2004)\n\nBarry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)\nIannis Xenakis, Greek composer\nTwin Peaks: The Return (David Lynch, 2017)\nLigeti, Atmosphères\nStranger Things (The Duffer Brothers, 2016)\nScreen shot of \"Space Invader\" Easter egg in Under the Skin\nWeird Studies Episode 37: Entities, with Stuart Davis\nJohn August, American screenwriter\nPhil Ford, \"The Devil's On Your Side: A Meditation on the Perennially Disreputable Business of Hermeneutics\" (unpublished)\nRoom 237 (Rodney Ascher, 2013)\nWilliam Irwin Thompson, Imaginary Landscape: Making Worlds of Myth and Science\nInterview with Mica Levi, who composed the score for Under the Skin\nAtar Arad, American violist\nDavid Caspar Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog","content_html":"In Jonathan Glazer's loose screen adaptation of Michel Faber's novel Under the Skin, a creature of mysterious origin drives around Scotland in a white van, collecting lonely men and spiriting them away to an otherworld where they are turned into food.... or something. Drawing on a deep well of literary, visual, and musical tradition, Glazer (with help from his score composer Mica Levi) create a vivid work of tragedy and horror, masterfully executed for maximal weirdness and unwaveringly true to the auteur's intent to reveal our world from an "alien perspective." In this episode, Phil and JF discuss some themes and ideas they've pried from this exquisite tangle of image and sound. Along the way, they discuss the role that serendipity, coincidence, and fate play in both art-making and scholarship.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nUnder the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013)
\nOther films by Glazer: Sexy Beast (2000), Birth (2004)
Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
\nIannis Xenakis, Greek composer
\nTwin Peaks: The Return (David Lynch, 2017)
\nLigeti, Atmosphères
\nStranger Things (The Duffer Brothers, 2016)
\nScreen shot of "Space Invader" Easter egg in Under the Skin
\nWeird Studies Episode 37: Entities, with Stuart Davis
\nJohn August, American screenwriter
\nPhil Ford, "The Devil's On Your Side: A Meditation on the Perennially Disreputable Business of Hermeneutics" (unpublished)
\nRoom 237 (Rodney Ascher, 2013)
\nWilliam Irwin Thompson, Imaginary Landscape: Making Worlds of Myth and Science
\nInterview with Mica Levi, who composed the score for Under the Skin
\nAtar Arad, American violist
\nDavid Caspar Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
"The world is not simply composed of physical causes strung together in strictly materialistic and mechanical fashion," writes Prof. Jeffrey J. Kripal in his seminal book, Authors of the Impossible. "The world is also a series of meaningful signs requiring a hermeneutics for their decipherment." This, in a nutshell, is Kripal's position vis à vis the fact of paranormal experience, a fact that he has explored in numerous works of scholarship over the last 25 years. For Kripal, whether we see supernatural entities as beings from other worlds or creatures of the human imagination is secondary to the question of whether they merit serious philosophical thought and consideration. On that point, he says, "it's not an option to be neutral." JF and Phil had the honor of sitting down with Jeffrey Kripal to discuss the super-natural, the sacred, and the reasons why these categories remain as vital now as they ever have been.
\n\nHeader image: "Artist's Impression of the Mothman," by Tim Bertelink, Wikimedia Commons.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nJeffrey J. Kripal, Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred, The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion, Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal, The Super Natural: Why the Unexplained is Real (with Whitley Strieber), and Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks it Empowers Us All (with Elizabeth G. Krohn)
\n\nStanley Kubrick's The Shining
\nWouter Hanegraaff, historian of hermetic philosophy
\nJohn Keel, The Mothman Prophecies
\nGraham Harman and Eugene Thacker, philosophers
\nJ. F. Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice
\nE. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande
\nThe X-Men (Marvel Comics)
Special Guest: Jeffrey J. Kripal.
","summary":"JF and Phil discuss the paranormal with the esteemed professor and philosophy and religious thought, Jeffrey J. Kripal.","date_published":"2019-01-30T13:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/a924a04b-587c-4e50-88b8-8f5b967ef35c.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mp3","size_in_bytes":74705459,"duration_in_seconds":3735}]},{"id":"2ab94660-59a1-47dc-a8ba-9cdde1974fad","title":"Episode 38: Style as Analysis","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/38","content_text":"Music writing has always been something of an occult practice, trying by some weird alchemy to use concepts to describe stuff that defies the basic categories of intellect. So long as we stick to classical music, we can pretend that nothing too odd is happening, since the classical tradition has been steeped in notation for centuries. But when a musicologist attempts to analyze, say, an ambient track by Brian Eno, things aren't so simple. Suddenly notation won't do, and there comes the need to make use of every tool in the poet's shed. This episode focuses on a recently published article by Phil on this question. In due course, the discussion turns to the power of good writing: its capacity not just to convey an author's subjective impressions, but to disclose new facets of the ineffable, baroque objective world.\n\nSHOW NOTES\n\nPhil Ford, \"Style as Analysis\" in The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches, edited by Ciro Scotto, Kenneth M. Smith and John Brackett\nChristopher Ricks, Dylan's Vision of Sin\nFerrucio Busoni, Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music\nSusan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality\nHans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey\nPhil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture\nJerry Hopkins, No One Here Gets Out Alive\nBrian Eno, Another Green World\nMitchell Morris, The Persistence of Sentiment: Display and Feeling in Popular Music of the 1970s\nWilliam Youngren, “Balliett’s Bailiwick,” Partisan Review 32, no. 1 (Winter 1965)\nWhitney Balliett, Collected Works\nE.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel\nHenri Bergson, Matter and Memory","content_html":"Music writing has always been something of an occult practice, trying by some weird alchemy to use concepts to describe stuff that defies the basic categories of intellect. So long as we stick to classical music, we can pretend that nothing too odd is happening, since the classical tradition has been steeped in notation for centuries. But when a musicologist attempts to analyze, say, an ambient track by Brian Eno, things aren't so simple. Suddenly notation won't do, and there comes the need to make use of every tool in the poet's shed. This episode focuses on a recently published article by Phil on this question. In due course, the discussion turns to the power of good writing: its capacity not just to convey an author's subjective impressions, but to disclose new facets of the ineffable, baroque objective world.
\n\nSHOW NOTES
\n\nPhil Ford, "Style as Analysis" in The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches, edited by Ciro Scotto, Kenneth M. Smith and John Brackett
\nChristopher Ricks, Dylan's Vision of Sin
\nFerrucio Busoni, Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music
\nSusan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality
\nHans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey
\nPhil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture
\nJerry Hopkins, No One Here Gets Out Alive
\nBrian Eno, Another Green World
\nMitchell Morris, The Persistence of Sentiment: Display and Feeling in Popular Music of the 1970s
\nWilliam Youngren, “Balliett’s Bailiwick,” Partisan Review 32, no. 1 (Winter 1965)
\nWhitney Balliett, Collected Works
\nE.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel
\nHenri Bergson, Matter and Memory
Several years ago, on New Year’s Eve, a tall, purple-robed praying mantis appeared to multidisciplinary artist Stuart Evan Davis as he meditated while running a fever. “Remember who you work for,” the entity said after beaming a zettabyte of information into Stuart’s febrile mind. Though it lasted less than a minute, the encounter sparked a series of life-changing -- and hair-raising -- events worthy of a Philip K. Dick novel.
\n\nJF and Phil talk to Stuart Davis to get his thoughts on nonhuman intelligences, the artistic cosmos, a movie trilogy the Mantis commissioned, and Stuart’s brilliant audio documentary, Man Meets Mantis.
\n\nHeader image by OLJA, Wikimedia Commons
\n\nStuart Davis Official Website
\nStuart Davis, Man Meets Mantis
\nStuart Davis, “Something from Nothing” course
\nJasmine Karimova, singer-songwriter
\nRamsey Dukes, The Good, The Bad, and the Funny
\nJohn Mack, psychiatrist and abduction phenomenon researcher
\nJacques Vallee, ufologist
\nJohn Keel, paranormal researcher
\nWeird Studies episode 2, “Garmonbozia”
\nNorman McLaren, Spheres
\nRemedios Varo, artist
\nLeonora Carrington, artist
\nJF Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice
Special Guest: Stuart Evan Davis.
","summary":"JF and Phil discuss nonhuman beings in an aesthetic universe with filmmaker, musician and mystic Stuart Evan Davis. ","date_published":"2019-01-02T10:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/6cff39af-2431-48a3-b816-dab244436728.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mp3","size_in_bytes":90803391,"duration_in_seconds":4487}]},{"id":"0e97eeb5-94f5-4be0-a120-4228e0084027","title":"Christmas Bonus: Hyperstition Addendum","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/36b","content_text":"Happy holidays, Weird Studies listeners! In this short \"Christmas Bonus\" episode, your intrepid hosts finish up what began as a discussion of Nick Land's concept of hyperstition. Following last week's closing remarks about the importance of \"banishing\" ideas that might otherwise take us over, the segment focuses on the dividing line between the personal and the political. Where does the one end and the other begin? What do we risk when we choose to make a necessarily limited standpoint the locus of some totalizing view? The answers will take back to the birth of eukaryotic cells, the sin of Cain, and the wisdom of Sun Ra.\n\nReferences made in this conversation were included in the show notes for Episode 36.","content_html":"Happy holidays, Weird Studies listeners! In this short "Christmas Bonus" episode, your intrepid hosts finish up what began as a discussion of Nick Land's concept of hyperstition. Following last week's closing remarks about the importance of "banishing" ideas that might otherwise take us over, the segment focuses on the dividing line between the personal and the political. Where does the one end and the other begin? What do we risk when we choose to make a necessarily limited standpoint the locus of some totalizing view? The answers will take back to the birth of eukaryotic cells, the sin of Cain, and the wisdom of Sun Ra.
\n\nReferences made in this conversation were included in the show notes for Episode 36.
","summary":"The final segment of our conversation on hyperstition, i.e., fiction that turns real.","date_published":"2018-12-25T11:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/0e97eeb5-94f5-4be0-a120-4228e0084027.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mp3","size_in_bytes":28834440,"duration_in_seconds":1441}]},{"id":"16b8d0ba-96fc-4b7c-94ee-bf16109cd9a8","title":"Episode 36: On Hyperstition","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/36","content_text":"Hyperstition is a key concept in the philosophy of Nick Land. It refers to fictions which, given enough time and libidinal investment, become realities. JF and Phil explore the notion using one of those optometric apparatuses with multiple lenses -- deleuzian, magical, mythological, political, ethical, etc. The goal isn't to understand how fictions participate in reality (that'll have to wait for another episode), but to ponder what this implies for a sapient species. The conversation weaves together such varied topics as Twin Peaks: The Return, Internet meme magic (Trump as tulpa!), Deleuze and Guattari's metaphysics, occult experiments in spirit creation, the Brothers Grimm, and the phantasmic overtones of The Communist Manifesto. In the end we can only say, \"What a load of bullsh*t!\"\n\nHeader Image: Still from the 1920 German Expressionist film The Golem: How He Came in the World, by Paul Wegener.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nJF's notes on Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the refrain\nGilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus\nDavid Lynch (director), Twin Peaks: The Return\nPhil Ford, \"Garmonbozia\" (work in progress, unpublished)\nDelphi Carstens, \"Hyperstition\"\nDelphi Carstens, \"Hyperstition: An Introduction\" (2009 interview with Nick Land)\nRichard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene\nCCRU Archives\nThe occult concept of the egregore\nWilliam Irwin Thompson, Imaginary Landscape: Making Worlds of Myth and Science\nMartin Heidegger, Being and Time\nAlan Chapman and Duncan Barford, The Blood of the Saints\nA. T. L. Carver, \"The Truth About Pepe the Frog and the Cult of Kek\"\nPaul Spencer, \"Trump's Occult Online Supporters Believer 'Meme Magic' Got Him Elected\"\nColm A. Kelleher, The Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah\nKarl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto\nG. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy\nSun Ra, Space is the Place","content_html":"Hyperstition is a key concept in the philosophy of Nick Land. It refers to fictions which, given enough time and libidinal investment, become realities. JF and Phil explore the notion using one of those optometric apparatuses with multiple lenses -- deleuzian, magical, mythological, political, ethical, etc. The goal isn't to understand how fictions participate in reality (that'll have to wait for another episode), but to ponder what this implies for a sapient species. The conversation weaves together such varied topics as Twin Peaks: The Return, Internet meme magic (Trump as tulpa!), Deleuze and Guattari's metaphysics, occult experiments in spirit creation, the Brothers Grimm, and the phantasmic overtones of The Communist Manifesto. In the end we can only say, "What a load of bullsh*t!"
\n\nHeader Image: Still from the 1920 German Expressionist film The Golem: How He Came in the World, by Paul Wegener.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nJF's notes on Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the refrain
\nGilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
\nDavid Lynch (director), Twin Peaks: The Return
\nPhil Ford, "Garmonbozia" (work in progress, unpublished)
\nDelphi Carstens, "Hyperstition"
\nDelphi Carstens, "Hyperstition: An Introduction" (2009 interview with Nick Land)
\nRichard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
\nCCRU Archives
\nThe occult concept of the egregore
\nWilliam Irwin Thompson, Imaginary Landscape: Making Worlds of Myth and Science
\nMartin Heidegger, Being and Time
\nAlan Chapman and Duncan Barford, The Blood of the Saints
\nA. T. L. Carver, "The Truth About Pepe the Frog and the Cult of Kek"
\nPaul Spencer, "Trump's Occult Online Supporters Believer 'Meme Magic' Got Him Elected"
\nColm A. Kelleher, The Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah
\nKarl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
\nG. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
\nSun Ra, Space is the Place
The first step in any pottery project is to center the clay on the potter's wheel. In her landmark essay Centering: In Pottery, Poetry and the Person (1964), the American poet M. C. Richards turns this simple action into a metaphor for all creative acts, including the act of living your life. The result is a penetrating and poetic reflection on the artistic process that values change, unknowing, and radical becoming, making Richards' text a guide to creativity that leaves other examples of that evergreen genre in the dust. Phil and JF get their hands dirty trying to understand what centering is, and what it entails for a life of creation and becoming. The discussion brings in a number of other thinkers and artists including Friedrich Nietzsche, Norman O. Brown, Carl Jung, Antonin Artaud, and Flannery O'Connor.
\n\nHeader image: NASA
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nM. C. Richards, Centering: In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person
\nJ. S. Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier
\nAmerican pianist David Tudor
\nC. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
\nWeird Studies, Episode 33: "The Fine Art of Changing the Subject"
\nGilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy
\nAntonin Artaud, The Theater and its Double (translated by M. C. Richards)
\nRudolf Steiner, Alchemy: The Evolution of the Mysteries
\nNorman O. Brown, author of Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History
\nG. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
\nFlannery O'Connor, "Novelist and Believer"
Although he is one of the luminaries of the weird tale, Robert Aickman referred to his irreal, macabre short works as strange stories. Born in London in 1914, Aickman wrote less than fifty such stories before his death in 1981. JF and Phil focus on one of his most chilling, "The Hospice," from the collection Cold Hand in Mine, published in 1975. In it, Aickman uses a staple ingredient of the classic ghost story -- a man is stranded on a country road at night, lost and out of petrol -- to concoct an unforgettable blend of fantasy and nightmare, reality and dream. Indeed, Phil and JF argue that Aickman deserves a place alongside David Lynch and a few others as one of those rare fabulists who can adeptly disclose how reality is more dreamlike, and dreams more real, than most of us would care to admit.
\n\nHeader Image: Detail from photo by Ivars Indāns (Wikimedia Commons)
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nRobert Aickman, "The Hospice" from Cold Hand in Mine
\nDante Aligheri, The Divine Comedy: The Inferno
\nDavid Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return
\nDavid Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
\nWeird Studies, Episode 22: Divining the World with Joshua Ramey
\nNorman Mailer, An American Dream
In 1917, Marcel Duchamp trolled the New York art scene with Fountain, the famous urinal, whose significance has since swelled in the minds of art aficionados to become the prototype of all modern art. The conversation as to whether or not Fountain fulfills the conditions of a genuine work of art has been going on ever since. In this episode, JF and Phil weigh in with their own ideas, not just about what art is, but more importantly, about what art -- and only art -- can do. The result is a no-holds-barred assault on the very idea of conceptual art, a j'accuse aimed squarely at Duchamp and anyone else who would make the arts as scrutable, and as trivial, as the latest political attack ad or home insurance jingle.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nJ. S. Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier
\nRoger Scruton, The Face of God
\nPhilip Larkin, All What Jazz
\nDaniel Clowes, Art School Confidential
\nBanksy, Girl with Balloon
\nBill Hicks, stand-up bit on marketers
\nWalter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” and Paul Klee, Angelus Novus
\nArthur Danto, “The Art World”
\nAndy Warhol, Brillo Boxes
\nJF Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice
\nCornelius Cardew, “Stockhausen Serves Imperialism”
\nJohn Roderick, “Punk Rock is Bullshit”
\nSusan McClary, foreword to William Cheng, Just Vibrations
\nDeleuze, "What is the Creative Act?"
\nBenjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
\nBiggie Smalls, "Ready to Die"
\nCave paintings at Chauvet
\nAleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Nobel lecture
\nJonathan Glazer, Under the Skin
Jorge Luis Borges's story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" is a metaphysical detective story, an armchair conspiracy thriller, and a masterpiece of weird fiction. In this tale penned by a true literary magician, Phil and JF see an opportunity to talk about magic, hyperstition, non-linear time, and the power of metaphysics to reshape the world. When Phil questions his co-host's animus against idealist doctrines, the discussion turns to dreams, cybernetics, and information theory, before reaching common ground with the dumbfound appreciation of radical mystery.
\n\nJorge Luis Borges, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" in Ficciones
\nWeird Studies, Episode 29, "On Lovecraft"
\nGeorge Berkley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710)
\nJohn Crowley, the Aegypt tetralogy
\nQuentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency
\nSir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia - Urn Burial
\nRichard Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung)
\nWilliam James, A Pluralistic Universe
\nKarl Schroeder, "Degrees of Freedom"
\nWeird Studies, Episode 26, "Living in a Glass Age"
\nHenri Bergson, Creative Evolution
\nDogen, Genjokoan
Most people know Glenn Gould as a brilliant pianist who forever changed how we receive and interpret the works of Europe's great composers: Bach, Beethoven, Schoenberg... But Gould was also an aesthetic theorist who saw a new horizon for the arts in the age of recording technology. In the future, he said, the superstitious cult of history, performance, and authorship would disappear, and the arts would retrieve a "neo-medieval anonymity" that would allow us to see them for what they really are: scarcely human at all. This episode interprets Gould's prophecy with the help of the Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, the Chinese Daoist sage Zhuang Zhou, and the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, among others.
\n\nSHOW NOTES
\n\nGlenn Gould, "The Prospects of Recording"
\nMarshall McLuhan's Tetrad of media effects
\nLudwig van Beethoven, Concerto no. 3 in C minor
\nGlenn Gould, "Glenn Gould Interviews Glenn Gould about Glenn Gould"
\nGlenn Gould and Yehudi Menuhin, dialogue on The Music of Man
\nJean-Luc Godard, A Married Woman (A Married Woman)
\nHeidegger, Der Spiegel interview (1966)
\nDaoist sage Zhuang Zhou
\nWalter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
\nStanley Kubrick, A Clockwork Orange
\nMarshall McLuhan, The Playboy interview
\nMarshall McLuhan, The Mechanical Bride
\nMarshall McLuhan, Understanding Media
\nDouglas Rushkoff and Michael Avon Oeming, Aleister and Adolph
\nJoyce Hatto
\nLionel Snell, My Years of Magical Thinking
\nKevin Bazzana, Glenn Gould: The Performer in the Work
\nPhil Ford, “Blogging and the Van Meegeren Syndrome”
\nDavid Thompson, Have You Seen...?: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films
No dream is ever just a dream. Or so Tom Cruises tells Nicole Kidman at the end of Eyes Wide Shut. In this episode, Phil and JF expound some of the key themes of Kubrick's film, a masterpiece of cinematic chamber music that demonstrates, with painstaking attention to detail, Zen Master Dōgen's utterance that when one side of the world is illuminated, the other side is dark. Treading a winding path between wakefulness and dream, love and sex, life and art, your paranoid hosts make boldly for that secret spot where the rainbow ends, and the masks come off.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nArthur Schnitzler, Dream Story (Traumnovelle) -- Source of the EWS screenplay, sadly overlooked in the episode but well worth a read.
\nFrederic Raphael, Eyes Wide Open: A Memoir of Stanley Kubrick
\nBathysphere
\nFrank L. Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
\nDavid Icke's "reptilian" theory of the British Royal Family
\nThomas A. Nelson, Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze
\nScreenshot of newspaper article from Eyes Wide Shut
\nRodney Ascher, Room 237
\nJames Hillman, Pan and the Nightmare
\nGustave Moreau, L'Apparition
\nMario Praz, The Romantic Agony
\nWilliam S. Burroughs, “On Coincidence,” in The Adding Machine
\nJ.F. Martel, "The Kubrick Gaze"
Phil and JF indulge their autumnal mood in this discussion of Howard Phillips Lovecraft's work, specifically the essay "Notes on the Writing of Weird Fiction" and the prose piece "Nyarlathotep." Philip K. Dick, Algernon Blackwood, and David Foster Wallace make appearances as our fearsome hosts talk about how the weird story differs from conventional horror fiction, how Lovecraft gives voice to contemporary fears of physical, psychological and political infection, and how authors like Lovecraft and Dick can be seen as prophetic poets of the "great unbuffering of the Western self."
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nH. P. Lovecraft, "Notes on Writing Weird Fiction"
\nH. P. Lovecraft, "Nyarlathotep"
1974 Rolling Stone feature on PKD
\nGraham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy
\nTheodor Roszak, The Making of a Counterculture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and its Youthful Opposition
\nAlgernon Blackwood, "The Wendigo"
\nAlgernon Blackwood, "The Willows"
\nAnn and Jeff Vandermeer, The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
\nH.P. Lovecraft, "Supernatural Horror in Literature"
\nCharles Taylor, A Secular Age
\nE.E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande
\nPeter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life
\nDavid Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
\nH.P. Lovecraft, "The Music of Erich Zann"
\nH.P. Lovecraft, "The Colour Out of Space"
\nH.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"
\nWeird Studies, Episode 2: Garmonbozia
\nMarshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
"Music is worth living for," Andrew W.K. sings in his latest rock anthem. In this second episode on the weirdness of music, JF and Phil focus on two works steeped in ambiguity and paradox: Bob Dylan's "Jokerman," from the landmark post-Christian album Infidels, and Franz Liszt's "Mephisto Waltz, No. 1: The Dance at the Village Inn," inspired by an episode in the Faust legend. If this conversation has a central theme, it may be music's power to unhinge every fixed binary, from God and the Devil to culture and nature. Music, as exemplified in these pieces, can put us in touch with the abiding mystery of the eternal in the historical, the unhuman in the human... The hills are alive!
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nBob Dylan, "Jokerman"
\nFranz Liszt, “Mephisto Waltz no. 1,” performed by Boris Berezovsky
Andrew WK, "Music is Worth Living For"
\nLeonard Cohen, “The Future”
\nC.G. Jung, Aion
\nDouglas Rushkoff, Testament
\nThe Guardian, “Carthaginians sacrificed own children, archaeologists say”
\nGarry Wills, "Our Moloch"
\nMinoan snake goddess statues
\nRichard Wagner, Parsifal http://www.monsalvat.no/
\nT.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
\nDaniel Albright, Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Music, Literature, and Other Arts
\nBeckett, Not I
\nNikolaus Lenau, German Romantic poet
\nWolgang von Goethe, Faust, Part 1, translated by David Luke
\nWeird Studies, Episode 3: Sin: "Ecstasy, and the White People"
In this first of two episodes devoted to the music of the weird, Phil and JF discuss two works that have bowled them over: the second movement of Ligeti's Musica Ricercata, used to powerful effect in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and the opening music to Cronenberg's film Naked Lunch, composed by Howard Shore and featuring the inimitable stylings of Ornette Coleman. After teasing out the intrinsic weirdness of music in general, the dialogue soars over a strange country rife with shadows, mad geniuses, and skittering insects. And to top it all off, Phil breaks out the grand piano.
\n\nHeader image by Bandan, Wikimedia Commons
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nLigeti, Musica Ricercata, 2nd movement
\nHoward Shore and Ornette Coleman, opening music for David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
\nSuzanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key
\nHenri Bergson, Creative Evolution
\nStanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey
\nViktor Shklovsky, "Art as Technique"
\nStanley Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut
\nHitchcock, Psycho
\nVulture, "The Evolution of the Movie Trailer" by Granger Willson
\nOfficial Trailer for The Shining_vs teaser for _2012
\nJan Harlan (director), Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures
\nDavid Cronenberg, Crash
\nWilliam S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
\nGilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
\nGunther Schuller's interview with Ethan Iverson
\nWeird Studies, Episode 25: David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch
\nDeleuze & Guattari, Anti-Oedipus
Stone, bronze, iron... glass? In his recent thought and writing, transdisciplinary artist and thinker Michael Garfield defines modernity as an age of glass, arguing that the entire ethos of our era inheres in the transformative enchantments of this amorphous solid. No one would deny that glass plays a central role in our lives, although glass does have a knack for disappearing into the background, at least until the beakers or screens crack and shatter. Glass is weird, and like a lot of weird things, it can serve as a lens (so to speak!) for observing our world from strange new angles. In this episode, Michael joins Phil and JF to talk through the origins, the significance, and the fate of the Glass Age.
\n\nMichael Garfield is a musician, live painter, and futurist. He is the host of the brilliant Future Fossils Podcast.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nMichael Garfield's website + Patreon + Medium + Bandcamp
\nMichael Garfield, "The Future is Indistinguishable from Magic" (This is the essay we discuss that was unpublished at the time of the recording)
\nMichael Garfield, "The Future Acts Like You"
\nMichael Garfield, "The Evolution of Surveillance Part 3: Living in the Belly of the Beast"
Artist David Titterington's Patreon page
\nRichard Doyle, On Beyond Living: Rhetorical Transformations of the Life Sciences
\nCorning, "The Glass Age" (corporate video)
\nJean-Paul Sartre, Baudelaire
\nJohn David Ebert, "On Hypermodernity"
\nJohn C. Wright, The Golden Age
\nJ.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
\nTimothy Morton, Hyperobjects
\nChristopher Knight and Alan Butler, Who Built the Moon?
\nPink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon
\nMarshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy
\nMarshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage
\nSpinoza, Ethics
\nCharles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity
\nMartine Rothblatt, Virtually Human: The Promise and the Peril of Digital Immortality
\nJohn Crowley, Little, Big
\nJose Arguelles, Dreamspell Calendar
\nWilliam Irwin Thompson, Lindisfarne Tapes
\nJonathan Sterne, The Audible Past
\nKarl Schroeder, “Degrees of Freedom,” in Heiroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future
\nMichael Garfield, “Being Every Drone”
\nHenri Bergson, Creative Evolution
Special Guest: Michael Garfield.
","summary":"JF and Phil talk to artist and thinker Michael Garfield about his idea that we are living in the final days of the Age of Glass.","date_published":"2018-09-19T13:30:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/fd19336e-d884-43e4-9b11-737b666e6185.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mp3","size_in_bytes":95058088,"duration_in_seconds":4727}]},{"id":"38711c33-1e0a-4536-b97b-fd5861fc4628","title":"Episode 25: David Cronenberg's 'Naked Lunch'","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/25","content_text":"JF and Phil head for Interzone in an attempt to solve the enigma of Naked Lunch, David Cronenberg's 1991 screen adaptation of William S. Burroughs' infamous 1959 novel. A treatise on addiction, a diagnosis of modern ills, a lucid portrait of the artist as cosmic transgressor, and like the book, \"a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork,\" Naked Lunch is here framed in the light Cronenberg's recent speech making the case for the crime of art.\n\nImage by Melancholie, Wikimedia Commons.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nDavid Foster Wallace, \"Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,\" from Girl With Curious Hair \nGilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, and \"How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs?\" in A Thousand Plateaus\nDavid Cronenberg (writer-director), Naked Lunch (the film)\nWilliam Burroughs, Naked Lunch (the novel)\nThomas De Quincey, Confessions of an Opium-Eater\nDale Pendell, Pharmako/Poeia: Power Plants, Poisons and Herbcraft\n\"David Cronenberg: I would like to make the case for the crime of art,\" Globe and Mail June 22 2018 \nJF Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice\nPhil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture\nDerek Bailey (director), On the Edge: Improvisation in Music \nPhil Ford, \"Good Prose is Written By People Who Are Not Frightened\"\nGeroge Orwell, \"Inside the Whale\"","content_html":"JF and Phil head for Interzone in an attempt to solve the enigma of Naked Lunch, David Cronenberg's 1991 screen adaptation of William S. Burroughs' infamous 1959 novel. A treatise on addiction, a diagnosis of modern ills, a lucid portrait of the artist as cosmic transgressor, and like the book, "a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork," Naked Lunch is here framed in the light Cronenberg's recent speech making the case for the crime of art.
\n\nImage by Melancholie, Wikimedia Commons.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nDavid Foster Wallace, "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way," from Girl With Curious Hair
\nGilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, and "How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs?" in A Thousand Plateaus
\nDavid Cronenberg (writer-director), Naked Lunch (the film)
\nWilliam Burroughs, Naked Lunch (the novel)
\nThomas De Quincey, Confessions of an Opium-Eater
\nDale Pendell, Pharmako/Poeia: Power Plants, Poisons and Herbcraft
\n"David Cronenberg: I would like to make the case for the crime of art," Globe and Mail June 22 2018
\nJF Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice
\nPhil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture
\nDerek Bailey (director), On the Edge: Improvisation in Music
\nPhil Ford, "Good Prose is Written By People Who Are Not Frightened"
\nGeroge Orwell, "Inside the Whale"
As Lionel Snell, also known as Ramsey Dukes, observes in his seminal esoteric essay, "The Charlatan and the Magus" (1984), the series of trumps in a tarot deck doesn't begin with the noble Emperor or august Hierophant, but with the lowly Fool, followed by the Juggler. Trickery or illusion, Snell suggests, may not be the dealbreaker we've thought it to be in parapsychological investigation. It may even be a feature, not a bug, of the magical process. In this episode of Weird Studies, JF and Phil talk to Lionel Snell about trickster magic, and all we miss out on when we make rational truth the only measure by which we know reality.
\n\nRamsey Dukes [Lionel Snell], "The Charlatan and the Magus"
\nDarren Brown, Tricks of the Mind
\nYuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
\nPhil Ford, “Birth of the Weird"
\nRamsey Dukes [Lionel Snell], How to See Fairies: Discover Your Psychic Powers in Six Weeks
\nRamsey Dukes [Lionel Snell], S.S.O.T..B.M.E.
\nJohn Keats, Negative Capability
\nWeird Studies, Episode 9: "On Aleister Crowley and the Idea of Magick"
Special Guest: Lionel Snell [Ramsey Dukes].
","summary":"Phil and JF discuss magic with occult thinker and practicing magician Lionel Snell, also known as Ramsey Dukes. ","date_published":"2018-08-28T15:00:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/bed59cce-6c88-45fc-b2b4-c358473a13fb.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mp3","size_in_bytes":70583968,"duration_in_seconds":3503}]},{"id":"29d90a14-84a8-4085-ba2f-81bdf6452b15","title":"Episode 23: On Presence","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/23","content_text":"Phil stops by JF's Canadian homestead for a raucous IRL conversation on the idea of presence. The range of topics includes objects of power, the magic of books, the mystery of the event, modernity's knack for making myths immanent, genius loci, the mad wonder of Blue Velvet, and the iron fist of the virtual.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nGil Scott-Heron, \"The Revolution Will Bot Be Televised\"\nLouis CK on smart phones at the ballet recital\nHenri Bergson, Matter and Memory, Creative Evolution\nGilles Deleuze on the virtual: see Bergsonism, Proust and Signs, The Logic of Sense, Difference and Repetition, Cinema II: The TIme Image\nExpanding Mind with Erik Davis, \"Being Anarchist\"\nJF Martel, \"Reality is Analog\"\nJason A. Josephson-Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment (and Gyrus's review)\nGyrus, North: The Rise and Fall of the Polar Cosmos\nWilliam Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture \nGeoffrey O’Brien, Phantom Empire \nDavid Foster Wallace, “David Lynch Keeps His Head”\nDonald Barthelme \nDavid Lynch, Blue Velvet\nEduardo Viveiros de Castro, Cannibal Meraphysics ","content_html":"Phil stops by JF's Canadian homestead for a raucous IRL conversation on the idea of presence. The range of topics includes objects of power, the magic of books, the mystery of the event, modernity's knack for making myths immanent, genius loci, the mad wonder of Blue Velvet, and the iron fist of the virtual.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nGil Scott-Heron, "The Revolution Will Bot Be Televised"
\nLouis CK on smart phones at the ballet recital
\nHenri Bergson, Matter and Memory, Creative Evolution
\nGilles Deleuze on the virtual: see Bergsonism, Proust and Signs, The Logic of Sense, Difference and Repetition, Cinema II: The TIme Image
\nExpanding Mind with Erik Davis, "Being Anarchist"
\nJF Martel, "Reality is Analog"
\nJason A. Josephson-Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment (and Gyrus's review)
\nGyrus, North: The Rise and Fall of the Polar Cosmos
\nWilliam Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture
\nGeoffrey O’Brien, Phantom Empire
\nDavid Foster Wallace, “David Lynch Keeps His Head”
\nDonald Barthelme
\nDavid Lynch, Blue Velvet
\nEduardo Viveiros de Castro, Cannibal Meraphysics
American philosopher Joshua Ramey, author of The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and the Spiritual Ordeal, and Politics of Divination: Neoliberal Endgame and the Religion of Contingency, joins Phil and JF to discuss a philosophical project whose implications go deep and weird. In his books and articles, Joshua proffers the vision of a world where divination -- whether or not it is recognized as such -- isn't just possible, but necessary for advancing knowledge, creating art, and forming communities. And his research has revealed that the wardens of our neoliberal order know this all too well. As he writes in an essay discussed in this episode, the mandate of a weird age ought to be clear: "Occupy, and practice divination."
\n\n**REFERENCES
\n\nJoshua Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and the Spiritual Ordeal
\nJoshua Ramey, Politics of DIvination: Neoliberal Endgame and the Religion of Contingency
\nJoshua Ramey, "Contingency Without Unreason: Speculation After Meillassoux" (abstract)
\nVanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, University of British Columbia, at academia.edu
\nFred Moten and Stefano Harney, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study
\nDeleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, Difference and Repetition, and The Logic of Sense
\nQuentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on Contingency
\nElie Ayache, The Blank Swan: The End of Probability
\nWeird Studies, "Does Consciousness Exist?" Parts One and Two
Special Guest: Joshua Ramey.
","summary":"Phil and JF talk with American philosopher Joshua Ramey about his work on chance, contingency, and divination.","date_published":"2018-08-01T11:00:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/2996e483-c847-451b-bbd8-f1483c9f98c5.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mp3","size_in_bytes":83451869,"duration_in_seconds":4147}]},{"id":"c5c9e93e-3a38-4bd4-9c2f-17ac90090ff6","title":"Episode 21: The Trash Stratum - Part 2","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/21","content_text":"The writings of underground filmmaker Jack Smith serve as a starting point for Phil and JF's second tour of the trash stratum. In their wanderings, they will uncover such moldy jewels as the 1944 film Cobra Woman, the exploitation flick She-Devils on Wheels, and (wonder of wonders) Hitchcock's Vertigo. The emergent focus of the conversation is the dichotomy of passionate commitment and ironic perspective, attitudes that largely determine whether a given object will turn out to appear as a negligible piece of garbage... or the Holy Grail. By the end, our hosts realize that even their own personal trash strata may give off shimmers of the divine.\n\nJack Smith, Flaming Creatures \nRobert Siodmak (director), Cobra Woman (1944)\nJack Smith, \"The Perfect Filmic Appositeness of Maria Montez\"\nRoger Scruton, English philosopher\nMystery Science Theater 3000 (TV series)\nKenneth Burke, American literary theorist\nAlfred Hitchcock (director), Vertigo (1958)\nFyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground \nCharles Ludlam's Theater of the Ridiculous\nMel Brooks (director), High Anxiety (1977)\n\"Ironic Porn Purchase Leads to Unironic Ejaculation\", The Onion (1999)\nJames Carse, Finite and Infinite Games\nJorge Luis Borges, \"The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim\"\nHerschell Gordon Louis (director), She-Devils on Wheels\nAndré Bazin, What is Cinema? \nErik Davis, \"The Alchemy of Trash\"\nDavid Lynch, Mulholland Drive\nWilliam James, The Varieties of Religious Experience\nPhil Ford, \"Birth of the Weird\" ","content_html":"The writings of underground filmmaker Jack Smith serve as a starting point for Phil and JF's second tour of the trash stratum. In their wanderings, they will uncover such moldy jewels as the 1944 film Cobra Woman, the exploitation flick She-Devils on Wheels, and (wonder of wonders) Hitchcock's Vertigo. The emergent focus of the conversation is the dichotomy of passionate commitment and ironic perspective, attitudes that largely determine whether a given object will turn out to appear as a negligible piece of garbage... or the Holy Grail. By the end, our hosts realize that even their own personal trash strata may give off shimmers of the divine.
\n\nJack Smith, Flaming Creatures
\nRobert Siodmak (director), Cobra Woman (1944)
\nJack Smith, "The Perfect Filmic Appositeness of Maria Montez"
\nRoger Scruton, English philosopher
\nMystery Science Theater 3000 (TV series)
\nKenneth Burke, American literary theorist
\nAlfred Hitchcock (director), Vertigo (1958)
\nFyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
\nCharles Ludlam's Theater of the Ridiculous
\nMel Brooks (director), High Anxiety (1977)
\n"Ironic Porn Purchase Leads to Unironic Ejaculation", The Onion (1999)
\nJames Carse, Finite and Infinite Games
\nJorge Luis Borges, "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim"
\nHerschell Gordon Louis (director), She-Devils on Wheels
\nAndré Bazin, What is Cinema?
\nErik Davis, "The Alchemy of Trash"
\nDavid Lynch, Mulholland Drive
\nWilliam James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
\nPhil Ford, "Birth of the Weird"
Is the Holy Grail a crushed beer can in the gutter? JF and Phil consider the implications of Philip K. Dick's line, "the symbols of the divine initially show up at the trash stratum." Gnosticism, Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot, Thomas Ligotti's "The Order of Illusion," Jack Smith's glorification of moldy glamour, saints' relics that look like beef jerky -- all this and more in the first of a two-part conversation.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nAleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth
\nPhil Ford, "What Good News Do You Bring?"
\nPhilip K. Dick, The Exegesis
\nPhilip K. Dick, VALIS
\nStanislav Lem, Microworlds
\nJonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind
\nRobertson Davies, The Rebel Angels
\nThomas Ligotti, Noctuary
\nFriedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
\nFrank Darabont (dir.), The Shawshank Redemption
\nWeird Studies podcast, On Tarkovsky's 'Stalker' Part 1 and Part 2
\nRichard Wagner, Parsifal
After announcing that Weird Studies will be going to a bi-weekly release schedule for the summer, Phil and JF talk about how the podcast has gone so far and what's on the horizon (more guests!). Before long, they're digging deep into what makes each of them tick as weird speculators, locating the points at which their ideas differ and converge. The discussion touches on the philosophy of Quentin Meillassoux, the theology of Tertullian, the Beatles, the Coke-Pepsi dichotomy, the art of religion, and more.
\n\nSHOUT OUTS
\nMandala artist Betty Paz
\nInfinite Conversations
\nMichael Garfield, the Future Fossils podcast
\nRamsey Dukes (Lionel Snell), “The Charlatan and the Magus”
\nJoshua Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and the Spiritual Ordeal and The Politics of Divination: Neoliberal Endgame and the Religion of Contingency
REFERENCES
\nPatrick Harpur, The Secret Tradition of the Soul
\nQuentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on Contingency
\nGK Chesterton, Orthodoxy
\nMC Escher, Drawing Hands
\nThe works of Tertullian
JF and Phil finally get down to brass tacks with William James's essay "Does Consciousness Exist?" At the heart of this essay is the concept of what James calls "pure experience," the basic stuff of everything, only it isn't a stuff, but an irreducible multiplicity of everything that exists -- thoughts as well as things. We're used to thinking that thoughts and things belong to fundamentally different orders of being, but what if thoughts are things, too? For one thing, psychical phenomena (a great interest of James's) suddenly become a good deal more plausible. And the imaginal realm, where art and magic make their home, becomes a sovereign domain.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nWilliam James, "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?"
\nSteven Shaviro, The Universe of Things
\nJean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego
\nWilliam James, Essays in Psychical Research
\nWeird Studies D&D episode
\nProust, À la Recherche du Temps Perdu
\nThe Venera 13 probe's photos of the surface of Venus
\nWallace Stevens, "A Postcard from the Volcano"
In this first part of their discussion of William James' classic essay in radical empiricism, "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?", Phil and JF talk about the various ways we use the slippery C-word in contemporary culture. The episode touches on the political charge of the concept of consciousness, the unholy marriage of materialism and idealism ("Kant is the ultimate hipster"), the role of consciousness in the workings of the weird -- basically, anything but the essay in question. That will come in part two.
\n\nHeader image by Miguel Bolacha, Wikimedia Commons
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nWilliam James, "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?"
\nDaniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained
\nDaniel Pinchbeck, author and founder of Reality Sandwich
\nPhil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture
\nScott Saul, Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties
\nQuentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency
\nMatt Cardin - author and editor, creator of The Teeming Brain
JF and Phil tackle Genjokoan, a profound and puzzling work of philosophy by Dogen Zenji. In it, the 13th-century Zen master ponders the question, "If everything is already enlightened, why practice Zen?" As a lapsed Zen practitioner ("a shit buddhist") with many hours of meditation under his belt, Phil draws on personal experience to dig into Dogen's strange and startling answers, while JF speaks from his perspective as a "decadent hedonist." "When one side is illumined," says Dogen, "the other is dark." For proof of this utterance, you could do worse than listen to this episode of Weird Studies.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nDogen Zenji, Genjokoan
\nShohaku Okumura and the Sanshin Zen Community in Bloomington, Indiana
\nPeter Sloterdijk, You Must Change Your Life
\nWeird Studies, Episode 8: "On Graham Harman's 'The Third Table'"
\nGilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement Image
\nJun'ichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows
\nThomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
\nHenri Bergson, Matter and Memory
\nSøren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
\nJoris-Karl Huysmans, À Rebours (Against Nature)
\nChogyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
In this second of a two-part conversation on Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker, Phil and JF explore the film's prophetic dimension, relating it to Samuel R. Delany's classic science-fiction novel Dhalgren, the cultural revolution of the 1960s, the affordances of despair, the spookiness of color, the transformation of noise into music, and the Chernobyl disaster. They even come up with a title for a novel Robert Ludlum never wrote but should have written: The Criterion Rendition!
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nAndrei Tarkovsky (dir.), Stalker
\nSamuel R. Delany, Dhalgren (foreword by William Gibson)
\nH.P. Lovecraft, "The Colour Out of Space"
\nJohn Searle, Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception
\nSteve Reich, Come Out
\nGustav Mahler, Symphony No. 1
\nMartin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology"
\nStanley Kubrick, The Shining
\nThe Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
\nSigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Journey into the Zone to uncover some of the strange artifacts buried in Tarkovsky's cinematic masterpiece, Stalker (1979). In this first of a two-part conversation, Phil and JF discuss a poem by Tarkovsky's dad, compare the film with the sci-fi novel that inspired it, explore the ideological underpinnings of formulaic genre, delve into the meaning and affordances of the concept of zone, and affirm that in a sufficiently weird mindset, even a casual stroll in your hometown can become an excursion into a Zone of your own.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nAndrei Tarkovsky (dir.), Stalker
\nArkady and Boris Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic
\nThe Wachowskis (dir.), The Matrix
\nJames Cameron (dir.), Avatar
\nSecond City Television (SCTV), vintage Canadian comedy show
\nAlex Garland (dir.), Annihilation (based on the novel by Jeff Vandermeer; here's an article on how Garland's film differs from Vandermeer's arguably weirder text)
\nSCTV, Monster Chiller Horror Theatre: Whispers of the Wolf
Heraclitus of Ephesus was one of the great pre-Socratic thinkers. Called the Obscure and the Weeping Philosopher, he left behind a collection of fragments so mysterious and pregnant with meaning that they continue to puzzle scholars to this day. In this episode, Phil and JF use a random number generator to select a number of fragments and speculate about their content. By the end, they will also have disclosed the bizarre contents of JF's tenth-grade "hippie bag," outed Oscar Wilde as a Zen Buddhist, and taken a walking tour of a city that exists only in Phil's dreams.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nPierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy?
\nNorthrop Frye, The Great Code
\nNorthrop Frye, Words with Power
\nI Ching: The Book of Changes
\nOxford World Classics, The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and Sophists
\nWikisource page for Heraclitus
\nJames Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld
\nDogen Zenji, Genjokoan
\nMark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body
\nGilles Deleuze on Spinoza
\nBenedict de Spinoza, Ethics
\nOscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey
\nFriedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
\nNeil Gaiman, Seasons of Mist (the fourth arc of the Sandman series)
\nDeleuze on Dreams
American filmmaker Rodney Ascher is a master of the weird documentary. Whether he be exploring wild interpretations of a classic horror film in Room 237, bracketing the phenomenon of sleep paralysis in The Nightmare, studying the uncanny power of the moving image in "Primal Screen," or considering the sinister power of a kitschy logo in "The S from Hell," Ascher confronts his viewers with realities that resist final explanations and facile reduction. In this episode, Phil and JF follow Ascher's films into the living labyrinth of a strange universe that isn't just unknown, but radically unknowable.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nAmerican filmmaker Rodney Ascher, director of "The S from Hell", Room 237, The Nightmare, and "Primal Screen"
\nJames Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld
\nThe Duffer Brothers (directors), Stranger Things (web TV series)
\nAlan Landsburg (creator), In Search Of... with Leonard Nimoy (American TV series)
\nErrol Morris (director), The Thin Blue Line
\nAnn and Jeff Vandermeer (editors), The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
\nBritish speculative writer Michael Moorcock
\nLord Dunsany, The Gods of Pegana
\nArthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
\nStanley Kubrick (writer-director), The Shining
\nRichard Attenborough (director), Magic
\nSandor Stern (writer-director), Pin
\nFreud, "The Uncanny"
\nFreud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle
\nDavid Lynch (writer-director), Lost Highway
\nFrench psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan
\nDuncan Barford, Occult Experiments in the Home: Personal Explorations of Magick and the Paranormal
\nJF Martel, "Ramble on the Real"
\nPhil Ford, "Birth of the Weird"
\nAmerican astronomer Carl Sagan
\nCharles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity
\nRené Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
\n
M. R. James' "The Mezzotint" is one of the most fascinating, and most chilling, examples of the classic ghost story. In this episode, Phil and JF discover what this tale of haunted images and buried secrets tells us about the reality of ideas, the singularity of events, the virtual power of the symbol, and the enduring magic of the art object in the age of mechanical reproduction.
\n\nTo accompany this episode, Phil recorded a full reading of the story. Listen to it here.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nM.R. James, "The Mezzotint"
\nRobert Aickman, English author of "strange stories"
\nEdgar Allan Poe, "The Oval Portrait"
\nWalter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
\nMarshall McLuhan, The Book of Probes
\nClement Greenberg, American art critic
\nJ.F. Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice
\nMarcel Duchamps, Fountain
\nHenri Bergson, Laughter
\nJohn Cage, American composer
\nDavid Lynch (director), Twin Peaks: The Return
\nGilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
\nVilhelm Hammershøi, Danish painter
\nSigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle
\nMartin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?
\nStanley Kubrick, [The Shining](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shining(film))_
\nFerruccio Busoni, Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music
\nDavid Lynch on why you shouldn't watch films on your phone
\nNelson Goodman, American philosopher
\nPablo Picasso, Guernica
\nPaul Thomas Anderson, The Master
\nMartin Heidegger, Basic Writings
\nPhil Ford, "No One Understands You"
M. R. James has been hailed as the unrivalled maser of the classic ghost tale, and his powers are at their zenith in "The Mezzotint," a story that first appeared in his 1904 collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. In it, James reimagines the Gothic trope of the haunted picture in a weird new light. The text, read here by co-host Phil Ford, serves as a springboard for Weird Studies episode 11, where we discuss the enduring power of the art object in the age of mechanical reproduction.
","summary":"An unabridged reading of M. R. James' classic ghost story, \"The Mezzotint,\" read by Weird Studies co-host, Phil Ford.","date_published":"2018-04-23T13:00:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/a91cbd41-8de2-411e-838a-78973caee39b.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mp3","size_in_bytes":33596127,"duration_in_seconds":1654}]},{"id":"0436d49e-538d-4f8d-bd0e-10e5c4ce8791","title":"Episode 10: Philip K. Dick: Adrift in the Multiverse","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/10","content_text":"In 1977, Philip K. Dick read an essay in France entitled, \"If You Find this World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others.\" In it, he laid out one of the dominant tropes of his fictional oeuvre, the idea of parallel universes. It became clear in the course of the lecture that Dick didn't intend this to be a talk about science fiction, but about real life - indeed, about his life. In this episode, Phil and JF seriously consider the speculations which, depending on whom you ask, make PKD either a genius or a madman. This distinction may not matter in the end. As Dick himself wrote in his 8,000-page Exegesis: \"The madman speaks the moral of the piece.\"\n\nREFERENCES\n\nPhilip K. Dick, excerpts from “If You Find This World Bad You Should See Some Of The Others” \nR. Crumb, The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick\nEmmanuel Carrère, I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick \n“20 Examples of the Mandela Effect That’ll Make You Believe You’re In A Parallel Universe” \nPhilip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle \nWeird Studies, \"Episode 9: On Aleister Crowley and the Idea of Magick\"\nWeird Studies, \"Episode 4: Exploring the Weird with Erik Davis\"\nWilliam Shakespeare, The Tempest\nSun Ra, Space is the Place\nZebrapedia (crowdsourced online transcribing/editing of the Exegesis) \nRamsey Dukes (Lionel Snell), Words Made Flesh \nDaniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained \nBernado Kastrup, Why Materialism is Baloney\nGordon White, Star.Ships: A Prehistory of the Spirits \nNick Bostrom, “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” ","content_html":"In 1977, Philip K. Dick read an essay in France entitled, "If You Find this World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others." In it, he laid out one of the dominant tropes of his fictional oeuvre, the idea of parallel universes. It became clear in the course of the lecture that Dick didn't intend this to be a talk about science fiction, but about real life - indeed, about his life. In this episode, Phil and JF seriously consider the speculations which, depending on whom you ask, make PKD either a genius or a madman. This distinction may not matter in the end. As Dick himself wrote in his 8,000-page Exegesis: "The madman speaks the moral of the piece."
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nPhilip K. Dick, excerpts from “If You Find This World Bad You Should See Some Of The Others”
\nR. Crumb, The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick
\nEmmanuel Carrère, I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick
\n“20 Examples of the Mandela Effect That’ll Make You Believe You’re In A Parallel Universe”
\nPhilip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle
\nWeird Studies, "Episode 9: On Aleister Crowley and the Idea of Magick"
\nWeird Studies, "Episode 4: Exploring the Weird with Erik Davis"
\nWilliam Shakespeare, The Tempest
\nSun Ra, Space is the Place
\nZebrapedia (crowdsourced online transcribing/editing of the Exegesis)
\nRamsey Dukes (Lionel Snell), Words Made Flesh
\nDaniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained
\nBernado Kastrup, Why Materialism is Baloney
\nGordon White, Star.Ships: A Prehistory of the Spirits
\nNick Bostrom, “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?”
The plan was to discuss the introduction to Aleister Crowley's classic work, Magick in Theory and Practice (1924), a powerful text on the nature and purpose of magical practice. JF and Phil stick to the plan for the first part of the show, and then veer off into a dialogue on the basic idea of magic. Along the way, they share some of the intriguing results of their own occult experiments.
\n\nREFERENCES
\n\nPhoto of JF's "large sum" cheque
\nAleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice
\nThe Gospel According to Thomas
\nJames George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion
\nErik Davis, "Weird Shit"
\nI Ching, The Book of Changes
\nJoshua Gunn, Modern Occult Rhetoric: Mass Media and the Drama of Secrecy in the Twentieth Century
\nThe Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage
\nThe Shackleton Expedition
\nGrant Morrison on how to do sigil magic
\nAlan Chapman, Advanced Magick for Beginners
\nDavid Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
\nDavid Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding
\nJoshua Ramey, "Contingency Without Unreason"
\nQuentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency
\nE. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande
\nH. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
JF and Phil discuss Graham Harman's "The Third Table," a short and accessible introduction to "object-oriented ontology." Phil takes us on a tour of his closet, we discover that JF's kids are better at this weird studies stuff than their old man, and the conversation veers through Harman's Lovecraftian "weird realism," Zen's "just sit" meditation, panpsychism, Martin Buber's I and Thou, experimental filmmaking, and more.
\n\nWORKS AND IDEAS CITED IN THIS EPISODE
\n\nGraham Harman, "The Third Table"
\nGraham Harman, Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects
\nMartin Heidegger, Being in Time
\nJ. F. Martel, "Ramble on the Real"
\nGraham Harman, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy
\nH. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"
\nArthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World
\nGraham Harman, "Objects and the Arts" (lecture)
\nBernardo Kastrup, Why Materialism is Baloney
\nDaniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained
\nWalden, A Game – A computer game based on Heny David Thoreau’s classic work, Walden
\nSouth Park, “Guitar Queer-O” (season 11, episode 13)
\nWikipedia entry on art critic David Hickey
\nHeraclitus, Fragments
\nMartin Buber, I and Thou
\nThe concept of “substantial form” in Aristotle’s philosophy
\nMartin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology"
\nSteven Shaviro, The Universe of Things
\nWilliam James, "Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?"
\nAndy Warhol’s minimalist films Empire and Sleep
\nWikipedia entry on filmmaker Terrence Malick
\nNeil Jordan (director), The End of the Affair (based on the novel by Graham Greene)
\nJ. F. Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice
\nGustav Klimt, The Kiss (painting)
\nMatthew Akers (director), David Blaine: Beyond Magic
\nThe Duffer Brothers (directors), Stranger Things 2
For as long as they've been pounding the crap out of each other for good reasons, humans have also been pounding the crap out of each other for fun. Everywhere, in ever age, elaborate systems, rituals, and traditions have arisen to ring in the practice of violence and thereby offer the rough beast that lurks in every soul a chance to come out for a stretch in the sun. In this episode, Phil and JF delve into one of the most scandalous affairs of all: the illicit dalliance of Aphrodite and Ares, beauty and violence.
\n\nWORKS & IDEAS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
\n\nErnest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon
\nJames Hillman, A Terrible Love of War
\nHomer, The Odyssey
\nJoyce Carol Oates, On Boxing
\nLa fosse aux tigres (documentary directed by Jason Brennan and JF Martel; Nish Media)
\nWalter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
\nRichard Strauss's opera Salome
\nGur Hirshberg, "Burke, Kant, and the Sublime"
\nGilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense
The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga was one of the first thinkers to define games as exercises in world-making. Every game, he wrote, occurs within a magic circle where the rules of ordinary life are suspended and new laws come into play. No game illustrates this better than Gary Gygax's tabletop RPG, Dungeons & Dragons. In this episode, Phil and JF use D&D as the focus of a conversation about the weird interdependence of reality and fantasy.
\n\nHeader image: Gaetan Bahl (Wikimedia Commons)
\n\nWORKS CITED OR DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE
\n\nOfficial homepage of the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game
\n\nCritical Role web series
\n
\nAnother RPG podcast JF failed to mention: The HowWeRoll Podcast
Demetrious Johnson’s Twitch site
\n
Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine (documentary)
\n
\nChessboxing!
\n
\nJackson Lears, Something for Nothing: Luck in America
\n
\nPeter Fischli, The Way Things Go
\n
\nJon Cogburn and Mark Silcox, Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy: Raiding the Temple of Wisdom
\n
\nLawrence Schick, ed., Deities & Demigods: Cyclopedia of Gods and Heroes from Myth and Legend
\n
\nArticle on Mazes and Monsters, a movie that came out of the D&D moral panic of the 1980s
\n
\nPhil Ford, “Xenorationality”
\n
\nJohan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element of Culture
\n
\nJohn Sinclair, [Guitar Army: Rock and Revolution with the MC5 and the White Panther Party](https://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Army-Revolution-White-Panther/dp/1934170003)
Phil and JF discuss Lisa Ruddick's "When Nothing is Cool," an essay on the postmodern humanities and its allergy to essences -- especially that personal essence we call soul. Maybe the soul is a heap of miscellaneous notions and influences that I paint a face onto and then call "me." Or maybe there is something under that painted effigy of the self. If so, what? And if there's nothing under there, could it be a nothing that delivers?
\n\nWORKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE
\n\nLisa Ruddick, "When Nothing is Cool"
\n\nElizabeth Gilbert, "Your Elusive Creative Genius"
\n\nJudith Halberstam, "Skinflick: Posthuman Gender in Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs"
\n\nDaniel Chua (the musicologist whose name Phil couldn't remember)
\n\nBrett Easton Ellis, American Psycho
\n\nMary Harron, American Psycho (film)
\n\nDavid Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return
","summary":"Phil and JF do their best to weird the cultural politics of the postmodern academy. ","date_published":"2018-03-13T15:45:00.000-04:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/61e6357d-d09b-4ec0-aa93-2f9f9b0344f8.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":83130487,"duration_in_seconds":4131}]},{"id":"97a9990a-22db-415f-b25a-6eaf92677a5c","title":"Episode 4: Exploring the Weird with Erik Davis","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/4","content_text":"Scholar, journalist and author Erik Davis joins Phil and JF for a freewheeling conversation on the permutations of the weird, Burning Man, speculative realism, the uncanny, the H. P. Lovecraft/Philip K. Dick syzygy, and how the world has gotten weirder (and less weird) since Erik’s groundbreaking Techgnosis was published twenty years ago.\n\nWORKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:\n\nErik Davis’s Techgnosis website \n\nErik Davis's podcast, Expanding Mind\n\nErik Davis, Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information \n\nErik Davis, Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica \n\nErik Davis, Led Zeppelin IV \n\nMark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie \n\nPhilip K. Dick, Exegesis \n\nGoop Magazine, no. 2 \n\nHakim Bey and the Temporary Autonomous Zone \n\nThe Burning Man Festival \n\nIan Hacking, The Taming of Chance \n\nErik Davis, “Weird Shit” \n\nJF Martel, “How Symbols Matter” \n\nHenri Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics\n\nCharles Baudelaire, “Correspondances” from Fleurs du mal \n\nSigmund Freud, “The Uncanny” \n\nDeleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus \n\nThe Onion, “Lovecraftian School Board Member Wants Madness Added to Curriculum” Special Guest: Erik Davis.","content_html":"Scholar, journalist and author Erik Davis joins Phil and JF for a freewheeling conversation on the permutations of the weird, Burning Man, speculative realism, the uncanny, the H. P. Lovecraft/Philip K. Dick syzygy, and how the world has gotten weirder (and less weird) since Erik’s groundbreaking Techgnosis was published twenty years ago.
\n\nWORKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
\n\nErik Davis’s Techgnosis website
\n\nErik Davis's podcast, Expanding Mind
\n\nErik Davis, Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information
\n\nErik Davis, Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica
\n\nErik Davis, Led Zeppelin IV
\n\nMark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie
\n\nPhilip K. Dick, Exegesis
\n\n\n\nHakim Bey and the Temporary Autonomous Zone
\n\nThe Burning Man Festival
\n\nIan Hacking, The Taming of Chance
\n\nErik Davis, “Weird Shit”
\n\nJF Martel, “How Symbols Matter”
\n\nHenri Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics
\n\nCharles Baudelaire, “Correspondances” from Fleurs du mal
\n\nSigmund Freud, “The Uncanny”
\n\nDeleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus
\n\nThe Onion, “Lovecraftian School Board Member Wants Madness Added to Curriculum”
Special Guest: Erik Davis.
","summary":"Scholar, author and journalist Erik Davis joins Phil and JF to talk about Weird Sh*t.","date_published":"2018-03-07T10:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/97a9990a-22db-415f-b25a-6eaf92677a5c.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":97871889,"duration_in_seconds":4868}]},{"id":"bce082e5-bd88-4ddd-b2ea-35ea50af4f23","title":"Episode 3: Ecstasy, Sin, and \"The White People\"","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/3","content_text":"JF and Phil delve deep into Arthur Machen's fin-de-siècle masterpiece, \"The White People,\" for insight into the nature of ecstasy, the psychology of fairies, the meaning of sin, and the challenge of living without a moral horizon.\n\nWORKS CITED OR DISCUSSED\n\nArthur Machen, \"The White People\" - full text or Weird Stories audiobook read by Phil Ford\n\nArthur Machen, Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy\n\nH. P. Lovecraft, \"Supernatural Horror in Literature\"\n\nJ.F. Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice\n\nSusanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell\n\nJack Sullivan (ed)., The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural\n\nJohn Keel, The Mothman Prophecies: A True Story\n\nPatrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality\n\nJacques Vallee, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers\n\nLouis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians\n\nMichael Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison\n\nJ.K. Huysmans, Against Nature (À rebours)","content_html":"JF and Phil delve deep into Arthur Machen's fin-de-siècle masterpiece, "The White People," for insight into the nature of ecstasy, the psychology of fairies, the meaning of sin, and the challenge of living without a moral horizon.
\n\nWORKS CITED OR DISCUSSED
\n\nArthur Machen, "The White People" - full text or Weird Stories audiobook read by Phil Ford
\n\nArthur Machen, Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy
\n\nH. P. Lovecraft, "Supernatural Horror in Literature"
\n\nJ.F. Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice
\n\nSusanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
\n\nJack Sullivan (ed)., The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural
\n\nJohn Keel, The Mothman Prophecies: A True Story
\n\nPatrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality
\n\nJacques Vallee, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers
\n\nLouis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians
\n\nMichael Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
\n\nJ.K. Huysmans, Against Nature (À rebours)
","summary":"JF and Phil discuss key themes and ideas from Arthur Machen's weird story, \"The White People.\"","date_published":"2018-02-21T10:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/bce082e5-bd88-4ddd-b2ea-35ea50af4f23.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":96422113,"duration_in_seconds":4795}]},{"id":"45693436-ec1b-46aa-9fac-8d4cf65bf8a4","title":"Weird Stories: Arthur Machen's \"The White People\"","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/3a","content_text":"Weird Stories is a series of readings for Weird Studies listeners who want to dig deeper into the themes and ideas discussed on the Weird Studies podcast.\n\nIn his seminal essay \"Supernatural Horror in Literature,\" H. P. Lovecraft named Arthur Machen one of the four \"modern masters\" of horror fiction, alongside Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, and M. R. James. Born in 1863, Machen burst onto the London literary scene in 1890 with the controversial novella \"The Great God Pan.\" He was briefly considered one of the luminaries of the Decadent movement before falling into obscurity and experiencing a literary rebirth toward the end of his life. \n\nIn this Weird Stories installment, Phil Ford reads the complete text of one of Machen's most famous works, \"The White People\" (1904).","content_html":"Weird Stories is a series of readings for Weird Studies listeners who want to dig deeper into the themes and ideas discussed on the Weird Studies podcast.
\n\nIn his seminal essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature," H. P. Lovecraft named Arthur Machen one of the four "modern masters" of horror fiction, alongside Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, and M. R. James. Born in 1863, Machen burst onto the London literary scene in 1890 with the controversial novella "The Great God Pan." He was briefly considered one of the luminaries of the Decadent movement before falling into obscurity and experiencing a literary rebirth toward the end of his life.
\n\nIn this Weird Stories installment, Phil Ford reads the complete text of one of Machen's most famous works, "The White People" (1904).
","summary":"A complete reading of Arthur Machen's 1904 novella, \"The White People,\" by co-host Phil Ford. This reading accompanies the upcoming episode of the Weird Studies podcast where J.F. and Phil plumb the imaginal depths of the classic weird tale.","date_published":"2018-02-19T10:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/45693436-ec1b-46aa-9fac-8d4cf65bf8a4.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":93200746,"duration_in_seconds":5793}]},{"id":"a1fb41a1-927d-4b59-bfbc-761dfefba176","title":"Episode 2: Garmonbozia","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/2","content_text":"Phil and JF use a word from the Twin Peaks mythos, \"garmonbozia,\" to try to understand what it was that the detonation of atomic bomb brought into the world. We use the fictional world of Twin Peaks as a map to the (so-called) real world and take Philip K. Dick, Krzysztof Penderecki, Norman Mailer, William S. Burroughs, Theodor Adorno, and H.P. Lovecraft as our landmarks.\n\nWarning: some spoilers of Twin Peaks season 3.\n\nWorks Cited or Discussed:\n\nPhil Ford, \"The Cold War Never Ended\", Dial M for Musicology (1) (2) (3) (4) \n\nTwin Peaks: The Return — Official Site \n\nPhilip K. Dick, “The Empire Never Ended,” treated in R. Crumb’s “The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick” and the “Tractate” from Dick’s Exegesis: http://www.tekgnostics.com/PDK.HTM\n\nNorman Mailer, “The White Negro” \n\nRay Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction \n\nJ.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion \n\nArthur Machen, The White People \n\nRobert Oppenheimer, “I am become death” \n\nC.G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle\n\nWilliam S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch\n\nHoward Phillips Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu \n\nWilliam B. Yeats, \"The Second Coming\" \n\nKrzysztof Penderecki, Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima\n\nThe Book of Ecclesiastes \n\nJon H. Else, The Day After Trinity (documentary) \n\nFrancisco Goya, \"The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters\" \n\nStanley Kubrick, Doctor Strangelove, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb \n\nTheodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment\n\nJean Beaudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation \n\nGuy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle\n\nWilliam James, A Pluralistic Universe\n\nNorman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself","content_html":"Phil and JF use a word from the Twin Peaks mythos, "garmonbozia," to try to understand what it was that the detonation of atomic bomb brought into the world. We use the fictional world of Twin Peaks as a map to the (so-called) real world and take Philip K. Dick, Krzysztof Penderecki, Norman Mailer, William S. Burroughs, Theodor Adorno, and H.P. Lovecraft as our landmarks.
\n\nWarning: some spoilers of Twin Peaks season 3.
\n\nPhil Ford, "The Cold War Never Ended", Dial M for Musicology (1) (2) (3) (4)
\n\nTwin Peaks: The Return — Official Site
\n\nPhilip K. Dick, “The Empire Never Ended,” treated in R. Crumb’s “The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick” and the “Tractate” from Dick’s Exegesis: http://www.tekgnostics.com/PDK.HTM
\n\nNorman Mailer, “The White Negro”
\n\nRay Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction
\n\nJ.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion
\n\nArthur Machen, The White People
\n\nRobert Oppenheimer, “I am become death”
\n\nC.G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle
\n\nWilliam S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
\n\nHoward Phillips Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
\n\nWilliam B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"
\n\nKrzysztof Penderecki, Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
\n\n\n\nJon H. Else, The Day After Trinity (documentary)
\n\nFrancisco Goya, "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters"
\n\nStanley Kubrick, Doctor Strangelove, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
\n\nTheodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment
\n\nJean Beaudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation
\n\nGuy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle
\n\nWilliam James, A Pluralistic Universe
\n\nNorman Mailer, Advertisements for Myself
","summary":"Phil and JF use Twin Peaks mythos to try to understand what it was that the detonation of atomic bomb brought into the world. Our answer: garmonbozia and plenty of it. ","date_published":"2018-02-01T07:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/a1fb41a1-927d-4b59-bfbc-761dfefba176.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mp3","size_in_bytes":83104035,"duration_in_seconds":5162}]},{"id":"0d8562d6-9ad7-4b2e-bb4c-ded44068de7d","title":"Episode 1: Introduction to Weird Studies","url":"https://www.weirdstudies.com/1","content_text":"Phil and J.F. share stories of sleep paralysis and talk about Charles Fort's sympathy for the damned, Jeff Kripal's phenomenological approach to Fortean weirdness, Dave Hickey's notion of beauty as democracy, and Timothy Morton's hyperobjects. ","content_html":"Phil and J.F. share stories of sleep paralysis and talk about Charles Fort's sympathy for the damned, Jeff Kripal's phenomenological approach to Fortean weirdness, Dave Hickey's notion of beauty as democracy, and Timothy Morton's hyperobjects.
","summary":"Phil and J.F. attempt to explain the non-existent field of Weird Studies.","date_published":"2018-01-31T08:00:00.000-05:00","attachments":[{"url":"https://chtbl.com/track/5DD79/aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/0d8562d6-9ad7-4b2e-bb4c-ded44068de7d.mp3","mime_type":"audio/mpeg","size_in_bytes":31519169,"duration_in_seconds":1938}]}]}![Wikimedia Commons](\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Olive_Oil_on_Water_%2847993245783%29.jpg\"){kind=link}
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