Inspired by Nader, Farritor and Schilliger's recent AI-assisted decryption of ancient texts, netting them the $1m Vesuvius Challenge Prize, I attempt to crack the code of a 1000 year old Japanese poem using Google's Gemini chatbot.

I pose to Gemini the four cryptic questions in the form of a poem about love's paradoxes by Izumi Shikibu, whose work was celebrated by Kenneth Rexroth with the following words: “Of all the poets of the classical period, she has, to my mind, the deepest and most poignant Buddhist sensibility.”

Can the latest Oogly Woogly Google tech finally solve riddles that have puzzled human readers and thinkers for centuries?

--

Things I Want Decided

-Izumi Shikibu (tr. Jane Hirshfield)

An episode inspired by Tadeusz Dąbrowski's poem "Sentence", Nick Flynn's "Tattoo" and Jack Gilbert's "The Answer":

SENTENCE

It's as if you'd woken in a locked cell and found

TATTOO

You do know, right,

longer & the still-

you are being continually

with the skulls of

you’ve ever loved—the you

& the you & the you—you don’t

through a binder, pick a

happens each time you

to inhale him back into you . . .

covered. You, love, could

simply tattoo an open

pouring in from somewhere

could make your body a door

(let her fill you) are made

TOPICS COVERED: Alienation; Analytical preparation; Ashberry's trees; Authenticity; Birth and self-discovery; Boundaries of essence; Communication dynamics; Confinement vs. liberation; Consciousness; Contemplation of existence; Cosmic symbolism; Cultural backgrounds; Daily Mail controversy; Deciphering life's language; Developmental path; Disorientation and discovery; Emotional reactivity; Enlightenment and insight; Estrangement and alienation; Ethical boundaries in therapy; Experience of reading a poem; Exploration of self; Expression and concealment; Fowles' "The Magus"; Genie metaphor; Gilbert's "The Answer"; Goldilocks metaphor; Human existential trajectory; Identity construction; Illusion of continuity; Individuality vs. collective unconscious; Intercostal nerves and pain; Interpersonal misunderstanding; Interpretation of symbols; Introspection and growth; Kabbalah and symbolism; Language as a cage; Language's role in suffering; Liberation magic; Life-defining tattoos; Linguistic clichés; Locked cell metaphor; Masson's "Final Analysis"; Merwin's trees; Misunderstanding as growth; Mystic union with God; Narrative construction; Neurological aspects of communication; Personal biases; Physical and mental isolation; Poetic inspiration; Potential for exploitation; Psychoanalytic dynamics; Ramanujan's trees; Recycled materials of past experiences; Relational nuances; Revelation of self-awareness; Rites of passage; Schiffer's character and influence; Self-awareness dawn; Semiotics of Hebrew letters; Silence and bliss; Social contexts; Spiritual symbolism; Stafford's "The Interior Castle"; Symbolic language complexity; Symbolic realm's labyrinth; Symbols interpretation; Tattoo as therapeutic act; Therapeutic boundaries; Transformation through language; Unraveling of human story; Vulnerability and humility.

[Transcript of episode]

Being an Anne Carson megafan (looking forward to her new collection ⁠Wrong Norma ⁠published this month) I decided to spend an evening with an artefact she created in 2016 called ⁠Float⁠ comprising 22 chapbooks held together in whatever order you choose to read them in, one of which is an essay that I’m about to read here.

This essay, "⁠Variations on the Right to Remain Silent"⁠, is also linked to my favourite poem in Float which can be found in the chapbook Candor, written originally for a performance piece with dancer Rashaun Mitchell.

COULD I

If you are not the free person you want to be you must find a place to tell the truth about that. To tell how things go for you. Candor is like a skein being produced inside the belly day after day, it has to get itself woven out somewhere. You could whisper down a well. You could write a letter and keep it in a drawer. You could inscribe a curse on a ribbon of lead and bury it in the ground to lie unread for thousands of years. The point is not to find a reader, the point is the telling itself. Consider a person standing alone in a room. The house is silent. She is looking down at a piece of paper. Nothing else exists. All her veins go down into this paper. She takes her pen and writes on it some marks no one else will ever see, she bestows on it a kind of surplus, she tops it off with a gesture as private and accurate as her own name.

I've called "Variations on the Right to Remain Silent" an essay, but I prefer to think of it as An Event, or a kind of Performance - or a weird and delightful lecture.

If you’re anything like me, finding such a koan is usually followed by an overwhelming desire to share. Hence. 

POEMS REFERRED TO IN THIS EPISODE:

Fragment 286

-⁠Ibykos⁠

Tubingen, January

Visits of drowned joiners to

-Paul Celan

TOPICS/THEMES:

Adam and Eve,

Aphrodite,

Artistic representation and interpretation,

Authenticity and translation,

Bacon, Francis,

Catastrophe as a creative force,

Celan, Paul,

Cliché and its avoidance,

Communication barriers,

Consciousness and self-awareness,

Divine versus human language,

Greek lyric poetry,

Historical and cultural translation,

Hölderlin, Friedrich,

Immortality and the divine,

Individual versus authority conflict,

Joan of Arc,

Language's limitations and potential,

Madness as a method of understanding,

Metaphorical versus literal interpretation,

Mythology's influence on art and literature,

Nature of reality and perception,

Personal identity and expression,

Power of silence and absence,

Rembrandt,

Relationship between language and thought,

Role of the translator,

Sacred versus profane knowledge,

Struggle against conventional norms,

Subjectivity of experience,

Untranslatability and the ineffable,

Violence and its representation

An episode inspired by two Dalton Day poems: "Love Poem" and "An Understanding" (from the chapbook Overlay).

All poems referenced in the episode (in order of appearance):  

YOU SEE I WANT A LOT

You see, I want a lot.

So many live on and want nothing

But what you love to see are faces

You have not grown old,

-Rilke

LOVE POEM

Every now & then like a gazillion cicadas

-Dalton Day

AN UNDERSTANDING

Because howling

Because covering

Because going underground

One time,

-Dalton Day

STOP THINKING AND END YOUR PROBLEMS

How do I know that it’s “good”? I can’t compare it to anything.

Everything reminds me of it, but I don’t know what “it” is.

-Elisa Gabbert (remixed version | full poem)

--

LINKS: 

Saved By A Poem (Kim Rosen)

Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (David Abram)

The Wheels On The Bus (Noodle & Pals Version)

Drop It Like It's Hot (Snoop Dogg)

Brown Cicada Being Made To Scream By A Human Animal

Going Sane (Adam Phillips)

Dvořák: Gypsy Melodies, Op. 55, B. 104 - IV. Songs My Mother Taught Me (Arr. Soltani For Solo Cello and Cello Ensemble)

I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl (Nina Simone: Live Version | album track)

Transcript

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TOPICS COVERED IN THIS EPISODE (in alphabetical order):

Abram, David; Appetite; Awakenings; Becoming Animal; Being; Buddhism; Carnal Knowledge; Cicadas; Cloned Voices; Consciousness; Creativity; Dalton Day; Death; Desire; Disappointment; Disconnection; Dreams; Ego; Elisa Gabbert; Emergence; Emotion; Empathy; Enlightenment; Essence; Existentialism; Expression; Fear; Fulfillment; Gwyneth Paltrow; Healing; Hot Yoga Teachers; Human Experience; Identity; Imagination; Indigenous Tribes; Inevitability; Insights; Instinct; Intellectual Curiosity; Introspection; Joy; Knowledge; Language; Learning; Liberation; Life; Longing; Love; Love Poem; Mastery; Meaning-Making; Memory; Misfits; Music; Nature; Neurons; Nursery Rhymes; Pain; Passion; Perception; Philosophy; Poem; Poetry; Practice; Psychoanalysis; Psychotherapy; Reciprocity; Reflection; Relationships; Resonance; Rilke, Rainer Maria; Rituals; Rosen, Kim; Samsara; Self-Awareness; Self-Improvement; Shamanism; Sheffield; Social Dynamics; Somatic Memory; South-East Asia; Speechify; Spiritual; Suffering; Symbolism; Terror; Therapy; Thought; Transformation; Transcendence; Understanding; Utterance; Validation; Vision; Voice; Wanting; Workshop; Yoga; Zen.

An episode inspired by two Wendell Berry poems:

A MEETING

In a dream I meet

EXCEPT

Now that you have gone

Bieber's Peaches

Mahalia's Peaches

Virgins? What Virgins? (Moslem Martyrs)

Adam Phillips & Devorah Baum (Attention Seeking)

Text version (with longer/better explanation of W.D. Hamilton's R-values!)

An episode inspired by Noor Hindi's poem 🐳 The World’s Loneliest Whale Sings the Loudest Song 🐳

The World’s Loneliest Whale Sings the Loudest Song & Other Confessions

I won’t make metaphors out of fish.

If I have to die, I choose the ocean. If I have to live, I choose you.

You: Everyone I’ve ever mourned.

I believe less & less of sunlight these days. I won’t die alone.

To awaken crying is to awaken displaced. Ghost of your joy in the bathtub. A face in the mirror. Your nephew’s painting in the foyer.

My mother cried in bedrooms growing up. I would study her for hours.

In a study, researchers learned patients who cried less are likely to have dismissive attachment styles.

Today, every bedroom in the house is mine. I stopped crying at age 12.

As a child, I spoke a language no one understood.

Research suggests loneliness increases cardiovascular disease.

When my cousin died, she died alone. When the world collapsed around Darwish, he wrote of coffee and sex.

When you held my body close to yours, I thought of clementines, sweet citrus, all the world’s lemons we’d temper with honey.

The world’s loneliest whale sings the loudest song.

This is what you’ll tell me the first time we meet.

And I’ll think about the ocean. And I’ll think about you.

I never learned how to swim. I’ve been drowning my whole life.

Studies suggest drowning lasts 1-3 minutes. But I’ll never stop grieving.

Scientists are still searching for the 52-hertz whale. But I swear he’s here. In my bedroom.

And I can hear him. And he’s telling me I can stop.

-Noor Hindi

The Loneliest Whale In The World

The Tone Deaf Saltburn TikTok Dance Craze

Noor Hindi - FPAC Speaker Series Presentation

In this episode, I explore our longing for basic trust, weaving together poetry (Pat Schneider, Rilke), philosophy (the Stoical idea of Logos, Cosmic Indifference, Animism), and psychology (Ego Psychology, Object Relations, and the developmental impact of early relationships) in order to make sense of our mistrust and the desire for deeper, authentic connections in a digital and fragmented world.

I suggest that this existential trust, foundational to well-being, is often found in the poetics of objects, putting us on the path to discovering the You we need in our lives.

SEGMENTS:

(00:00) The Art of Online Personas: Decoding the Facade of Dating Profiles

(03:00) Unveiling Basic Trust: Perspectives from A.H. Almaas on Digital Connections

(04:35) Stoic Echoes in the Modern Psyche: Linking Logos to Basic Trust

(05:18) Rational Cosmos, Illusion of Free Will: Stoicism's View on Life's Order

(08:41) Embracing Cosmic Virtue: Stoicism's Guide to Harmonious Living

(9:50) Cosmic Indifference versus Inherent Benevolence: A Philosophical Dilemma

(10:41) Science and the Search for Universal Goodness: The Stoic Conundrum Faced With Camus' Absurd

(12:46) The Formation of Self: Insights from Ego Psychology and Early Experiences

(13:24) Decoding Personality: The Role of The Enneagram and MBTI in Ego Development

(19:09) Assessing Basic Trust: A Basic Trust Assessment

(21:58) Animism: Rebuilding Trust through a Connected Worldview?

(25:20) Ordinary Things, Extraordinary Patience: Finding Connection in Animism?

The Patience of Ordinary Things

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

-Pat Schneider

The Inner Rose

Where is there for this inner
an outer? Upon which hurt
does one lay such fine linen?
And which heavens are reflected within them,
upon the interior seas
of these open roses, these carefree ones, see:
how loose in looseness
they lie, as if a trembling hand
could never tip them over.
They can hardly hold themselves
erect; many allow themselves
be filled all too full and flow
over from inner space
into the days, which, ever
more and more full, close in upon themselves,
until the entire summer becomes
a chamber, a chamber in a dream.

-Rainer-Maria Rilke (tr. Mitchell)

Resources and Reference:

-Facets of Unity (A.H. Aalmas)

-In Our Time: Marcus Aurelius (Radio 4)

-The Handbook of Contemporary Animism (edited by Graham Harvey)

-Graham Harvey’s Animist Manifesto

-Michal Zerkowski's article about Irving Hallowell's research on the Ojibwe animism

-The Perception of The Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling, and Skill (Tim Ingold)

Music:

-Breathless (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds)

-Chips & Dip (Sam Greenfield)

-With You (Teenage Fanclub)

-Nocturnes & Meditations (Matt Tondut)
-Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variation 1 (Arr. for Harp) - Parker Ramsay

-When Everything Fades (Matt Tondut)

Primarily an excuse to play you Tindersticks' gorgeous "Travelling Light", but also an attempt to unravel in 15 minutes the world of referential delusions, where ordinary events assume personal significance in ways that cross the boundary between quirky beliefs and mental disorders.

Meet, my ex-client 'Eric' and his unshakable notion that love signals are being played to him, and him alone, from a DJ's playlist who professes to have no romantic interest in him at all.

The poem mentioned in the episode is this one by Elizabeth Bishop:

One Art

Parallels drawn between Marcus Aurelius's Meditations and Byron Katie’s Loving What Is, with a nod to the Philosopher King’s son, Commodus (“a bit of a shit” - Cassio Dio, History of the Roman Empire).

Also, some late Wallace Stevens, doing "The Work”.

The Plain Sense of Things

After the leaves have fallen, we return

Our desire for meaningful communication with an inner or outer You in W.S. Graham's What Is The Language Using Us For, and Maureen McClane's Open Sky.

OPEN SKY