Baffling Combustions

Here in this first of a two-part series we tackle "now" from numerous vantages, among others including as a word with all its practical denotation and connotations as well as its application to "being in the present," as popularly voiced by Eckhart Tolle. It includes the beginnings of a near-term historical perspective in its use from the 1960s as it's evolved into a pseudo-secular faith call. FAIR WARNING: Reflecting our attempt to get to now, this session's quiet points have been struck and/or shrunk to induce a rapid fire (an element of combustion).

"NOW 2" starts where one (NOW 1) in this series was abandoned, and as it occurs on our 2020 Election Day its attention's magnetized to its cultural and political nuances, with no small amount of fragmentary presence. This session concludes with a recording from Claudia Rankine's "December," a multi-vocal film performance from The Shed in New York.

Here in this first of a two-part series we tackle "now" from numerous vantages, among others including as a word with all its practical denotation and connotations as well as its application to "being in the present," as popularly voiced by Eckhart Tolle. It includes the beginnings of a near-term historical perspective in its use from the 1960s as it's evolved into a pseudo-secular faith call. FAIR WARNING: Reflecting our attempt to get to now, this session's quiet points have been struck and/or shrunk to induce a rapid fire (an element of combustion).

This session calls to the process-hung state of the "manuscript" and not just in its conventional meaning - a typically hand-written original document - but also its supplemental, philosophical, ontological,poetical and existential associations. It's not as dry as it sounds - or if dry its combustible material to which we touch fire to light the way ahead.

This session calls to the process-hung state of the "manuscript" and not just in its conventional meaning - a typically hand-written original document - but also its supplemental, philosophical, ontological,poetical and existential associations. It's not as dry as it sounds - or if dry its combustible material to which we touch fire to light the way ahead.

Sometimes that with which we are most familiar to us is, paradoxically, most strange, such as breath. Here we breathe on it, expanding on and contracting in its practical qualities as well as teasing out some of its wild and dear associations.

In this second of two podcasts we augur further into, and maybe a little way through, Gertrude Stein's essay "Composition as Explanation," originally delivering into human time in the winter of 1925-26 in England as a lecture and subsequently published as a text the following year. In this second approach we look through some holes we knocked out in the first round. This work is dedicated to Marcus DeCosta, the American educator, who died in early August of 2020. Here's a link to the text:

www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/694…-explanation

In this first of two podcasts we augur into Gertrude Stein's essay "Composition as Explanation," originally delivering into human time in the winter of 1925-26 in England as a lecture and subsequently published as a text the following year. In this first approach we knock around various notions that seek to light the way toward some interpretation of what Stein means in her numerous time registers, though they admittedly remain elusive, which of course we love.This work is dedicated to Jonathan Oppenheim, the  American film and television editor and producer, who died in July 2020. Here's a link to the text:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69481/composition-as-explanation

Made in February, a month before the business launch of the Trump Virus, we look at the “Algorithm,” it’s early history and its late incarnation as the fuel source of “the Mammon of mechanized greed” (D.H. Lawrence). Here by some remove we hear from a host of human males whom it touched (if not scarred): Leibnitz, Turning, Freud, Cocteau, Whitehead, Hilbert, Yeats, Harari ("'Algorithm' is arguably the single most important concept in our world"), Bradbury, Darwin, Boyd and Rodney Dangerfield. This podcast is dedicated to Sparrow’s father, Dr. Jack Gorelick, who had recently celebrated his 101st birthday.

We were going to call this podcast "Podcastism,” which means nothing — even to us — yet we wanted to mark this as somehow different from what this (Baffling Combustions) is as we explore the nature, origin and future of this medium that took off with the introduction of the iPod in the early ‘00s and shows no sign of sunsetting (unlike its initial vehicle of transmission). Highlights include riffs around the “perfect podcast” (this might be it!), 2001: A SPACE ODDYSSEY, William Burroughs (the “cut up” method), the exigencies of Ambitheism (Sparrow’s religious homebrew), Rodney Dangerfield and John Cage. This podcast was recorded a few days after the death of the sage Ram Dass on December 22, 2019 (before our world turned upside down).