Ryan and I got together at the recently extended Phoenix Cinema and Digital Arts Centre in Leicester, for a chat about what makes for a meaningful life. Ryan shared his experience of getting a car and being stuck in endless traffic trying to get to work. This was the first time we’ve met in the evening and had a beer as well!

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In our final podcast of 2022, Ryan and I met for a coffee and chatted about how we are coping during the festive season, what films and books we’ve been watching and reading, and how to show sincerity when attempting to get the Christmas Feeling when buying tat in an out-of-town shopping centre!

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It was really nice to have a coffee this morning with Jonathan Taylor and Paul Whitehead, who are based at the University of Leicester’s Centre for New Writing. We chatted about the way that literature has faced the challenge of the consumer society, and what role literature plays in a progressive and democratic society.

As well as sharing their professional insights, Jonathan and Harry shared who and what they have been inspired by, and how they hope to promote and support the uptake of all forms of literature in Leicester.

Jonathan’s website has links to his publications, writing and poetry. Harry’s focus is on the Literary Leicester Festival in March 2023.

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Today I chatted with Dafydd Roberts, about Listen to the Voice of Fire, Dafydd’s music project that encompasses sound art and experimental music performances. Since relocating to West Wales, to pursue a PhD in the alchemical writings of Thomas Vaughan (fl.1650), Dafydd has been active in DIY underground music networks since the early 90s. His projects synthesise his academic interest in hermeticism and sound. Dafydd’s music has been released on labels in the USA, Germany and Australia, played by John Peel, BBC Wales on Resonance FM.

We chatted about the process of developing an aesthetic approach to music that is diffused and promotes a sense of imagination informed by poetry, mystery and hermetic engagement with stories.

Tracks played are available from Bandcamp, and include:

In A Strange Chamber

I Saw a Sword Lay Shattered

Kemel Atlantis

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Ryan and I caught up for a coffee again this morning, to find out what films and books we’ve been reading. We chatted about how forms of media can be thought of as emergent, and considered what a metamodern radio station might feel like. Ryan mentioned Arrow Cult Films, the films of Anton Tarkovsky and Gaspar Noe.

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What was the heatwave like for you? That was our starting topic in this latest episode of Distraction Therapy. Ryan and I chatted about what insight we gained about climate crisis, and what manifestations of anxiety we might see emerging in films, songs and creative media, that compensate for the need for urgent action? We’ll see responses of one form or another coming through in our popular culture, beyond the antagonism of the news cycle, so what should we be looking out for?

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The degree to which we need suitable distractions in our lives, is in direct proportion to the level of anxiety that we experience as a result of modern culture, working practices and social expectations. The more media and stuff that we try to cram into our heads, the less we are open to the experience of contemporary living. Ryan Clayton and I sat and chatted over a coffee about what we’ve been distracting ourselves with, and to what extent we can ironically distance ourselves from a culture that is seemingly dissolving and de-socialising around us. We chatted about the prospect of being trapped for a lifetime in routines of business administration and performance management, with expectations of loosing ourselves in the herd. It’s not all doom and gloom, though, because as other generations have figured out, there is always a way we can plot an independent and individuated pathway forward, this time through utilising metamodern ideas of sincere and meaningful aesthetic experience of culture.

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Ryan Clayton and I met for a coffee, neither of us knowing what we wanted to discuss. It was an experiment in seeing what might emerge! In the end we tried to discuss Kant’s transcendental philosophy, and what it’s implications might be for engaging with metamodern culture? What does a symbolic experience help us to understand that goes beyond our rational and sensory type of thinking, and how can the aesthetic provide numinous experience?

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Hi, in this episode of Distraction Therapy I’ve put some music together, and added some thoughts on what a listening-focussed approach to social deliberation might feel like.

Music Played:

The Bottom Line (Sunrise Session II) Ólafur Arnalds, Josin & Reykjavík Recording Orchestra                Sunrise Session II

Leyohmi (Luminescence) – Carolina Eyck & American Contemporary Music Ensemble                – Fantasias for Theremin and String Quartet

Falling In – Mark Slater – Insula

Future Memory – Carmen Villain – Only Love From Now On

Overdose – Salamanda – Overdose

Dementamente – Tosca – Dementamente

Millionspiel – Can –  The Lost Tapes

Presidential Tub – F.S. Blumm & Nils Frahm – 2X1=4

Dr. Wang – Jóhann Jóhannsson & Jonas Colstrup – Blind Massage (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

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How can we use popular media to bridge the gaps in our knowledge of the world? Over a coffee, Ryan Clayton and Rob Watson discuss how we can make sense of popular media, and what a metamodern outlook might encompass as we wander about the cultural wasteland… 

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