Lost Xplorers

On this episode, I ask Kris some important questions about sense making and storytelling. Considering all of the information out there, how does a person learn what's important and what isn't? How do we build a structure of reality in which we can exist in a healthy way?

Kris recounts an experiment with sound, a dream of killer plants and swords, and the importance of remembering 11/22.

Kris and I get together to work out a "pilot episode" for a non-existent television show. Kris brings the concept this time: Hauntids is an X-Files, paranoid PKD thriller story about a girl in a hyper progressive future who begins to see a world that those around her can't. Unless, of course, she's just going crazy.

Today on the show we talk about William Dampier, a pirate turned ship captain turned pirate again. Dampier headed the first official Royal Navy mission to collect flora and fauna from distant lands. Along the way he gifted the English language hundreds of new words, recipes, and understanding of winds, currents, and sailing.

But he also committed lots and lots of crime along the way. How do we tangle with complicated legacies such as this? Is there a way to become pirates in our own minds, with our own incomplete maps?

Note: my audio got lost for the last few minutes of the episode, but it doesn't affect the listening experience. I'm not leaving Kris hanging though!

Visit Kris's Youtube page here.

Check out Victrola in the Jungl here.

On this episode, Kris and I begin our discussion on PIRACY! What caused the pirate craze in the 17th century? Is there a way to incorporate this spirit Ito your day-to-day? What did the pirate utopias of the past teach us? Is this a mindset?

Kris and I continue our discussion about imaginary worlds by looking into the work of Daniel Defoe, with a particular focus on Moll Flanders and his Imaginary Voyages to the Moon. Did Defoe predict the invention of virtual reality? We discuss the importance of satire as a method of observing and reporting, a "descriptive" practice rather than a "prescriptive" one. This morphs into a great discussion about writing and storytelling. What's the difference between "telling a story" and "building a narrative"?

For the creative challenge, David is tasked with using a blind eel to navigate the web of a dead man's brain, in search of secrets.

For part two of our discussion of Michael Heizer's 'City,' Kris asks the question: what makes a city a city? Is the city's purpose tied into the "feel" of it? Are people the main component, or are cities built first, with the intention of herding people around? This is a great critique of Heizer's massive project, the first of its kind that I've ever seen. We also talk the origins of "beaver" as a euphemism, the City Museum of St. Louis, the credo of the Space Family Robinson, and "antonym therapy." David is tasked with taking us on a journey to a Mythic Destination in America...it involves apple pie and the descendants of Paul Bunyan.

Big episode today folks! Kris got to take a tour of the new Michael Heizer project 'City.' I start off by telling him about a trip I took to an estate sale (complete with a creepy "Christmas room") and from there we move into an absolutely fascinating look at this project 50 years in the making. We talk about accessibility of art, anticipation of experience, obsessive outsider artists, and exotic aircraft over Area 51. This one is a banger!

On this episode, we talk writing routines, positive and negative nodes of discourse, imaginary worlds, psychoarchaeology, utilizing A Voyage to the Moon to map the psyche of thinkers of the path, and perhaps to rewrite our own internal maps. Kris tasks David with developing a play about Darwin's theory of evolution...to be put on by a sixth-grade class.

Authors who set out visions of the Moon and other worlds pre-modernity:

Plutarch

Cicero

Lucian

Wilkins

Godwin

Defoe

de Bergerac

Dante

Chaucer

Swedenborg

Kepler’s Dream

Other notes:

Discipline is Destiny by Ryan Holiday

Brill Building

A Voyage to the Moony by Cyrano de Bergerac

On this episode, Kris relates an amazing story about riding out a hurricane on the Isle of Pines and doing battle with mice, ants, and crabs. We then talk about the imaginary as a necessary component of the material, The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish (the first work of science fiction by a woman, 1666), lost casinos, dreams of return, and the logical aspects of perception.

On this episode, Kris and I discuss the deeper mythological meaning of Atlantis. Kris weaves together Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Burroughs, and the story of Fordlândia to interrogate why this story holds such power. What if Atlantis was a sigil?