This episode is about Schubert's awful and awesome bohemian life/music/death; a Victor Hugo sonnet from "Les Contemplations" ("La mort et la beauté sont deux choses profondes"); K.G. Nishitani on Nihility, sin and redemption; Fernando Pessoa's Fragment 363 (love, possession and illusion, the interplay of beauty and horror), with visuals courtesy of a walk around Rickmansworth Lake with Max listening to Sviatoslav Richter play Schubert's Piano Sonata No. 18 in G Major: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o12iQ6n6Rs&ab_channel=SviatoslavRichter-Topic.

i thank You God for most this amazing

I think this might work better ⁠as a video⁠?

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Death whispers

-Virgil

Brigit Pegeen Kelly reads for Wallace Stevens' poem "Poetry Is A Destructive Force" and we then discuss.

TOPICS COVERED: Acceptance, Aggression, Animal nature, Appetite, Blood as essence, Civilization's facade, Consumption, Destructive instincts, Dominance and submission, Ego and identity, Ethical paradoxes, Experiential essence, Fear and survival, Flesh consumption, Human-animal dichotomy, Hunger (physical and metaphorical), Inner violence, Innocence as facade, Instinctual heritage, Joy in presence, Killing for pleasure, Love and connection, Man as predator, Meat industry cruelty, Misery's depth, Moral contradictions, Nature of happiness, Nietzsche's philosophy, Pain and suffering, Pleasure principle, Poetry's power, Predatory behavior, Primal fears, Romantic love, Sacrifice and consumption, Sexuality, Social constructs, Suffering's universality, Survival instincts, Violence inherent in life, Vulnerability of being, Wagner and Beethoven (cultural references), Words vs. experience, Yorgos Lanthimos's "Poor Things"

Sources and influences: BBC's "The Moral Maze," Frank O'Hara's "Lunch Poems," Nietzsche's writings on transformation and values, Yorgos Lanthimos's film "Poor Things". Music = Fela's Zombie, Tokens' Lion Sleeps Tonight, and System Of A Down's Chop Suey.

Are there any connections to be made between Miroslav Valek's poem Killing Rabbits (read here by the American poet Brigit Pegeen Kelly), and Craig David's R&B "banger" Seven Days from the year 2000?

Many.

Killing Rabbits

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The image I've used for this episode was created by the Oracle after being shown a photograph I'd taken earlier on in the day of a cute little slug and spider duo hanging out together on my windowsill. I asked GPT to commemorate their loving connection through a portrait in the style of Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717).

Maria Sibylla Merian's work is known for its unparalleled attention to detail, especially in her studies of insects and plants. Merian's work in the late 17th and early 18th centuries was groundbreaking, not only for its artistic beauty but for its scientific accuracy. She meticulously documented the life cycles of insects, making detailed observations that were far ahead of her time, integrating precise scientific detail with artistic elegance. Her dedication to capturing the minutiae of her subjects has left a lasting impact on both art and science, making her work an exceptional example of the fusion of detailed observation and aesthetic beauty.

All we need is love. For something and/or someone.

Also poetry.

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?

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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; Self-awareness dawning; 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 (translation by Carson)

Tubingen, January

Visits of drowned joiners to

-Paul Celan (translation by Carson)

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)

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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.