The Liminalist: The Podcast Between

Accompanying essay, “Invitation of the Mirror” Follow-up conversation with Motherless Brooklyn author Jonathan Lethem, on the novel-in-progress, working in the horror genre, late-Cronenberg parallels, Chronic City, personal fantasy informing fiction, Lethem’s characters as nonviable personas, deflationary fiction, crumbling castles, useless super-powers, & ineffective postures, the P.K. Dick vault, occult symbolism in Chronic City, the ephemerality of identity, ... Read moreLiminalist # 28.5: Potemkin Villages (with Jonathan Lethem)

(Companion essay, “The Margins & the Mainstream: Horsley on Lethem”) Outtakes: Lethem on Dissident Gardens and maternal lineage (15 mins)  Download https://boxes.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/wp-content/uploads/Lethem-on-Dissident-Gardens.mp3   First of two conversations with author Jonathan Lethem, on meeting Lethem, Lethem “almost feeling stalked,” the transmigration of psyches, encountering Philip K. Dick, being colonized, reader-author intimacy, the genesis of Seen & Not Seen, ... Read moreLiminalist # 28: A Conspiracy of Secret Voices (with Jonathan Lethem)

(This podcast is accompanied by an article, “The World Itself: Powerlessness, Fantasy, Transportation Systems & Lost Masculinity in True Detective 2.” PDF here. Audio reading below.) Second part of in-dept exploration of True Detective season 2 with Heather Poirier, on the American Dream, ideology, and weaponized memes, the power of ideas, art as inoculation, The Counselor, a positive virus, connecting to ... Read moreLiminalist # 27.5: Your Own Personal Underworld (with Heather Poirier)

This podcast is accompanied by a two-part article, “The World Itself: Powerlessness, Fantasy, Transportation Systems & Lost Masculinity in True Detective 2.” First of a two-part psycho-exploration of Nic Pizzolatto’s True Detective season 2 with Lovecraftian Heather Poirier, on comparisons to season 1, the armature of espionage, plot as a delivery device, the implacability of archetypal forces, Greek tragedy and ... Read moreLiminalist # 27: There Is No Surface (Discussing True Detective with Heather Poirier)

Solo interlude, Jasun by the lake, on anger, creative compulsion, ennui, the fatigue of ego, & Kevin Smith’s pig heaven. Songs: “Hello the Fuck Out There” by FrenchRadio Constellation; “Fingers,” “Monkey on Your Back,” “Home,” by Clinic.

Conversation with Aspergerhuman blogger Bo Moore, on alexithymia, emotion and language, autism and Asperger’s as imports from other symptomologies, studying animal behaviors to understand humans, emotions as reaction to environment, freeze response, society as a predatory environment, early Homo Sapiens and socialization via agriculture, juvenilization of humans, wild humans, neoteny and domestication, differential development, growing ... Read moreLiminalist # 26: Everything Changes with the Light (with Bo Moore)

Second part of conversation with science fiction author Peter Watts, on the possibly mal-adaptive nature of consciousness, meat robots, cognitive capacity, Julian Jaynes and mounding fullness, consciousness vs. self-awareness, conditioning experiments, the cognitive feats of corbetts, the Cambridge declaration and self-aware octopi, why sex feels good, fractal geometry and healthy environments, does consciousness subvert the ... Read moreLiminalist # 25.5: The Brain Eaters (with Peter Watts)

(Original photo by  Maria Nygård) Here comes Behemoth-author Peter Watts, for the first hour of a roving and rifting conversation with Jasun about killing Jake (the One) and integrative therapy courtship, Lonesome Bob’s death ballad, Peter’s  marine biology years, the initial impetus, Peter’s childhood “Everyone can have their own aquarium!” epiphany, astronaut dreams, getting off ... Read moreLiminalist # 25: A Micro-Organism of Meaning (with Peter Watts)

No podcast this week; a few idle musings about future guests, rich man’s fantasies, True Detective, depression, lucid boredom, UFOs, and God, to tide listeners over until next week. Songs: “El Mariachi” and “Monkey Said” by The Freak Fandango Orchestra; “Six Sticks,” by Halloween; “Invisible Rock,” by Kevin Blechdom; “The Spase Dogs,” by the Vivisectors.

Part two of conversation with Archdruid John Michael Greer, on time, the narrated self, and the inception of language, the occult path, the ubiquity of liminality, the three rays of Druid myth, the liminality of time, time & timelessness, life on the margins, banishing uncertainty, rising ocean levels and ice sheets, the flows that unite, ... Read moreLiminalist # 24.5: The Floodwaters of Liminality (with John Michael Greer)