Several weeks ago I talked on the phone for an hour and a half with Dr. James Fadiman, one of the central figures in the history of psychedelic research and a co-founder of the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology. I’ll be publishing the conversation as a Teeming Brain interview in the near future, but for now…
The Tragedy of Man (MOVIE TRAILER)
The movie trailer itself can be a form of art, as witnessed by the just-released mega-trailer for Cloud Atlas, the forthcoming new film from the Wachowskis. Trailers not only advertise a film but, in some cases, can present and possess their own inherent logic, flow, and narrative arc, and can generate a memorable viewing experience…
Parasite Choi (SHORT FILM)
For one of this week’s film offerings, we’ve chosen a short piece whose fusion of post-apocalyptic horror, beauty, starkness, and surreality is guaranteed to fascinate and disturb. And that’s not even to mention the astonishing brilliance of the visual effects and sound design, nor the even more astonishing fact that “Parasite Choi” is a collaborative…
Let your subject find you, and other rules for writers
Everybody has seen those lists of rules that writers sometimes come up with for advising others on how to perform the literary art and craft. Mark Twain famously embedded some real writing advice in his mostly snarky/facetious identification of “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses.” George Orwell’s offered five rules for writers in “Politics and the English…
The Light of Natural Philosophy
Let us ask the Apostle Paul, that vessel of election, in what activity he saw the armies of the Cherubim engaged when he was rapt into the third heaven. He will answer, according to the interpretation of Dionysius, that he saw them first being purified, then illuminated, and finally made perfect. We, therefore, imitating the…
Cloud Atlas (MOVIE TRAILER)
This extended trailer for the forthcoming film Cloud Atlas — written and directed by Lana (formerly Larry) Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, and Andy Wachowski, and adapted from David Mitchell’s 2004 mindblow of a novel — looks positively extraordinary. I don’t know how the film can possibly live up to it. But I’m hopeful, since the Wachowskis…
On transmitting artistic and spiritual vision
Some years ago as I was searching for a way to introduce poetry to the high school writing and literature classes that I was then teaching — not just certain, selected poets and poems but the entire idea and import of poetry itself — I started telling my students that language can have an alchemical…
Recommended Reading 18
This week’s links, reading, and viewings encompass America’s apocalyptic obsession, the troubled future of America’s electricity situation, the continued rehabilitation of psychedelic research in academic and governmental contexts, the rise of America’s internal surveillance state, a worried critique of art’s monetization, the hijacking of social media by megacorporate interests, a warning from by-God Silicon Valley…
Study links mind-body dualism to unhealthy behaviors
First, a philosophical review for those who need it: as a philosophical term the word “dualism” refers to the belief in a fundamental split between the mind and the body, and more broadly between the mind and the physical world. It is classically associated with Descartes, who in the seventeenth century proposed that reality consists…
“Mossgrove / Bed of Moss” (SHORT FILM in 2 parts)
In distinct contrast to the surreal metaphysical/ontological grunge and horror of “Metachaos,” our other cinematic suggestion for today, here’s a linked pair of positively lovely short films, set to beautiful solo piano music and focusing on certain aspects of the natural world that usually go unnoticed by us humans. The paired title is “Mossgrove/Bed of…