Extraordinary Discourse Podcast

Strategic Bursts Of Information My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company. Jane Austen  

Courageous Learning Wisdom is like gossip. Except it's the good kind. Vera Nazarian,  The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Provocation Rations Redemption will not be possible until today's heresies coalesce into a new mythos. John Dunn

Talking Cure Collage is the twentieth century's greatest innovation. Robert Motherwell

Scriptflipping You have to flip the script. Henry Giroux

Talk Chops Popular culture isn't a freeze-frame; it is images zapping by in rapid-fire succession, which is why collage is such an effective way of representing contemporary life. The blur between images creates a kind of motion in the mind. James Rosenquis

Disruptive Intelligence For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of dialogue here, a scrap of narrative, an isolated description of a common object, an elaborate running metaphor which threads between the sequences and holds different narrative lines together. Hilary Mantel

Fishin' In The (Human) Condition My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren't only bombs and bullets —no, they're little gifts, containing meanings! Philip Roth  

Talkstream Takeaways A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Defenestrating the Overton Window For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking. Stephen Hawking

Field Notes of a Tenured Autodidact Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it. Jean-Jacques Rousseau The salvation of the world lies in the maladjusted. Martin Luther King, Jr.  

Memes in Themes Drunk on the chill whiskey of words. Robert Allen Magellan's Clouds

THIS and THAT and THE OTHER thing Jewish mystics used to believe that the world presents innumerable smashed pieces of vessels with divine light clinging to them. It is each individual's responsibility to rescue the captive sparks. Bonnie Friedman, Surrendering Oz

Orchestrated Polyphrenia Jack is an archetypal Cornish and English hero and stock character appearing in legends, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes, generally portrayed as a young adult. Unlike moralizing fairy heroes, Jack is often portrayed as lazy or foolish, but through the use of cleverness and tricks he usually emerges triumphant. In this way, he may resemble a trickster. Some of the most famous include "Jack and the Beanstalk", "Jack Frost", "Jack the Giant Killer", "Little Jack Horner" and "This Is the House That Jack Built". While these heroes are not necessarily congruous, their concepts are related and in some instances interchangeable. The notion of "Jack" is closely related and sometimes identical to the English hero John. He also corresponds with the German Hans (or Hänsel) and the Russian Iván. … Another definition of “magic tales” is a type of folktale characterized by its performance aspect. Classical...

Small Steps Toward Giant Leaps I got this image of myself as a flock of sparrows, alighting on the pavement, as though they were cast there like two handfuls of dice, landing in some truly ordered randomness and then hopping their hollow-boned selves from morsel to morsel, pecking at crumbs, coins, cigarette butts, the dried poo of other fowl, their multiple hungers combining to form a single feasting beast. Daniel Scot Tysdal Year Zero The Best Canadian Essays 2014

Mots, Bon And Otherwise SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Trying improbable and unprecedented combinations is your specialty right now. You're willing and able to gamble with blends and juxtapositions that no one else would think of, let alone propose. Bonus: Extra courage is available for you to call on as you proceed. In light of this gift, I suggest you brainstorm about all the unifications that might be possible for you to pull off. What conflicts would you love to defuse? What inequality or lopsidedness do you want to fix? Is there a misunderstanding you can heal or a disjunction you can harmonize? Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter September 9, 2015

(Re)Mixed Messages And beyond even that - the eerie experience of finally finding in myriad ragtag phenomena an underlying psychic connection, as if I've at last flipped over the fabric that made them appear separate, and discovered long strands of embroidery thread linking one design with the next. Bonnie Friedman, Surrendering Oz ]

Soundbite Diner Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable. C. G. Jung

Pieces De Resistance All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man. Henry David Thoreau or woman....

Logos Lego Borges… like Joyce…used universal culture as an instrument of p lay. Umberto Eco Borges And My Anxiety Of Influence

Aporetic Tikkun Olam It is the lucid vertigo of a language that is trying to redefine the world while it redefines itself in the full knowledge that, in an age that is still uncertain, the key to the revelation of the world can be found not in the straight line but only in the labyrinth. Umberto Eco A Portrait Of The Artist As Bachelor  

Thought Pivots A mammal swells and circles and lays him down. You and I have finished swelling; our circling periods are playing out, but we can still leave footprints in a trail whose end we do not know. Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think your soul can go it alone. Annie Dillard For The Time Being

Clips Up For Grabs There’s something in me that just wants to create dialogue.              David Mamet

Bonbons For Radical Imaginations The Divine Will in Poetry is Creative, and its inspiration is never single-minded or strait, but creates a field of meanings. Robert Duncan The Truth And Life Of Myth

Reframe By Frame Choosing one's own curriculum in the jungle of the mass media can constitute an instance of constructing one's own "humanitas." What I mean is that Woody Allen has something to do with " paideia ," while John Travolta does not: but we must not be so dogmatic. If I think about my own growth in "humanitas," I would have to put on the list of my Spiritual Sources The Imitation Of Christ, No No Nanette, Dostoyevsky, and Donald Duck. Umberto Eco The American Myth In Three Anti-American Generations

Pieces Of Saying, Playing Certainly playing creatively with hypertexts - changing old stories and helping create new ones - can be an enthralling activity, a fine exercise to be practiced at school, a new form of writing, very much akin to the jam session. I believe it can be good and even educational to try to modify stories that already exist… This is essentially what great artists have always done. Umberto Eco On Some Functions Of Literature

Plural Mural Democracy was the politics of the ensemble, as Hegel's was the philosophy of the ensemble, and Whitman saw his Leaves Of Grass as belonging to the poetics of the ensemblist. The word "ensemblist" he italicizes. Robert Duncan, Changing Perspectives In Reading Whitman

Outré Train The artist who could disentangle the subtle soul of the image from its mesh of defining circumstances most exactly and 're-embody' it in artistic circumstances chosen as the most exact for it in its new office, he [sic] was the supreme artist. James Joyce, Stephen Hero

Unorthodocumentary …not an 'interview' or a 'conversation' -although it has elements of both. It grows in many directions, without an overall ordering principle. To use Deleuze's terms it is the book as war-machine, the book as 'rhizome'. There is no hierarchy of root, trunk and branch, but a multiplicity of interconnected shoots going off in all directions. It is therefore both an explanation and an exemplification of 'Deleuzian pluralism'. Hugh Tomlinson Barbara Habberjam Translator's Introduction Deleuze , Dialogues II

A Thing Or Two Besides Our time is a routine twist of an improbable yarn. Annie Dillard For The Time Being

Advance The Conversation You know how men [sic] have always hankered after unlawful magic, and you know what a great part in magic words have always played. If you have his name, or the formula of incantation that binds him, you can control the spirit, genie, afrite, or whatever the power may be. Solomon knew the names of all the spirits, and having their names, he held them subject to his will. William James

Deep Chitchat The mainstream is a sideshow. Boredom on steroids. Jack Having words for these forms makes the differences between them so much more obvious. With words at your disposal, you can see more clearly. Finding the words is another step in learning to see. Robin Wall Kimmerer thanks to Maria Popova

Off To The Side Of all the many subdivisions of comedy, he [Stephen Leacock] excelled at the one we call nonsense, although it often seems to pierce through appearances to a finer sort of sense to any we know in the world of everyday. Consider the quotation from Gertrude the Governess, which is the only piece of Leacock to get into both Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, and the Oxford Dictionary Of Quotations: "Lord Ronald flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions." Robertson Davies The Funny Professor Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking. John Maynard Keynes

Edge Effects I like "multi-"...multiplicity, multicultural, multiplication etc. Any contribution to diversification and value augmentation is achievement. Rossana Condoleo

And And And What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death. The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us. Octavio Paz David Francey, Torn Screen Door The Bills, Nowhere To Be & All Day To Get There 

As We Speak This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't matter to me what your position is. You've got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. This is no time for anything else than the best that you've got. Toni Morrison

Brief Windows Let me pry loose old walls. Let me lift and loosen old foundations. Carl Sandburg Prayers of Steel

Interconnecting . . . Dots The relations . . .   constitute the essence. Nietzsche

Interesting Times Perception is to a much greater extent than previously imagined, a function of the linguistic categories available to the perceiver. As we said, reality is a perception located somewhere behind the eyes-- but, "behind the eyes" there is a language process . We know that Nature never repeats or standardizes - we do it. And how we do it depends on the categories and classifications of our language system. It is only a slight exaggeration to say we see with our language. Postman & Weingartner Teaching As A Subversive Activity

Unorthodox Talks In the language is life. Hawaiian Proverb Little by little, one travels far. J. R. R. Tolkien

Outspoken Pasternak is, indeed, the heroic prototype of the literary genius, incapable of conformity, fearless, identifying himself with humanity and not with a country, a political party, or a doctrine. Genius always possesses this indefinite concreteness, this passionate particularity, this piecemeal integrity. Herbert Read David Wilcox, Bad Apple

Intalksication Many fecund ecosystems are strung along edges like coastlines and forest margins. I fished for these varietous utterances along spoken ecosystems (audio, radio [appealing to the inner rather than the outer eyes] is already "marginal"), but I didn't run a steel hook through the walls of their mouths and out their gills while they goggled in horror, and I didn't club them writhing to stillness.  I re-schooled them, that's all, and it turns out they love to meet and mix with other fish, different fish, and your mind is the speilraum (playroom) play-lake of their mating while they appear to lie discrete, neither touching each other across the purity of the gaps, nor smeared over with any marmalade of music to suggest continuity or coolness. Once they parade past you, this school! Of thoughtfish, they are returned to the grand aquarium excited about other remixes, other relationships, other orgies, other play in the playroom of their sea, other cha...

Don't You Think We Should Talk This Thing Over? So the universe has always appeared to the natural mind as a kind of enigma, of which the key must be sought in the shape of some illuminating or power-bringing word or name. That word names the universe's principle and to possess it is after a fashion to possess the universe itself. "God," "Matter," "Reason," "the Absolute," "Energy," are so many solving names. You can rest when you have them. You are at the end of your metaphysical quest. But if you follow the pragmatic method, you cannot look on any such word as closing your quest. You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience. It appears less as a solution, then, than as a program for more work, and more particularly as an indication of the ways in which existing realities may be changed. Theories thus become instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which w...

Relevant Irreverence The word "and" trails along after every sentence. Something always escapes. William James i speak without reservation from what i know and who i am. i do so with the understanding that all people should have the right to offer their voice to the chorus whether the result is harmony or dissonance, the worldsong is a colorless dirge without the differences that distinguish us, and it is that difference which should be celebrated not condemned. Ani Difranco  

I Hear Voices It is a feature of twenty first century modernity that the tenets around which society is built and organized exist unchallenged. When there is only one cultural perspective and no alternative story, where is the judgment about the worth of the existing regime meant to come from? The left-right political dichotomy serves liberalism by not challenging it. Democracy sustains the status quo by offering the illusion of choice with no choice. Genuine opposition can only emerge if there is an alternative story with which to counter the current mythos. And how that mythos is maintained! By the great world enterprise, with its digital mountain of media propaganda, Hollywood-fashioned histories, global corporate HR masquerading as an education system and pseudo-religious convictions riddled with liberal ethics. Against this multi-billion dollar programme of maintenance, a few mere words could hardly be said to endanger the global regime. Yet John Dunn contends that the weak...

No Ladder, Sideways Moves "Everyone carries with them at least one piece to someone else's puzzle." Lawrence Kushner  Honey from the Rock thanks to Rob Brezsny

Folks, This Ain't Normal It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition. Carl von Clausewitz Without an element of the obscene there can be no true and deep aesthetic or moral conception of life... It is only the great men [sic] who are truly obscene.  If they had not dared to be obscene they could never have dared to be great. Havelock Ellis Allen Bell

Sideways To The News Every construction we make of the world is, or should be, hypothetical. It is a story we tell ourselves. Being hypothetical, it is also at best falsifiable. We believe we understand someone; we find we've been wrong when we hurt them or they hurt us. We think we know how we are perceived and valued, and learn that those around us have quite another view of us, far better or far worse. I might suggest that we are sane in the degree that out our internal narrative retains the character of hypothesis, permitting editing, necessary adjustment, the assimilation of new understanding. Fictional narratives consistently employ surprise, reversal, irony, hidden identity. The wandering Ulysses is continually confronted with prodigies that alter the effective terms of survival. Only his shrewdness, his ability to respond to urgencies that constantly change, allows him to return alive to Ithaca. Disrupted hypothesis is structured into fiction of all kinds, from Don Q...

More Can Be Said A flowing, funning dance of both sacred and profane, both living and dying, both immanence and transcendence, both depth and breadth, both inner and outer, both male and female, both concrete and abstract, is how Jesus characterized the Kingdom in the Gospel of St. Thomas. Steindl-Rast, 1984 Buzz O’Connell

From A Dot-Connection Collection Not Everyone has given up on indie, however. As a character in the online comic strip Cat and Girl noted, "Imperfect is the new desirable!" the latest tactic involves a return to the "rougher sounds and images" described by Shields, despite technology that can autotune or auto correct your deficiencies. "We live in a time of ragged edges," proclaims the friend of Girl. Or, as Marginally Mediocre Blogger Tully Mills (who is actually quite a good Blogger despite the name of his blog) asked in March of this year, "Why does my generation try to make everything look like it's straight out of one of my Dad's shitty photo albums from the '70s?" While our comic strip heroine Girl agrees ("Not everything needs a poorly silk-screened drawing of a bird on it") her friend gets the last word: "If you need me I will be listening to tape hiss in my room." Indie Won. Now What? Ryan Bigge...

Heretick Talk vs Tick-Tock Too long have I longed and looked into the distance. Too long have I belonged to loneliness;  thus I have forgotten how to be silent. Mouth have I become through and through, and the roaring of a stream from towering cliffs:  I want to plunge my speech down into the valleys. Let the river of my love plunge where there is no way! How could a river fail to find its way to the sea? Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

Epinarrative Conspiracy nut, leftist, madman. These are terms of dismissal so you don’t have to listen to the argument. It would be healthier and more fun to hear what someone has to say. Oliver Stone  Our hope of salvation lies in our being surprised by the other. Ivan Illich