Extraordinary Discourse Podcast

Think Twice, It's Alright Wind is song Of whom and of what? Of the sword's longing To be the word. People cherish the day of death Like a favorite daisy. Believe that the strings of the great Are strummed by the East these days. Perhaps we'll be given new pride By the wizard of those shining mountains, And I, of many souls captain, Will wear a white snowcap of reason. V. V. Khlebnikov 1918-1919

F the Default Intelligence and temperament are not marathon races: there are no fixed criteria for success, no start or finish lines — and running sideways or backward, might secure victory. Siddhartha Mukherjee

Jimmying the Doxa Doxa (from ancient Greek δόξα, "glory", "praise" from δοκεῖν dokein, "to appear", "to seem", "to think" and "to accept"[1]) is a Greek word meaning common belief or popular opinion . Used by the Greek rhetoricians as a tool for the formation of argument by using common opinions, the doxa was often manipulated by sophists to persuade the people, leading to Plato's condemnation of Athenian democracy. Wikipedia

Another Think Coming Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men [sic]. Confucius

Leaning Out the Overton Window ...it must be sought in the margins of life, in the shadows of despair and at the edges of the unknown. If those willing to enter the darkest places and face the unknown would gather whatever threads of meaning and imagination they might find and begin to follow where they lead, new paths to unity would be revealed and old oppressions could be relieved. Michael Meade

Wiggle Room As Townsley (2001:271) argues: "From this standpoint, not even the often mentioned idea of 'illocutionary force', or any speech act or narrative which changes the world by redefining it or changing people's perception of it, could possibly encompass the sheer physicality of the transformations claimed by shamanism". Amazonian Vegetalismo: A study of the healing power of chants in Tarapoto, Peru. François DEMANGE Medicine M.A in Social Sciences by Independent Studies University of East London, 2000-2002.

F The MSM We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. Toni Morrison

Lots of Counter-Narrative Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at Thomas Jefferson University, and Mark Robert Waldman, a communications expert, collaborated on the book, “Words Can Change Your Brain.” In it, they write, “a single word has the power to influence the expression of genes that regulate physical and emotional stress.” Study Confirms: The Words We Speak Can Literally Alter Our Brain Mystical Raven [thanks to Jacquie Rafuse]

As We Speak The Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) was developed by Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal during the 1950's and 1960's. In an effort to transform theatre from the "monologue" of traditional performance into a "dialogue" between audience and stage, Boal experimented with many kinds of interactive theatre. His explorations were based on the assumption that dialogue is the common, healthy dynamic between all humans, that all human beings desire and are capable of dialogue, and that when a dialogue becomes a monologue, oppression ensues. from Theatre of the Oppressed Workshops by Douglas L. Paterson

All Mixed. Up! The need to deal with a broad variety of contexts and issues has led to many different propositions. Sound-bite/Comprehensive Analysis Both/And Continuity/Discontinuity Both/And Particular/General Both/And Organized/Chaotic Both/And Retrospective/Progressive Both/And Decontextualization/Recontextualization Both/And And if all the roads end up in dead ends you'll be shown the secret paths no one will comprehend. Rumi

Truth - or AAAAAA! The syntactical nature of reality, the real secret of magic, is that the world is made of words. And if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish. Terence McKenna This being the 300th in this series, I thought I'd offer in celebration a picture of Queen Elizabeth of England. Bye!

Off-Ramp Talk Slow down! Exit the mainstream. In most cases of people actually talking to one another, human communication cannot be reduced to information. The message not only involves, it is, a relationship between speaker and hearer. The medium in which the message is embedded is immensely complex, infinitely more than a code: it is a language, a function of a society, a culture, in which the language, the speaker, and the hearer are all embedded. Ursula K. Le Guin Quoted by Maria Popova

Talk As The Crow Flies Ever observe how “the crow flies”?—they fly all over the place, stop and hop, check things out, saunter, perch, sing, jump sideways, make dark knight’s moves. They digress, the humorous bricoleurs.

Wisdom Glean We have to create culture - don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who wa...

For Thinkers and Readers Only The…  and rhetorical imaginings… assembled here relate in ways that challenge generic convention, perhaps even subvert the notions of genre we used to distinguish between prose and poetry, fiction and exposition… they reflect upon one another, and occasionally borrow from one another, placing passages from one context in the entirely different light of another to tease out nuances of significance, elicit alternative responses not anticipated in the original. … I hope each part will stand on its own as a play of language and idea, appealing as intended, on emotional, intellectual, and imaginative planes to a greater or lesser degree, simultaneously. ripped from John  Moss's The Paradox Of Meaning and pared to fit

Rungs Of A Tall Talk Ladder Too many stars this summer, Sir. Too many friends struck down, too many riddles. I feel I'm growing more ignorant All the time And soon I'll end up a half-wit in the brambles. So explain yourself, elusive Master! Philippe Jaccotet

Puckish Pedagogy Candor and clarity go a long way in fertilizing the soil, but in the end there is always a degree of unpredictability in the climate of communication — even the warmest intention can be met with frost. Yet something impels us to hold these possibilities in both hands and go on surrendering to the beauty and terror of conversation, that ancient and abiding human gift. And the most magical thing, the most sacred thing, is that whichever the outcome, we end up having transformed one another in this vulnerable-making process of speaking and listening. Maria Popova

Playing Marbles With Diamonds We each need to find our way home in this little life. Not just walk someone else’s trail. Douglas Rushkoff

NSFW Following one of Jacques Derrida’s early questions — namely, How is writing involved in speech? — this essay reconsiders the role of the tongue and the sense of taste in the oral phenomena of speaking and saying. The contact the tongue makes with the mouth or teeth is just as much a materialization of language as what is commonly called “writing.” The tongue acts as a pen and the mouth, as a blank page (or palimpsest). Mouthed writing is accompanied by sense experiences. There are various selftastes to the tastes of speaking, the tastes of words, or, even, the tastes of thoughts. ... The auto-affection of tasting-oneself-speakwriting is offered as an alternative to the metaphysical presumptions Derrida implicates in Husserl’s understanding of speech based on the auto-affection of hearing-oneself-speak. As such, writing (haunted by the trace of death) and speech (invested with living- presence) is now confronted with the selftastes of speakwriting with one’s stylangue [st...

A Finder's Keepers I am not a searcher, I am a finder. Pablo Picasso

Pivots A word after a word after a word is power. Margaret Atwood We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

Intelligent Guff "It sounds terribly complicated, I know. And I suppose it's really not any better than a notebook." "Then why all that guff? I don't get it." "Because," she said carefully, sensing that despite his outward truculence he understood her, "it can happen that - if you practice this art - that the symbols you put next to one another will modify themselves without your choosing it, and that when next you call them forth, they may say something new and revelatory to you, something you didn't know you knew. Out of the proper arrangement of what you do know, what you don't know may arise spontaneously…" "Hawksquill" and "Auberon" from John Crowley's Little, Big

Cuts To The Chase [...] the primary bias of the digital media environment is for distinction. Analog media such as radio and television were continuous, like the sound on a vinyl record. Digital media, by contrast, are made up of many discrete samples. Douglas Rushkoff 07.07.16

Not The Prevailing Narrative The true nature of life - life is playing. Life is just play, and play is the essence of life. Frederick Leboyer

Seeker’s Delectables Back of our own contemporary arts of the collagist, the assembler of forms, is the ancestral, protean concept, wider and deeper, of the poet as devotee of the ensemble. Robert Duncan, Changing Perspectives In Reading Whitman

Revelations Of Interconnection Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition. Learned Hand Cities are about juxtaposition. Richard Rogers

Stray! I'm always trying to find 'connections' between things. That art is the juxtaposition of a lot of things that seem unrelated but add up to something recognizable. Pat Metheny

Combinatory Play Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought. Albert Einstein

Viva Voce Viva voce: Viva voce \Vi"va vo"ce\ (v>imac/"v[.a] v[=o]"s[-e]). [L.] By word of mouth; orally. viva voce n : an examination conducted by word of mouth [syn: {oral}, {oral exam}, {oral examination}]  I don't know why we, in the art world, cannot unpack things and sort of make hybrid notions of a practice. We're very rigid. It's funny, though; in music, we have no problem sampling, mixing and remixing. But in the art world, why can't we take little parts of history and mix it together? Mark Bradford

Big Small Talk Design, whether it's on your body or in your home, is the same thing. It's mixing different colors, different textures, and unexpected patterns - elements that you wouldn't often put together in an interesting way. Blake Lively

Unofficial The word is simultaneously profane, that which we use to communicate everyday; and the Word is sacred, that which exists and justifies the ground of being. This is worth remembering, for it is just as true today as it was in Jacob’s era. There is magic in poetry, not just as a metaphor but in a literal sense as well. Narrative, fiction, language, prosody, all of these, despite the calipers of criticism, maintains a sort of charged and enchanted power. There is something sacred in poetry which is greater than and before that of even religion, and this power of language – to conjure completely different worlds that exist only in the grammatical relationships of abstract words to one another, to maintain the ability to affect the objective world of material existence, and to function as totems of meaning which can travel from mind to mind – was as true for Jacob wrestling with his angel as it is for any of us wrestling with meaning today. Recall, Orpheus: Upon the End of ...

Heresy Hearsay Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters. Dau Voire

Radical Rethink Some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don’t understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they’re there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it’s the other side that matters. José Saramago

Carnets (Extracts) Night settles. You hear voices under the lime trees: The human voice shines like the earthward beam Of Antares which is sometimes red, sometimes green. Philippe Jaccotet

Talk Provocatours The word is simultaneously profane, that which we use to communicate everyday; and the Word is sacred, that which exists and justifies the ground of being. This is worth remembering, for it is just as true today as it was in Jacob’s era. There is magic in poetry, not just as a metaphor but in a literal sense as well. Narrative, fiction, language, prosody, all of these, despite the calipers of criticism, maintains a sort of charged and enchanted power. There is something sacred in poetry which is greater than and before that of even religion, and this power of language – to conjure completely different worlds that exist only in the grammatical relationships of abstract words to one another, to maintain the ability to affect the objective world of material existence, and to function as totems of meaning which can travel from mind to mind – was as true for Jacob wrestling with his angel as it is for any of us wrestling with meaning today. Ed Simon, Recall, Orph...

Stir-Fried Say-So Life is a mixing of all kind of things: comedy and tragedy going together. Alejandro Jodorowsky

Edgy I just grew up watching a lot of movies. I'm attracted to this genre and that genre, this type of story, and that type of story. As I watch movies I make some version of it in my head that isn't quite what I'm seeing - taking the things I like and mixing them with stuff I've never seen before. Quentin Tarantino

Outré I'm not really frightened by experimenting - that's the main thing. I really like mixing very old beautiful pieces that are from thrift shops or that have some historical value with quite new futuristic things. Bat for Lashes  

Daring Talk There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. Maya Angelou 

Talk Chops Whether a plane to Singapore, a subway in Manhattan, or the streets of Cincinnati, I search for meaningful conversation wherever I may travel. Without it, I believe we lose the ability to not only understand others, but more importantly, ourselves. Dhani Jones

Seeker's Dialogues This event of speech, Le Guin argues, is the most potent form of entrainment we humans have — and the intimate tango of speaking and listening is the stuff of great power and great magic. Maria Popova

Unofficial Opposition A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Cocktail Parti Talk Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it. Listening is not a reaction, it is a connection. Listening to a conversation or a story, we don’t so much respond as join in — become part of the action. ... When you can and do entrain, you are synchronising with the people you’re talking with, physically getting in time and tune with them. No wonder speech is so strong a bond, so powerful in forming community. ... Sound is dynamic. Speech is dynamic — it is action. To act is to take power, to have power, to be powerful. Mutual communication between speakers and listeners is a powerful act. The power of each speaker is amplified, augmented, by the entrainment of the listeners. The strength of a community is amplified, augmented by its mutual entrainment in speech. ... This is why utterance is magic. Wo...

Contrarian Nation Before going to sleep every night, Napoleon [Hill] would imagine a group of history's greatest thinkers from different fields, who have passed away, seated around the table with him. He would speak to each person asking for their advice and guidance. He found by having this group of Invisible Counselors he was most receptive to new ideas, thoughts, knowledge and inspiration. In fact Napoleon believed this Council was of so much benefit to him he eventually increased the numbers to 50. Your Cabinet of Invisible Counselors Ideapod

Countercultural Cuts Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either. M. McLuhan

Craic Intersections " Craic " (/kræk/ KRAK), or "crack", is a term for news, gossip, fun, entertainment, and enjoyable conversation, particularly prominent in Ireland. It is often used with the definite article – the craic.

Air Quotes True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions. Joseph Addison

NSFW World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and feel The drunkenness of things being various. Louis MacNeice - Snow

Exceptional Excerpts But I think we can do better than that. We have shards of truth, and we can gather them up, bits of broken mosaic tile that shine. Anne Lamott

Figments Of Realities As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction. Stan Getz

Extra! Extra! to Zo-Zo by Steve Slavik the world is a thrift store where you don’t know what you want until you see it— an ill-arranged litter of calico cats & spotted dogs cars & fire-engines people tall & short skinny & fat black-, brown-, or blonde-haired hydrants, kerbs, trees giraffes & hippopotami people hawking onto the sidewalks peeing on the walls making their ways to jobs they love or hate in the mornings and back to homes they love or hate in the evenings movies, concerts, plays, operas songs, books, & banks— libraries & grocery stores. the world’s a thrift store just waiting for you to poke your way about to ferret out what you want— you won’t know it until you see it— and you have to grab it immediately coz it won’t be there tomorrow & the prices are always just right & the same for everybody: everything costs you your life to get out the door. but maybe someone sees you & you’re exac...

Exploding The Envelope Men [sic] need many words before deeds. Gimli Tolkien Lord Of The Rings

Radical Imagining … a kind of spiritual autobiography, but the trick is that on any other level it's a kind of insane collage of fragments of memory. Jonathan Lethem