Extraordinary Discourse Podcast

Thoughts To Entertain To make ourselves, to shape a form from various elements – that is the task! The task of a sculptor! Of a productive human being! Nietzsche

Talk On The Hoof For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.                                   Matthew 12:37

Gainsayings The trickster's function is to break taboos, create mischief, stir things up. In the end, the trickster gives people what they really want, some sort of freedom. Tom Robbins Apologies for the redundant Milgram clip. I was shocked to discover it. JS

Backtalk The great Sufi master Ibn el-Arabi described the essential method of spiritual advancement as an inner conversation with the personalities that seem to exist beyond what you regard as your own limits . . . getting those personalities to tell you what you did not know, or what you could not easily conceive of within your habitual limits. This is commonplace in some therapies, of course. Ted Hughes, The Art of Poetry No. 71 Paris Review

Authentic Marginalia Goethe said that even the writing of plays, dividing the imagination up among different fictional personalities, damaged what he valued—the mind’s wholeness. I wonder what he meant exactly, since he also described his mode of thinking as imagined conversations with various people. Ted Hughes, The Art of Poetry No. 71 Paris Review

Culture Under The Counter That’s what they have been aiming for all along, and they long for it with all their heart! And isn’t it straight ahead and then to the left or something? But as they start to move again, they momentarily realize they are drunk as a skunk and that by the time they reach the other side of the street, they will most likely have forgotten again where they are going. And so they stumble on, half heroic and half ridiculous, pursuing a long, crazy peregrination toward heart’s home, not just lost, but only intermittently aware that they are even searching. The Drunk at the Crossroad

Salaud Salad The difficulty with this conversation is that it's very different from most of the ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees. Douglas Adams