Weird Studies

"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man can reason away." This line from a Doobie Brothers song is probably one of the most profound in the history of rock-'n'-roll. It is profound for all the reasons (or unreasons) explored in this discussion, which lasers in on just one of the major trumps of the traditional tarot deck, that of the Fool. The Fool is integral to the world, yet stands outside it. The Fool is an idiot but also a sage. The Fool does not know; s/he intuits, improvises a path through the brambles of existence. We intend this episode on the Fool to be the first in an occasional series covering all twenty-two of the major trumps of the Tarot of Marseilles. REFERENCES The Fool in the tarot St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey Into Christian Hermeticism Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth Plato, Phaedrus Weird Studies episode 60 - Space is the Place: On Sun Ra, Gnosticism, and the Tarot Till Eulenspiegel, folk figure Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears Weird Studies episode 75 - Our Old Friend the Monolith: On Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey Weird Studies episode 76 - Below the Abyss: On Bergson's Metaphysics Rider-Waite Tarot Deck Richard Wagner, Parsifal G. W. F. Hegel, German philosopher Ramsey Dukes, Words Made Flesh: Information in Formation George Spencer Brown, Laws of Form Alain Badiou, Deleuze: The Clamor of Being Punch and Judy, British puppet show George P. Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living Thomas Mann, Death in Venice Phil Ford's lecture on Death in Venice (Patreon exclusive!) Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot Hal Ashby (dir.), Being There Alejandro Jodorowsky and Marianne Costa, The Way of the Tarot Frank Pavich (dir.), Jodorowsky’s Dune Tarot of Marseilles André Breton, French surrealist artist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

According to the French philosopher Henri Bergson, there are two ways of knowing the world: through analysis or through intuition. Analysis is our normal mode of apprehension. It involves knowing what's out there through the accumulation and comparison of concepts. Intuition is a direct engagement with the absolute, with the world as it exists before we starting tinkering with it conceptually. Bergson believed that Western metaphysics erred from the get-go when it gave in to the all-too-human urge to take the concepts by which we know things for the things themselves. His entire oeuvre was an attempt to snap us out of that spell and plug us directly into the flow of pure duration, that primordial time that is the real Real. In this episode, JF and Phil discuss the genius -- and possible limitations -- of his metaphysics. REFERENCES Henri Bergson, "Introduction to Metaphysics" Weird Studies episode 13 -- The Obscure: On the Philosophy of Heraclitus Weird Studies episode 16: On Dogen Zenji's 'Genjokoan' Bertrand Russel's critique of Bergson's philosophy Dōgen Zenji, Shōbōgenzō Wiliam James, Principles of Psychology Plato, Theaetetus Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency Aleister Crowley, British occultist Graham Harman, "The Third Table" Weird Studies episode 8 - On Graham Harman's "The Third Table" Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When the quarantine began, professors around the world raced to put their classes online, and for the Jacobs School's big undergraduate music history course (M402 represent!) Phil created a series of solo podcasts, many of which have been appearing on the Weird Studies Patreon site. Our patrons seem to be enjoying them, so we thought we'd publish the first one ("The Duke of Ellington") as an off-week bonus for all our listeners, partly as a teaser for the subscriber-only stuff on Patreon and partly because Duke Ellington is cool. There's a bit of technical music talk in this, but you can ignore it and still get the main point: Ellington's early short film Symphony in Black and his subsequent orchestral suite Black Brown and Beige represent his lifelong project of using his "beyond category" music to articulate a vision of African American past and future. Please note: this was Phil's first attempt at doing a solo podcast in far-from-ideal circumstances, and the sound is pretty unpolished in places. He got his act together for the later ones; go check them out at https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies. REFERENCES Fred Waller (dir.), Symphony In Black - A Rhapsody of Negro Life Duke Ellington, Black, Brown, and Beige Dudley Murphy (dir.), Black and Tan Fantasy John Howland, Ellington Uptown: Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and the Birth of Concert Jazz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"You don't find reality only in your own backyard, you know," Stanley Kubrick once told an interviewer. "In fact, sometimes that's the last place you'll find it." Oddly, this episode of Weird Studies begins with Phil Ford hatching the idea of putting a replica of the monolith from 2001 in his backyard. As the ensuing discussion suggests, this would amount to putting reality -- or the Real, as we like to call it -- in the place where it may be least apparent. Perhaps that is what Kubrick did when he planted his monolithic film in thousands of movie theatres back in 1968. Moviegoers went in expecting a Kubrickian twist on Buck Rogers; they came out changed by the experience, much like the hominids of great veld in the "Dawn of Man" sequence that opens the film. This is what all great art does, and if you look closely, maybe 2001 can tell you something about how it does it. Because in the end, the film is the monolith, and the monolith is all art. REFERENCES Stanley Kubrick (dir.), 2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur C. Clarke, "The Sentinel" Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey (novel) Clement Greenberg, American art critic Stanley Kubrick (dir.), The Shining Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory Weird Studies episode 62: It's Like "The Shining," But With Nuns: On "Black Narcissus" Ligeti, Atmosphères Gerard Loughlin, Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology Jay Weidner, Kubrick's Odyssey: Secrets Hidden in the Films of Stanley Kubrick Rob Ager's analysis of 2001 (Ager was criticized for not citing Loughlin above) Eric Norton's Playboy interview with Stanley Kubrick J. F. Martel, "The Kubrick Gaze" in Daniel Pinchbeck & Ken Jordan (eds.), Toward 2012: Perspectives on the Next Age J. F. Martel, "The Future is Immanent: Speculations on a Possible World" Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion Sid Meier's Civilization V Stanley Kubrick (dir.), Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Stanley Kubrick (dir.), A Clockwork Orange Dziga Vertov, Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology" Gilbert Ryle, "Improvisation" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this second part of their exploration of C. G. Jung's essay "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry," JF and Phil try to discern the psychological and metaphysical implications of the great Swiss psychologist's theory of art. For one, this involves discussing what Jung meant by archetypes, and how these relate to the artists who bring them forth in artistic works. This in turn leads to a discussion of the emergent artwork as an "autonomous complex," that is, as a self-moving spirit that requires the artist merely as a conduit for its manifestation in human -- and cosmic -- history. REFERENCES Carl Gustav Jung, "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry" Arthur Machen, "Hieroglyphics: A Note Upon Ecstasy" Rick Riordan, [Percy Jackson & the Olympians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Jackson%26_the_Olympians)_ series of novels Robert Altman (director), Nashville Homer, The Odyssey Jacques Offenbach, The Tales of Hoffmann E. T. A. Hoffmann, "The Sandman" David Lynch, American filmmaker (the Dionysian!) Stanley Kubrick, American filmmaker (the Apollonian!) Richard Wagner's idea of Gesamtkunstwerk William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch Johannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance, and JF's analysis thereof Lisa Ruddick, "When Nothing is Cool" Weird Studies episode 5: Reading Lisa Ruddick's "When Nothing is Cool" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the first of two conversations that Phil and JF are devoting to C. G. Jung's seminal essay, "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry," first delivered in a 1922 lecture. It was in this text that Jung most clearly distilled his thoughts on the power and function of art. In this first part, your hosts focus their energies on Jung's puralistic style, opposing it not just to Freud's monism (which Jung critiques in the paper) but also to the monism of those other two "masters of suspicion," Marx and Nietzsche. For Jung, art is not a branch of psychology, economics, philosophy, or science. It constitutes its own sphere, and non-artists who would investigate the nature of art would do well to respect the line that art has drawn in the sand. Weird Studies listenters will know this line as the boundary between the general and the specific, the common and the singular, the mundane and the mystical... REFERENCES C. G. Jung, "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry" Joshua Gunn, Modern Occult Rhetoric: Mass Media and the Drama of Secrecy in the Twentieth Century Peter Kingsley, Catafalque: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychologist Kinka Usher (director), Mystery Men Theodor Adorno, “Bach Defended Against his Devotees” Aleister Crowley, English magician C. G. Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections C. G. Jung, The Portable Jung Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life" in: Untimely Meditations Weird Studies, episode 49: Nietzsche on History Weird Studies, episode 70: Masks All the Way Down, with James Curcio Christian Kerslake, Deleuze and the Unconscious Joshua Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal Paul Ricoeur, French philosopher Rudolph Steiner, Austrian esotericist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For over two centuries in early modern Italy, boys were selected for their singing talent castrated before the onset of puberty. The goal was to preserve the qualities of their voice even as they grew into manhood. The procedure resulted in other physiological changes which, combined with an unnaturally high voice, made the castrati the most prodigious singers on the continent. As Martha Feldman shows in her book The Castrato, a masterpiece of cultural history, the castrated singer was such a singular figure that he invited comparisons with angels, animals, and kings, attracting adoration and ridicule in equal measures. The castrato was a true liminal being, and as JF and Phil discover in this episode of Weird Studies, an unlikely herald of the present age. REFERENCES Martha Feldman, The Castrato: Reflections on Natures and Kinds Stanley Kubrick, American filmmaker Alessandro Moreschi, the last castrato, singing "Ave Maria" Baruch Spinoza, Ethics X-Men Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" Thomas Ligotti, "Mrs Ligotti's Angel", read by horror writer Jon Padgett Weird Studies, Episode 48: Thomas Ligotti's Angel Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica Genesis P-Orridge, American musician and occultist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join JF and Phil as they discuss the mystical and cosmic implications of McLuhan's oracular vision. They explore the concept of 'the medium is the message' as a teaching tool in the Zen tradition. They delve into McLuhan's laws of media and the impact of mediums on perception and society. They also discuss the poetic potential of the modern world and the suppression of beauty, as well as exploring Marshall McLuhan's view on technologies as extensions of the human nervous system.

James Curcio is an American multidisciplinary artist and nonfiction writer whose works include the novels Join My Cult, The Party at the World's End, and the upcoming Tales from When I Had a Face. Recently, Curcio edited Masks: Bowie and Artists of Artifice, an anthology of essays by various thinkers and artists on the complex interplay of fact and fiction, self and other, in the life of the modern creator of artistic works. David Bowie's career, from the early experimentations to the great working that was his final album Blackstar, provides the book's gravitational field. In his effort to better plumb the mysteries of the aesthetic universe, Curcio penned the anthology's opening essay, "Masks All the Way Down," and it is on that piece that this conversation focuses. Join James, Phil and JF as they discuss the terrifying and liberating idea of an aesthetic cosmos as seen from the vantage point of the artist who learns that with new each work comes a new face, an amalgam of symbols and forces drawn from a depth of surfaces, a paper-thin dream that goes ever so deep... REFERENCES James Curcio (editor), [Masks: Bowie and Artists of Artifice](www.intellectbooks/masks) James Curcio's website: https://www.jamescurcio.com James Curcio's new novel, [Tales from When I Had a Face](www.TalesFromWhenIHadAFace.com) David Bowie, Blackstar Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex Poppy, American singer Anatta, the Buddhist concept of no-self Nagarjuna, Indian philosopher Yukio Mishima, Japanese writer Hunter S. Thompson, American writer Lewis A. Sass, Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life" in Untimely Meditations Ornette Coleman, Change of the Century Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu Vladimir Nabokov, Russian novelist Nicholas Roeg (director), The Man Who Fell to Earth Raphael Bob-Waksberg (creator), BoJack Horseman Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society Euripides, The BacchaeSpecial Guest: James Curcio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is there to say about the COVID-19 virus that hasn't already been said, over and over again, all around the world, in quaratined houses and on TV and social media and countless Zoom chats ... what can we say that you haven't heard? Well, probably nothing. But we are now at the point where we realize that the real importance of the things we say is not their content, but the mere fact of saying them. As Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message, and at a time when we have been driven into separate solitudes, we are discovering that the real meaning of our utterances might be something like "hello, are you there?" and "I am here, talking to you." In that spirit, Phil and JF have a conversation about William James's essay "On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake," partly to discuss the ways that it's relevant to our present circumstances and the ways it's not, but mostly to make human connections, both with each other and with Weird Studies listeners. As JF says, stay close, but keep your distance. REFERENCES William James, "On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake" William James, Writings 1902-1910 Noel Black (director), "To See the Invisible Man", 2nd segment of episode 16 of The Twilight Zone (1985-86) Weird Studies no. 29, “On Lovecraft” Weird Studies no. 64, “Dreams and Shadows: On Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea” Weird Studies no. 67, “Goblins, Goat-Gods and Gates: On Hellier” Martin Heidegger, “‘Only a God Can Save Us’: The Spiegel Interview" Bruno Latour, "An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns" H.P. Lovecraft, “Nyarlathotep” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices