I love free flow newsletters like this. That's why I follow @extraevil as well. It's like surfing cable TV on a Saturday night. Flipping through all the channels, enjoying for ten mins before moving on. The exhileration of finding something. Theres always a giddy positive hope to it, because you know you'll find real gems. Thanks fpr the shoutout. I really enjoyed the process of having a guest.
Keith, what a lovely thing to say, that I have I have made you, at least during the time that you were reading this, into a virtual Regan MacNeil! (She of head-spinning ,The Exorcist, fame). I think I'll find a recording of Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels sining 'Good Golly Miss Molly' so I can listen to Mitch sing 'Spinning spinning spinning, spinning like a spinning top!' as I reread your comment!
I’m not sure if this is relevant or not...but I was unfamiliar with Sway, my being a relatively casual Rolling Stones listener. It just doesn’t float to the top of the Spotify mixes. However...circa 2018 I believe...I was riding a train from London to Bournemouth with some colleagues, and along that route is a stop in...Sway. For whatever reason, we found the name of the town humorous, and we have for years now talked fondly of “our time in Sway.”
What I do not know (and doubt), is if there is any relation between these two UK phenomena.
At any rate, you reminded me I hadn’t texted this one former colleague in quite some time, so I sent him a message. Now that I think about it, I’ll share this post as well.
Thanks for that. What an unusual name for a town! I love it. And ain't that Stones song grand? To my ears it's a perfect match of lyrics to the music, as the song seems to slide slowly from side to side as it goes on.
But I must confess, what I most like about your comment is the part where you decide to share it. That's the way to do it, friend!
I'm not much of a fan of ('American') football, so I don't know what motivated me to read that article about Damar Hamlin. But isn't it kind of extraordinary? That kind of freaky cardiac arrest thing could have happened to anybody on the field, I suppose. But I wonder how many people in Hamlin's situation could have offered a comment upon their return to playing that would be pithy enough to anchor a Sundman figures it out! post?
I was watching the game when Hamlin’s cardiac arrest happened. It was...one of the most unsettling things to witness. You’re used to fake death on TV, but you don’t tend to see much real death and/or resuscitation, especially casually watching a football game. No one but the medical professionals seemed to know what to do or say. The rest of us were in shock, including the broadcast team. It was especially wild watching the reactions of his teammates. They were very clearly not mentally ready for anything, much less continuing the game. So I was happy the powers that be shut it down.
I’ve never seen the lyrics of Sway quoted in an essay or even anywhere. But your discussion of time, recovery from cardiac arrest and Christianity bring me back to Carl Jung and the concept of synchronicity (not the song by the Police) and a Philip K Dick “speech” I first came across last night.
I’ve only watched the first 10 minutes - but PKD covers his notion of orthogonal time, and how God may slip in to the world. It is odd enough to send your way. You are welcome to listen to as much or as little as you’d like.
Thanks, I'll check out the PKD thing. Dick is a challenging case. A brilliant writer who wrote amazing, compelling stories (and in so doing invented a new & profound genre of literature, and arguably a new branch of philosophy as well), Dick was also often incoherent, self-contradictory and just plain bonkers. I acknowledge the profound effect he's had on my own writing, and I'm happy and honored when people compare my books to his. Ken MacLeod has called my book The Pains "1984, as told by Philip K. Dick". I can live with that.
But unlike Dick, I'm not overtly a mystic, and I'm not much interested in how "God might slip into to the world. " What does interest me is how prevailing conceptions of such things influence both {how we (each of us, intimately, personally) think of our own lives}, and {the kinds of art, and of fiction in particular, that any age produces}.
That is to say in the age of Homer, there was epic poetry, but there was no such thing as a novel. Why did the novel arrive and prosper when and where it did? Kermode, in "The Sense of an Ending," argues that theological and proto-scientific questions about the nature of time are part of the answer to such questions. This is a topic that interests me.
I first read PKD around 1972 when a friend gave me a copy of Ubik. And I thought it was amazing. He was a bright friend from High School, who I recall telling me he could only do psychedelics and not smoke MJ for certain medical reasons. He later apparently went in to computer work and perhaps related to biochemistry. I was looking him up a few months back - but found out he had passed away a few years back.
Like you I read a lot of PKD and found, if I recall, some diary work, and that he was off and on institutionalized. I was surprised to see an interview about his belief in God, since his books didn’t really go in that direction at all.
Check out VALIS and especially The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, which is based on Dick's friendship with the Christian mystic/crackpot(?) Bishop Pike. It goes deep into theological territory.
Thanks. I read Valis a very long time ago. I’m quite sure I did not read the Transmigration of TA”. I’ll stick that on my list. Interesting! And I’ll try to get off a short email to you with a tale about heart things, which I don’t think I sent you. I see my library has an electronic version of the trilogy. Now to work this into the other 25 books I’m working on. :-) a great time for a divided attention span.
I love free flow newsletters like this. That's why I follow @extraevil as well. It's like surfing cable TV on a Saturday night. Flipping through all the channels, enjoying for ten mins before moving on. The exhileration of finding something. Theres always a giddy positive hope to it, because you know you'll find real gems. Thanks fpr the shoutout. I really enjoyed the process of having a guest.
My experience of reading this essay: Every time my head spins (again), you give it another little push.
Keith, what a lovely thing to say, that I have I have made you, at least during the time that you were reading this, into a virtual Regan MacNeil! (She of head-spinning ,The Exorcist, fame). I think I'll find a recording of Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels sining 'Good Golly Miss Molly' so I can listen to Mitch sing 'Spinning spinning spinning, spinning like a spinning top!' as I reread your comment!
I’m not sure if this is relevant or not...but I was unfamiliar with Sway, my being a relatively casual Rolling Stones listener. It just doesn’t float to the top of the Spotify mixes. However...circa 2018 I believe...I was riding a train from London to Bournemouth with some colleagues, and along that route is a stop in...Sway. For whatever reason, we found the name of the town humorous, and we have for years now talked fondly of “our time in Sway.”
What I do not know (and doubt), is if there is any relation between these two UK phenomena.
At any rate, you reminded me I hadn’t texted this one former colleague in quite some time, so I sent him a message. Now that I think about it, I’ll share this post as well.
Matt,
Thanks for that. What an unusual name for a town! I love it. And ain't that Stones song grand? To my ears it's a perfect match of lyrics to the music, as the song seems to slide slowly from side to side as it goes on.
But I must confess, what I most like about your comment is the part where you decide to share it. That's the way to do it, friend!
I'm not much of a fan of ('American') football, so I don't know what motivated me to read that article about Damar Hamlin. But isn't it kind of extraordinary? That kind of freaky cardiac arrest thing could have happened to anybody on the field, I suppose. But I wonder how many people in Hamlin's situation could have offered a comment upon their return to playing that would be pithy enough to anchor a Sundman figures it out! post?
I was watching the game when Hamlin’s cardiac arrest happened. It was...one of the most unsettling things to witness. You’re used to fake death on TV, but you don’t tend to see much real death and/or resuscitation, especially casually watching a football game. No one but the medical professionals seemed to know what to do or say. The rest of us were in shock, including the broadcast team. It was especially wild watching the reactions of his teammates. They were very clearly not mentally ready for anything, much less continuing the game. So I was happy the powers that be shut it down.
I’ve never seen the lyrics of Sway quoted in an essay or even anywhere. But your discussion of time, recovery from cardiac arrest and Christianity bring me back to Carl Jung and the concept of synchronicity (not the song by the Police) and a Philip K Dick “speech” I first came across last night.
I’ve only watched the first 10 minutes - but PKD covers his notion of orthogonal time, and how God may slip in to the world. It is odd enough to send your way. You are welcome to listen to as much or as little as you’d like.
https://youtu.be/DQbYiXyRZjM
Thanks, I'll check out the PKD thing. Dick is a challenging case. A brilliant writer who wrote amazing, compelling stories (and in so doing invented a new & profound genre of literature, and arguably a new branch of philosophy as well), Dick was also often incoherent, self-contradictory and just plain bonkers. I acknowledge the profound effect he's had on my own writing, and I'm happy and honored when people compare my books to his. Ken MacLeod has called my book The Pains "1984, as told by Philip K. Dick". I can live with that.
But unlike Dick, I'm not overtly a mystic, and I'm not much interested in how "God might slip into to the world. " What does interest me is how prevailing conceptions of such things influence both {how we (each of us, intimately, personally) think of our own lives}, and {the kinds of art, and of fiction in particular, that any age produces}.
That is to say in the age of Homer, there was epic poetry, but there was no such thing as a novel. Why did the novel arrive and prosper when and where it did? Kermode, in "The Sense of an Ending," argues that theological and proto-scientific questions about the nature of time are part of the answer to such questions. This is a topic that interests me.
I first read PKD around 1972 when a friend gave me a copy of Ubik. And I thought it was amazing. He was a bright friend from High School, who I recall telling me he could only do psychedelics and not smoke MJ for certain medical reasons. He later apparently went in to computer work and perhaps related to biochemistry. I was looking him up a few months back - but found out he had passed away a few years back.
Like you I read a lot of PKD and found, if I recall, some diary work, and that he was off and on institutionalized. I was surprised to see an interview about his belief in God, since his books didn’t really go in that direction at all.
Check out VALIS and especially The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, which is based on Dick's friendship with the Christian mystic/crackpot(?) Bishop Pike. It goes deep into theological territory.
Thanks. I read Valis a very long time ago. I’m quite sure I did not read the Transmigration of TA”. I’ll stick that on my list. Interesting! And I’ll try to get off a short email to you with a tale about heart things, which I don’t think I sent you. I see my library has an electronic version of the trilogy. Now to work this into the other 25 books I’m working on. :-) a great time for a divided attention span.