Episode 173: By Heart: On Memory, Poetry, and Form

Episode 173: By Heart: On Memory, Poetry, and Form

Author: SpectreVision Radio July 10, 2024 Duration: 1:18:50
In this computerized age, we tend to see memory as a purely cerebral faculty. To memorize is to store information away in the brain in such a way as to make it retrievable at a later time. But the old expression "knowing by heart" calls us to a stranger, more embodied and mysterious take on memory. In this episode, Phil and JF endeavour to recite two poems they've learned by heart, as a preamble to a discussion on poetry, form, and the magic of memory. Details on Shannon Taggart's Symposium @ Lily Dale (July 25-28). Support us on Patreon. Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia. Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop Find us on Discord Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau! REFERENCES Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan” Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “A Musical Instrument” Dave Hickey, “Formalism” from Pirates and Farmers Weird Studies, Episode 109-110 on “The Glass Bead Game” Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria Weird Studies, Episode 42 with Kerry O Brien Francis Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the heart of Weird Studies, a podcast from SpectreVision Radio, you’ll find long-form conversations between Professor Phil Ford and writer J. F. Martel. Their discussions aren’t simple reviews or straightforward analyses; instead, they wander through the tangled undergrowth where art and philosophy meet, giving generous time to concepts that resist easy understanding and to creative works that fracture our ordinary sense of the world. This podcast deliberately lingers in that ambiguous space, treating the “weird” not as a genre but as a particular mode of experience-one that reveals the cracks in what we comfortably assume is real. Each episode feels like joining a deep, meandering dialogue between two friends who are both deeply knowledgeable and endlessly curious, covering a vast terrain that includes literature, film, music, and esoteric thought. It’s a show for anyone who suspects that the most profound truths are often found in the shadows, the anomalies, and the strangely beautiful. As part of the SpectreVision Radio network, which specializes in content that explores the uncanny edges of creativity, Weird Studies builds a unique community of listeners who are eager to think differently. You won’t find pat answers here, but you will encounter compelling questions and a shared sense of exploration that makes each installment a distinctive journey.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 230

Weird Studies
Podcast Episodes
Episode 66: On Diviner's Time [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:32:19
In the paper discussed in this episode, Phil Ford coins the term "diviner's time" to denote a particular feeling that will be familiar to anyone who has engaged in divinatory or magical practice, namely the feeling that…
Episode 63: Faculty X: On Colin Wilson's 'The Occult' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:19:35
At its simplest, what Colin Wilson calls Faculty X is "simply that latent power in human beings possess to reach beyond the present." Yet its existence is evinced in all those phenomena that modernity files under "supern…
Episode 61: Evil and Ecstasy: On 'The Silence of the Lambs' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:07:16
The Welsh writer Arthur Machen defined good and evil as "ecstasies." Each one is a "withdrawal from the common life." On this view, any artistic investigation into the nature of good and evil can't remain safely ensconce…
Episode 60: Space is the Place: On Sun Ra, Gnosticism, and the Tarot [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:26:27
Somebody once said, "No prophet is welcome in his own country." Whether this was true in the case of jazz musician and composer Sun Ra depends on whom you ask. With most, the dictum probably bears out. But there are thos…
Episode 59: Green Mountains Are Always Walking [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:20:28
"Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around a lake." This line from Wallace Stevens' "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" captures something of the mysteries of walking. It points to the undeniable yet baffling relationship…
Episode 58: What Do Critics Do? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:34
What is the role of the critic in the world of art? For some, including lots of critics, the figure exudes an aura of authority: her task is to tell us what this or that work of art means, why it matters, and what we are…
Episode 57: Box of God(s): On 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:30:49
Raiders of the Lost Ark is more than a Hollywood movie made in the summer blockbuster mold. As Phil says in his intro to this popping Weird Studies episode, the film is "a Trojan horse of the Weird, easy to let in but on…