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First of a two-part conversation with Keyhole Factory-author William Gillespie, on the idea of capitalism as a virus, end of the world media, being trained as a novelist, the world as a story, anecdotes in place of history, the extinction event, ascribing agency to the ecosystem, the meaning of weather, Patricia Highsmith’s idea of comforting, a spiritual dimension, a golden age of dystopias, industrial proletariat sci-fi, disaster movies and mortality, isolation movies, from abnormal psychology to creative writing, the CIA, creative writing, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a government plot to discredit reality, yuppie sexuality, Bruce/Caitlin Jenner, the plague of “literally,” is the war on terror a literal war?, Nietzsche’s view on war, human beings within a mechanistic universe, the egocentric idea of agency, the poet-astronaut, relativity and the absence of simultaneity, remembering the future, no present moment, Brian Rotman and the narrated self, George Lakoff & reality, hardwired to create narratives, the relationship between language and time, Castaneda and the flyers, language as invading pathogen, the dilemma of choosing the right pronoun, DNA as virus, a war of consciousness, junk DNA and entropy, the total psyche, everything is inside/there is no outside, what would a projection say, Philip K. Dick, solipsism vs. holisticism, the burden of agency, individuation and autonomy, the pretext of language, how we communicate primarily.
William’s websites: http://keyholefactory.com http://newspoetry.com http://tableofforms.com
Songs: “El Mariachi,” by The Freak Fandango Orchestra; “The Dust,” “Fix You,” by Robyn Hitchcock.
Another good conversation. I have a fascination with apocalyptic / post apocalyptic fiction myself. I have noticed how modern versions of this sub-genre are much more paranoid. Soylent green being one notable exception. When I think about the original BBC series “The Survivors” compared to the remake this is clearly evident.
Again, it all comes back to language. I cold, however, disagree that there is no present. If you become truly in the body there is only the present moment. Perhaps language is only a way of expressing those feelings or experiences and memory is just a way to catalog those experiences. Perhaps time only exists because we/I/they have become less embodied and rather than a lexicon of feelings we start mapping it as some type of progression?
Personal pronouns and descriptions of gender and sexuality, yes I too have encountered this PC nightmare.
Keep them coming! 😉
For the body there is only the present; for the mind, there is no such thing.
Really enjoyed this, perhaps the best to date – you two had great rapport!
“the future as a tragic memory of our own death, . . . . and the meaning of trees have changed forever,” . . . . the lag william spoke of, the one between the conversation, and the podcast ultimately reaching my/our bended ears, our wiring for stories, and alas, even our collective karmic culpabilitude, our o so human failing to equate this/our ability to commune in cyberspace with those profound thoughts in our own heads, reminds me of something. yeah, that’s it, why i loathe texting as a form of connecting with others.
sometimes i wonder if our liminal perspectives allows each of us grace to fold and put away our words when we feel into the bodies of others and recognize, not hear, just recognize ourselves in each other. sounds very cornball, simplistic even, but i think this of late when it so happens that 2 dear kindred are now past seeing, or hearing and remembering, they themselves are beyond words, mine or their own, and i cannot help but think there is a time for words and then there isn’t. then there is just something else.
this was very evocative, inspiring, really. i love your musical interludes, quite literally wept through Dust.
how fortunate for all of us that william ultimately chose syntax over rorschach.
thanks for this wonderful conversation with william jasun, it was something else,