Parrhesia Hour

*Quarantine episode #6 -- Broadcast from home via Instagram Live*Don't you find it thrilling to do a thing you don't understand?  To not be able to quickly answer the question "what am I doing right now?"  Today guest Lev Abramoc joins the show--jazz stories to come! Originally aired and recorded 4/22/2020

*Quarantine episode #5 -- Broadcast from home via Instagram Live*Wouldn't you prefer things to be infinitely deep?  Not knowable and known?  Can you create order from chaos without thinking no other order could have been?  Something about concluded thoughts gets me real skeptical.What finds satisfaction in not-knowing? Improvisation! Can we agree that people lean excessively on knowing?  I think it becomes oppressive, and absurdly so---those claiming to "know best" are definitely drowning unacknowledged unkonwns.  just let go of it!  Then we can get on the same page and have some sincere and cognitively consonant discussions. Originally aired and recorded 4/15/2020

*Quarantine episode #4 -- Broadcast from home via Instagram Live*Do you find yourself asking yourself: "If I'm a doctor, can I know anything about health?"  Or, "if I'm not Miles Davis is it even worth playing music?"  Well we can't all be ballerinas but I don't think that should stop us from dancing.  How plain, to imagine one "best" and measure everything in relation to it.  John Cage and today's guest Paul Carter have some thoughts on these topics. Originally aired and recorded 4/08/2020

*Quarantine episode #3 -- Broadcast from home via Instagram Live* What do Joe Exotic's GW Zoo, and Peter Ivers' New Wave Theater have in common?  Lofty ideals!  Why stop thinking when you could start thinking?  What starts you thinking?  There's such pressure on language, I'd like to release that pressure, to lower expectations -- expect less from language.  Please come relax with me, let yammering be yammering. Originally aired and broadcast on 4/1/2020

*Quarantine episode #2 -- Broadcast from home via Instagram Live* When you cook, do you clean as you go?  If you do, have you ever regretted it?  If you don't, have you ever resented being asked if you do?  This got me thinking about ecosystems, detritus, and engineering -- I don't think a design should be considered complete or beautiful if it hasn't accounted for management of its own waste. Originally aired and recorded 3/25/2020

*Quarantine episode #1 -- Broadcast from home via Instagram Live*A part of a thing is never the whole of the thing.  That's easy enough to get behind, just don't forget that anything constructed is necessarily partial.  So you can spend your time thinking about anything you want, just don't make the mistake of presuming you now know it all.  Things are changing everyday! Originally aired and recorded 3/18/2020

Politics!! Am I right?  So easy to fall into nihilistic despair, to feel futile in an echo chamber, praching to the choir... Don't let hastily applied cliches deter you!  A choir needs music to sing, right?  A choir is powerful, music is powerful -- elections are not the beginning, nor the end.  Guest Eric Shevrin is here to chat today. Originally aired and recorded 3/11/2020

How is your decision making informed by your sense of justice?  Are you the arbiter of justice, or do you defer to something beyond yourself?  That is to say, how useful is it to acknowledge your finitude?  Guest Jason Meadows joins us today. Originally aired and recorded 3/4/2020

How can we look at what is?  Thinking about people can be sticky, but what if we think about objects, what's that open up?  Can it be empowering?  Like if I'm an egg, will I be more understood?  Guest Aris is here to ehlp us ponder this. Originally aired and recorded 2/26/2020

What information should be on the show flyer?  That the members of the band are good people?  And what's going on when bad people make good art?  Do you want to like people, or do you want to like watching them?  What makes a community, what makes a product?  Guest Pauline helps us think through this. Originally aired and recorded 2/19/2020

Confronting things is the new dominating things.  Sure, time and progress isn't linear, but I do think we're better communicators now than say, 100 years ago.  Tho maybe not better than 3000 years ago.  "There's no thinking in parrhesia, it's brainless" Originally aired and recorded 2/12/2020

Attention is a big theme of this show, y'know, it can really reveal a lot to yourself and others:  there's an infinite amount of things you could pay attention to, so that which grabs you really says something about your priorities, conscious or otherwise.  So what is stained glass asking us to pay attention to?  Guest JD is here to think through this with us today. Originally aired and recorded 2/5/2020

"Interested in infinity?""Intermittently""In time I'll tell you about intelligent intervals influencing intangible influxes"In for a ride, today you are.  Guest Eric shares his thoughts on infinity, while Sun Ra's Astro Infinity Arkestra plays. Originally broadcast and recorded 1/29/2020 

Today we continue to discuss acting.  Why?  Well think about Hollywood's global cultural hegemony!  Actors are a huge thing, and we're trying to understand the billions here, what unites the people?  Is it the stories or, is it the performing?  It's always both, right?  Guest Michelle joins us today. Originally broadcast and recorded 1/22/2020

Acting and acting and action--to act is to take action, but it's also to pretend?  And is pretending in context lying?  Or is it actually parrhesiastic honestly--a vulnerable show of how you believe emotions to look?  What's going on here--Why is acting such a highly valued thing?  Guest Katherine helps us consider this. Originally broadcast and recorded 1/15/2020

Are new age thinkers like Eckhart Tolle, to an extent, asking you to be unconcerned with the issues concerning the fabric you're apart of?  Is turning inward a turning off to what's around you?  Is it all yin and no yang?  Guest Lucy is here to think/feel through this.   Originally broadcast and recorded 1/8/2020

What to do with the pain of being misunderstood?  Or, even worse, when the other party is willfully avoiding understanding, imposing their own narrative on you?  What recourse do you have?  Could parrhesia help?  Guest Alejandra is here to explore understanding. Originally broadcast and recorded 12/11/2019

What's easy, what's hard?  What's plastic, what's concrete?  What's soft, what's stiff?  What won't hurt, what will?  Let's face the voice today with guest Phoebe. Originally broadcast and recorded 12/4/2019 

I can be anything I can eat, but what can I chew?  And you might think of yourself as open minded, but, how open mouthed are you?  Guest Amelia joins us today to talk about food. Originally aired and recorded 11/27/2019

So you wanna sing -- think you've got what it takes?  What does it give?  Let's focus on the giving, and let's focus on the focus, because that's really what any discipline is about: a focusing of attention.  Vocalist Dominique joins us!Originally broadcast and recorded 11/20/2019

What did it mean to be a radical artist int he early 19th century?  For William Wordsworth, to rethink the ode was a big ol' deal met with much resistance.  No more sycophantic salutes to state power, let us praise the leech collector down by the river.  Valorizing the lower classes...sounds like a recurring trend in the arts. Originally broadcast and recorded 2/28/2018

Well folks, it's feeling a godo time to take stock of what we are feeling ok with not knowing.  I want to make sure we're not in a mad dash to accumulate knowledge, but instead feeling around for resonances.  Books are not for teaching how to think, but for feeling unalone. Originally broadcast and recorded 2/21/2018

We've talekd about time before, and we have definitelyu talked about space, but let's get into some calculations, like, what exists over time?  As in ____/Time.  Feel me?  Husserl might help.  Oh and some gestated thoughts on morality. Originally broadcast and recorded 2/7/2018

Meta-ethics, let's get into it.  What's morality good for if we can't agree what's moral?  Credit & culpability are ego shit, only reality-implications matter. Originally broadcast and recorded 1/31/2018

How can freedom lead to fascism,to a desire to be controlled?  Erich Fromm has a book on this I only jhust started, but then I went to see Phantom Thread, and it totally relates.  Let's see if guest Miles agrees, let's see what can be seen. Originally broadcast and recorded 1/17/2018

Ah, love, Alice Coletrane, Joseph Campbell, Bell Hooks, cathexis, science and guest Brandon on the show.  "Love and how the bro cannot love"  Let's have fun defining and categorizing. Originally broadcast and recorded 1/10/2018

Milford Graves, Anthony Braxton, and William Parker today with 'Beyond Quantum'.  Which has me asking the question:  When is thinking like a scientist annoying?  like, if pseudoscience confirms, and science disconfirms, are people justified in calling the scientist a buzzkill, a marry-mary-quite-contrary? Originally broadcast and recorded 1/3/2018

Judgment and judging.  You want to know yourself, yeah?  How defined (and fortified?) are you by what you're not?  Why are some things easier to accept than others, as in, what's it mean when it's hard to accept something? Originally broadcast and recorded 12/27/2017 

Gossip has a negative connotation, yeah?  It alwayus has for me, BUT, is this just an idea I got from THE MAN?  The Soviet Union had posters saying "Don't gossip, it's treason"--so, like, why does the government care?  Is, perhaps, gossip an empowering social practice?  Is it a power of the people? Originally broadcast and recorded 12/20/2017

"As if!" not only catchy 90s slang.  The Philosophy of As If by Hans Vahinger was published in Germany in 1911, and it involves "useful fictions" and the Fictional Final Self, or at least, that's how I want to talk about it. Originally broadcast and recorded 12/6/2017

My friend was noticing migraine ads--"unless you get them, YOU DON'T GET IT, the suffering is real," and naturally this aroused some suspicion in me.  Are you being sold your own suffering?  Is this the commodification of victimhood?  Originally broadcast and recorded 11/29/2017

"Shoulder to Shoulder, Man to Man, March as Men Should, Don't be Afraid!"  Is it appropriate to appreciate this lyric in its context, and not as primarily gendered?  Listen to how Sun Ra chants it, and:  my new Android phone, what's it like? Originally broadcast and recorded 11/22/2017 

If 'training' and 'research' are to provide 'confidence' and 'evidence' then, what else could be?  Biofeedback ala biophysics?  It's egalitarian!  Available to all!  "It's havin fun that you grow" --Tony Williams. Originally broadcast and recorded 11/15/2017

Comeuppance, what goes around comes around, action/reaction.  Karma-like-processes, how do they function and how are they misunderstood?  Or, how can I choose to understand them?  No scholar or theologian agrees, so who are they that I am not? Originally broadcast and recorded 11/1/2017

Don't just say "tsk tsk tsk, I banish you from my sensibility" ok?  please? Originally aired and recorded 9/13/2017

They say love is a many splendored thing.  I say, everything is many splendored, you're just choosing to look deeply at love.  What are you prioritizing? Originally aired and recorded 8/30/2017

Sun Ra likes to ask "if this is a planet of life, why are people dying?" and someone described fungus as that which embraces death and so makes all life possible.  And what's up with things that eat shit?  What do they know that we don't? Originally aired and recorded 8/16/2017 

Sax player David S Ware brings up some interesting points on not-thinking, and so does drummer JoJo Mayer.  What do we think?  What do you think? Originally aired and recorded 8/9/2017

I listened to a lecture on affect storms and poetry by scholar Keston Sutherland, and it got me thinking about the album Charles Mingus Plays Piano, Spontaneous Compositions and Improvisation.  I suspect that improvised music much more naturally exists within an affect storm than does poetry, let's look into. Originally aired and recorded on 8/2/2017.

I hope not, but then what is vanity about?  When am I vain? Originally broadcast and recorded 10/19/2016

Reminiscing on an evening watching Tatsuya Nakatani perform paired with a grant proposal for the city of LA, a plan to instill a sense of pronoia in the multi-million person populace. Originally broadcast and recorded 9/28/2016 

And is meditation just an observation of physics?  Shouldn't we listen to physics? Originally broadcast and recorded 10/12/2016

What criteria need be met for you to be convinced?  What do you consider thorough? Originally broadcast and recorded 8/24/2016

When is it about self-congratulations?  I want to discuss some things I'm suspicious of. Originally broadcast and recorded 7/27/2016

For whom do you appeal?  Thoughts this episode inspired by painter Philip Guston and Composer Morton Feldman. Originally broadcast and recorded on 2/10/2016