Featured Artists in this episode:
Hannah Sharafian: is an actress, playwright and teacher in NYC
Tyler Bejoines: is a singer/songwriter and leader of band Tyler And The Names, based in Massachusetts
Jane LeCroy: is a poet, punk/folk/rock singer and bandleader of The Icebergs and teacher in the NYC public school system, resident of NYC
Heather Kapplow: is a multimedia artist based in Massachusetts. Her Walking In The Time Of Covld, is an interactive and collaborative work specifically about current life.
Lin Marcoux is a Bodywork therapist and healer in North Carolina
Amanda Maciel Antunes is a multimedia artist, costume designer, and archivist in Los Angeles “I have said many times before that on my show there are both guests whom I have never met in person, as well as those who I can count as closest friends.
Of the six people who make an appearance in this episode only one, Hannah Sharafin, is someone who not only have I never met before the show, but was relatively unknowledgeable about her work.
The others include people who I have known quite well, more or less, and over at least a couple of decades.
I say all of this because one of the results of something like Covid19, and this result is something I have seen little remarked upon in the popular media/press, is that it encourages or even necessitates a certain soulfulness, in Thomas Moore's sense of that word.
One aspect of soulfulness concerns friendship and human connection more generally, and conversation is key.
This increase in soulfulness does not necessarily constitute a full stop silver lining. I harbor suspicions that much desired improvements (should they come to pass as many activists want, to name one example) to come out of this will prove to have downsides themselves in the long run, compromised as they are by the corrosiveness of what we are living through.
I would be dishonest if I did not state these doubts.
There are times for civility and then there are times when one must be true to oneself and to one's own convictions.
You will also note that I am more forthcoming, even blunt, in this episode about some of my own convictions, for example by Camus', or Schoppenahuer brand of pessimism (as explicated in the Joshua Foa Diensteg book Pessimism) in the Jane LeCroy section, or my willingness to make jokes about the phrase "flatten the curve" since the phrase sounded to me like the name of a jazz fusion instrumental song from the early 80s, thus my reference to the musicians Will Lee and Steve Gadd in the Tyler Bejoines, and knowing upon reflection this might be in bad taste to many since it ignores the actual meaning of the phrase (which is most serious) in favor of it's sound in a different context.
But all of these are examples of soulfulness in that they are a way for me to reach back into things I love most deeply, and these are usually things from the past, like beloved music or works of philosophy. There is no excerpt where this tendency is more apparent than in my conversation with Tyler Bejoines.
But what all of these examples have in common is that not only might they be seen as "trivial" or off topic to the centrality of this virus in some quarters, but that they are supreme examples of art of all kinds, which, if you think about it, is why this podcast exists to begin with.
Read more about this episode here: https://www.facebook.com/journeyofanaesthetepodcast/
