About some
Conspicuous
Inspirations:
Electracy—a theory introduced in 1989 by Gregory Ulmer that describes the kind of skills and facility necessary to exploit the full communicative potential of new electronic media such as multimedia, hypermedia, social software, and virtual worlds.
The Zibaldone—Giacomo Leopardi’s lifelong evolving compendium, written between 1817 and 1832, of personal impressions, aphorisms, profound philosophical observations, philological analyses, literary criticism, poetry, and simple notes.
Influences
I’m
Aware of:
Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture—Arthur Evan’s controversial work published in 1978, presents the historical suppression of nature society and magical thinking by the rise of militarism and patriarchy. Queerness is reclaimed as a sacred dynamic with an ancient natural lineage.
Heliogabalus; or, The Crowned Anarchist—Antonin Artaud’s 1934 novelized biography of Elagabalus, the 25th Emperor of Rome. Ruling only from 218 AD to 222 AD before being assassinated by his own guard, he replaced the traditional head of the Roman pantheon, Jupiter, with the Sun God of his ancestral priesthood, installed his mother and grandmother as the first women to be in the Roman Senate, and publicly married both men and women during his mystical reign of sexual rites and debauchery.
Koyaanisqatsi—a 1983 visual symphonic poem directed by Godfrey Reggio set entirely to music composed by Philip Glass. A cinematic attempt to evoke a spiritual passage between the ancient and contemporary, from nature to industry, exploring life out of balance. Reggio explained the lack of dialogue by stating "it's not for lack of love of the language that these films have no words. It's because, from my point of view, our language is in a state of vast humiliation. It no longer describes the world in which we live."
Drawing Down the Moon—a sociological study of contemporary paganism in the United States written by the American Wiccan and journalist Margot Adler. First published in 1979 the book is credited with both documenting new religious impulses and being a catalyst for the panoply of practices now in existence, helping popularize earth-based religions.
Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!—a book released in 1983 by essayist Fredy Perlman. It is a personal critical perspective on contemporary civilization and society. The work defined anarcho-primitivism for the first time, and was a major source of inspiration for anti-civilization perspectives in contemporary anarchism, most notably on the thought of philosopher John Zerzan.
The Perennial Philosophy—the 1945 comparative study of mysticism by the British writer and novelist Aldous Huxley. An attempt to present this Highest Common Factor of all theologies by assembling passages from the writings of those saints and prophets who have approached a direct spiritual knowledge of the Divine.
The First and Last Freedom—the 1954 book by Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti contemplating the nature of the self and of belief, investigations into fear and desire, the relationship between thinker and thought, the concept of choiceless awareness, and the function of the mind.