Episode 12 // UFOs

This week's episode explores modern expressions of religion and their intersections with the bizarre and intriguing universe of UFOs, aliens, and extraterrestrials. This week we alternate between a UFO-themed playlist featuring artists like Sun Ra and Craig Leon, and an interview with Diane Brisebois, a leader and spiritual guide in the Raelian Church -- the largest UFO religion in the world.

The image below is a cave painting from the Dogon tribe in Mali who, at points in time, worshiped extraterrestrial deities known as the Nommo, [1]. Craig Leon, first encountered sculptures of the Nommo in a Brooklyn Museum exhibition in 1973, which eventually lead him to release an album under John Fahey's Takoma record label -- a release re-imagining what music would sound like if handed down from an ancient alien species. RVNG International is reissuing his work in a compilation album this June called, 'Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music Vol. 1: Nommos / Visiting'. [2]

episode download: [forthcoming]


0:02:06 - station id: Jack Layton
0:02:16 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:02:29 - Supergrass - 'Jesus Came From Outta Space'
0:06:37 - talking: introduction
0:07:31 - Quiet Evenings - 'Split with Sundrips'
'":"":""' - interview with Diane Brisebois: introduction, the 'elohim'
0:18:57 - Michael Hurley - 'No, No, No, I Won't Go Down No More'
0:23:06 - psa: vegetarianism
0:23:25 - ad: Tone Deaf - Allison Cameron and Kyoko Ogoda
0:24:34 - Craig Leon - 'Nommo'
0:31:30 - Pulse Emitter - 'Meditative Music 3'
'":"":""' - interview with Diane Brisebois: gender/sexual justice, Clitoraid hospital
0:35:55 - Matt Rogalsky - 'Eliane 1'
0:37:35 - Grouper - 'Alien Observer'
0:41:32 - Sufjan Stevens - 'Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois'
0:44:01 - Pangea - 'Comet'
'":"":""' - interview with Diane Brisebois: sensual meditation, GMOs, act of apostasy, Raelian embassy
0:56:06 - No UFO's - '00/00/2010'

1:00:45 - psa: Noam Chomsky on community radio
1:01:31 - station id: Amy Goodman
1:01:47 - ad: The Sleepless Goat's soup program
1:02:17 - pro: cfrc programming volunteer application
1:02:53 - Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. - 'God Bless AMT'
1:05:29 - Ornette Coleman - 'Space Church (Continuous Service)'
1:14:04 - Biosphere - 'Laika'
'":"":""' - interview with Diane Brisebois: controversy, connect with Raelian community
1:22:05 - The Orb - 'A Huge Eveer Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld
1:23:37 - talking: outro
1:24:41 - Sun Ra & His Arkestra - 'Love in Outer Space'

"If we then turn our attention to mind and realize that we have no definition of what mind is, why then is there any mystery in the fact that we have no definition of what the UFO is? The mind is present at hand in every conscious moment. It has been our constant companion for fifty thousand years, and we haven’t a clue as to what it is. So therefore, a manifestation of the other — the superego, or the extraterrestrial other like the UFO — it is not surprising that it is a mystery. I always hark back to the words of J.B.S. Haldane, the great British enzymologist, who said ‘reality is not only stranger than we suppose, it may be stranger than we can suppose."

- Terence McKenna (Aliens & Archetypes), [3]

More Info:
[1] Nommo of the Dogon Tribe of Mali
[2] Craig Leon's 'Nommos/Visiting' Release on RVNG International
[3] Terence McKenna on 'Aliens and Archetypes' (Video Interview)

Episode 11 // Water

Yesterday was International Water Day. Today, more than 760 million still do not have access to safe, clean drinking water. According to the World Health Organization, there are approximately 30,000 water-related fatalities every week. Water, though forgettably so at times, is a cornerstone of life.

In 'The Sea Around Us', Rachel Carson writes, "Each of us carries in our veins a salty stream in which the elements sodium, potassium, and calcium are combined in almost the same proportions as in sea water. This is our inheritance..."

Ancient poets and scribes saw blood as life, and they knew water to be life as well. The two have long been intertwined with our understanding of human existence. This week's episode contemplates aqueous themes in spirituality, especially within the Abrahamic tradition, and references Baal, the Canaanite deity of rain, Jesus and the wine miracle at the Marriage at Cana, as well as the textual seams in the Noahide narrative. Themes of water, blood and wine, in this week's musical selections, parallel reflections on the mystery of 'life' -- existentially, bodily, and also spiritually.

The image below depicts three ritual wine containers from the Shang dynasty, dating back to the 13th to 11th centuries BCE. The first two incorporate decorative motifs of the owl, a significant totemic animal in Shang ritual, thought by some scholars to be associated with ancestral beliefs and worship practices.

episode download: [forthcoming]


0:00:25 - station id: by Jack Layton
0:00:34 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:00:46 - Violent Femmes - 'Jesus Walking on the Water'
0:03:52 - Luke Winslow-King - 'The Coming Tide'
0:06:40 - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - 'Jesus Met the Woman at the Well'
0:08:40 - Cabaal - 'Altar/Ascent'
":"9:08 - talking: on Elijah and the Prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel, [1]
0:14:47 - Ricky Eat Acid - 'God puts us all in the swimming pool'
0:18:22 - postmoderndisco - 'Mist'
0:23:36 - In The Guestroom feat. Bill Cassidy - 'Blood and Faith'
0:27:51 - Blondes - 'Wine'
":"8:03 - talking: on water, wine, and blood, and the marriage at Cana, [2]
0:34:48 - promo: below the decks (radio show)
0:35:19 - psa: traditional lands of the Anishinaabe & Haudenosaunee
0:35:29 - Liturgy - 'Glory Bronze'
0:42:10 - Neon Indian - 'Ephemeral Artery'
0:45:02 - Crystal Castles - 'Baptism'
0:49:14 - Evian Christ - 'Waterfall'
0:53:29 - Balam Acab - 'See Birds (Sun)'
0:57:39 - promo: AMS AGM CFRC fee increase vote
0:58:26 - promo: cfrc radio
0:58:42 - station id: by Amy Goodman
0:58:55 -  Salem - 'Water'


1:01:44 - Sleep ∞ Over - 'Romantic Streams'
1:05:31 - Linda Perhacs - 'River of God'
1:09:55 - Julian Lynch - 'The Flood'
":10:13 - talking: on textual seams of Noahide flood narrative, [3]
1:20:44 - Water Borders - 'Ararat'


"In our standard ideological tradition, the approach to Spirit is perceived as Elevation, as getting rid of the burden of weight, of the gravitating force which binds us to earth, as cutting links with material inertia and starting to “float freely”; in contrast to this, in Tarkovsky’s universe, we enter the spiritual dimension only via intense direct physical contact with the humid heaviness of earth (or stale water) —the ultimate Tarkovskian spiritual experience takes place when a subject is lying stretched on the earth’s surface, half submerged in stale water; Tarkovsky’s heroes do not pray on their knees, head turned upward, toward heaven, but while intensely listening to the silent palpitation of the humid earth."
- Slavoj Zizek (The Monstrosity of Christ, p. 243)

"The jug's gifts are water and wine, in which Heidegger finds the "marriage of sky and earth." For the rain is received from the sky and stored in the earth, and the wine is brought from the vine which is nourished by the sky. Water and wine are drinks for mortals providing nourishment and refreshment. Wine is also a consecrated drink we offer to the gods. Both together -- mortals and gods -- are found in the drink which the jug gives. Thus all four -- earth and sky, mortals and gods -- abide together in the jug."
- John Caputo (The Mystical Element in Heidegger's Thought, p. 85)


Further Info:
[1] Elijah and the Altar on Mount Carmel (Yale Video Lecture)
[2] Theology of Jesus and the Marriage at Cana (Google Book)
[3] Contradictions and Doublets in the Noahide Narrative (Yale Video Lecture)

Episode 10 // International Women's Day

Looking at the troubled religious landscape of today, one of the most significant religious tasks faith communities urgently face, in my opinion, is the eradication of gender oppression and a push for gender justice. In a religious context, gender oppression often seems to function within insulated religious logic that is carefully guarded and reinforced in interpretive frameworks of sacred texts, liturgy and religious practice. In these situations, I think, to some extent, social change can only come about when an individual or group has the courage to step into these little universes of insulated religious logic, and work with and from religious assumptions to communicate notions of 'social change' to spiritual/religious communities in a necessarily 'prophetic' way. That is why something like Feminist Theology seems so significant to me, and why I feel a denial and withdrawal from religion for the sake of 'progress' can be a problematic way to approach gender equality. [3]

This week's episode was in celebration of International Women's Day -- featuring a playlist full of brilliant women-identified artists and their musical work -- including some Top 40 Ghanian gospel, old-timey bluegrass, Korean geomungo improvisation, riot grrrl punk, theremin performance, Latin American folk, holy minimalism, devotional Thumrī, and a heavy serving of experimental / electroacoustic compositions.

Below is a sculpture entitled 'Expanded Expansion' by Eva Hesse -- an American Jewish artist mostly associated with movements like 'post-minimalism' and 'anti-form'. This particular piece is composed of cheesecloth, latex, and rope -- materials that degrade rather quickly -- a quality Hesse loved as it underscored not only the temporality of art, but also the way works of art not were not static materials devoid of physical context, but themselves 'processes' -- a notion very reminiscent of Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy. The supporting rods beneath are composed of somewhat eternally durable fibre glass, a counterpoint Hesse took great joy in.

episode download: [forthcoming]

0:01:32 - station id: Jack Layton

0:01:43 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:01:55 - Esther Smith - 'Yesu Kristo Asore'
0:06:33 - Motion Sickness of Time Travel - 'Clairvoyance'
'":"":51 - talking: Brian Shimkovitz on Ghanian Gospel, clairvoyance, Johanna Beyer's legacy, Faust, [1], [2]
0:16:07 - Inga Copeland - 'faith'
0:20:28 - Johanna Beyer - 'Music of the Spheres'
0:26:24 - Else Marie Pade - 'Faust Og Mefisto'
0:33:25 - Clara Rockmore - 'Hebrew Melody (Achron)'
0:38:53 - promo: democracy now!
0:39:24 - psa: loving spoonful 
0:40:09 - Sofia Gubaidulina - 'Glorification of Death'
'":"0:48 - talking: Achron, Clara Rockmore, holy minimalism, activism of Hazel Dickens and Suni Paz, mythical figure of La Llorona
0:47:12 - Kim Jin-Hi - 'Dance of Meditation'
0:51:49 - Hazel Dickens - 'Here Today, Gone Tomorrow'
0:54:38 - Suni Paz - 'La Llorona (The Weeping Woman)'
0:58:43 - Sleater-Kinney - 'God is a Number'
1:02:30 - station id: Amy Goodman
1:02:45 - psa: vegetarianism
1:03:04 - promo: below the decks (radio show)
1:03:38 - talking: riot grrrl movement, Kesarbai Kerkar, Thumri, oracle bones, agincourt hymn 
1:08:18 - Kesarbai Kerkar - 'Bhairavi Thumri'
1:11:43 - Fifth Column - 'Ghost of a Buffalo'
0:17:39 - Pauline Oliveros - 'Oracle of Bones Mirror Dreams'
0:25:08 - Elizabeth Veldon - 'The Agincourt Carol 1'


“Women, not having recourse to a divinized feminine, have had their identities dictated to them by the rule of man, God as other/Other…as virgin mother, or as property of the male, women have played a part in the proceedings, but have not been able to claim a fully autonomous identity or subjectivity.”
- Luce Irigaray (Divine Women)

"This chapter is an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism. Perhaps more faithful as blasphemy is faithful, than as reverent worship and identification. Blasphemy has always seemed to require taking things very seriously. I know no better stance to adopt from within the secular-religious, evangelical traditions of United States politics, including the politics of socialist feminism. Blasphemy protects one from the moral majority within, while still insisting on the need for community. Blasphemy is not apostasy. Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism. At the centre of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg."
- Donna Haraway (A Cyborg Manifesto)


Further Info:
[1] Brian Shimkovitz Profile on RWM
[2] Esther Smith feature on Awesome Tapes of Africa
[3] Practical Feminist Theology Panel at Boston University (Video)

Episode 9 // Divine Beings

This week's episode is loosely based around the theme of 'divine beings' -- entities such as angels, demons, ghosts, nymphs, and the muses of Ancient Greece. My commentary remained rather skeletal this week, but the musical selections, I feel, do a very good job of reflecting some of the genres and outfits I've grown really attached to and have come to love immensely over my past four years here at Queen's.

The word 'angel' comes from the Greek word 'angelos' meaning 'messenger'. Theologically, they often represent a sort of mediation between humankind and the 'Divine' or 'God'. Tutelary angels (or 'guardian' angels) emerged in the religious imagination of the 5th-century C.E., largely from the work of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, who developed an elaborate 'hierarchy' of angels. (From this mysterious pseudopigrapher, we actually get the word 'hierarchy' -- hierarkhes or 'sacred ruler'.) But that aside, music in general has served, for me, as both a sort of comforting tutelary angel and a divine medium/messenger of information these past few years. So this is my personal tribute to music, my personal guardian angel, haha; hope you enjoy.

Below is an image of Damien Hirst's sculpture entitled 'Anatomy of an Angel' displayed at Tate Modern in London.

episode download: [forthcoming]

0:00:17 - id: Jack Layton
0:00:27 - promo: cfrc 
0:00:40 - Stars - 'Death to Death'
0:04:46 - Kelan Phillip Cohran & The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble - 'Apsara'
":"5:13 - talking: about Abaddon, Apsara, Gabriel, and Polyhymnia, [1]
0:14:03 - d'Eon - 'I Don't Want to Know'
0:20:43 - young family - '$$'
0:23:55 - Steve Hauschildt - 'Polyhymnia'
0:26:55 - Imperial Topaz - 'Angel of the Overpass'
0:31:56 - promo: volunteer application
0:33:15 - psa: snid (studies in national and international development)
0:34:00 - Oneohtrix Point Never - 'Boring Angel'
0:38:16 - DJ Elmoe - 'Whea Yo Ghost At, Whea Yo Dead Man'
0:40:45 - Don Cherry - 'Chenrezig'
":"4:22 - talking: on Chenrezig, developing tradition of 'Satan', and responsible interpretation, [2]
0:53:36 - Stereolab - 'Monstre Sacre'
0:57:21 - The Incredible String Band - 'Job's Tears'


1:04:04 - id: Amy Goodman
1:04:20 - psa: loving spoonful
1:05:06 - Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - 'Quail & Dumplings'
1:09:28 - The Blacktop Cadence - 'Are You My Angel'
1:14:21 - Earth - 'A Plague of Angels'
":"4:46 - talking: on feminine pronouns for G-d and Carl Jung's bird/angel archetype of the psyche, [3], [4], [5]


"Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; 'She once pulled up an onion in her garden,' said he, 'and gave it to a beggar woman.' And God answered: 'You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.' The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. 'Come,' said he, 'catch hold and I'll pull you out.' he began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. 'I'm to be pulled out, not you. It's my onion, not yours.' As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away. So that's the story, Alyosha; I know it by heart, for I am that wicked woman myself. I boasted to Rakitin that I had given away an onion, but to you I'll say: ‘I've done nothing but give away one onion all my life, that's the only good deed I've done."

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)


Further Info:
[1] Dummy Interview with d'Eon
[2] The 'Satan' in Hebrew Scriptures (Yale Video Lecture)
[3] Feminine Conceptions of God in Hebrew Scripture
[4] Carl Jung on Divine Beings and Birds
[5] 'Angels, Spirits and the Devil' by Emil Brunner (Book Chapter)

Episode 8 // Mathematics

This week's episode explores the strange intersection of religion and mathematics, working through religious traditions of numerology and numeric typologies, fractals and their relationship to Daoism and Godel, Kepler's theological contemplations, and set theory's relationship to Schoenberg's serialism. It's a messy and cursory leap through deep oceans of provocative, nuanced and critical discourse spanning centuries of religious and intellectual thinking -- prodding the many mathematical conceptualizations of existence, meaning, and the paradoxical finitude/infinitude of the universe itself.

The image below is of a 15th-century 'thangka' painting from Tibet. It is a set of four mandalas depicting the esoteric teachings of the Vajravali cycle, often accredited to the 11th-century pandit Abhayakaragupta. It is composed of recursive numeric patterns similar to those of mathematical 'fractals'.

episode download: [forthcoming]

0:00:22 - station id: Jack Layton
0:00:33 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:00:45 - De La Soul - 'The Magic Number'
0:04:01 - Loscil - 'Triton'
0:0":""' - talking: triton, fractals and Daoism, Kepler and Pythagoras' 'music of the spheres' [1], [2], [3] 
0:10:45 - Damien Jurado - 'Magic Number'
0:13:55 - Emperor X - 'Sfearion'
0:18:14 - Laurie Spiegel - 'Kepler's Harmony of the Worlds'
0:28:53 - Boris - 'Six, Three Times'
0:31:45 - Pixies - 'Monkey Go To Heaven'
0:34:44 - ad: vapours concert at modern fuel
0:34:53 - ad: living live at modern fuel
0:36:31 - Slowdive - '40 Days'
0:39:47 - Hammock - 'God Send Us a Signal'
0:0":""' - talking: 40 as a biblical number, 666 and Nero, Bertrand Russell, Godel, [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]
0:44:20 - Laurel Halo - 'Hour Logic'
0:53:27 - BADBADNOTGOOD - 'CS60'


1:00:18 - ad: kingston canadian film festival
1:01:25 - promo: wunderground presented by qtv and cfrc
1:02:10 - ad: a tribe called red
1:02:55 - station id: stereolab
1:03:07 - Fever Ray - 'Seven'
1:08:17 - Autre Ne Veut - 'Two Days of Rain'
1:11:07 - Sandra McCracken - '980 Anne Steele'
1:16:04 - Tony Conrad & Faust - 'From the Side of the Machines'
1:1":""' - talking: 99 and 'amen', serialism, [10], [11]
1:21:05 - Duke Ellington - 'Ninety-Nine Percent'
1:23:00 - Arnold Schoenberg - 'Psalm 130 (De Profundis, Op. 150)'
1:28:22 - Logos - 'Ex 101'


"...[N]ot by renunciation alone can we build a temple for the worship of our own ideals. Haunting foreshadowings of the temple appear in the realm of imagination, in music, in architecture, in the untroubled kingdom of reason, and in the golden sunset magic of lyrics, where beauty shines and glows, remote from the touch of sorrow, remote from the fear of change, remote from the failures and disenchantments of the world of fact. In the contemplation of these things the vision of heaven will shape itself in our hearts, giving at once a touch stone to judge the world about us, and an inspiration by which to fashion to our needs whatever is not incapable of serving as a stone in the sacred temple."
- Bertrand Russell

"Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting."
- Gottfried Leibniz

"Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived."
- Baruch Spinoza

"Religion may also be developed as a philosophical system built on axioms. In our time rationalism is used in an absurdly narrow sense …. Rationalism involves not only logical concepts. Churches deviated from religion which had been founded by rational men."
- Kurt Godel

"Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind and within the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension..."
- Alfred North Whitehead


Further Info:
[1] Daoism and Fractals by James Miller (Video Lecture)
[2] Fractals and 'Godel, Escher, Bach' (MIT Video Lecture)
[3] Laurie Spiegel and Kepler's Harmony of the Worlds (New Yorker Article)
[4] Apocalyptic Literature and 666 in the Book of Revelation (Yale Video Lecture)
[5] Number 40 in Religion (Wikipedia Article)
[6] Mathematics and Religion (Video Discussion)
[7] 'Mysticism and Logic' by Bertrand Russell (Essay Collection)
[8] Godel's 'Proof of God'
[9] Godel's Incompletetness Theorem (MIT Video Lecture)
[10] Early Christian Letters and the Number 99 with AnneMarie Luijendijk (HarvardX Video Discussion)
[11] Dissertation on Schoenberg's Psalms and Serialism (PDF)