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)

Episode 7 // Language

A theological movement that I've found very useful in my own self-study of Christianity is that of 'postliberal theology'. A great deal of its framework is based on the thinking of the great analytic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein -- and his ideas of 'language-games'. It perceives Christianity as some 'overarching narrative', and within it, its own embedded grammar and logic, culture and practices. The movement in some sense rejects an epistemology founded on the Cartesian cogito, but instead reclaims one based on the language and culture of the particular community and its particular tradition. Paradoxically, it is rather unconcerned with an exegesis founded on historicism, and is more so taken with interpretation as an 'act of imagination' with the needs of the community at the forefront. It is similarly unconcerned with the 'objective' meanings and truths of text as well as the scholarly adventure of retrieving 'original meaning' of texts (as if such a thing exists, in light of Gadamer's hermeneutics), and is more so inclined to the non-foundationalist task of interpreting what the text means for a particular community, now. This emphasis on the particular, and the eschewing of the universal, intends to empower normative interpretations of texts that incite action; this in some sense arising as a response to the frustrating liberal inaction of the Christian church under the Nazi regime and other similar shortcomings of theological liberalism.

This is the sort of context that non-explicitly serves as a backdrop for this week's episode themed on 'language'. I find a great deal of significance in 'language' and firmly believe it to be foundational for not only spirituality, but consciousness and human existence itself. I attempted to explore the far-reaching theme of 'language' in this week's playlist with references from Saussure's pioneering work on structuralism, to the semiotics of the 'I am' statements Jesus uttered in Johannine literature, to Berio's exploration of the text's relationship to vocalization and meaning, and to the theological relationship between Pentecost and the tower of Babel. Hopefully it was relevant to your relaxing 'reading week' wherever you happened to be.

The image below is from a 12th century illuminated manuscript known as 'St. Albans Psalter' or the 'Albani Psalter'. It illustrates, in characteristically English Romanesque style, the biblical story of Pentecost and the related imagery of glossolalia (speaking in tongues).

[download forthcoming]


0:00:53 - station id: Holy Fuck
0:00:59 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:01:10 - promo: black history month, prisons, racism
0:02:19 - The Magnetic Fields - 'The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure'
0:05:28 - talking: on Saussure's signified/signifier theory, lectio divina, Johannine 'I am' statements, [1]
0:10:15 - Boredoms - 'Super You'
0:17:51 - Toro y Moi - 'Divina'
0:20:07 - Pelt - 'True Vine'
0:36:38 - promo: brother brian's bluegrass (radio show)
0:37:25 - The Golden Gate Quartet - 'He Never Said a Mumblin' Word'
0:40:42 - Luciano Berio - 'A-Ronne'
0:47:52 - talking: on Luciano Berio and nuances of meaning, text and vocalization, Resurrection Williamsburg, glossolalia, theology of Babel and Pentecost (via William Cavanaugh), [2], [3]
0:55:29 - Greg Scheer - 'Glossolalia'
0:58:27 - station id: Shad
0:58:31 - promo: below the decks (radio show)
0:59:02 - psa: Anishinabe and Haudenosaunee territory
0:59:12 - Spacetime Continuum & Terrence McKenna - 'Speaking in Tongues'
1:09:40 - Fiona Soe Paing - 'Tower of Babel'
1:12:54 - Anthony Braxton - 'Language Improvisations' (Excerpt)
1:20:11 - Matmos - 'Roses & Teeth for Ludwig Wittgenstein'
1:23:32 - talking: on Wittgenstein, [4]
1:28:49 - Jani Christou - 'Tongues of Fire: A Pentecost Oratoiro' (Excerpt)


"[A] religion can be viewed as a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework or medium that shapes the entirety of life and thought. It functions somewhat like a Kantian a priori, although in this case the a priori is a set of acquired skills that could be different. It is not primarily an array of beliefs about the true and the good (though it may involve these) or a symbolism expressive of basic attitudes, feelings, or sentiments (those these will be generated). Rather it is similar to an idiom that makes possible the description of realities, the formulations of beliefs, and the experiencing of inner attitudes, feelings, and sentiments. Like a culture or language, it is a communal phenomenon that shapes the subjectivities of individuals rather than being primarily a manifestation of those subjectivities. It comprises a vocabulary of discursive and nondiscursive symbols together with a distinctive logic of grammar in terms of which this vocabularly can be meaningfully deployed. Lastly, just as a language (or “language game,” to use Wittgenstein’s phrase) is correlated with a form of life, and just as a culture has both cognitive and behavioral dimensions, so it is also in the case of a religious tradition. Its doctrines, cosmic stories or myths, and ethical directives are integrally related to the rituals it practices, the sentiments or experiences it evokes, the actions it recommends, and the institutional forms it develops. All this is involved in comparing a religion to a cultural-linguistic system.

...It remains true, therefore, that the most easily pictured of the contrasts between a linguistic-cultural model of religion and an experiential-expressive one is that the former reverses the relation of the inner and the outer. Instead of deriving external features of a religion from inner experience, it is the inner experiences which are viewed as derivative."
- George Lindbeck (The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age)


Further Info:
[1] Yale New Testament Lecture on Johannine Literature (Video Lecture)
[2] Meaning in Relation to Text and Vocalization by Luciano Berio (Short Text)
[3] William Cavanaugh on Babel and Pentecost (Video Lecture)
[4] Wittgenstein His Life and Philosophy (Audio Lecture)

Episode 6 // Sanctums

This week's episode explores the spatial dimensions of spirituality and how we relate to different spiritual conceptualizations of space. I've tried to curate musical expressions that express a spectrum of ideas of what it can mean for a place to be sacred or divine. As a religious individual myself who has personally come to perceive all of planet Earth as a sanctum of sorts, my sense of 'sacred' space is deeply intertwined with notions of ecological justice -- a theme Wade Davis (a Canadian anthropologist I really admire) continually evokes in much of his public work. Davis argues:

"[A] young kid from the Andes who's raised to believe that that mountain is an Apu spirit that will direct his or her destiny will be a profoundly different human being, and have a different relationship to that resource or that place, than a young kid from Montana raised to believe that a mountain is a pile of rock ready to be mined. Whether it's the abode of a spirit or a pile of ore is irrelevant. What's interesting is the metaphor that defines the relationship between the individual and the natural world. I was raised in the forests of British Columbia to believe those forests existed to be cut. That made me a different human being than my friends amongst the Kwagiulth who believe that those forests were the abode of Huxwhukw and the Crooked Beak of Heaven and the cannibal spirits that dwelled at the north end of the world,"

The image below was taken at Temppeliaukio, a rock-hewn Lutheran church in Helsinki, beloved for its idiosyncratic architecture and exceptional acoustics. Often referred to as 'Church of the Rock', it is a monolithic church cut out from a single block of stone -- something it shares in common with 12th century churches in the Ethiopian town of Lalibela.
.

[download forthcoming]


0:03:08 - promo: 'aelita: queen of mars' screening with music by Fire Moss
0:03:37 - station id: Jack Layton
0:03:48 - promo: cfrc funding drive prizes
0:04:39 - psa: four directions aboriginal center
0:05:37 - Conjunto of Cusipata (Smithsonian Folkways) - 'Chileno'
0:08:39 - Eliane Radigue - 'Kailasha' (Excerpt 1)
0:0":""' - talking: on Lord of Quyllur Rit'i Festival in Peru, Eliane Radigue and Buddhism, mountain themes in Canaanite and Hebrew religion, [1], [2]
0:12:19 - The Incredible String Band - 'The Mountain of God'
0:14:12 - Elvis Presley - 'Crying in the Chapel'
0:16:35 - Death Cab for Cutie - 'St. Peter's Cathedral'
0:21:05 - Julia Brown - 'library'
0:23:40 - Hop Along - 'Diamond Mine'
0:29:13 - Jawbreaker - 'Bivouac'
0:39:23 - The Stupid Stupid Henchmen - 'Catacombs Are COOL'
0:40:57 - Eliane Radigue - 'Kailasha' (Excerpt 2)
0:4":""' - talking: on Tao Lin, various definitions, and Lalibela, Ethiopia, [3]
0:43:42 - Jason Lescalleet - 'Friday Night in a Catholic Home'
0:45:49 - Eschaton - 'Trap Tune (Scrivel, Christ's Church)' (with funding drive plea)
0:51:52 - Sanctums - 'Brass Towers'
0:56:41 - Caribou - 'Lalibela'
0:59:05 - The Welcome Wagon - 'Unless the Lord the House Shall Build'
1:00:54 - Denison Witmer - 'Two and a Glass Rose'
1:04:16 - Eliane Radigue - 'Kailasha' (Excerpt 3)
1:0":""' - talking: on cfrc funding drive, Cibo Matto reunion, 285 Kent
1:07:35 - promo: cfrc funding drive
1:07:54 - promo: cfrc funding drive (3 choices)
1:08:09 - Cibo Matto - 'Lobby'
1:12:08 - Kitty and Pinkiepieswear - '♥♥♥285♥♥♥'
1:16:47 - Active Child - 'I'm in Your Church at Night'
'":20:05 - talking: on cfrc funding drive, Flannery O'Connor
1:21:22 - Wise Blood - 'Penthouse Suites'
1:22:53 - Purity Ring - 'Fineshrine'
1:27:22 - Vessel - 'Temples'
1:29:01 -  psa: SNID (Students in National and International Development) lectures


"The soul is feminine before God, waiting in a state of surrender for the Beloved to come. The sixteenth-century Indian princess and poet Mirabai knew this mystical truth. Mirabai was devoted to Krishna, her “Dark Lord,” and once, when she was wandering in some woodlands sacred to Krishna, a famous theologian and ascetic named Jiv Gosvami denied her access to one of her Dark Lord’s temples because she was a woman. Mirabai shamed him with the words: “Are not all souls female before God?” Jiv Gosvami bowed his head and led her into the temple.

The lover waits for her Beloved. And when He comes to us, in those moments of meeting and merging that are so intimate that one can hardly speak of them, the lover is feminine, pierced, penetrated by the tremendous bliss of His love."
- Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee


"In the monarchical model, God is distant from the world, relates only to the human world, and controls that world through domination and benevolence. On the first point: the relationship of a king to his subjects is necessarily a distant one for royalty is "untouchable." It is the distance, the difference, the otherness of God, that is underscored with this imagery. God as king is in his kingdom -- which is not of this earth -- and we remain in another place, far from his dwelling. In this picture God is worldless and the world is Godless: the world is empty of God’s presence. Whatever one does for the world is not finally important in this model, for its ruler does not inhabit it as his primary residence, and his subjects are well advised not to become too enamored of it either.

...As an alternative model I suggest considering the world as God’s body. In what ways would we think of the relationship between God and the world were we to experiment with the metaphor of the universe as God’s body, God’s palpable presence in all space and time? If the entire universe is expressive of God’s very being -- the incarnation, if you will -- do we not have the beginnings of an imaginative picture of the relationship between God and the world peculiarly appropriate as a context for interpreting the salvific love of God for our time? If what is needed in our ecological, nuclear age is an imaginative vision of the relationship between God and the world that underscores their interdependence and mutuality, empowering a sensibility of care and responsibility toward all life, how would it help to see the world as the body of God? This image, radical as it may seem (in light of the dominant metaphor of a king to his realm) for imagining the relationship between God and the world, is a very old one with roots in Stoicism and elliptically in the Hebrew Scriptures... it surfaced powerfully in Hegel as well as in twentieth-century process theologies. The mystical tradition within Christianity has carried the notion implicitly, even though the metaphor of body may not appear: "The world is charged with the grandeur of God" (Gerard Manley Hopkins). "There is communion with God, and a communion with the earth, and a communion with God through the earth" (Teilhard)."
- Sallie McFague, [4]


Further Info:
[1] Canadian Anthropologist, Wade Davis, on the Star Festival in Peru (Video Lecture Excerpt)
[2] Onomastics and Theophorics in Canaanite and Hebrew Religion (Yale Video Lecture)
[3] Lalibela, Ethiopia (UNESCO profile)
[4] 'Imaging a Theology of Nature: The World as God’s Body' by Sallie McFague (Essay)

Episode 5 // Lunar New Year

This week's episode explores a variety of Lunar New Year festivities, including Tet (in Vietnam), Losar (in Tibet), Spring Festival (in China), Seollal (in Korea), and Tsagaan Sar (in Mongolia) -- featuring Chinese lute music from the acclaimed pipa player Wu Man, a film score by avant-garde/kosmiche German band Popol Vuh, a 5000-year-old circle-dance tradition from Korea, and some Mongolian throat-singing.

This week's episode also makes nods to the Shēngxiào's Year of the Horse. It's been difficult to trace the origins of the Shēngxiào (translated literally as 'birth likeness', sometimes known in English as the Chinese Zodiac), but groups of twelve animals began appearing in the Zhan Guo Period (Warring States Period), and a fixed list of twelve animals emerged by the Han Dynasty. Traditions related to associating birth years with the twelve zodiac signs were popularized during the North Zhou Dynasty (557-581 C.E.). Below is an image of Ai Wei Wei's 'Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads' exhibit -- based on traditional zodiac sculptures from the fountain clock of Yuan Ming Yuan (Old Summer Palace), before they were looted by the French and British in 1860 during the Second Opium War. (Image Source: Ding Musa at LACMA)




0:00:51 - psa: Noam Chomsky on community radio
0:01:37 - station id: Amy Goodman
0:01:52 - promo: Brother Brian's Bluegrass (radio show)
0:02:40 - Beach Fossils - 'The Horse'
0:05:26 - Yao Min & Yao Li - 'Gong Xi, Gong Xi (Congratulations)'
0:08:21 - Popol Vuh - 'Kailash' (film score)
0:0":""' - talking: on Losar (Tibetan Lunar New Year), pilgrimage to Mount Kailash, [1], [2]
0:12:57 - Traditional (Smithsonian Folkways) - 'Dropa (Two Shepherd Songs)'
0:15:01 - Techung - 'Losar'
0:20:03 - promo: CFRC Funding Drive Poetry Event
0:20:34 - promo: CFRC Funding Drive Teaser
0:21:08 - Doan Ca Hue - 'Long Ngam (Dragon Recitation)'
0:23:04 - Dinh Dung, Thu Hang, Doan Ca Kich Hue - 'Ho Gia Gao (Chant of Pounding Rice)'
0:27:54 - Doan Ca Kich Hue, Hien Luong - 'Doan Xuan (Spring Unity)'
0:29:00 - Popol Vuh - 'Kailash' (film score)
0:"":""' - talking: on Tet (Vietnamnese Lunar New Year), pipa player Wu Man
0:31:49 - Wu Man - 'White Snow in a Sunny Spring'
0:35:08 - The Shins - 'Mine's Not a High Horse'
0:38:28 - The Heliocentrics & Mulatu Astatke - 'Chinese New Year'
0:42:15 - St. Vincent - 'Year of the Tiger'
0:45:43 - Popol Vuh - 'Kailash' (film score)
0:"":""' - talking: on Chinese zodiac, Jim Jarmusch's documentary on Neil Young, tweets by @horse_ebooks, [3], [4]
0:48:36 - Sufjan Stevens - 'Year of the Horse'
1:01:50 - ad: reelout queer film festival
1:02:50 - station id: Yo La Tengo
1:03:00 - psa: media co-op
1:03:30 - Okkyung Lee - 'One Hundred Years Old Rain (The Same River Twice)'
1:09:40 - Kuktan Arirang - 'Kang-Kang-Soo-Wol-Nae'
1:12:51 - Popol Vuh - 'Kailash' (film score)
1:"":"" - talking: on Seollal (Korean Lunar New Year), tteokguk tradition, [5]
1:14:59 - MeryMos - '까치까치설날은 (Korean New Year's Day Song)'
1:16:01 - Baterdene & Khongorzul - 'The River Herlen' (Mongolian long song)
1:20:01 - Popol Vuh - 'Kailash' (film score)
1:"":""' - talking: on Tsagaan Sar (Mongolian Lunar New Year), Mongolian long song and throat singing (overtone singing), [6], [7]
1:21:59 - White Moon - 'Altain Magtaal' (Mongolian throat singing)
1:26:05 - Timbre Timbre - 'Beat the Dead Horse'
1:30:58 - Bishop Allen - 'Dimmer'

"We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more." - Carl Jung

Further Info:
[1] 'Wheel of Time' by Werner Herzog (documentary film)
[2] 'Kailash: Pilgrimage to the Throne of Gods' by Florian Fricke (film art)
[3] Jim Jarmusch talking to Neil Young about the Bible (video clip)
[4] The Now Defunct @horse_ebooks (twitter page)
[5] Vegan Tteokguk Recipe (recipe)
[6] Mongolian Long Song (wikipedia article)
[7] Mongolian Throat Singing (Overtone Singing) (wikipedia article)