Tag: culture

With his first book recently published, essayist, poet, and artist Brian George reflects on the bizarre and often humorous ways that great works of the past were received by their contemporary critics, and how changes in the cultural landscape over the last few centuries—but especially since his coming of age in the Boston poetry and punk scenes of the late 1970s—have profoundly altered the ways we read, receive, and understand new works.

A paean to Albert Murray and his hybrid memoir/literary criticism masterpiece of 1971, South to a Very Old Place.

Fiction, films and search engines meet indigenous names and the chatter of jays; where does our attention wander when it strays on the dappled path?

Our bodies transform what we eat, and with our minds we re-create and transform culture. Here are some of the works that have gotten our attention recently and feel worth sharing.

Fakes, egregores, and conspiracies are overtaking our perceptions of the world—what’s behind such reality mirrors, and where do the reflections or projections in them come from? Join Brigid and a group of kindred spirits for readings, discussion, and a deep exploration of these intriguing questions at the edges of our knowing.

The struggle is real. Many of us aren’t doing what we really want to be doing. We may or may not hate our day jobs, but sometimes you reach a point where you wonder if you’re not just wasting your time. Income is certainly a consideration; many of us s …

Reminiscent of the work William Blake, Max Beckmann, and Hieronymus Bosch—to say nothing of the latter’s medieval predecessors, Antoniou’s images find their singularity in the exploration of the imaginal encounter, the sacred drama.

As a fledgeling writer and editor, as well as an (almost-retired) scientist, I am feeling my way into the business of editing, critiquing, choosing. I have eclectic tastes. I read just about anything, and voraciously. I review everything I read—you can …

A Call for Submissions & Invitation to Collaborate. Until August 25th, 2020, the editors of Metapsychosis are accepting submissions towards our next publishing cycle. Share your creative work and get involved…

“Sex and God or sex and death.” I repeated his phrase, feeling a slight slur in my speech brought on by the beer on an empty stomach. “Is that all there is?”

​I was jealous of Pedro’s imaginary lovers and of his vaster sexual experience. Short poems, long poems, quirky poems, I read them in secret when he was out. I didn’t understand them. Poem after poem, sounding much alike, revealed the charms of some new image of his desire, even as he prayed for some kind of deliverance from his too, too solid flesh…

I felt that many kinds of patterns, of ancient origins, had been stamped onto our writhing, wrestling, male flesh, and that we had entered this forbidden zone many times before…

What was Harold Bloom? I don’t know, but here is my answer for now.

How to decipher Alejandro Jodorowsky’s symbolic film world? Here’s an introduction.

Metapsychosis #OnlyPoetry channel presents: A guided reading and discussion of Iraqi poet Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab’s poem, “The Rain Song,” with Jordan-based author Dona Abbadi. Dona guides us through a reading of one of the most belov …

It is about the trials and tribulations of lovers who are set in a dismal, bleak universe—much like our current reality in NYC one could even argue. They are challenged to come to terms with each other and deal with various issues such as ego, conflicting decisions, and insecurities.

Meet Sidney (aka the Sacred Scribe)—a PhD candidate in Physics with a problem in the paradoxical human realm of love. What does a love triangle look like in the fourth dimension? Quantum indeterminacy rules, as Sidney and her friends explore a bold new cosmology uniting Science and Spirituality, and Sidney’s “wave function” must decide between the primal magnetism of Bruno, her friendship with Alyzia, and the life of her mind and creative soul.

disparate minds meet to discuss Darren Aronfsky’s feature film, mother! with: brigid burke, mark jabbour, marco v morelli, natalia anthony

disparate minds meet to discuss Darren Aronfsky’s feature film, mother! with: jf martel, caroline savery, john davis, geoffrey edwards, and marco v morelli

Packed with archetypal, mythological, and religious symbolism, Darren Aronofsky’s ‘mother!’ baffled audiences with its disturbing tale of home invasion…and world destruction. This essay unpacks some of the deeper layers of the film from the perspectives of religion and psychology, western esotericism, and comparative mythology.

What can films tell us about reality? In a deep-ranging dialogue drawing on the philosophical ideas of Martin Heidegger and looking at works by Terrence Malick, Wim Wenders, Stanley Kubrick, and other celebrated auteurs, two contemporary aesthetic thinkers reflect on the ways in which cinema brings us into a deeper, stranger relationship with the world, and our being in it.

Our reading group on Gao Xingjian’s novel Soul Mountain begins a with a preliminary talk about his Nobel Prize acceptance essay, “The Case for Literature.”

We warmly welcome Darrell Hester (Mythos Collective) and Zachary Feder to Metapsychosis. Zachary, a writer and interlocutor on our forum at Infinite Conversations, contacted Darrell after seeing one of YouTube videos. In this talk, they cover everything from the cultural and psychological significance of the film to the esoteric meaning of vibranium. This is their first talk—with more to come, we hope!

We are powerful enough to burst through the artificial narrative-bubble of projections of power-over, and step together into the brisk air of the real world in all its complexity—painful, wonderful, multiplicitous. If, in that fine first inhalation of fresh air, we take in a deep moment of peace, we may hear the aspirations of all living things…

Perhaps there is a common ground for humankind that runs deeper than the machinations of a “power-over” mythology. Let us envision a more optimal design that meets more needs through respecting life’s innate capacity for intelligence and beauty.

Our human desires and emotions are oftentimes the “hooks” that memes use to attach to us. Once a meme has colonized us, it can profoundly guide our actions in the world. Therefore, we need to develop discernment to parse the beneficial memes from the malicious ones.

The power Trump commands is given by us—our attention, our deference, our minds, hearts, lives. In little ways, we can retake control of how and to what purposes we deploy our minds and spirits.