Firing up the old podcast again! This is the first in a series of audiobook chapter releases. I never did figure out how to package and sell my book as an audiobook per se, but it feels like the right time to put this out into the world. The “expectant – and apocalyptic time” that was named on the back cover seems more vividly at hand now than in 2017 when I first published the thing. Illich and Girard helped me find my bearings in this strange time that is the end of something big–Dougald Hine names it modernity, Paul Kingsnorth calls it The Machine, Joe Biden calls it “the rules-based international order”–that last name loaded with what Girard would call a “misrecognition” of the sacred violence that we have called “good” and tried so desperately to distinguish from the violence of others we have called “bad.” Will we renounce our violent passions in time to avert an apocalyptic escalation? There are many ways to pray. Perhaps relaunching a podcast is one of them.
You’ll notice these recordings are unpolished. There is no music, no midway blurb asking for contributions. I trip over my words sometimes. At one point, a whirring noise comes into the background, the sound of sunflower seed feeding into the oil press on the floor below the office where I made these recordings. It makes me appreciative of the craft that other podcasters put into their recordings. To paraphrase the author of Ecclesiastes, there is a time to polish and a time to refrain from polishing. Now is not the time to polish. Not this, not now.
Peace and all good,
Marcus