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Extra Credit 017 - Wabi Sabi and Weird Fiction (Patreon)

Published:
2023-11-30 19:03:42
Imported:
2024-01
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Weird fiction deals with imperfect, unfinished narratives that expose the impermanence of all things, which are core tenants of the Japanese philosophy Wabi Sabi.

Comments

Anonymous

All the Star Wars talk got me thinking: Who's the best practitioner of Wabi Sabi in those movies: Answer: Emperor Palpatine. From Phantom Menace all the way to Rise of Skywalker, he's always got grand master plans -- but they're constantly going wrong. Jedi thwarting his intrigues, Rebels blowing up his Death Stars, Darth Vader killing, him, etc. But does he ever get scared or upset? No! He simply adjusts, improvises, and builds a beautiful new plan out of the pieces of the old one. Yes, the Dark Side is truly the way of Wabi Sabi.

Anonymous

Well, that episode really hit home. Just before listening I had been reviewing my own podcast’s past year, our second. I or a guest narrator will read a short story and my podcast partner, Bob, will add an ambient soundtrack to the narration. Occasionally I’ll add a biography or link to a resource related to the stories we cover. Overall I was happy with what we had done. Plenty of mistakes, mispronunciations, bad performances, but I was happy with most of it. We think of the podcast as 50% music and 50% narration. If my performance sucks and the story turns out to be dull there always Bob’s music . The year started off pretty rough. A friend of ours was going to read a story for us back in January but she had a sudden seizure and collapsed and died on the streets of Paris. The shock and loss hit pretty hard and it took a month or two for me at least to get back into a frame of mind to record. As hard as it was to start the podcast process up again I found it very therapeutic. Just to make something again. Since then we haven’t missed a month, even when our planned readings get derailed, which often happens. Lining up readers, for example, has been a process that both giveth and taketh. If our scheduled reader had been available back in September we wouldn’t have had to pivot into our backup plan, which was Lovecraft. I had been avoiding Lovecraft because I was afraid of the polysyllabic complexity of a lot of his writing, but I knew the stories ( as a longtime fan of this podcast ) so we took the plunge. First episode was pretty rough but the next two were some of our best. Oddest thing was that I LOVED speaking all those dark operatic descriptions, the over-the-top adjectives, the eldritch and archaic word forms out loud! Can’t wait to do it again. Highly recommend it as a new way to appreciate Lovecraft. You guys might want to consider it yourselves if you ever get nostalgic for recording some Lovecraft. A Fifer and Lackey reading of “From Beyond” or “Cool Air” for instance. We also had to reschedule in November because we couldn’t afford the copyright on an Alfred Bester story we had hoped to do, and, after several narrator changes and additions, we ended up doing some Saki. We had a cast of five, so sort of a theater piece and a lot of fun to do. As far as direct Wabi Sabi goes, I’ve decided to really lean into my mispronunciations. They are Legion. Also developing a drinking game based on overall frequency.