This week's guest is the loquacious, thoughtful, and profound JF Martel, film-maker and author of Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice and the three-part essay Reality is Analog, about the philosophical themes lurking behind Netflix's series Stranger Things.
https://www.metapsychosis.com/reality-is-analog-philosophizing-with-stranger-things-part-one/
We discuss what can and cannot be captured and communicated digitally…
The Primordial, Deep, Subrational Forms of Poetry, Madness, Excess…
“Ultimately, art does have a function: it’s to help us better navigate the infinite chaos that is reality.”
The problem of overusing or misusing Occam’s Razor
“We understand the nature of reality the moment we admit that we don’t know it…the moment we admit we CAN’T know it.”
“Every concept kind of contains its own opposite, or casts its own shadow.”
The difference between a Sign and a Symbol
Faith or Rebellion? (Patriotism or Treason?)
Azazel the Peacock Angel vs. Lucifer the Rebel Angel
Is there an ultimate reality?
“It’s really, really tough to make great art. It’s tough to make GOOD art.”
About Hollywood: “I don’t think collaboration has ever been a great friend of art.”
“The equipment is changing so fast that no one gets GOOD at anything anymore…it’s hard to MASTER anything, today. But I think we’re moving toward something better than what we’ve had.”
The old and new paradigms of film and TV production
“[Netflix is] using the digital culture we’ve developed to make great films in the way that maybe they should always be made, which is: you identify the people with vision, and you put them in charge.”
Technology: Inevitable? How Japan said no to guns for hundreds of years…
“A society that presumes that it knows the real and can dictate its course…it is doomed to failure.”
“We are finite and live in the infinite. You can’t accrue more of the infinite.”
Staying in touch with the nonhuman.
“We’re made out of forces we can’t control. But at the same time we have a certain amount of control over how conscious we are of that. And we need to become more conscious of that. And Art helps us become more conscious of that in an objective sense, and Art helps us become more conscious of that in an empirical sense…it points out areas of the Known that need to be reconnected to the Unknown.”
How to be an esoteric workaday dad mystic artist weirdo
“I think we need to become more religious…I mean in tune with that transcendent, imminent Thing.”
“Once your roots go down infinitely, you have LICENSE to love iPhones.”
“We’d buy stuff, we’d put it in the movie, and then we’d return it intact. I felt like we were doing real alchemy…”
Michael tells one of his most bizarre and curious accounts, of a haunted camera acquired by pranking a corporation…
“Infinite meaning is tantamount to meaninglessness.”
“Artistic creation is fundamentally dangerous, in the sense that you’re moving out of the Terra Firma of the known into areas that are unknown, or you’re looking at things from an angle that’s alien to the perspective you inherited from your tribe or your culture. So there’s a REASON why so many artists end up fucked up or dying horrible deaths…I think there’s a fundamental danger that we need to recognize, especially as we enter into projects or creations that are actually visionary, that are actually pushing into something.”
“I think you can allow for quite a bit of synchronicity to enter your life, as long as you can handle it.”
“All you have to do is read Van Gogh’s biography, and you can ask…was it worth it? I think it was worth it. Maybe there’s a notion here of sacrifice. Maybe certain people are so willing to go out there and produce these visions that they’re willing to sacrifice themselves. That sounds crazy today, because we don’t have the vaguest inkling of what sacrifice means in this culture.”
“Maybe you need the tragic. Maybe the tragic is indelible…and that’s what makes creation so beautiful.”
WWDT: “What Would Dostoyevsky Think?” (Ask yourself about the opinions of your revered artist heroes when you’re working on a piece…)
“The responsibility is on each individual person to use these tools in the best way possible in an environment that discourages it on every level.”
“Mainstream American culture since the end of the second World War has been predicated on the need to distract ourselves from The Bomb.”
“All in all it seems like the dirty secrets are coming out, and that can only be good.”
Analog vs. Digital Epistemologies…Reality is Analog/Reality is Digital
“I couldn’t believe that reality was analog if I didn’t believe it was also digital.”
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18 - JF Martel (Art, Magic, & The Terrifying Zone of Uncanny Awesomeness)