A fine conversation with Acid Horizon; thanks to all. I've been trying to formulate a question for Dr. Hart on these topics for some time, and in that conversation's wake I think I have it:
If we return to an older view of material reality still properly imbued with that richness of logos inherent in all beings – all four senses of cause and the fullness of potentiality at play, everything more “mind-like” – doesn’t the question of mind arise again, in a new way, for beings such as computers running AI? For they too will be replete with the mind-like quality of being. Does the matter of their artifice come into play in some way, such that their “intentionality” and telos would forever be dependent on that of their makers, and never truly their own? I’d love to hear any thoughts on this (from anybody).
Meanwhile I’ll offer that “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” lifts “Wish You Were Here” just one notch ahead in my book. The only Pink Floyd song that can make me weep.
I'm aware that your area of speciality is more the New Testament (and I recently bought the second edition of your translation), but what Old Testament translation(s) would you recommend, aside from standard translations like the NRSV? Are you aware of / have you read Robert Alter's Hebrew Bible translation, and if so, what do you think of it?
Can’t wait for your Dark Side comments. I’ll have to give the album another listen all the way through. My favorite album has always been Wish You Were Here, but David Gilmour’s guitar solo on Time remains one of my favorite alongside Mother, and Comfortably Numb. Gilmour certainly had/has an innate transcendent sense of melody (for that reason, his atheism somewhat surprises me).
McCartney said in his show on Hulu that he was able to witness some of Dark Side’s recording sessions. Fitting, I suppose, since there would certainly be no Dark Side of the Moon without Sgt. Peppers and Abbey Road.
Re the Acid Horizon podcast: Many thanks to DBH and all concerned. It's a comfort that others, who know much more about such things than I do, are also afraid. Wasn't Owen Barfield, in his own way, on to the ultimate problem in Saving the Appearances? Barfield: "What the Psalmist wrote of the old idols is true no less of the idols of the twentieth century. 'They that make them are like unto them.'"
Man, if you or other readers enjoy Pink Floyd I'm sure you will enjoy much of of Porcupine Tree's discography as Steven Wilson (writer/singer/guitarist) was cut from the same musical cloth. Progressive rock is still my preferred "genre" that I tend to gravitate towards.
sadly I can't get into Pink Floyd that much anymore seeing as Roger Waters has become nothing but a spokesperson for Putin and the Russian Regime. A brilliant musician but the man has disgraced his whole name by this point
Interesting comments regarding "Dark Side of the Moon." It reminded that when I was reading your book "The Experience of God," at the beginning of chapter 3, "Being," especially your mediation on "primordial agitation," I recalled Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" from "The Wall" album. The lyric: "When I was a child /I caught a fleeting glimpse/Out of the corner of my eye/I turned to look but it was gone/I cannot put my finger on it now/The child is grown/The dream is gone." Truth, recognition, and melancholy.
Pink Floyd's durability is astounding. I began to listen 20 years ago, they carried me through fairly dark prodigal explorations into substance and other things in my teens, I never really let go after I came out the other side, and in the past decade they've remained the one band I always go back to. It happens to be the case that "Shine on Your Crazy Diamond" is my 5 y.o.'s favourite song.
I think that both Gilmour and Waters had such important contributions that albums like WYWH, DSOTM, The Wall were not going to continue to be made (The Wall is becoming eclipsed by Roger almost totally--but still produced apex PF songs like Comfortably Numb and Hey You and Run Like Hell--as was The Final Cut). I have a love-hate relationship with Animals--but "Dogs" and "Pigs on the Wing" 1+2 are true gems. "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" too, in another way.
Gilmour is, IMO, one of the most underrated male rock vocalists of the era. Momentary Lapse of Reason, and the Division Bell, are still so "Pink Floyd"y, and give a sense of what it would be like if Pink Floyd was all about "love and loss" (Gilmour's overarching motivation). Those albums lack the shock of Waters (his vocals are jarring, his themes are in your face, and for many of us, he will be forever wedded to the grotesque but inimitable art of Gerald Scarfe), which is a real loss. Moreso, they lack his poignant sense of the tragedy of war, which must be his main thematic impulse.
This is to say nothing f the Barrett drama, the early Gilmour days, or the important fact of the name of their first album (which links the legacy of Floyd, however thinly, to that whole expression of Pan-ism in folk rock of the era).
Be still my Hart -- but don't; go on: you're a '70s prog rock fan, as well? Perhaps that's an overly broad characterization. Perhaps only Dark Side. I had that poster on my wall growing up and still love it. Also loved and love Close to the Edge and other perspective-changing albums from that era.
I am very sorry for your loss. Thank you for sharing your beautiful and inspiring tribute to your friend.
Thank you, I found the interview with Acid Horizon fascinating, I knew nothing of them and so their genial interest in what you had to say, I found rather surprising.
I'm also interested in what will say relating to Dark Side of the Moon, I'm intrigued by your comment "how thoroughly that era’s popular music established its own enduring genre, but also apparently exhausted its highest potentials." I rather like Ian MacDonald's essay on the occasion of the release of the Echoes compilation album and how a reputation for psychedelic spaciness kept Pink Floyd afloat from the departure of Syd Barrett until their commercial breakthrough Dark Side of the Moon. A reputation encouraged by clever titles like "Saucerful of Secrets" but then Dark Side although it still had a certain aural dreaminess that was undercut by the deeply gloomy and depressing lyrics "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way" etc. I felt & still do, some sense of betrayal of the expansive colourful hopefulness of the earlier psychedelic music (best embodied in Beatles Sgt Pepper) that it seemed to be the continuation of.
I shall wear "displaced Romantic" as a badge of pride. It was a grand way to spend a Friday evening (GMT).
There is no dark side of the moon really.
A fine conversation with Acid Horizon; thanks to all. I've been trying to formulate a question for Dr. Hart on these topics for some time, and in that conversation's wake I think I have it:
If we return to an older view of material reality still properly imbued with that richness of logos inherent in all beings – all four senses of cause and the fullness of potentiality at play, everything more “mind-like” – doesn’t the question of mind arise again, in a new way, for beings such as computers running AI? For they too will be replete with the mind-like quality of being. Does the matter of their artifice come into play in some way, such that their “intentionality” and telos would forever be dependent on that of their makers, and never truly their own? I’d love to hear any thoughts on this (from anybody).
Meanwhile I’ll offer that “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” lifts “Wish You Were Here” just one notch ahead in my book. The only Pink Floyd song that can make me weep.
Dr. Hart,
I'm aware that your area of speciality is more the New Testament (and I recently bought the second edition of your translation), but what Old Testament translation(s) would you recommend, aside from standard translations like the NRSV? Are you aware of / have you read Robert Alter's Hebrew Bible translation, and if so, what do you think of it?
Can’t wait for your Dark Side comments. I’ll have to give the album another listen all the way through. My favorite album has always been Wish You Were Here, but David Gilmour’s guitar solo on Time remains one of my favorite alongside Mother, and Comfortably Numb. Gilmour certainly had/has an innate transcendent sense of melody (for that reason, his atheism somewhat surprises me).
McCartney said in his show on Hulu that he was able to witness some of Dark Side’s recording sessions. Fitting, I suppose, since there would certainly be no Dark Side of the Moon without Sgt. Peppers and Abbey Road.
Re the Acid Horizon podcast: Many thanks to DBH and all concerned. It's a comfort that others, who know much more about such things than I do, are also afraid. Wasn't Owen Barfield, in his own way, on to the ultimate problem in Saving the Appearances? Barfield: "What the Psalmist wrote of the old idols is true no less of the idols of the twentieth century. 'They that make them are like unto them.'"
Man, if you or other readers enjoy Pink Floyd I'm sure you will enjoy much of of Porcupine Tree's discography as Steven Wilson (writer/singer/guitarist) was cut from the same musical cloth. Progressive rock is still my preferred "genre" that I tend to gravitate towards.
sadly I can't get into Pink Floyd that much anymore seeing as Roger Waters has become nothing but a spokesperson for Putin and the Russian Regime. A brilliant musician but the man has disgraced his whole name by this point
Interesting comments regarding "Dark Side of the Moon." It reminded that when I was reading your book "The Experience of God," at the beginning of chapter 3, "Being," especially your mediation on "primordial agitation," I recalled Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" from "The Wall" album. The lyric: "When I was a child /I caught a fleeting glimpse/Out of the corner of my eye/I turned to look but it was gone/I cannot put my finger on it now/The child is grown/The dream is gone." Truth, recognition, and melancholy.
Dr. Hart, what do you think of the new rule changes in the MLB?
Pink Floyd's durability is astounding. I began to listen 20 years ago, they carried me through fairly dark prodigal explorations into substance and other things in my teens, I never really let go after I came out the other side, and in the past decade they've remained the one band I always go back to. It happens to be the case that "Shine on Your Crazy Diamond" is my 5 y.o.'s favourite song.
I think that both Gilmour and Waters had such important contributions that albums like WYWH, DSOTM, The Wall were not going to continue to be made (The Wall is becoming eclipsed by Roger almost totally--but still produced apex PF songs like Comfortably Numb and Hey You and Run Like Hell--as was The Final Cut). I have a love-hate relationship with Animals--but "Dogs" and "Pigs on the Wing" 1+2 are true gems. "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" too, in another way.
Gilmour is, IMO, one of the most underrated male rock vocalists of the era. Momentary Lapse of Reason, and the Division Bell, are still so "Pink Floyd"y, and give a sense of what it would be like if Pink Floyd was all about "love and loss" (Gilmour's overarching motivation). Those albums lack the shock of Waters (his vocals are jarring, his themes are in your face, and for many of us, he will be forever wedded to the grotesque but inimitable art of Gerald Scarfe), which is a real loss. Moreso, they lack his poignant sense of the tragedy of war, which must be his main thematic impulse.
This is to say nothing f the Barrett drama, the early Gilmour days, or the important fact of the name of their first album (which links the legacy of Floyd, however thinly, to that whole expression of Pan-ism in folk rock of the era).
Be still my Hart -- but don't; go on: you're a '70s prog rock fan, as well? Perhaps that's an overly broad characterization. Perhaps only Dark Side. I had that poster on my wall growing up and still love it. Also loved and love Close to the Edge and other perspective-changing albums from that era.
I am very sorry for your loss. Thank you for sharing your beautiful and inspiring tribute to your friend.
Thank you, I found the interview with Acid Horizon fascinating, I knew nothing of them and so their genial interest in what you had to say, I found rather surprising.
I'm also interested in what will say relating to Dark Side of the Moon, I'm intrigued by your comment "how thoroughly that era’s popular music established its own enduring genre, but also apparently exhausted its highest potentials." I rather like Ian MacDonald's essay on the occasion of the release of the Echoes compilation album and how a reputation for psychedelic spaciness kept Pink Floyd afloat from the departure of Syd Barrett until their commercial breakthrough Dark Side of the Moon. A reputation encouraged by clever titles like "Saucerful of Secrets" but then Dark Side although it still had a certain aural dreaminess that was undercut by the deeply gloomy and depressing lyrics "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way" etc. I felt & still do, some sense of betrayal of the expansive colourful hopefulness of the earlier psychedelic music (best embodied in Beatles Sgt Pepper) that it seemed to be the continuation of.