The Guardian recently posted their “Top Ten books about consciousness” list. Before I read the article I thought up this personal, spontaneous list of my own. In no particular order…

Siddhartha
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Hagakure
Sun and Steel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
The Dharma Bums
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Valis Trilogy
True Hallucinations and The Archaic Revival
Orgies of the Hemp Eaters
The Politics of Ecstasy

Which did I miss? One interesting thing about this consideration is the question of defining “consciousness.” My choices were evolutionary/psycho-neurological, artistic, and philosophical, but I’m leaving many stones unturned. Please leave your own additions in the comments here or on Facebook.

One book that caught my eye on The Guardian‘s list that caught my eye was Julian Jayne’s The Origins of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Here’s their take…

Jaynes’s daring and brilliant theory about the evolution of human consciousness is that ancient people could not “think” as we do today and were therefore “unconscious”, going about their business as automatons responding to voices in their heads, which they assumed were those of gods. Consciousness as we experience it only began to emerge around 3,000 years ago, when a series of natural disasters and the widespread use of writing forced humans to change. You may not be convinced by all of his arguments, but you’ll like this book a lot. “Either a work of unparalleled genius, or completely out-to-lunch loopy,” wrote one reviewer. That just about sums it up for me too. Jaynes’s bicameral mind heavily influenced the writers of HBO’s update of Westworld and is namechecked several times by lead actor Anthony Hopkins. Respect!

Here’s Dustin Eirdosh interviewing the founder of the Julian Jaynes Society, Marcel Kuijsten. It’s a fascinating introduction to Jaynes and his incredibly compelling understanding of the relationship between human consciousness and language. It also spotlights the way online culture has drawn increased attention to Jaynes’ theory.

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The first poem revealed, “To a Refractory Santa Claus,” is about Spain and “consists of two 11-line verses and pleads for escape from the cruelties of an English winter to the fresh fruit and sunshine of warmer climes,” according to The Guardian. The next poem, “Megrims,” is a monologue addressed to a doctor by a narrator experiencing “irregular incidents.”

The scholars agree that the works are inferior to her more developed later work (and who among us poets doesn’t cringe on Plath’s behalf when we consider anyone finding our first drafts and early work after we are gone?), but they said the poems show traces of her future voice, especially the style of her most famous collection, Ariel.

The poems were recovered from an old piece of carbon paper. Click through the link above to track ‘em down for yourself. Never forget that poetry is meant to be listened to. It’s ultimately not for “readers”. Poetry is a sonic phenomenon, and that’s why it’s forever connected with music, and why wrongheaded folks will tell you that lyrics and poems are the same thing. Here’s a clue: they’re not. Or maybe they are — these are lightheaded spaces where ideas and analysis give way to groove, and beat, and the visionary. Plath was a visionary, but hearing is believing. Here’s a Plath playlist by one of the greatest poets America can claim…

This spring we mark 50 years since we lost Richard Fariña in a tragic motorcycle accident on April 30, 1966. The author of this great article at The Guardian assumes most readers will be familiar with Fariña as a literary figure who wrote the novel Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me which was published only weeks before Fariña’s death. The article looks at Fariña as a literary link between the Beats and the hippies.

Of course every songwriter in Nashville and I know that Fariña was a folk singer in the same Greenwich Village scene where Bob Dylan made his name, and that Fariña’s most memorable music can be found on the records he recorded with his wife, Joan Baez’ sister, Mimi.

I haven’t read Fariña’s novel, but it’s fun to find out something unexpected and new-to-you from an artist you already respect, isn’t it? Looking forward to reading that one. If you already have it on your shelf fill us in with a comment about the book. If you’re not familiar with Fariña’s music or if you just haven’t heard Richard and Mimi in awhile here they are killing it with Pete Seeger on his Rainbow Quest television show about two months before Richard’s death…

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What happens when you add up every man who’s ever walked on the moon? You count more men than have ever been knighted to officially don the red wig and play the part of the clown, Ronald McDonald. In this surreal documentary, one former Ronald shows us just how hard it can be to escape from the grasp of that burger-slinging trickster. Here’s The Verge with an introduction…

Meet Joe Maggard, the eighth of nine men to officially don the iconic Ronald McDonald costume from 1995 to 2007. In a new 6-minute minidoc produced by The Guardian, Maggard opens up about his experience as the mascot. He fondly recalls his years as McDonald’s Chief Happiness Officer, and he details his close, personal connection with the clown persona. Things become emotional and strange.

“JOE IS PRESENT, BUT NO… NO, I’M RONALD.”

The video begins with a clean-faced Maggard sitting by his pool talking about his initial reluctance to take the job, but that he now feels like the luckiest guy in the world. When asked if he still has his costume on hand, he responds: “The clown’s right in there. The clown’s ready to go. Like any superhero, he’s ready.”

From Method Acting to extra mayo, this short film will remind you why you were scared of clowns…

Ronald from Guardian News & Media Ltd on Vimeo.

More men have walked on the moon than been Ronald McDonald. Joe Maggard was McDonald's mascot from 1995 to 2007. He was eighth of nine men to have done the job. But what happens after you step out of the big red shoes? Maggard says you never truly retire from being the fast-food chain's Chief Happiness Officer. At a carnival in Las Vegas as he dons the costume again, and offers advice on healthy eating and the importance of being Ronald

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Taking a break from our spooky October posts here at the end of the month — we’ll let today’s merrymaking bring its own hard-earned scares — here’s a great little show from Canadian television that I stumbled upon the other day. Prisoners of Gravity was an interview show disguised as a pirate broadcast, covering all sorts of books, films and art through a countercultural lens to dazzling effect. The series aired 139 episodes over 5 seasons from 1989 to 1994. Here’s the word from the Wiki…

As established through a comic-strip montage opening sequence drawn by Ty Templeton, the premise held that a fan of speculative fiction becomes disturbed by news broadcasts describing the alarming state of the world and decides he must escape. He broadcasts his show each week from an orbiting space station. The show’s presentation was fully wrapped in its quirky premise, featuring on-screen graphics and background sounds to simulate a space station atmosphere, “using active, innovative cinematography to ease the visual boredom that often accompanies interviews with talking head(s).”

The week’s topic was introduced with a few opening thoughts before launching into various interview clips. In each episode, Rick would interview a number of authors and artists, along with filmmakers, animators, and the occasional futurist. Topics that were discussed ran the gamut: censorship, superheroes, humour, religion, fairy tales, Mars, cyberpunk, war, overpopulation, sex… Episodes were 30 minutes in length (having no commercial breaks on public television) and typically showcased six to fourteen interviewed creators alongside bridging commentary from Rick. Roughly six-hundred interviews were conducted and aired by the time the show’s run came to an end.

Prisoners has its own YouTube channel and this playlist is a bit chaotic so you’ll need to bounce around a bit to follow episode to episode. I’ve set the video in this post to start with the first segment of an episode that deals with racism because it dovetails so nicely with the recent news about Marvel’s upcoming Black Panther film. Here’s a bit about that from The Guardian…

The newly announced films are two-part Avengers sequel Infinity War and a Captain America movie called Civil War, alongside new film outings for Doctor Strange and – most interestingly – Black Panther.

The latter will be Marvel’s first lead black superhero, and it’s a breakthrough moment. The positioning of this ethnic minority as heroic – however tortured that heroism may likely be – is a valuable statement in this most high profile of US pop cultural products, in a year when the dominant media image of black men has been as subordinated to (often white) police.

My favorite thrill with this show comes at the beginning of every episode when it seems like a program called Second Nature goes to static and is “interrupted” by the program — so retro-meta I wanna roll around in back issues of Mondo 2000. Enjoy Prisoners of Gravity…

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