The Cornucopia: Notes & Errata
Episode 6: “Wool of a Black Sheep”
SCRIPTUM
Intro:
Welcome to The Cornucopia. I am Billy Kirby. Your legs get restless from sitting for too long. You know this sensation well. If you were to joggle the foot resting cross-legged on your left kneecap, it would serve as a fidget-function: an idle relief from deep internal pressure, from the anxiety associated with the restlessness of sitting or having sat for too long. If I were to touch your hand, as one presumably conscious organism to another, to make eye-contact and speak positive communications and such, whatnot, it would serve as a means for connection: a conscious relief from deep internal pressure, from the sensation that we are both, if even presumably conscious, possibly lost for all necessary time in the skull prisons within which our minds’ brains serve a life sentence. If you were to acknowledge this, then… well… what then? Hello. And welcome.
Episodic Germ:
They’ve just called my name; would you hold my dog for me? It’s a small dog, a pup really. As you can see it’s an innocuous pug. This is how I feel comfortable asking you to hold my dog. Go on. Give it a pet. She likes you, I can tell. They’ve called my name so I have to go. Thank you so much for holding my dog: although you haven’t had time to accept or deny my request, I’ll just place her here on your lap. Thanks again. I’ll be back.
Meat Hammer:
I am sitting in a coffee shop. I read somewhere that being in a different environment changes your natural urge toward preformed habits. Maybe this is true. Maybe this is why I come here so much, to write. This is my favorite coffee shop. It is called Caveat. Its logo is an asterisk, and the logo is featured in black on the carboard sleeves of all their to-go cups: a large dark asterisk whose bottommost prong, extension, w/h/y, is drawn to resemble a droplet. A drip. A drooping liquid blip, probably of coffee. I think it’s especially clever, marketing-wise. I enjoy the logo and the shop and the atmosphere the shop creates. It is raining out. It is raining and there are people in here around me on their laptops, likewise, seemingly working on things. If I were an extreme paranoiac, the kind reserved for my own imaginary formation, I’d maybe be paranoid that the people around me—the ones being seemingly productive, doing things, the things, working on stuff I’m not nauseous enough to pry into the validity of (to sit down beside them individually and ask with an inquisitive glare what they’re working on, w/h/y)—I’d maybe think that one or a few or all of them were actually watching me, or, if I were at the extremus of this line-of-thinking, that they were working on dictating my actions to a correspondent Somewhere Else. I obviously don’t think any of this, but it’s interesting enough to imagine what it would be like to be a paranoiac who entertains this line of thinking. I imagine this sort of paranoia goes hand-in-hand with the kind of Hollywoodesque deficient mental-health stereotypes we as a culture have cultivated. Just wondering gives me chills. The coffee-grinder grinds grounds. It is significantly audible. I say “significantly audible” because “loud” is not specific enough for my communicative intent. I’m not sure any of this is really getting across, but oh well, I might as well just spill it out. The truth is that this podcast you’re here listening to and/or reading (depending on the source from which you’re consuming this media), is a means by which I can absolve myself of the loneliness and anxiety I undergo on a daily basis. Maybe that means an awful lot of negative things about me, but maybe I don’t care. I just want to communicate with you. I’ll relay communication signals with you right over the table, look you in the eyes, substantiate the sort of responses that would signify Sincere Attention, etc. Alas, the structure of my podcast is, as of yet, monological. It’s therefore difficult to engage in the traditional types of communication you’d see, for example, between two people sitting together, drinking coffee. Nevertheless, I’d like to entertain the idea that it’s a substantive enough effort I’m taking here—to communicate with someone, a stranger, outside of my immediate time and space—to justify the act of putting down into words on word-processor and recording and developing and ultimately producing this audio file, this communication file.
Meat Shredder:
The red thread of fate I walk along, as seen from the gods of Mt. Olympus, would seem meandering, indirect, ultimately directionless, perhaps. I have dreams in which I ride passengerside in a red sportscar while my brother zooms through the intricate parking system of a mega-apartmentage, which is also a vast library, which is also a series of interconnected strip malls. I feel intense Anxiety interdream as he veers about, accelerates through pedestrian crosswalks and dodges other vehicles. I recall that we’re looking for our parents. I recall that my brother’s library card was forged in the name of a Demon. I do not recall the name. “Mishna”? “Mylna”? I recall that he registered his library card’s acct. under the name of this demon, and that it was a jocular sort of trick he had played. I recall very little in all, as is often the case. There is a secret to this dream the subconscious data-processing part of my mind will not communicate to the conscious part of my mind I freely associate with my Identity, with my Self. I wonder about the energy required on behalf of my mind to conjure store-names of the mega-condo/-library/-mall’s strip we zoom-zoom-zoom past in this complicated multileveled parking lot, the letter-number-conjunct coordinates of which are interspliced with the streets of an obscure city, nearly impossible to traverse. But this episode is not about dreams, I don’t think. This episode is about the significance of our eminent attachment of meaning to arbitrary external stimuli which are themselves already conjoined with meaning-attachments. I wonder about what this episode will be. Part of the podcast’s previous episode was about applying a Subject to the structure of each episode, a changed form, and so on, but now I feel as if it in some ways interferes with the purposes of YrsTrly whenever it is he (I) begins working on these episodes: I am trying to converse as organically as possible, to communicate ideas which occur continuously and then shift modalities as they evolve through bastardized mentally-affected iterations. It’s as if the eye of the brain’s mind changes the very thought merely by observing it. There’s some scientific experiment I can’t fully recall which relates to this observation-changing-observer-changing-observation-type concept. I can’t adequately elucidate the thought at hand, but there it is: an acknowledgement. Probably more than I ought to, I think about the validity of the thoughts I’m having as I’m having them, a process which includes my thoughts’ flows’ vying for consistency, calm, over the analogical rocks of self-analysis, blocking the as-it-were stream. There’s a quote I’d like to here employ:
“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.”
- Alan Watts
I think Watts was really onto something in this quote, and furthermore I’d like to explore his bibliography. I honestly don’t know much of his stuff apart from the motivational collages people have included him in on YouTube. Self-definition seems to be the plague of the many side-effects of consciousness. I look in the mirror and see a version of myself which is external to my own perception, viewpoint, P.O.V., w/h/y. I look and see the reflection and wonder about how to ameliorate my brain’s ghost’s understanding of the man’s visage as it relates to the world. It feels like an utterly futile thing to do, especially taking into account the fact or idea that I’m, as an internal viewer looking out at the external shell of my self’s viewpoint, unable to assess the quality or nature or Objective State of that shell without factoring in the biases of that very viewpoint, paradoxically, like some ouroboros: snake eating tail.
I enjoy listening to music while writing at the coffee shop. I don’t do it when silence is an option, but (alas!) silence is not an option. My Logitech G Pro Headphones do well to combat the amazing music tastes of the shop’s playlist-commencing staff. I do this because my music—as in, the music I’m playing through these noise-cancelling headphones—is instrumental, and thus more conducive to a suitable audio-atmosphere for my writing, which writing’s process is arduous the same way looking in the mirror, trying to define myself, is arduous. So today I put on some God Speed You! Black Emperor. I bought a used CD of theirs: Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven. I love their music with the casual love of those who firmly appreciate the art it is they consume. I sure as hell need to explore their discography. It’s bound to be rich in orchestral post-rock vibes. It’s perfect for my purposes here, with my headphones, at Caveat.
Meat Processor:
You are hoping I give some digestible conclusion here, probably, is the thing. The thing about the thing is that I don’t think I can. I just wanted to say hello. I just wanted to say that you are always welcome here, dear listener. I just wanted to say that, though communication on our parts is difficult enough as it is, we might as well attempt to trek into that fray for the sake of a semblance of something like connection. Whether or not it is immediate, this semblance, it is in my opinion worth the effort and anxiety and Fear required to say Hello, to converse about dreams and thoughts and music, to introduce yourself to the situation you have gotten your Self’s selves into: that the conscious mind is only a part of the as-it-were problem: that there are multiple little versions of your Self which vie all the time with the Fear to be heard, or to be substantial in that their existence has at least a recognizable (if minimal) effect on the You you consider to be the only one. So I’m here to introduce myself to you, to this situation of the act of attempted communication I’ve gotten myself and my Self’s selves into. I’m here to possibly form a semblance of connection with you, the dear listener/reader, to whom I owe a great deal of gratitude. Let it be said that I am thankful. Let it be said that I am in here, in this communication file, hoping you have an excellent day—hoping you’re maybe willing to as-it-were pass it on, this attempt. It seems to me like the world becomes a bit more colorized the more and more we emit positive communications, however effectively, to one another. Maybe I’m totally off here. Maybe only partially. Maybe you’ll have a terrific day, one which reaffirms your faith in the possibility of good days. To quote David Foster Wallace—albeit way out of context—“it may not be likely, but it’s also not impossible.” So with that I’d like to sincerely thank you once more. Thanks for stopping by. Thanks for attending. Thanks for occupying the space you reside in. It has been my pleasure to talk with you.