183 - Lava Lamp Creativity

First day back teaching. Education of today no longer lines up with the needs of young people. What if education was project-based? Outdoors?

Kris recounts his history with his Black Mountain Nemesis. Is there something wrong with the architecture of schools? The impossibility of convincing teenagers who don’t like to read, to read.

What’s going on with the price of sandwiches? Kris’s band for the day: THE LUXURIANTS! Radical wealth excess. A scathing attack on fandom. Is there any real cultural commentary going on anymore?

Stores used to be hubs of underground fandoms. Those don’t exist anymore. Kris and I talk about great bookstores. If there is an underground, Kris and I would love to be a part of them.

Hidden algorithms and inherent structures. Is the way out through treasure hunting? Forcing people away from the gardens, from cultivation, is having disastrous consequences.

We are turning away from ancient patterns of dreaming. Jack Kerouac called Charlie Parker “a creator of forms.” Who is creating forms now?

JDO puts forward his idea of “lava lamp creativity.” How does a story actually form? It’s worth creating a story in a group to find out. Where did the phrase “it’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick” come from?

Collective imaginative dreaming leads to lava bubble magic. Where things get fuzzy and immaterial, that is the realm of human dreaming and imagination. Hidden terrain, socially engineered fiction, and spiritual crisis.

Dilbert and The Office as signals of the end. The rise of the middle management. What do these people do? Who knows?

JDO delivers his mentor profile in the form of a short crime story. Taking care of yourself with the idea that you might have someone to take care of one day.

Kris recalls Sonny Bono’s PSA on drug abuse. “One day you’ll be the older generation.” Kris muses on euphemism. Wondering what it would be like to live in the houses that you pass on the road.

Enjoy nostalgia. Dream is the aquarium of night.