The Anarcho-spiritual Broadcast: Recent Episodes
Tristan Absurdo
The Anarcho-spiritual Broadcast is an organ of expression for the absolutely modern piety, exploring recurring themes on metaphysics, religion, and economics.
This reading continues the majestic sequence “By Blue Ontario’s Shore” from Walt Whitman’s incomparable Leaves of Grass, covering sections 11 & 12.
Leaves of Grass editor Karen Karbiener notes about “By Blue Ontario’s Shore”:
“From its first appearance in 1856, this poem has functioned as Whitman’s definitive social statement. In 1856 it constituted a broad directive for how the country might be unified; the poem echoed many of the commands of the Preface, and actually used or modified many of its most powerful statements.”
A message from the past:
We interrupt the regularly scheduled eternity for a message from Walt Whitman, the poet of America, who considered his book to be America itself. Hundreds of millions of citizens and immigrants all together the leaves of this grass, the growth and maintenance of these States, this vast lawn of a constitutional republic.
Speak to me Walt Whitman, deliver to me your vision of America. Chant and enumerate it, and like a spell spoken we will recover it, magically the psyche of the nation will return to itself, as a dangerous power play against American priniples falls of its own devices. Yes, they will fall of their own devices, and this verse will embrace the protectors of America, the uniters of America. Walt Whitman was the original bard and uniter of America, and so as bards we must sing these songs and keep them alive.
Maybe you don’t like my style – I completely understand. I would like to hear how Leaves of Grass sounds to you, I’d like to hear your voice too speak them. Why is there no national Whitman reading club org? Should I be in charge of it?
There is the Walt Whitman archive, which strains to organize all the different drafts and iterations of Leaves of Grass (https://whitmanarchive.org).
But this all so texty, I want the living soul of it too, for the voice is the body of the soul, and so with Leaves of Grass, and the body of this text.
Isn’t there an academic somewhere undertaking this spoken word Whitman project? Or is Whitman not the poet of America? Is Whitman not important enough for that?
Contact me Hollywood insiders if you are interested in producing my pilot screenplay and treatment for a mini-series about Whitman.
We’re in a constitutional crisis and I need Walt Whitman right now.
In this episode I take a break from reading “By Blue Ontario’s Shore” to become possessed by a barking, chanting, deliberate spirit of Whitman, who arrives as a voice from the past to tell us how from over the carnage will rise prophetic a voice.
And Whitman knew carnage, as we will hear in the second half of my reading of “By Blue Ontario’s Shore.”
Part two of my reading of “By Blue Ontario’s Shore” by Walt Whitman.
Leaves of Grass editor Karen Karbiener notes about the sequence “By Blue Ontario’s Shore”:
“From its first appearance in 1856, this poem has functioned as Whitman’s definitive social statement. In 1856 it constituted a broad directive for how the country might be unified; the poem echoed many of the commands of the Preface, and actually used or modified many of its most powerful statements.”
I return to my first love and my last love, the poem of America, the incomparable Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. This post covers sections one through three, Leaves of Grass Deathbed Edition.
In truth, I started this blog because there is a coherent value system I wanted to elaborate which I termed anarcho-spiritual, a silly name, honestly, but one I live with now because at one time I thought it sounded kind of cool and made it a .com on WordPress.
In reality, however, the belief system is just an interpretation of tradition and the gospel, which I don’t hear anybody explaining as the useful and extreme doctrine that it is.
It takes a while to unfold these things. Perhaps this blog is just a means to expressing it somewhere else or some other way. Wherever I am in the process, the main tenet doesn’t really change: there is a supraphysical force which reflects all of a person’s actions, words, and intentions into another dimension, a subtler dimension which is more like undifferentiated clear light than materiality.
I’ll keep posting more pieces like this between poetry readings and my other rantings.
I continue my lyric poetry sequence, Loosely Connected Yous, with this new part, which is actually directly connected to the previous one.
Thank you for listening.
Here I start a new track and begin scripture readings, beginning with the Book of Psalms, Psalms 1 through 6.
The edition I use is the New American Bible Revised Edition, which is a reliable, middle of the road English translation, which also has some good footnotes. I quote from the copy which I’ve used for scripture since 2012.
Well I’m back to my own readings, after being so rudely interrupted by the likes of R.M. Rilke, and his elegies so artfully rendered by Stephen Mitchell.
Loosely Connected Yous is my first book, so be gentle with me, it’s probably not very good poetry. But it’s a lyric sequence that has stuck with me over the years. As simplistic as it is, originality has always been my goal, and these formulations always felt unique to me, sourced from my body in some way, for good or bad.
I took this lyric poetry sequence from my publication “Selected Collected 2009,” and this reading I recorded in a 15th anniversary edition and final recording in April 2024.
I did this as I begin to publish my entire back catalogue, which is extensive. Indeed, it’s hard to know where to start with my work. Therefore, I went ahead and shored up the very beginning, and recovered these poems and formatted them into a handsome new edition.
Perhaps sometime in the future, if demand warrants, I will haul out some of the other sequences from “Selected Collected 2009 by Ignacio Valentore,” such as “Different Kinds of Rains,” “Odes to Water,” and “Because you’re a gd human being!”
I conclude my elegiac readings with Die Vierte Elegie, from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies, translated by Stephen Mitchell.
I quote the footnote by Stephen Mitchell, which quotes Rilke (“Notebook entry, early November 1910; quoted in F.W. Wodtke, ‘Rilke und Klopstock,’ Kiel diss., 1948, p. 28).
I pick up again with The Second Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell.
I wrote about the publishing history of this lyric poetry sequence in the first part of this material, in a post entitled You Butter Your Own Bread You…
Hello readers, hearers, and lovers in the Spirit, I return to you once again with leaves in hand. Thinking about America this Fourth of July, I found myself drawn to Whitman, to hear some of his big ideas about America.
I enjoyed my readings so much I did a recording of the Inscriptions to the Deathbed edition. This time I filmed it also. I will put the videos on YouTube as Whitmania.
This is the first section of the recording I did on July 4th, from the very first line of Leaves of Grass to the tenth section of “Starting from Paumanok.”
Thank you for listening.
I know I said I would get back to my spiritual rantings after some Whitman songs, yet the poetic interlude continues. Before I get back to my rogue wisdom, you have to swear you're ready to listen. Maybe you'll listen to somebody with some real clout, some real authority, such as Nobel prize winning poet…… Continue reading Under Ben Bulben by W.B. Yeats →
Hello friends, Let's take a Whitmanian interlude before season 2 of my spiritual rantings kicks off. I've been thinking about doing an all-Whitman podcast. Uncut Leaves of Grass. What do you think, dear listener? I started doing readings of Song of Myself because this is the way it sounded to me when I read it,…… Continue reading Song of Myself by Walt Whitman Sections 1-8 →
"I used to think that nothing mattered. Now I know precisely the opposite is true: that everything matters. A human being reproduces the world every single day. . ."
Join me as I conclude my interview-recitation with Soren Kierkegaard, who came back from the dead to read "The Expectancy of Faith," an upbuilding discourse published in 1843. It goes without saying that this is an exclusive interview with Kierkegaard, who appears only through the refraction of subjectivity and the legacy of an eternal consciousness.…… Continue reading Episode 9.8 – The Expectancy of Faith by Soren Kierkegaard – The Last Part →
Poetic interlude within Episode 9, the recitation-interview with Soren Kierkegaard reading "The Expectancy of Faith." Although I can never orate this poem as beautifully as it is written, as perfectly as it is written, I give it a few solid tries, and create some little wind of my own, even if I'm unable to hit…… Continue reading Episode 9.75 – Interlude – Spirit Bits #1593 by Emily Dickinson →
Part 3 of my interview-recitation with Soren Kierkegaard begins at the central pivot point of the essay, the upbuilding discourse we've been following along with, "The Expectancy of Faith," published in 1843. The preamble has ended; now Kierkegaard begins to unfold the primary thesis, as clear as day. You could really start the essay here,…… Continue reading Episode 9.6 – The Expectancy of Faith by Soren Kierkegaard – Part 3 →
Special guest Soren Kierkegaard continues reading "The Expectancy of Faith," an upbuilding discourse exploring the meaning of religious faith, the central subject of Kierkegaard's authorship. The text is from 1843, the very beginning of Kierkegaard's published works, a good starting point to encounter his thinking about faith. This starting point will lay the groundwork to…… Continue reading Episode 9.3 – The Expectancy of Faith by Soren Kierkegaard – Part 2 →
Have you ever wanted to read the 19th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, because of his reputation and respect among other philosophers? Wittgenstein, to quote one off the top of my head, called Kierkegaard "the most profound philosopher of the 19th century," and Heidegger claimed that Kierkegaard's religious speeches were as philosophically significant as his…… Continue reading Episode 9 – The Expectancy of Faith by Soren Kierkegaard – Part 1 →
I'm not trying to save anybody. I'm saying that absolute unity is real, in all these different ways of pointing to it. That's what I'm doing. Do you say absolute unity is real? What are you going to do about it? I honestly want to know, specifically.
Hello listener-seeker, This episode focuses on my aims for the podcast, as I reflect on a few turning points from my intellectual history that led me to hold the beliefs I do today. I discuss the anxiety of knowledge, the impossibility of God, and then tell a story about one of my best pithy sayings.…… Continue reading Episode 8 – An Address to the Listener-Seeker →
https://videopress.com/v/XwvvEc52?preloadContent=metadata The video version of episode 4, "God is Pure Openness."
This is the second half of the episode which begins, "People often wonder. . ." "When you live life in the Spirit, everything you do is reflected in heaven, and in this way you can attain to a consciousness of the eternal. The eternal is an essentially negative force, and because of that sacrifice happens…… Continue reading Episode 7.5 – Theodic Swings Part 2 →
"People often wonder. . ." Hello friends and lovers of goodness, Here is the next long-form episode of The Anarcho-spiritual Broadcast. The episode is actually split in two, divided by a central imaginative scenario. If you end up listening to one of the two episodes, thank you so much for listening. If you end up…… Continue reading Episode 7 – Theodic Swings →
Hero and coward have the same fate. Everyone who lives must die, and the longer one lives, the more infirm one becomes. But there is a way to alter this destiny – by dying early, by dying healthy.
Yet there is a fate which is not a fate: it is a future.
https://anarcho-spiritualism.com/2018/05/16/fatedly/… Continue reading Episode 6.7 – Five Min Spirit Bits – Fatedly →
-A lot of people read my writing for a second and must assume either that I take myself too seriously, or that I am a fool. To the first charge I must say that this is not the case - I do take my subject matter very seriously however, yes, I do take that very…… Continue reading Episode 6.3 – Two Minute Spirit Bits →
Hello sisters and brothers and all others in Spirit, Here is the next episode of The Anarcho-spiritual Broadcast. Thank you for knowing how to listen to these things, whatever these episodes may end up being. I am indebted to you for bringing your proper ears, and judging me not by my station in life but…… Continue reading Episode 6 – You Is A Dual Who →
Hello children of God, Here is the next episode of The Anarcho-spiritual Broadcast. Its main subject is the idea of "the gift," followed by an exploration of cosmic mediation, birth and death, creation and resurrection. Thank you for listening, and may you share in all the goodness the world has to offer.