Avi: Of all the gods and spirits honoured in Western antiquity, only the muses remain with us in everyday public discourse. Artists often say that their greatest work does not come from their own being, but from inspiration that is channeled through them. A muse is a personification of this phenomenon, the being who impregnates the … Continued
Avi: Our experience of meaning is divided into zones or regions that we tend to perceive as distinct worlds. We speak casually about the world of hockey, a fandom universe, or the mindfulness scene. We are grounded in the “real world,” even as we may delight in other imaginatively entering various worlds of stories, dreams, and … Continued
Avi: By entering experientially into a pre-existing narrative, our imagination naturally embellishes beyond the source text – interior fan-fic if you will – showing us more than we consciously put into it. Tonight we’ll explore this technique using a text from a well-known fantasy novel as our seed story.
Avi: As we form our worldviews, more and more parts of our experience become ordered, automatically tiled over with convienient conceptual tags. Yet even the most comprehensive conceptual schema has its limits. What I call “the rock face” is the very edge of your constructed reality. It’s where sense meets non-sense, where the rational comingles with … Continued
Avi: We’ve spent the past few years trying our best to stay grounded in the midst of the pandemic’s uncertainty. Now just as the new year is beginning, a new wave of the disease is hitting us, and understandably it is easy to lose touch with the practices that centre us. In those moments, we … Continued