"This presentation will trace the motif of darkness from its use in mystical literature to contemporary extremophile science. It is an enigmatic and yet omni-present concept stretching back through John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, to Dionysius the Areopagite, who talks about 'divine darkness' as a way of thinking about the unhuman. Our takeoff point, however, comes from Georges Bataille's posthumous text 'Theory of Religion,' and the way it thinks of darkness in terms of philosophical negation - not just a privative negation, but an absolute negation, one that, in order to be thought, requires the negation of philosophy itself. This idea leads Bataille to understand mysticism (and in particular darkness mysticism) as the privileged mode of non-philosophy."
Recorded live in Vancouver, Regina, Charlottetown, Ottawa and Toronto, Coupland's 2010 Massey Lectures entitled "Player One" is a real-time five-hour story set in an airport cocktail lounge during a global disaster. Five disparate people are trapped inside: Karen, a single mother waiting for her online date; Rich, the down-on-his-luck airport lounge bartender; Luke, a pastor on the run; Rachel, a beautiful young blonde incapable of true human contact; and finally a mysterious voice known only as "Player One." Slowly, each reveals the truth about her/himself while the world as s/he knows it comes to an end.
Of Wondrous Legends is a Chicago baroque psych classic recovered from the dustbins of history. To the few who have heard it, it has earned comparisons to Tim Buckley, Pearls Before Swine , and 60s British prog-folk. O.W.L. was founded in 1968 on Chicago's north side by Stephen Titra. A founding member of the beloved midwestern hippie jam band Mountain Bus, Titra left that band just as their Dead-inspired, bluesy jams gained serious regional traction in order to fully devote himself to the inward looking, singular vision of O.W.L. O.W.L. was recorded at Chicago's Universal Studios over a six month stretch in 1971 and a handful of test pressings were produced and circulated, but despite serious interest from a number of major labels, this gem went unreleased.
