The final episode of season 4 and my conclusion from my sounding modernity learning and unlearning journey featuring an exchange with Catherine Ingram about 'a calm presence'.
See the web version of this site on a laptop or desktop computer for a complete transcription of this episode.
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TRANSCRIPTION OF THE EPISODE
(bell and breath)
(sounds of canoe with frogs)
This is the 52nd and final episode of season 4 of the conscient podcast, sounding modernity.
Published on Sunday, December 31st, 2023. Happy new year.
In the background is one of my favorite sounds recorded while canoeing in a bay at our cottage during frog mating season in the spring and it’s part of a project I started in 2017 called simplesoundscapes.
Now a lot has happened in a year. Lots of learning and unlearning. In response to a listener’s feedback, I summarized my first six months in e127 halfway – towards what are you halfway? as follows:
Your point about how Sounding Modernity might unfold in/out of control is a good one as I approach the midpoint in the project on July 1. I’m coming to terms with its failings, surprises and unanticipated unlearnings. The isolation in particular has been bewildering. I think I have already ‘lost my grip on it’, in a good way. I have essentially given up on it being a ‘exploration of the sounds of modernity’ – which was quite pretentious anyway – but rather, as you suggest, has become a portrait of my struggles and discoveries through the sounds of modernity.
So let me expand a bit on that idea of isolation. I hoped this project might engage the arts community in dialogue with me and each other about these existential issues, which is why each episode ends with a question. It’s meant to be a prompt or an invitation to dialogue, but it’s not meant to be a rhetorical enquiry as some people think it is, It’s an invitation. So, my expectation was that it would interest artists and others with a similar frame of mind and it has, but it has not been as generative as it thought it might be and so I am humbled that it is not working as well as I thought.
Now this year-long project has come full circle.
The idea for this final episode came to me on June 16 of this year while walking along the beach at Pacific Spirit Regional Park in Vancouver.
I was thinking about a statement by Catherine Ingram, an accomplished author, dharma teacher, and podcast host of In the Deep with Catherine Ingram about her Facing Extinction essay on her website. I’ll read it to you:
I wrote the long-form essay ‘Facing Extinction’ in early 2019. Over these past years I have occasionally been able to update the information and perspectives contained therein. However, I am finding that the speed with which the data is changing and the pressing issues that we are immediately facing, such as the exponential rise of artificial intelligence and transhumanism, have made some of this essay obsolete. I have thus decided to remove it.
Her statement took my breath away and reminded of this excerpt from Facing Extinction that I used in e19 reality:
Love, what else is there to do now? Here we are, some of the last humans who will experience this beautiful planet since Homo sapiens began their journey some 200,000 years ago.
Now, in facing extinction of our species, you may wonder if there is any point in going on.
So in my July I wrote to Catherine and I said::
You’re right that love is what we must do and be. It might be all we can do and be. So where do we go from here? Is there any point going on?
A couple of days later Catherine replied:
Yes, there’s a point in going on. It is to be here for others who are not as strong or clear as you and who will be frightened and in need of a calm presence. But that’s about it.
So, I want to thank Catherine Ingram for that exchange.
I’ve come to the same conclusion: the point of going on is to be here for others who are frightened by the ecological crisis and who are in need of a calm presence.
And of course, there are many unknowns and ‘unsounded’ events yet to come - things might yet change for the better -, but for now, that’s about it.
Thanks for listening.
I don't know if or when I'll be back with season 5 of this podcast. I have a lot of listening and thinking to do. I invite you to stay tuned.
And I leave you with this final question, which, like all the others in this season, I invite you to respond to, on the conscient podcast website or to me directly.
How can you support those who are frightened by the ecological crisis and in need of a calm presence?
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the