https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=4vA-ItUAxm4
So hello everybody, I’m very happy to be here with Tumor Viz. Many of you have seen his work, you’ve heard his music. Tumor Viz has made many fusion of music with audio clips and part of that has been going through some of my talks. And recently he went through one of my first public talks, which was called Pentecost for the Zombie Apocalypse. It was given at an OCA, at an Orthodox Church meeting with all these priests and the bishop was there as well. And it was a moment that was very unnerving to me because it was the first time that I was talking to all these bishops. So I took a lot of time to prepare. I really wrote it down and I memorized it and rememorized it. And I know that Marvin is his actual name. Marvin noticed that it was very prepared. And so I think he kind of grabbed on that and thought it would be a good idea to bring it all together and to make almost like a musical out of my talk. So I was really impressed with what he did and I’m definitely looking forward to talking to him about it and the choices that he made and the decisions that he brought about in this musical. This is Jonathan Pagel. Welcome to the symbolic world. So, Marvin, it’s really good. We’ve met before on not in person, but in Zoom. So it’s good to talk to you again. I’m really looking forward to hearing about what your decisions were. Maybe you can start and tell us what it is that made you want to do this because it was a massive project. Right. So generally, what made me go into this kind of music, we call it flow-fi. Akira the Don, for example, who also made a song with your called it Meaning Wave. But it’s that and you talk about that in your talk too, is that there is this hunger for meaning. And I feel that in myself and I see that also in the world and in my friends. And it seems like it’s so most of the music and entertainment culture in general is meaningless. There’s nothing that you can grab onto. It’s nothing that you can say, use to also learn about the world and learn how to act in it. And I felt the strong urge to kind of participate in changing that, especially after I found out about what Akira is doing. And after I worked with him for a bunch of like, I think, six months or something like that. And I started with with Peterson’s with John Peterson’s works, because that’s also how I got into all of this in general, like his interview with Kathy Newman, of course, and then his biblical lectures, which also brought me on the way towards the church. And then I was talking to Jacob and Lisa, who both loosely work with you on your channel. I think Jacob’s a moderator. Lisa manages the clips channel, right? Yeah, exactly. And I think it was Lisa who mentioned the Pentecost talk to me and said, it’s really it’s standing out from from everything else that you’ve done. And so I gave it a listen and I instantly heard what she said. And you mentioned it too, that you prepared it a little. So it’s already a little segmented and it’s already a little like poetry, I think I would say. And that also made it really easy. So I just I listened to it and then I cut it up into the different pieces. And then I said, OK, let’s see how much how far we can go. How much how far we get with this. You’ve been working on this for like a year and a half, maybe like it’s been a while. Yeah, about I think I started cutting it up in maybe March last year or something, something like that. And then I but then I focused on a album I wanted to do from from Peterson’s talk, Who Dare Say He Believes in God, to me personally, personally, it was a preparation for going into Pentecost and the icons themselves, what you talk about. So I thought it would be better to release that first. But we had some problems contacting Jordan again after he gave me his initial. OK, obviously, I think it’s. And so then then I just I just thought, OK, then I’ll focus on the Pentecost album because I had the preparation that I needed from the album. So then I then I could get into your stuff. And you put it out on Pentecost. It came out on Pentecost Day, which was which is a nice little nice little move on your part to have that. Yeah, right. Right. I initially wanted to get it out on on Halloween last year when we did the live stream. But well, it didn’t didn’t quite work out. But but that’s good, because then I had the time to finish the songs properly and all of that. And I’m very I’m very proud of what what came out of that and also surprised that it worked out so well. So I’m going to surprise you with the question. So before we go into some of the songs, some of the clips, if you can resume the talk like I guess you’ve listened to it so many times now, like if you can resume the talk into into a short into a short sentence or short statement, what would you say that the talk is about? Sorry to put you on the spot there. No, no, no, no problem. No problem. I would say Christ is here for everyone. And without exception for everyone, everyone can come to him. I think that’s that’s the message. And that’s definitely the message that I got from it. And yeah, I get a little emotional thinking about that, to be honest. Because your whole emphasis on St. Christopher, for example, like the monster that wasn’t able to pray or fast or abstain from anything in the end, being able to carry Christ across the river and to join the church and to become a saint, that’s so that’s it’s so intensely moving. Because I also I wasn’t I wasn’t in a very good place, let’s say, in the church. Because I also I wasn’t I wasn’t in a very good place, let’s say, for a long time and also still still not really when I when I yeah, when I when I started engaging with your content, you know, drug use and all of that, like the modern world stuff. And I didn’t I didn’t think that there would be any place for me in the church. And so there was also no no no real motivations. Why would I change anything really? Because how would I fit into that? And yeah, but but that I mean, I was wrong with that. And then and your talk showed showed me and I mean, now I am part of the Orthodox Church. And I mean, you can considering becoming a priest, that’s oh, my goodness. I didn’t know that you’ve got the beard already. So you’ve got that going. Yeah, that’s exactly what my priest said to you said you’ve got the beard. So you’re you’re right. That’s amazing. Oh, the congratulations. When would you do when would you receive in the church? I don’t I don’t remember when that happened was in I think March 13. So so it’s like three to four for four months now. Okay. And yeah, yeah, that was and that was a big chunk of that is because of you and your content for sure. So thank you very much on this on this note for a second. Yeah. Well, glory to God that you that you that you came that you came through the threshold. So I’m happy to hear that. Yeah. So I think that’s that’s the sentence that I would bring it bring bring it down to is like crisis there for everyone and everyone can join and everyone can be saved. Yeah. That’s awesome. So you prepared some of the songs or some of the clips from some songs that we can kind of listen to a little bit and then we can talk about. So go ahead, set it up and we’ll we’ll we’ll go in there. Awesome. We’ll do. So we live in a time of monsters. I announced this to you, but I think all of you already know that. We only need to glance at popular culture to realize this at the narrative level of our culture and our stories. We’ve become obsessed with monsters, with the strange alien, the marginal, with the glorification of the exception of things that don’t fit. Most of us here probably grew up with Sesame Street, where we were told that monsters are our friends. It’s no longer in fiction by now. The monsters have left the dark spaces under our beds. They have left our nightmares to come out into the open. At a social level, we can feel and see all around us, the growing polarization, the acceleration of what we can only call the breakdown. The decomposition of culture, the progressive dissipation of the center, which rallies us as a society. Right. So that was the clip from the first song, Monsters and the second coming. I think this one came came about a little later in the whole process, except for the intro, which when you listen to the album, you’ll see that there’s like a minute of introduction to that song, which is just weird sounds like UFO sounds and like ominous robotic breathing and stuff like that, which then culminates in the drums, you know, getting into it. Just to make it a little eerie and set the tone. Yeah, there’s something there’s definitely something even in the way that you kind of parse out, you modify the rhythm, you know, that there’s this kind of slow. There’s this kind of slow move. It reminds you of some of the music that I was listening to in the late 90s, this kind of intense, slow movement, you know, this guitar. And that is, how can I say this, kind of bringing you bringing you somewhere but in this intense, slow manner. And so that’s what I was getting from that when I listened to the first time. Nice. Yeah, that’s also what I was trying to try to cause the listener to feel, let’s say when I when I was doing that. I like that when it’s when it’s it is slow, but it’s it’s, you know, this this this kind of unstoppable, even even though it’s slow, it’s going to going to go forward anyway. Yeah, that’s a good that’s a good image like this, this kind of slow but unstoppable movement that’s coming towards you. Definitely. That’s a good way to describe it. And so that was it’s funny because when I listen to myself, I can hear because I was I was I had I was reading and I had memorized at the same time. And so I can hear the mistakes that I make like just in terms of grammar. I can make a few grammatical mistakes, which is totally fine. This is where people realize sometimes that I’m not a native English speaker, even though people think I am. I make these strange grammatical mistakes in the way I’m speaking. Sorry that that’s what I’m hearing. It’s hard for me not to hear that when I’m listening to it. No, I understand it. I think if it were the other way around, I would notice that too. Because I’m also not a native speaker like my native native native language is German. But it’s there are even some a few moments where because you made a grammatical mistake, that’s what made it possible to have it align with the rhythm of the song. So I’m just I’m happy about that. Because like I was actually what I was actually doing was changing the grammar to, you know, to fill the beat. That’s what I was doing. Yeah, it was all it was all deliberate from the beginning. So yeah, so so that’s the first song. And that’s really just my kind of introduction talking about monsters and just kind of getting people because I was dealing with a lot of people at that time. You have to think this was like in 2017, I think. So we were dealing with people even me. I think it was early late 2016, maybe dealing with people that had never heard my content at all. And so I was going in cold for most of the people in the audience and trying to kind of paint a general image of something that painted general image of something that was maybe they never ever thought about. And so so it was yeah, it was really nerve wracking. So trying to get little images of Sesame Street and these monsters that kind of pervade our culture to get people to realize something they never realized, even though it’s so obvious. Once you’ve seen it, right, it becomes so obvious. But a lot of people don’t don’t see it. They just live in by their culture. So yeah, even even our buses, they have these little machines where you check in your your ticket and they are called ticket monsters now. And they’re also, you know, painted in that way that it’s like a little monster that you have to feed. Like it’s it’s it’s little it’s everywhere. Yeah, exactly. Well, once you start to see the you start to see the the let’s say the pattern of what’s going on, then then it’s hard to turn back. You just it just you just know that it’s and it gets increasing to it. It is the things that the things that I talked about in 20. It’s funny because this year, if COVID permits, we know. But in the fall, I was asked to come talk to the same group. So the same OCA, it’s the Diocese of the South, and they have their their kind of meeting of all the priests and the bishop together. So they asked me to go speak at their their assembly again. And it’s just so funny because everything I said, which was almost was there. But now it’s like times it’s times 10 now. And so I don’t know how I’m going to deal with that in terms of doing this talk again to all these priests. I’ve been thinking about it like almost obsessively. How am I going to outdo myself now with that talk that I did four years ago? That is I’m looking forward to that. Then then we’ll have a part two of a part two of the musical. And that’s hilarious. How did how did they how did they react to it? Because for me, it was easy to accept all of that because I was on the outside and I was kind of a monster. So so I liked hearing that. People who are, you know, on the inside might not. What was the reaction? I would say at least my my impression of what happened was extremely positive. Like it was it was I would say that at some point I felt like I had the the audience kind of hypnotized. I don’t know what else to how else to describe it. You know, at first I was kind of looking out and I was seeing puzzled faces. And then as the talk went on, all of a sudden I could see people get into the groove of what I was saying. And and then by the end of the talk, I think there was really like a buzz. I don’t know how to explain it like a buzz in the audience. And so I really it was overwhelmingly positive. I would say in general, my the reaction that I’ve had from my hierarchy has been overwhelmingly positive. And obviously, I’ve been worried about that because I’m talking about things in a way that are a little surprising to some and maybe are not from the same angle. And so I was I was always worried that people wouldn’t understand what my purpose was or what I was getting to. But I haven’t felt that I’ve really been supported by my own bishop and then by, you know, just by the hierarchy in general. So that’s been that’s been wonderful. Yeah, that’s that’s awesome to hear. Also, I mean, I’m not I’m not completely surprised because the Orthodox Church is much more embedded in all of this mysterious stuff, let’s say, than than well, the different the other churches. But but yeah, that’s that’s that’s really great to hear and also reassuring, let’s say. Yeah, and I do I do still get some pushback because of the icon of St. Christopher and I sympathize with that. I totally understand that some priests are not happy that I am making images of that icon or just talking about it or posting about it because it was condemned in a Russian late Russian council and a council that is under Peter the under Peter the Great Peter the First. And it’s with the most interesting thing about that is the reason why they are angry about me promoting the icon is actually the reason why I’m doing it. Because they think that they think that I am demonizing the other that I am that I am, you know, kind of portraying this idea of the alien as a monster and all of that. And I keep trying and I keep trying to help them understand that it’s a saint. It’s like it’s an icon of a saint. And the people that love that icon that I’ve encountered are people who feel like that monster. Right. It’s not it’s not it’s not like I’m saying all these evil monsters is that that image is actually calling people who feel in them an aspect of of marginality of misunderstood of being misunderstood of being they identify with them. And that’s not that’s like the weirdest thing for people to understand that that that you know some people really do we all to a certain extent have that in us, you know, like an aspect of the gargoyle in us. But I think some people in some more some people in particular have feel more that way. And so I think that that icon is playing the opposite role of what he thinks it is. He thinks it’s pushing people away. But I think it’s actually it’s actually attracting people that are the weird and the and the strange because it’s still an icon of a saint and they can they can identify with the story of not being able to fully fit in. But then nonetheless having a place and having a role to play in that in that story. So so it’s a funny it’s a funny situation. But I still I sympathize with people who are annoyed with me. That’s like the biggest thing that I’ve gotten in terms of pushback has been about about the icon of Saint Christopher. That’s interesting. I thought that if you were to get pushback, I thought it would be because they themselves wouldn’t like the icon. Like I don’t I don’t like to see this as part of part of the tradition. I thought that would be the problem. But yeah, I get that too. Well, that’s why they don’t like it because it’s suggesting it’s because it’s talking about the stranger as as like almost like as a monster. And you know, and also because they don’t like the idea of dehumanizing, you know, this idea of kind of dehumanizing people, which is right. They’re totally right. It’s like they’re completely right. You’re right. But that’s the that’s the whole mystery of this encounter with the strange and how we are able to then ultimately find ways to to to bridge. You know, that’s what a Saint Christopher ends up being is a bridge from the inside to the outside. So it does always have a strangeness to it. So yeah, which is also I mean, also mystery itself is like part of part of I’ve been talking about that to a friend of mine. Yeah, so mystery itself is kind of part of being and part of the pattern. It’s not not like mystery is something that’s only not revealed. It’s like mystery itself is a is a is a as a stone that fits into the wall that we something like that. I think you get what I mean. Yeah, exactly. That that there is an aspect of reality which is not properly represented. It’s not that it appears to us sometimes in in these in these types of strange form, let’s say, you know, and so on the edge of the world, you encounter a dog headed man. But then at the edge of the Holy of Holies, you encounter a beast with four wings. It’s like humans with wings. I know it’s I know you think it’s it’s not as weird to have a human with wings, but it’s still weird. It’s weird. Just because we’re used to it doesn’t mean it’s not weird like a man with a dog headed with a dog headed face. It’s like those are those are weird images, too. They’re images that are pointing to something like you said, which is not fully graspable in our category. So, right. I mean, just think of of the I think the orphan him like this, these wheels within wheels, which have like with eyes on them. Like, what is that? Yeah, if that if that isn’t so. So, yeah, I get what you mean. That’s it’s it’s yeah, we’re just used to the image of people with wings, I would say. That’s just that’s more normal to us because we see it more often. Yeah, we see more often and we think that it’s that it’s similar. But it’s like a lot of the angels are are warriors, too, just like St. Christopher. They they’re just they’re just it’s almost like their reflection. St. Christopher stands on the edge of the world and the angels stand between us and God. They stand on the edge. But the on the other edge, right, the edge, the bridge between the higher and the lower. And so they both appear as warriors. They both appear as a form of hybrid. But it also makes sense that their hybridity is different, you know, and that they would have something like the head of a human and then the body or the wings of a bird. Whereas on the other edge, which is the very edge of the world, then you would have something like the head of an animal on the body of a human. It’s almost like the reverse, but it’s also showing the place in the hierarchy in terms of strangeness. Yeah, right. Right. I hadn’t even noticed that yet. This this turning it around. But yeah, you’re right. OK, yeah, we could we could get into the next clip. Yeah, go for it. As the narrative fabric of our world begins to fill in quantities that are barely possible to believe with images of the monstrous, as we feel the world being torn apart by fragmentation and conflict, we are simultaneously as individuals being constantly assaulted by images, images with the purpose of awakening our own desires. We’ve come to the point where we most of us, so many of us have been accustomed to the constant exposure to the stranger and stranger fringe of desire, whilst being enticed by the siren song to indulge, to give into the waves and the storm and to think into the mire. Those two things, the edge and the end, they represent the same structure. They’re the same thing in our stories. Those two things, the edge and the end, they represent the same structure. So even when he is a zombie, man is a microcosm. Yeah, I don’t know if you noticed, but the image that I used is kind of it’s not explicit, but you get what it kind of looks like, right? I thought it was funny. I was walking outside of my house and just saw it. I thought, yeah, we can use that. I really like this one a lot just because also there’s more surprise in the way that you played with the words and everything. And listening to it really made me remember some of the things that I was able to do because it was so written. I was able to constantly move between the analogy, between the desire, the monsters, the edge, all of this trying to kind of play between these different levels to help people see what I was talking about, like allude to desire and then to siren songs and to these monsters that are on the edge, but that are participating in your desires. And so I was like, yeah, yeah, I was trying to do that. I remember now. And it worked out very well. Now to me, it seems like you were starting different threats in the beginning and then bringing them more and more together. The more you progress, the more you say, oh, yeah, he talked about that like two minutes earlier. And then it’s referencing back and forth. And it also makes you have these aha moments where you get the connection between the different levels of symbolism, let’s say. Yeah, that’s always been what I’ve been trying to do all the time is to try to surprise people by these connections that they don’t expect and that kind of comes together. But the way that you described it makes sense, also makes sense of the puzzlement, the puzzled look that I was getting at the beginning. It’s like, where is he going? Where is he going? Because that’s exactly what you said. It’s like I’m kind of pulling on these threads and I’m pulling them together, but you can’t see yet what the image is. And then slowly it kind of builds up towards something that now you’re like, OK, OK, this is what is going on or this is what is happening. So, yeah, so that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it’s very, very interesting, also very helpful. The whole notion of the different levels when you start to recognize, oh, this is actually that and that’s also this and this and this. This is kind of what made it impossible for me to push away the Christian story, the Christian pattern anymore. Because, you know, at first you’re like, oh, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. OK, cool. But but all these other things also make sense. But when you see how how how how close, let’s say it is like this, no, it’s it’s it’s all encompassing wherever I look, when I when I think about it hard enough or when I when I read the right things, then I then I then I get the connection between the between the things. And I never had that with any of my my adopted worldviews. Let’s say it was, you know, I was engaged in all this new agey stuff and and maybe a little Buddhism here, a little Hinduism there. And oh, yeah, that sounds nice. Yeah. And but it all it all stops making sense when you stop when you when you start thinking about it really hard and try to compare and all of that. But that’s not the case. Yeah. And mostly the mostly the layering is the issue is is one of the problems of the kind of New Age movement or the New Age direction is how it is so individualistic. It ends up being very individualistic and there isn’t the natural kind of hierarchy of patterns that lay themselves on top of each other and then create this web that you can live in. And so it either ends up being completely idiosyncratic like, you know, everybody who takes like you said a little bit of this a little bit of that they put it in a pot and then they they have this breathing technique and this yoga practice and you know this and that. And then they have a singing bowl or whatever and they burn this this this you know they’ll burn a certain amount of incense or whatever. But it’s all kind of this convoluted thing. So it ends up being idiosyncratic or it’s like a guru and like a bunch of devotees and then it’s like this weird little tyranny that usually doesn’t last like it ends up breaking down because it doesn’t it doesn’t participate in these bigger bigger stories. And so and it’s also it’s even sometimes the way that we understand even Christianity people want to represent it as a revolutionary thing. But we need to remember that if you read in scripture it says that the disciples went to the synagogue every day. Right until they were chased out of the synagogue, the disciples didn’t think they were starting something new. They really thought like they were just part like revealing or kind of manifesting something which was already there. But they were participating in its revelation. And so that’s also that’s important to understand. And that’s why like you said that’s why Christianity ends up once you take it seriously and you realize that it connects different levels of reality together. You understand why it why it’s held the West why it held the West together for for millennia. Yes, the only thing that’s also like especially this aspect is something that after Jordan talked about it obviously but something that I so much love about Nietzsche and his writings because he understood that he understood that that’s like if you take God out of the equation then everything else falls apart too. It’s impossible to remain like this. What’s it like this humanist idea that you you can’t just be a good human being without having any basis for it. Yeah, that works as long as it’s not tested. But yeah, and as long as you try as long as you take for granted that being good me basically comes from Christianity, because I love it when people say that you can be good and be an atheist. And I’m like, no, you don’t understand. It’s not even whether you can be good and be an atheist is that what is the ground for which from which you gather the good like even the good itself. You know, it’s a you. So you’re usually they’re saying something like I can be an atheist and still basically follow Christian values with a few modifications. It’s like, doesn’t work. It works for a while, like you said, and then it then it peters out and it kind of runs out of steam and becomes idiosyncratic or tyrannical. So yeah, I mean, what’s what’s the use? Why not do the things that you know you shouldn’t do but but there’s no there’s no moral basis for why you shouldn’t do it. It’s just convenience, let’s say convenience or power like some kind of state enforcement that those two sides end up getting stronger. Right. Yeah, so that’s that’s that’s that’s very interesting for sure. Yeah, I would I would play the next clip. Go for it. Awesome. The garments of skin is seen by the Church Fathers as all that is added to our nature in the world of the fall. The layers of society of technology. Those are the flip side. And in a way, they’re of the same nature as our weakness. And the passion which come from the world of death. St. Gregory of Nyssa tells us that the hairs on our body are a symbol of death. Without feeling dead. Appear as our spatial extremities. The very limits of our garments of skin, just as death appears as our temporal extremity of this earthly life. The giants in the Bible. Those that appeared before the flood with a sign of confusion and mixture. Wrapped in inappropriate sexual desire. Wrapped in inappropriate sexual desire. In the tradition of Enoch, they’re seen as the origin of technology and magic. They were known to create hybrids. They’re full of excess. Revealing in conflict until absolute chaos could no longer be held at bay and the world was undone in the waters. Yeah. What interests me in that is that there are so many, there’s like three or four melodies in that little part. You keep switching from different, even not just melly, but just the actual tone or the feeling that’s in the music. So it’s like the first is this kind of almost like heavy metal, heavy guitar, and then it moves into something which is almost like, it’s almost lighter. And then you, so I don’t know, I’m curious to know what’s your decision making process when you’re kind of bringing this together? I don’t know how common that is, but when I, in general, but especially in music, when I work on music, I experience it as an almost visible landscape that maps, that kind of maps on the landscape that I see with my eyes. And it’s like when I go through different melodies, it’s like going through, let’s say, an alley where it’s like all a little, it’s dark there and maybe a little wet on the floor or something. And then I get into more open spaces and I kind of, I even, I see the, let’s say the buildings or the plants or whatever and the colors. And that’s how I try to navigate through that is when I play a note or melody or something. And then I see, yeah, yeah, that fits, but it needs a window there or something like that, let’s say. And with, for example, when you talk about the giants and inappropriate sexual desire, I had the sentence wrapped in inappropriate sexual desire that caused me to feel something specific. And then I got my guitar and I tried to translate that, let’s say. And I feel like the riff that I play, not the heavy metal stuff, but the palm muted stuff that’s in the lighter verse, it sounds kind of sticky to me, let’s say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. Yeah, kind of, yeah, that’s a good way of understanding it. That makes sense. Interesting. So you listen to the music, you listen to the words and then depending on where the music, where the words seem to kind of bring you into a different space, then you’ll apply like a different melody to that, to that. That’s what I’m getting. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, it’s not that I always listen to the bit first and then make, start making music for it. I oftentimes have a rough beat where I feel like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s kind of where Jonathan’s moving here is that this is the same space. So I bring it together and then I adjust it and I adjust your speech and I adjust the music again. But yeah, that’s kind of my way of navigating through that. And just out of, like, I’m just curious to know how long does it take to put together a song like this? It depends. I mean, there are songs that I had to work on for like a year even to get to where I wanted to, but there are others where it takes a few weeks to, and maybe there are even ones that I have almost done in two days. Then it’s mixed and mastering is coming and then maybe I’m adjusting it to sound more, a little bit more like the other songs so it fits together more well. But yeah, that really depends. That’s from two. Interesting, definitely. And so what is it that fascinated you with this? Because you said you were kind of the idea of the garments of skin because it’s definitely one of the most important. I mean, for me it’s one of the most important images I use to help people understand the modern world, let’s say, and understand technology and understand this kind of world of layers. So I’m just curious about what is it about that idea that kind of resonated with you? On one hand, it’s again, it’s showing the symbolism that’s everywhere. Like man is a microcosm and it showed me that, so that made it even more apparent how all encompassing these patterns are. And also, how do I say this? I would say that it’s all a, even musical instruments that we use and also the skin that we have and all that we do, all the technologies that we have are consequence of the fall. Like I wasn’t, I was never aware of how that’s because we’re where we are. Like I thought, yeah, yeah, we fell. That’s also a thing that happened. But it’s that’s the reason for history at all. And so that’s, yeah, that was so strange to realize. Yeah, but it’s interesting to see how in scripture, once you understand that, you can notice how God is constantly recapturing the space of the fall and kind of transforming the fall into something else. And so making technology, you know, making singing into something which is directed towards him, making architecture into something which is also a temple and directed towards him. So this kind of movement from all these things that are developed by the lineage of Cain in the fall then end up being kind of turned back towards God, of course. And then the ultimate image is the New Jerusalem in the end of this, this kind of filling up with the world with a city, but that a city that is shining this glorious city. Which is this double inversion that you will also talk about later. Right, right. Yeah, which, yeah, that’s I always have to laugh when I think about that because it’s so I don’t even know no word to describe it. It’s so funny because I would have thought that there’s no double inversions that there’s just things are wrong. And then you then then they are set right and that seems so authoritative. And so but but it’s more like, I mean, like, like St. Christopher tricking the devil into revealing Christ to him. And this is funny. I can’t I cannot not laugh at that. Yeah, especially that story. And then then ultimately, like the ultimate irony of the story of St. Christopher is that he wants because you have to always remember that he wants to serve the strongest person. That’s what he wants. And so he goes out and he serves these different characters that finally kind of reveal Christ to him. But he still doesn’t get it right. So he’s there on the side of the river. And then he ends up serving the weakest person. So this child, this little baby comes up to him. And so he he he serves the weakest person. But then it’s actually it’s actually Christ tricking St. Christopher into serving him. Right. That’s what’s going on. It’s like he’s like, just carry me across the water. And then as he’s carrying him across the water, he’s realizing what’s going on. And it’s like, OK, this is not what I thought it was going to be. This is not what I thought. And then and then finally, once he reaches to the other side, then he realizes that he the thing that he wanted from the beginning, which was to serve the strongest man or the highest king, he ended up doing it without even realizing that he was doing it. It’s part of also he was kind of he was kind of saved despite himself, you could say. You know, so it’s a it’s really an amazing it’s such an amazing like every time you look at it, you end up seeing how there’s a lot of other stuff going on in that story that maybe you didn’t notice at the outset. Yes, very often like this this idea that you have to let go of something when you’re when you’re clinging too much to it, let’s say. But then you like not not always, but but sometimes God just gives it to you anyway after you let go of it, after you stop your detachment to it, let’s say. Exactly. Like when you’re too attached to something, it makes you lose it. And then if you if you if you’re willing to be detached from it, you find it again in very surprising ways. You know, sometimes not in the way you expected, but it definitely comes back to you. Yeah, I mean, that’s that’s even something that you can you can observe in human relationships when you when you’re clinging to a person, let’s say, friend or girlfriend or something like that. And it’s yeah, that’s it’s very, very, very interesting. Yeah, I can I can play the next. Oh, no. Before that. I don’t I don’t know if that work. Maybe tell me when I when I made the music for desire, I that was the last song that I made for for the album. And I wanted to do like I wanted to have a sexy song. You know, it’s like, did that work out? Well, I don’t I do. The problem is that I don’t remember the names of the. It’s not the last one we heard, but that one before where you say that the things the edge and the end represent the same structure and all that. I don’t know if I would have. So I would don’t know if I would have recognized it that way. Maybe it’s also because I don’t expect it to be that. And so I’m not sure I would recognize it that way. Sorry. Yeah, no problem. No problem. Yeah, I’ll play the. Oh, I think because of the funky bass as a narrative fabric of our world begins to fill in quantities that are barely possible to believe. Right. With the image. Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. I did. It’s funny because when you played it this time, I did notice the bass and I’m like, hey, he’s got this like funky bass that going in there. And so but I didn’t connect it, which is obviously which makes sense because that’s also the funk was always about kind of like that. You know, what’s the name? Barry White or whatever with like the just kind of low bass. And so now you’re right. Now that you say it. And I remember that it’s kind of low bass coming in and like, yeah, OK, I get it. I get it. Oh, nice. Yeah, thank you. Awesome. OK, OK. The next one is the seventh song, The Ultimate Unexpected. It’s very short and I made it so short because I want people to want to listen to it twice. The monster is also the encounter with the surprise of the edge as the church expands to the dark corners of the world, but also the dark corners of our own lives. As the spirit of God transforms us, for most of us, there are always be foreign elements, monsters hiding in our garments of skin. So here in Pentecost, this monster is represented as not yet in the church, in the church, but as part of the potential into which the church can grow, as part of that which can hear the gospel in its language. I really like that one. I think it’s probably one of the most musical ones that has that has more more melody. And the idea of kind of singing over my voice as I’m saying things, I think it really is effective. It really does something. And it also it almost makes you hear the the melody in my own voice. As I’m talking and you can hear the melody being sung behind it, you know, it kind of fuses together with my with my voice. I really think it’s probably one of the best ones in terms of the terms of the song element of it. Yeah, I think it was also I got to say, maybe the most fun to record, at least the song element of it. Yeah, it moves very nicely. Also, you mentioned it yourself, like that you have an inherent, maybe everyone, but you especially have an inherent melody in the way that you talk. And it it thank you. It makes it rather easy. Yeah, that’s funny. I don’t realize I wonder like, I wonder if if I have the same melody in French as I do in English. I’d be curious to know like if the language you speak will affect the way like the the the tonality that you use. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I think that’s the most interesting part of it. Yeah, I think it’s the most interesting part of it. I don’t know. I have no idea. I might. I mean, I don’t I don’t I don’t really speak French like only a few sentences, even though I had it for years in school. I just wasn’t very good at it. Well, what about you between English and German? Do you feel like it’s a different melody in terms of the the sounds that it’s bringing about? It’s more melodious and in the way that you speak. The sounds that it’s bringing about. It’s more melodious in English than in German, I would I would say. That’s that’s something that I notice in in general is that German is a very technical language. It’s not it’s not ugly to me, but it’s very technical. And English is more I want to call it an emotional language or a fluid language more than more than German. So but I but I think that the reason why you’re you have so much inherent melody in the way that you talk is because you’re French Canadian. Maybe. Yeah, I think it comes from that. So, yeah, French Canadians are definitely like our French is very sing songy. It’s you know, like there’s some it’s like old like this old pre revolutionary French. And so it has a lot of we have a way more. Yeah, we have way more tonality and then the Parisians do we have more sounds even than the Parisians have in their in their in their French. So I might look at one of your you started doing French content as well. Right. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Like every two weeks with JP Marceau, we’re doing some French podcasts. Nice. Yeah, I won’t be most likely won’t be able to segment that myself. But but if you at one point or maybe Lisa, I don’t know how well she speaks French or whoever is is cutting out of that like a three minute piece that’s that’s that’s that has coherence to it. I would I would try to I would try to make a song out of that just to just to be interesting. Yeah, that’d be true. But the more you say it, the more that I realize you’re how right you are in terms of tonality because the French like we have up and down in our in our sound. So so like the French will go up and stop and then we’ll go up and down in our in our in our tone. So it’s like a friend from friends for a house will say maison and then we’ll say maison like I’m exaggerating. But it’s like it goes I’m exaggerating a lot for French Canadians. My dear, but it will go like up and down and like that. So it’s more it has more. Yeah, I never thought about that. Interesting. Yeah. Do you because you say for most of us, they’ll always be foreign elements, monsters hiding in our garments of skin. That’s that that kind of ties into the idea of theosis, right? Because we’re being transformed by by the Holy Spirit in our lives and trying to become more holy and grow closer to God. Is there like do people do do people finish that in their lives? Or is it is it always something that Christ finishes when you enter or before you enter paradise? I mean, some some saints definitely reach theosis in their earthly lives. There are different examples of that. So so it’s possible. But I would say not for I would say for most people, it’s not that it’s it’s it’s kind of something that continues after your body, like after the resurrection, let’s say something like that. And it’s also described in St. In St. Like St. Gregor of Nyssa. Theosis is not described as something that you kind of arrive to in a static way. You know, it’s rather this kind of ongoing, this kind of glory to glory notion where there’s an indefinite there’s like an infinite glory that you are attaining. And so it’s it’s nonstop. It’s like a it’s as if like the pattern is going up. It’s constantly moving up. So it’s not it’s not just like, you know, this image of the angel sitting in the cloud was like you’ve got you’ve reached and you’re there and you’re just kind of there. It’s more of this is continuous synergy of ascent that is that is constantly going on. That’s very interesting. So you say it’s continuing even after the resurrection and after well, after the apocalypse and after we’re technically saints in heaven. Well, that’s what that’s what at least that’s my take on it. Like, I’m sure you’ll find people who disagree with me, but at least that’s my take on what I get from St. Gregory, at least that it’s it’s just this kind of this infinite this kind of this infinite ascent into into the life of God. So which also seems more more logical, let’s say, because it’s not like God is finite. So if we if we learn to be in God and learn more about God, even after all of this stuff is done, that would make sense that it goes on for forever. Yeah. Yeah, that’s at least that’s the way that I that I see it in terms of it’s in terms of St. Gregory, especially because he’s my my guide for most of this. Is he your patron saint too? No, my patron saint is Maximus. St. Max was the confessor. Aha. Yeah, that’s nice. That’s actually my that’s actually my my name like that’s my Orthodox name is Maximus. And so but I don’t use it. I stopped using it very soon after my baptism just because like even my bishop kind of just stopped using it and then I just kind of happened. But recently my bishop when he gave me communion, he came to with the spoon and he said, don’t you have another name? And I looked at him and I was like, yeah, it’s Maximus. So he said, so Maximus received the blood and body of it. So I was like, that’s awesome. So I need to re-appropriate that maybe and start using it again. You can I’ll change my name on the channel. It’ll be like Maximus Peugeot or something. I’ll incorporate that when we when we make new music. That’s kind of cool. But it’s definitely like I would say my my my my patron is a Maximus. But St. Gregory, St. Ephraim and St. Christopher are obviously the saints that I’m the closest to and that I feel the most drawn to and most taught by you could say in different ways. St. Ephraim the Syrian. Yeah, definitely. He wrote hymns on paradise. Yes, right. Yeah. Yeah. But just in general, his theology and the Syrian fathers, St. Isaac the Syrian as well. Their theology is very is very powerful because it it’s more non dual in the way that I I present it. You know, like St. Isaac the Syrian is the one who said things like, you know, that the hell and the fire in hell is the love of God. And those types of statements, you know, so I, you know, St. Ephraim talks about the womb of God, like the idea that the sacred womb out of which the the out of which God kind of created the world. Kind of comes out of. And so they’re they’re more non dual in the way they describe things. And so it’s closer to I feel like they get the pattern more, not more, but they just get it. They just presented more succinctly, let’s say. I understand what you mean when you when you focus too much on the the the duality, let’s say, then you become agnostic in the end. Yeah. So, yeah, no, no, I think that’s very helpful to bring it together again, because it also it is together. It’s not like I the way I understand it. It’s not like there’s real. There’s there’s a real it sounds dumb, but I don’t think that there’s a real duality. I think that’s more how we perceive it than you know, God is not is not is not is not different. It’s not cut up. Yeah. I mean, the best way the best way to understand it is that is that duality is contained in unity, but it doesn’t have an autonomous existence. And so it’s that so that duality is fine as long as it’s always moving towards unity and contained in unity. You know, and so that that would be the sin. The fall would be something like completely inhabiting duality, you know, and that’s what that’s why it’s the knowledge of good and evil. But it brings you into a world of duality in which you see that as the highest as the highest thing, you know, because God creates with duality. It starts right away at the beginning. God created heaven and earth. There’s that first duality right there in the beginning of scripture. And so so duality is definitely it’s it’s mostly the whether or not you move into unity or whether or not you see duality as the final step, like the final step in the world. Yes. Thank you for clearing that up. I’ll play the next song. Yeah, go for it. The next clip. I might have three favorite songs from the album, but this is definitely one one of them. Sinus Cephalus, Waiting for Crumbs. It’s the most punky, let’s say, or rock song. Maybe on the edge of the church, maybe on the edge of the world. This one is not a Canaanite, but a Canaanite. That might seem like a really bad pun, but I assure you that it will cause modern interpreters to cry foul in reading his ancient account and will say that all of this question is just a matter of bad transcription. I don’t think so. I don’t think so. All these foreigners in the icon of Pentecost culminating to the impossible monster of the surprise cover on the edge of the church, anticipating maybe waiting for the crumbs, maybe waiting for the antidorons we can imagine flowing out of the church so that even those we can barely recognize as our brothers can have a foretaste of the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven. Yeah, yeah, that was the that was when is also in the talk when it was like I felt like I was moving into tricky territory, where I was going to start to say things which, which would, which would make people feel uneasy when we’re the other. But in the end, I don’t think it did that, but I could I knew that I was starting to talk that it was getting into a weird in a weird place, let’s say. So the punk music makes sense. The kind of this kind of punk vibe makes sense in that moment for sure. Yeah, I can imagine that it’s it’s it’s when I when I when I go through the this this bit of the talk when I when I when I went through this bit of the talk when I was checking if there was anything I wanted to change and I also when I when I adjust the rhythm of your speech, I speak it myself to the music and then see where I should put the words. So it’s like I’m rapping with you. And and that’s all like when I when I then later on thought about this bit and and and and when went a little further and started exploring this these let’s say these sentences or these these notions. It’s very easy to get into a form of anger or something like something like that because some people are so unwilling to to have that be part of the tradition. Like the modern the modern historians, for example, as you said, so yeah, no, no, that’s just a misunderstanding of ancient texts and that it’s no it’s not. Yeah, because it’s like the analogies play themselves out so perfectly that to say that this is just a misunderstanding is completely insane. It gets completely insane. And it also that’s one of the like one of the main strategies that I’ve been trying to give to people to help counter the counter the scholarly way of interpreting is is has to do with attention and memory. And it’s a very sound argument, which is that mistakes happen all the time. And it’s almost like it’s weird because it’s almost close to like an evolutionary argument. Right. It’s like there’s a mutation. And then the mutation, it continues. And because the mutation continues, you can’t discount it. You can’t say, well, that’s not what it was originally was like. No, what are you talking about? So even if you say it’s a mistake, it’s not a mistake because it was remembered and it was transmitted and it grew and the analogies accumulated around it. And so it was actually inciting. It had the insight into something which was true. You know, even if it is just a mistake in transcription, it ended up being a better insight into what was going on in that story. And you can understand that all the time, these types of these types of that say one of the things I talk about is that in as stories last longer in time, they tend to snap to the pattern. Like even memory, the older the memories you have, the more they tend to kind of snap to the pattern because it’s like it’s a golden thread that you can follow that kind of joins you together. You join things together. And so when that happens, that’s always when the scholars want to tell us that no, this isn’t what the Christians originally thought or whatever that is. And yeah, so it’s just to me, that type of argumentation has become completely irrelevant and useless. And hopefully people can use that argument sometimes too. Yeah, that’s this idea of there’s no literal interpretation of the biblical stories, right? That’s because it doesn’t matter if St. Christopher was a man with a dog face or if he was a giant or if he was just something that was just a dog face. Because it doesn’t matter if St. Christopher was a man with a dog face or if he was a giant or if he was just someone who looked normal but had this monstrous way of acting. First of all, we don’t have access to that. And ultimately it doesn’t matter because those aren’t just the categories. The category that was used was the appropriate category. It’s the best category for explaining what he is so that we can understand it later in time. And so that was the category used. And it’s the same with the Cenocephaly in general, which is that it was the best category to describe the experience of something so simple. The experience of something so strange that it looks animalistic to us. And so that’s a universal experience. Any tribe, any group can have that experience of something that is so other from themselves that it connects to animality, let’s say. So in that sense, it’s still the best category. And just like I argue even in my text about the idea of hippopotamus, it’s probably one of the best way of describing it. It’s like a hippopotamus means a water horse. And so does it mean that there’s a genetic relationship between a horse the way we understand it and hippopotamus? That’s stupid. That’s a stupid way of thinking. And so why do we want to now impose the same thing back on the idea of a Cenocephalus and think they were idiots for thinking that they were dog-human hybrids? And so it’s like, who knows? Maybe there were. I don’t know because there seems like there’s some on the horizon for us now. It seems like we’re going to have human-dog hybrids at some point. So that you shouldn’t completely discount it either. But you also shouldn’t get hung up on that because that’s not the point of the story. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, it’s interesting when one can think and talk about, yeah, maybe there even were real dog-headed men and all that. But it’s not important, really. It’s just interesting, but not important. It’s not useful to you to kind of go down that route. It’s the same even with the whole everything that’s related to UFOs and the aliens and all this stuff. It’s the same problem, which is that people, they miss the forest for the trees. They don’t understand what it means as a manifestation in the story and kind of the social moment and are hung up on how did they get here and what are their spaceships? Are they interdimensional beings or are they interplanetary beings or are they just projections of our psyche or are they this or that? Yeah, okay, whatever. That’s fine. I mean, whatever. But let’s try to first of all understand how this fits into a bigger story and what it actually means. Whatever those beings are that are poking their noses into the world, they’re aliens. They’re aliens in the strict sense. They’re like the ultimate strange that is coming into reality. And so it actually tells us a little bit about where we are in the story when that starts to happen. There again is this unwillingness to recognize the Christian story. It’s like this whole postmodern notion of there is no overarching narrative. There’s no right or wrong. There’s no strange or familiar really. And aliens are just the same as human beings or the animals that we know or anything. And yeah, it seems to me that, and I’ve been talking about that with people from my parish a few minutes ago, is that we… It’s hard to talk about this stuff. It’s definitely difficult. It’s not difficult also because there’s right now a social stigma of even addressing this question. To even acknowledge the experience of the strange is dangerous. It’s dangerous because people attribute it to racism or to some kind of social pressure. But it’s a universal experience. It’s actually not one which you can limit to one people. It’s just a universal experience of strange. And if you deny it, you’re denying a very important aspect of what it means to even recognize any identity of anything. I think to me it’s better to talk about how we can integrate the strange properly and how we integrate the strange improperly. That’s a much better way to talk about this than just try to deny the category itself because you’re denying what it means to be human, universally denying it. And that’s not useful because it ends up coming back secretly. It ends up coming back strangely, kind of unconsciously, and pops up in hypocritical ways that people don’t even notice. They end up doing it but without noticing they’re doing it and then it just becomes very, very odd. That’s funny because yesterday I saw a sticker that said space invaders against speciesism or something like that. My goodness, that’s amazing. You know that people are there. You know the people are there. But it’s nuts that even the trope that somehow, let’s say, being suspicious of aliens, like of actual science fiction level aliens, like Mars Attack, being suspicious. Mars Attack is a great example of a play on a joke on that where it’s like they want to be so accepting to the aliens that the aliens just walk all over them and they basically destroy the world. And they’re like, oh no, we don’t want to intrude. Maybe we misunderstood them. Maybe it’s like, no man. That’s nuts. I’m not surprised but I find it hilarious that we’re there. I did remember the thing that I wanted to say earlier. What I was talking about with the people in my parish is that this is, and I mentioned it earlier, this unwillingness to notice the Christian pattern. And so what science did is it took everything that Christianity says and all the explanations that Christianity gives and it just put it aside and then say, okay, it can’t be that. So it has to be something else and then they come up with all these weird theories and ideas. Is that, I mean, am I being unfair to them? Is that really unwillingness or is that? It’s actually mostly a question of levels is what it is. It’s a confusion of levels of reality is one of the biggest problems between a traditional worldview and a scientific worldview, which is that the scientific worldview moved towards kind of an analysis of phenomena rather than the meaning of phenomena and seeing the world through meaning as the first lens, let’s say, and wanted to analyze phenomena. And then what they did is they mistook stories that were talking about meaning for stories that were talking about analysis. And then they decided this has no value because it’s not properly talking about, let’s say, analysis of phenomena in a way that to analyze it and quantify it in a way that you can reproduce it. Right. That’s what science is. And so when they see descriptions that aren’t like that, they want to discount them. And the worst part of that is that they’re across, they were in the 19th century, especially across from Christians who wanted that too, who like wanted to take the traditional stories and make them into these silly analytical quantifiable descriptions. And so it’s like, so they lost, right, because that’s not what they are. And so they lost that fight. And so now we’re still dealing with the consequence of that. But I mean, it’s kind of petering out and you can see like people like John Rovecki and Jordan Peterson and these kind of people, these people that are looking at consciousness and the science of consciousness, it’s petering out because they now, now that they’ve reached kind of the end of the rope of what materialism can offer, they have to reconsider, you know, the problem of meaning and the problem of description without meaning is actually impossible. And that scientists all along were functioning with implicit categories of meaning that were given to them. And but as you kind of push that and you keep pushing and you push the meaning stories to the side, then things start to fragment and to crumble. And you realize, OK, wait a minute, I’m in trouble. Like if I don’t recapture these, this meaning manner of telling, of describing the world. So it’s not really the case that science is, let’s say, in the wrong place. It’s more that it doesn’t acknowledge that it also, let’s say, has to work with meaning. And if we were to incorporate that again, then science also wouldn’t, let’s say, cause the problems that it does know. Exactly. Science wouldn’t necessarily be problematic if they, but it’s almost like this is the trade. It’s like a secret, like a secret of reality, which is often to increase power, you actually have to sacrifice meaning to increase power. And so for Cain to become stronger in physicality, he had to move further away from the garden. And this is kind of the this is the reality of it. You know, you have to you have to you have to give up meaning to increase power. And you can see it like, you know, you could you could you could see it in all kinds of ways. Like you could see that you would get an army and the bigger the army is right, the more difficult it will be for you to maintain the centralized meaning of what you’re doing. And then your army, the bigger it gets, the more powerful it is. But the more dangerous it is that it’s going to start to break apart and fragment as it gets bigger. Like, example, Alexander, right. That’s what happened to Alexander’s legacy, right. Is that it was got so big that once the meaning, the let’s say the person holding it together died, then it just broke apart because it was too it was too powerful and too big. So that’s a trade off. It’s real. And it’s but it’s a mystery in the way the world cycles. And the idea is that as you move away and you move towards the end, then something happens and it gets it kind of gets restored or returned towards the glory. And that’s the New Jerusalem is the last example of that, where all of this movement to the end of the world gets changed into these glorious walls of of of jewels and of gold to kind of manifest how they’re part of the world. And how they’re participating in the in the glory. That’s fascinating. So Marvin, thank you so much for doing this and for all the work you do. I like I’m constantly amazed at what you come up with. And I not only that, but I feel very humbled that that that that you’re that you’re out there kind of spending the time to to to make what I’m saying beautiful and to kind of make it in a way that people can enjoy and can celebrate and participate in. So I I feel very humbled and very fortunate that that you’re doing that. So thank you for all the work you do. Yeah, my pleasure. Really. Thank you for for for for allowing me to do that and giving me the material because it’s yeah it’s it’s it’s helped me so so so much to move towards this. I would have never thought that it would be possible for me at all. And it made my life better in so many ways. Yeah. Thank you so much. Glory to God. And yeah, yeah. Thank you. So everybody go look into the description. We’ll have all the links to his different channels to YouTube channel, but also to the different places where you can get his music. We can stream it where you can buy it. And so I wish you the best in the future. And we’re looking forward to seeing what are the next things you come up with. Yeah, thank you. Also, all the best to you. And I’m looking forward to talking to you again. All right. Thanks.