Re-Vision Radio's TOWER OF SONG
Program

with your host
The Gypsy Scholar & Bohemian Essayist

This page is designed to provide a conceptual and imagistic background to "Re-Vision Radio."

Re-Vision Radio's listeners ask:

What I want to know is
How does the song go?
(Grateful Dead)

And everybody knows that on Re-Vision Radio the song goes perfectly with the essay, because Re-Vision Radio puts its philosophical message across best through song. As the song goes:

That's why I'm telling you in song.
(Van Morrison)

... You'll be hearing from me baby
Long after I'm gone
I'll be speaking to you sweetly,
From a window--
In the Tower of Song.
(L.C.)

And that "window in the Tower of Song" looks out over that "invisible landscape," or perhaps William Blake's world of Imagination:

"Such the period of many worlds.
Others triangular, right angled course maintain. Others obtruse
Acute, Scalene, in simple paths; others move
In intricate ways, biquadrate, Trapeziums, Rhombs, Rhomboids,
Parallelograms triple & quadruple, polygonic,
In their amazing hard subu'd course in the vast deep."

Re-Vision Radio discovers that its unigue radio vocation of uniting, through its Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, scholarly discursive expression with artistic expression was (a) already in play right at the beginnings of Western dialectics, (b) fully in play in the Romantic Movement of the nineteenth century (e.g., the "Romantic Essay"), and (c) embodied in the Orphic Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Therefore, Re-Vision Radio's Tower of Song program is all the more determined to engage in an eccentric style of philosophical rhapsody, or even raving--an eloquent and nuanced raving--, in order to bring out an overall (Neptunean/Mercurial) radio mood, one that comes about through starting off with Socratic argumentation and getting off by moving gradually into Socratic enchantment--musically realized. Thus, Re-Vision Radio goes back--"way, way back"--to the Renaissance concept of "Poetic furor"--"frenzy" or "rapture"--that was believed to manifest in poems and songs.

"Whoever is possessed in any way by a deity indeed overflows on account of the vehemence of the divine impulse and the fullness of its power: he raves, exults ... therefore this possession is called furor .... No one under the influence of furor is content with simple speech: he bursts forth into clamoring and songs and poems."

In other words, Re-Vision Radio takes its cue from the Romantic style of communicating knowledge: "to associate ideas in a state of excitement." In addition, Re-Vision Radio's mixing of the two modes of scholarship and art, means that it mixes high and lowRomantic literature. For example, in his "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth explains that the subject of poetry should be the "Low and rustic life," described culture, which also has its model in

"in a selection of language really used by men; and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way . . . as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement."

Thus, Re-Vision Radio carries on Romanticism's great project of the "re-enchantmant" of the world (after the disenchantment of scientific naturalism), and literally--by way of its dedication to the musician-magician Orpheus and its presentation of Musekal Philosophy--attempts to re-ensing the world (enchant: incantare; incantatare; incantation). In other words, hosting Re-Vision Radio means shamanizing on radio, since it is said that the shaman "sings the world into existence."

Socrates (of the Phaedrus), the master dialectician, unexpectedly shows us his Dionysian side. His strict rhetoric gradually flows over into lyrical eloquence, astonishing his companion. Socrates is soon so possessed by divine inspiration or madness (of the Nymphs and the Muses) that he must break off his rapt speech before it threatens put him entirely out of his senses! The dialogue closes with a hymn to the wild god Pan. So the mythic Socrates is depicted as a philosophical "enchanter" possessed of enraptured incantation of the poet-musician and offering up hymns to gods of the irrational side of life. [from Essay-with-Soundtrack]

"Like the perfect hypnotic subject ... [the Orphic Scholar] gives the impression of being able to enter trance state at the drop of his high hat, whereupon the liquid measures flow...."

Re-Vision Radio's Romantic Synthesis:
Burning the Candle At Both Ends

The prototypical conception of the primary opposition of the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus is one of the outstanding legacies of nineteenth-century Romanticism (philosophically formulated by Nietzsche). Simply put, as the theory goes, these two gods represent contrasting Greek cultural values and their respective psychological aspects; Apollo representing the civilizing principle, solar consciousness, masculinity, sublimation of instincts, rationality itself, and Dionysus representing the other side, that is, nature, lunar consciousness, femininity, sexuality, intoxication, ecstacy. The tension between Apollo and Dionysus was thus interpreted, generally, as the two sides of human nature and, particularly, the psychological situation of Western, nineteenth-century man, who, being too over-burdened by Apollonian values, needed to reticfy the cultural imbalance by turning to the repressed Dionysian side of things (especially everything that had to do with the "Romantic Imagination")by eclipsing solar-consciousness with lunar-consciousness--"the nightside of things." (This Romanticism was picked up by Freud and is reflected in his ego vs. id psychological theory.) For the purposes of Re-Vision Radio, Apollo and Dionysus stand for the two archetypal principles of logos and mythos repectively; the principles, or modes of expression, it wants to unite--philosophy and music, dialectics/argument and song, rationality or the critical intellect and intuition/imagination.

Yeah in the midnight, in the midnight,
I burn the candle
Burn the candle at both ends,
burn the candle at both ends
Burn the candle at both ends,
burn the candle at both ends
And I keep on, `cause I can't sleep at night
Until the daylight comes through
And I just, and I just, have to sing.
Van Morrison

Re-Vision Radio's host, the Gypsy Scholar & Bohemian Essayist--master of radio ceremonies--, seeking the twilight trance-state of reflection and reverie, and longing to connect with that soulful dark blue-fire rhythm of things, romantically
burn the candle at both ends--

logos & mythos, ideas & love, reason & imagination, fact & fantasy, realism & idealism, dialectical & mystical, mind & heart--the end of the Argument & Song on your radio dial, tuned to the Romantic Tower of Song.

"Our High Romantic Argument"

RE-VISION RADIO is a Philosophical & Musical program broadcast from an imaginal window at 88.9 on your radio dial from the Tower of Song. It’s hosted by the Gypsy Scholar and Bohemian Essayist, with a flower in one hand (or name) and a sword in the other. RE-VISION RADIO is a “Soul-making” program, because it’s essentially an “underworld perspective”—a seeing below surface appearances to the occult or symbolic truth of things. Thus, RE-VISION RADIO is truly Underground Radio.

The experimental format of RE-VISION RADIO is a seamless mixing of argument & song, dialectics & music, or logos & mythos; in other words, philosophical essays are put to music, producing the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack. Thus Everybody Knows, since there’s a song hermetically hidden in an essay and, conversely, an essay waiting to be revealed in a song, that RE-VISION RADIO puts its philosophy best in song—as the lyric goes: “That’s why I’m telling you in song.” In mixing the noetic texts of Philosophy with the poetic texts of Song, RE-VISION RADIO offers its listeners an Orphic soundscape; a medley of the esoteric and the popular, high academic culture and low pop-culture—high argument & deep song—not from the Ivory Tower, but from “that tower down the track”: the Tower of Song. Because Everybody Knows that to really grok the meaning of a song context is everything, RE-VISION RADIO’s essays contextualize its songs, and, conversely, its songs compose its essay. In the same way, this dialectical relationship between argument & song means that the prose essay contributes gravitas to popular song and, alternatively, popular song gives wings to the essay, composing a Musekal Philosophy. Thus, the fusion of song & argument is the rhyme and reason for the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, which, juxtaposing argument with song, makes for melodious (aesthetic) ideas and discursive notes—a kind of Philosophical Concert and, conversely, a kind of Musical Essay. This dialectical inter-textuality creates a novel radio art-form: scholarship as performance art (William Blake's "Mental Studies & Performances"), which is a Romantic way to “associate ideas in a state of excitement” and to “rave on words on printed page.” RE-VISION RADIO’S musical inter-textuality, because it reads metaphorically between the lines of Philosophy & Song, becomes the imaginal hyper-textuality of a Soul-text. Thus, Everybody Knows that this imaginal kind of Radio-text, haunted by song, is inspired by the legendary Orpheus, master rhetorician and “singer of love songs.” Questing back—”way, way back”—in search of the magical power of music, with the archetype of Orpheus as its guide, RE-VISION RADIO broadcasts a Musekal Philosophy (by way of the ancient “Sicilian Muse”), which is the perfect union of words and music broadcast through the Essay-with- Soundtrack—the Orphic synthesis of what has been called the “Infinite Conversation” and the “Endless Melody.” This perfect union of argument & song is the Romantic ideal of the synthesis of “poetry and thought,” “a union of fact and imagination;” “not Poetry, but rather a sort of middle thing between Poetry and Oratory.” With this Romantic union of poetic furor and reason, the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack becomes “our high argument,” or elevated discourse—“Reason in its most exalted mood.” Thus, with the 19th-century “Romantic Essay” as its model, RE-VISION RADIO‘s Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack is a novel revival of the lost “Art of the Personal Essay” where “Soliloquy bridges the gap between high art and popular song.” The Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack is designed to communicate a musical sense of philosophy, one that can be understood as “Speculative Music,” from one point of view and, from another, ”Philosophy in a New Key.” Thus, Everybody Knows that the Essay-with-Soundtrack’s musekal philosophy is also a (Romantic) “philosophy of music:" a musekal philosophy that issues not in a discursive but in a lyrical knowledge. And, in seamlessly mixing argument & song through “Mental Studies & Performances” (Blake), Everybody Knows, too, that RE-VISION RADIO’s scholarship as performance art makes philosophy sound more musical and, conversely, music sound more philosophical. Thus, in the TOWER OF SONG, philosophical essays aspire to the condition of music; to the condition of music translated into words: The Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, which approximates what the Romantics envisioned—the end of philosophy as poetry, or song.

Going back—"way, way back"—RE-VISION RADIO's Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack (or the Essay in Argument & Song) would pick up the fallen standard of the nineteenth-century Romantic Essay, which sought to transcend the boundaries of prose and non-prose and conjoin philosophy with poetry. (This is in keeping with the Romantic’s penchant for mixing genres.) The Romantic Essay has been described (based upon its development by Wordsworth and Coleridge) as a "conjunction of Reason and Passion that did not draw particularly sharp lines of differentiation between ‘poetry’ and the ‘impassioned, eloquent, and powerful prose.’" Thus, for Coleridge: “The love of truth conjoined with a keen delight in a strict, skillful, yet impassioned argumentation, is my master-passion.” Following in this Romantic genre, the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack is conceived of as "the perfect union of words and music." Thus, the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, like the Romantic Essay, begins with an "impassioned, eloquent, and powerful prose, following from a fairly strict following of traditional ‘public’ discourse to modes of prose requiring the virtual abandonment or annihilation of such discourse and often quite literally disappearing into poetry or into the silence of contemplation and vision." The Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack exists in a liminal radio space, between argument and song, criticism and lyricism—finding the ancient muse where prose and music meet, on the border between prose and poetry. Thus, because the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack is about the romance of ideas (eros plus logos; the heart’s desire for ecstasy and the head’s requirement for clarity), Everybody Knows that RE-VISION RADIO ’s Musekal Philosophy issues not in a discursive but in a lyrical knowledge.

Because of the “sympathetic magic” (vibrations of musical tones produced in something as a result of similar vibrations at the same frequency) of playing off the Argument with the Song, the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack’s dialectical relationship of the musicality of the Essay and the philosophy of the Music means that that Argument adds rigor to the Song, while the Song adds lyricism to the Argument. In other words, the music adds the raw energy of Rock to the formal essay and, conversely, the formal essay contributes philosophical meaning to the music. Thus, Everybody Knows the Essay hermeneutically informs the Music, while the Music ecstatically transcends the prose, giving emotional or imaginative heightening to the Essay. RE-VISION RADIO ’s Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack attempts to overcome the dichotomy between the prose written word and the lyric that is embodied in song. Given that RE-VISION RADIO posits a dialectical relationship between Argument & Song, this means (when the essay is about the song and visa versa) that the Essay-with-Soundtrack seeks to overcome the dichotomy of the analysis of the song (“linernotes”) versus its performance. So completely would the Essay-with-Soundtrack mingle Argument & Song that the song speaks the essay, and, conversely, the essay sings the song. In other words, the song becomes the introspective meditation through the philosophical essay and, conversely, the essay becomes the performance of the song through its heightened ideas. Thus, Everybody Knows that music underscores or enhances the essay—aestheticizes it—and, conversely, the essay conceptualizes and clarifies the song. In the TOWER OF SONG, then, you hear the nuanced gems of lyricism, because popular rock music provides the energy for the Essay-with-Soundtrack, while the essay simultaneously puts the music in hermeneutical perspective. Because it’s been said that Romantic Mind is "the union of deep feeling and profound thought,” RE-VISION RADIO in programming a mix of rigorous intellectual argument and an elevating musical sensuousness, strives to unite reason and imagination, intellect and feeling, head and heart. Thus the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, assaying back and forth between the dialectical and the musical, brings into play a paradoxical reuniting of the head and heart—-a Romantic comingling of a "sensuous reason" and a "feeling intellect," thereby synthesizing the left and right brain. So Everybody Knows, "If my heart could do my thinking / And my head begin to feel / I would look upon the world anew / And know what's truly real." [Van Morrison] In practicing its own type of the Romantic “Arts & Sciences of the Imagination” (Blake), RE-VISION RADIO delights in remixing what the Romantics poetically combined—"high Argument" & “song” (of "the Mind, / My haunt, and the main region of my song”—Wordsworth.) RE-VISION RADIO’s Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, assaying back and forth between high academic culture (argument) and low pop- culture (song), takes its cue from the great Romantic composer, Beethoven, who, it is said, "took great delight in juxtaposing the exalted and the commonplace," making his music "a union of sensuous and rational." It also looks to the American inspired scholar Emerson who dared to proclaim: "I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low." Thus, the Musekal Philosophy of the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack broadcasts its meaning in two modes: Wordsworth’s "high argument" and Lorca’s "deep song." ". . . they have climbed, / on high with song that is more sweet, more deep." (Dante, Divine Comedy) "Music that can deepest reach." (Emerson, The Essays) And, broadcast on radio, this seamlessness of going back and forth between high argument & deep song is really a gas: "So the words dissolve into the music, and the music dissolves into the words, and a refreshment is produced, kind of oxygen." [Alan Watts] Everybody Knows the Musekal PhiloSophy heard on RE-VISION RADIO means that a Song is as good as an Argument/Essay. In fact, through the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, they are in dialectical relationship; that is, there's a song waiting to be amplified out of an essay and, conversely, there's an essay waiting to be unpacked in a song lyric. Like the Prose-Poem, the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack (written with music in mind) has “the technical or literary qualities of poetry (such as regular rhythm, definitely patterned structure), but is set on a page as prose.” It is a work in prose that has “poetic characteristics such as vivid imagery and concentrated expression.” Thus, Everybody Knows, the intent of crafting the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack (synchronistically inspired by song) is to turn a phrase until it perfectly catches the color of the music. And Everybody Knows that the aim of RE-VISION RADIO, through its Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, is to not only to entice the listener to hear the familiar pop-song (empowered by philosophical meaning) anew (and see the essay's meaning amplified by song), but to seamlessly weave together essay & song so that the listener feels like the song was actually tailor-made for the essay. In another sense, the goal of the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack is to mix the Argument & Song so seamlessly that listeners won't know if the music exists for the philosophical essay, or the philosophical essay for the music; that is, whether the song simply provides an interlude in the reading of the prose essay, or whether the essay is simply an extended "lead in" to the main purpose of playing the song (i.e., showcasing the song). Therefore RE-VISION RADIO 's Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack dissolves the boundaries between scholarship and art, criticism and poetry, rhetoric and lyric; between, that is, Argument & Song—so much so that it is hoped the listener can’t make out where the Argument leaves off and the Song begins, and vice versa. This Orphic magic of entering completely into the song in a meaningful way (music’s “intellectual value," music giving "insight . . . a flash of understanding," its "the force of mental life, bringing on revelations,” music's connection with the “inner life of the mind,” the personally "associative" quality of music) is the purpose of the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack: to find and enter into the TOWER OF SONG.

The Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, fusing dialectics and love in “flowers of discourse,” has Dante as its guide, since the Florentine poet looked back to the Troubadour’s “Dialectic of Love” and desired only to write about the “Love that discourses in my mind" [Pugatorio]. In the paradise of discourse that is the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, both aspects of the psyche are given their due: reason and imagination, scholarly/critical intellect and intuitive/artistic heart, academic research and mystical insearch; both secular hermeneutics and sacred hermetic/kabbalistic interpretation, both scholarly rigor and poetic reverie, Apollonian clarity and Dionysian obscurity, philosophical questioning and romantic questing. RE-VISION RADIO, then, questing—“way, way back”—carries on, in popular form, the great Platonic synthesis of logos and mythos (i. e., between the earlier mytho-mystical, as it was transmitted through the Greek Mystery Religions, and the newer rationalist development in Philosophy that had broken away from it: "Intellectual rigor [read: "the logical"] and Olympian inspiration [read: "the mytho-poetic"] no longer stood opposed.”) Because Plato’s dialectic became—“after it has risen, with an incredible impulse, through the mania [madness] of Eros to the heights of philosophy”—mantic (poetic-prophetic) vision, RE-VISION RADIO’s Orphic Essay- with-Soundtrack would energetically channel “Philosophy” back through the powerful medium of radio, where it rises to the heights of enraptured song—“soul music.” Remembering that “Philosophy” for Plato is a “care for soul” and begins in “wonder," the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack spans both logos and mythos: both the critical analysis and the enraptured intuition, both the down-to-earth investigation and the flight of poetic inspiration; the fusion of scholarly rigor with poetic reverie; philosophical aptitude with musical amplitude. Therefore, since it has been said that "Eros redefines reason in its own terms," RE-VISION RADIO's Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, mixing PhiloSophy & Song (dialectics & music), replaces the "murders to dissect" (Wordsworth) mode of academic (Protestant) scholarship with service to Eros--insight, synthesis, celebration; "Reason in its most exalted mood," which, in service to Eros, through the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, becomes what Emerson envisioned as a higher reason: "the living, leaping Logos." RE-VISION RADIO’s reunion and fusion of Philosophy & Music—Musekal Philosophy—makes the ideal philosopher (according to Socrates and Plato) a "fervent musician," or a "musical man.” Moreover, because PhiloSophy is a form of “play”—an artistic endeavor—, it makes the scholar of philosophy a scholar-artist-musician (an Orphic Scholar), who is distinguished by his or her ability to play with knowledge and create a collage of ideas or intellectual mind-jazz. Thus, RE-VISION RADIOs Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack is broadcast through what Blake called “Mental Studies & Performances.” In other words, the Gypsy Scholar attempts to make scholarship a performance art. Therefore, the Musekal PhiloSophy of RE-VISION RADIO’s Orphic Essay-with- Soundtrack finally leads not to ponderous academic desiccation, but to ecstatic Dionysian celebration—to the "Joyous Science” (of the Troubadours and Emerson and Nietzsche). This means it offers a mood of trance, enchantment, and ecstasy. "All our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling." (Blaise Pascal ) However (listeners be warned), it is not brain-dead, new-age spaciness, but rather, because Mueskal PhiloSophy is both logos and mythos, what the Orphic Scholar, Emerson, knew as "Reason in its most exalted mood," which issues in "music that can deepest reach.” And because Everybody Knows that the ability to express complex philosophical ideas in lyrics of song is the gift of Orpheus, RE-VISION RADIO broadcasts what one sixties singer-songwriter said the music of that time promised: "A deep ecstasy that can be had." Therefore, RE-VISION RADIO’s Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack and its Musekal PhiloSophy turn out to be, metaphorically and literally, what one modern philosopher envisioned as "Philosophy In A New Key." [Langer]

The TOWER OF SONG program—“not for everyone, but for madmen only”—is underwritten by its ancestral tutelary deities: Hermes-Mercury—Trickster-god of those Wednesday communications and connecting synchronicities—and Sophia-Magdalene, Our Dark Lady of the Romantic Tower of Song—Goddess-Muse of Eternal Wisdom & Wit and ancient lonely-tower libraries. RE-VISION RADIO is co-hosted by the Angel of Imagination & Music, along with its “twenty-seven angels from the great beyond” in hyperspace, where Ushahina, angel of the hours between midnight and the dawn, gets you on her wavelength.

The purpose of the RE-VISION RADIO program is to help guide its listeners--"in the middle of the night"--in searching for, by following the song, and entering into that long-abandoned Romantic “Lonely Tower,” situated in that alternative mental dimension—the “invisible landscape.” “Oh let my Lamp at midnight hour / Be seen in some high Lonely Towr, / Where I may oft out-watch the Bear, / With thrice great Hermes.” [Milton] Because RE-VISION RADIO is broadcast from this ancient Tower of the “Visionary Company,” where “the poetic champions compose,” in the midnight hour “those funny voices” whisper: “You can call my love Sophia, / I call my love Philosophy.” And, since the beginning of real Philosophy is the “sense of wonder,” Everybody Knows that the “sense of wonder” with radio is all in the mind's eye—radio as Theater of the Imagination—, making RE-VISION RADIO the alternative radio concept that lets you see what it means. And what it means, by way of the Romantic “Arts & Sciences of Imagination,” is that Golgonoozan “artifice of eternity”— The TOWER OF SONG.

The love of truth conjoined with a keen delight in a strict, skillful, yet impassioned argumentation, is my master-passion.
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

Let us bring to bear the persuasive powers of sweet-tongued Rhetoric and . . . let us have as well Music, the maid-servant of my house, to sing us melodies of varying mood.
(Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy)

Behind the lyric and the song is the governing, central idea, and you have to keep both of them going, so neither gets bogged down. The trick is to keep them going together.
(Stephen Soundheim)

“Whoever is possessed in any way by a deity indeed overflows on account of the vehemence of the divine impulse and the fullness of its power: he raves, exults . . . therefore this possession is called furor .... No one under the influence of furor is content with simple speech: he bursts forth into clamoring and songs and poems.”
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

“A revealing glimpse of Mr. Farlow both as a person and a musician…. As much concerned with a philosophy of life as it is with music.”
(Talmage Farlow, film by Lorenzo DeStephano, 2006)

“After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one’s tears. I can fancy a man who had led perfectly commonplace life, hearing by chance some curious piece of music, and suddenly discovering that his soul, without his being conscious of it, had passed through terrible experiences, and unknown fearful joys, or wild romantic loves, or great renunciations.”
(Oscar Wild, 'The Critic As Artist')

Re-Vision Radio's Gypsy Scholar & Bohemian Essayist ("Radio Master of Ceremonies") broadcasts in exile (in his capacity of "Minister of Information & Culture" for the Visionary Company") from the
TOWER OF SONG