Poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson w/Ryan J. Stout and Dr. Moumin Quazi

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Beautiful. Alright. Leadership Lessons from the Great Books

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podcast, episode number

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130 with Momen and

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Ryan. Poems of

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Alfred Lord Tennyson in

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3, 2, 1.

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Hello. My name is Haysan Sorels, and this is

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the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode

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number 130.

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In the long course of human history, there are people who

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make an outsized impact in certain areas, including

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the arts, the sciences, politics, and, yes, even

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finance. Most of these people’s names have been long

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forgotten, but their words and their actions still have

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an outsized impact on the world.

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One of the larger challenges of our era of instant communication and everyone knowing

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everything about everybody all at once is that the number of

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people who seek to make, an outsized impact in

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all areas they touch has increased, yet there are

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still people who are, well, average.

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Serving where you are at at the highest possible level of your

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talents and skills without looking for claps or approval

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is actually the gold standard of behavior in our

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time. We make the default setting for

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leaders the idea that every leader should be competent at every aspect

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of leadership, but this is just as faulty an assumption for

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leaders as it is for followers. Sometimes, some leaders need to just be

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competent at one thing.

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One thing. And if they are competent at that one thing,

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they can have an outsized impact on the world long after they

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are gone. On the show today, we

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will extract lessons for leaders from the most unlikely

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source possible. And while I am not a

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poetry guy, quote, unquote, I personally think the poetry needs to rhyme.

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And then Ogden Nash is probably the height of poetical

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doggerel. And by the way, we’re gonna be covering Ogden Nash next

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year on the podcast, so stay tuned for that.

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These poems that we are going to read today have lines and

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have ideas and have thoughts that have entered the lexicon

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of western thought. This goes beyond zeitgeist and have

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generated an outsized impact. Today, we

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will read and discuss the poems of Alfred, lord

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Tennyson, with our returning guest cohost today,

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Ryan j Stout and doctor Momin

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Kazi. Leaders, serve where you

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are planted at the highest possible level of your talents and

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skills without seeking collapse or approval.

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So today, we’re going to pick up in our book reading with,

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the Oxford paperbacks version of Tennyson’s Poems and Play.

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So this is a this is a collected edition. Right? It has a lot of

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different poems and plays in it edited by, t Herbert

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Warren and revised and enlarged by Frederick Page. There’s a

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lot of content in this book. We cannot possibly

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cover it all. It would be impossible. Thus, we

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are not going to. Instead, what we’re going to do is we’re going to

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look at, we’re going to read, we’re going to examine,

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certain select poems, some of which you will know and a

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couple of which you you won’t. And then we’re going to frame those

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in terms of, in terms of leadership, in terms

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of how people lead and what leaders can learn from

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poetry. Now one of the struggles that we have in our world, and I was

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actually just listening to a podcast about this,

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oh, over the course of the weekend, is that poetry is

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fundamentally, an an

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eastern medium. Right? The way in which

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we think is different with poetry or has to be different with poetry.

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Poetry is about a journey towards something, whereas a

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narrative, and and we live in a Greek oriented

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rationalist scientific rationalist, sort of environment even

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with our religion and our fantasies, We still want things

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to make sense. We want narratives to make sense. That’s a

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very Greek way of looking at the world.

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And we need both ways of looking at the world. We need both of those

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ways merging together. And so, when we look at the poems

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of Tennyson, one of the things that will strike us immediately

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as we read them is, well,

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is what he is doing in taking folks

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along, taking the western mind along a journey.

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And I quote or read from Ulysses. This is the

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first poem that we will look at today. It’s a it’s a

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longish one, so so bear with me. I’m also gonna give you a little bit

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of background on the poem, and then we’ll let Momen and Ryan jump in with

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their thoughts on the poem. And by the way, thanks to, to Ryan for

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suggesting these, these poems as ones that we should look at

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today out of Tennyson’s broad over

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or oeuvre. I have no idea how to pronounce that. Momen will

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correct me. I’m not even worried about it. He’ll correct me on

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this.

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Alright. And I pick up from Ulysses. A little

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prophet said an idle king by this still hearth among these barren crags,

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mashed with an age of wife, I meet and dole and equal laws into a

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savage race that hoard and sleep and feed and know not me.

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I cannot rest and travel. I will drink life to the less, to the

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lees. All times I have enjoyed greatly, have suffered greatly, both with

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those that love me and alone. On shore and when through

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scuttling drifts, the rainy Hyades vex the dim

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sea. I am become a name, or always roaming with

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a hungry heart. Much have I seen and known cities of men

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and manners, climates, councils, governments, myself not least, but honored

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of them all, and drunk delight of battle with my peers, far

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on the ringed plains of windy Troy. I’m a

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part of all that I have met, yet all experience is

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an arch where the throw gleams that untraveled world

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whose margin fades. Forever and forever when I move, how

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dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust, unburnish, not to shine

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in use, as though to breathe where life, life piled on life,

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where all too little and of one to me. Little remains, but every

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hour is saved from that eternal silence, something more,

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bringer of new things and vile. It were for

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some 3 sons to store and hoard myself, and this

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gray spirit yarn yearning and desire to follow knowledge like a sinking

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star beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

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This is my son, mine own Telemachus, to whom I leave the scepter and the

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isle, well loved of me, discerning to fulfill this labor by slow

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prudence to make a mild to make mild a rugged people and

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through soft degrees, subdue them to the useful and

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the good. Most blameless is he, central in the sphere

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of common duties, decent not to fail in offices of tenderness and

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pay, meet adoration to my household gods when I am gone. He works his

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work, I mine. There lies the pork. The vessel puffs for sale.

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There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners’

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souls have toiled and wrought and fought with me that ever with a

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frolic welcome took the thunder and the sunshine and opposed 3

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hearts, 3 foreheads. You and I are old.

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Old age hath yet his honor and his toil. Death closes all.

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But something near the end, some work of the noble note may yet be done,

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not unbecoming men that strove with gods. The

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lights begin to twinkle from the rocks, a long day wanes as slow motion climbs,

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the deep moans round with many voices. Come by, my

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friends, it’s not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting

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well in order, smite the sounding furor for my purpose holds.

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To sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars until

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I die, it may be that the gulfs will wash us down. It may be

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well that we shall touch the happy isles and see the great Achilles whom we

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knew, Though much is taken and much abides, and though we are not

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now, that strength which in old days move

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Ulysses was written in 1833 and revised for

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publication in, 18/33 and revised for publication in

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1842. And by the way, this is according

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to the, the Tennyson,

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library pieces that are that are online. I’m quoting this

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directly from them. Tennyson reworks the figure of Ulysses by drawing on the

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ancient hero of Homer’s Odyssey and the medieval hero of Dante’s

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Inferno. Homer’s Ulysses is described in scroll,

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let’s see, 11 of the Odyssey, letters from a prophecy that he will take a

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final sea voyage after killing the suitors of his wife, Penelope.

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The details of the sea voyage are described by Dante in Canto

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20, 6 of the inferno. Ulysses finds

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himself restless in Ithaca. By the way, Ithaca, pause,

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that is a city in New York that I once slipped in and

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worked in, and driven by the longing that I have gained to experience the

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world. Dante’s Ulysses is a tragic figure who dies

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while sailing too far in an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Tennyson

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combines these two accounts by having Ulysses make his speech shortly after returning to

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Ithaca and resuming his administrative responsibilities and shortly

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before embarking on his final voyage.

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Okay. So we opened up with that. I’ve talked quite

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a bit. That’s a long poem. Let’s get Momin and

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Ryan in here. We’re gonna kinda flow a little bit with this today.

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Thoughts on Tennyson? Thoughts on the the opening

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poem, Ulysses, and a little bit thoughts on the literary life of

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Alfred Lord Tennyson. Bowman, why don’t you go ahead and get us kicked

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off here? Love to. Thanks for inviting me to be part of

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this podcast today. I really enjoy it and appreciate you, and

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it’s great to meet Ryan as well. I love the poem Ulysses. I

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believe, my mentor when I was at University

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of North Texas, he called this arguably the

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greatest poem in the world, or the greatest poem ever

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written. He he’s a Victorianist, so he is, you know, he

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is biased. But, I I think that it

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is one of the greatest poems ever written. It really

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does capture the spirit of the Victorian age especially.

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He, Tennyson does some interesting

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things with the original story and alters it for

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his purposes. One of those being, that in

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the original Homer poem,

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all of his mariners have passed away or died,

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on the way to Ithaca there in Greece. And

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so for him to say, you know, hey, you know,

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my fellow mariners, let’s go back out after just 3 days of being

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home, that’s an alteration. But,

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but still the fact is is he has captured

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the spirit of 19th century,

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you know, empire right there by saying,

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I’m not done. I wanna get up and get back out, and,

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I’ve got to strive to seek, to find, and not yield. You

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know, I’m I’m still alive, basically. So I

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have 3 or 4 kind of big points, and one of them

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being that the poem was written during a time of

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intense grieving. He lost his friend. We’ll talk about it in in memoriam,

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Arthur Henry Hallam. A shining light he thought had so

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much potential. It was one of his best friends,

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and he lost him. And, it was it was a

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shock to everyone’s system. And for for,

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Tennyson, he really, found himself in a period

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of grief and mourning. He writes

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Ulysses finally in the in the kind

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of getting himself out of the the

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grief funk that he’s in. But he’s not

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really publishing for a long time, but he’s writing

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these poems in memoriam, and Ulysses is one of

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those poems. So I I would suggest grieving isn’t the

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end. If you look at this poem, you can see that

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grieving and expressing that grief in in a very artistic

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way is really the beginning. 2, it reveals

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the longing for connection. He mentions Achilles. He mentions, of course,

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Ulysses is speaking. But he’s saying,

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I might, you know, meet back up with Achilles. And so you

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could see a man longing to reunite with his best

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friend. 3, it illustrates the aspirations of,

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Tennyson’s national spirit to follow knowledge like a

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sinking star beyond the utmost bound of human

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thought. This is a big deal. This is the the spirit

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of the age. You know? And then I would suggest that,

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he recognizes that there are different roles that serve vital

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purposes. Telemachus has his emerging role

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as the new leader. He’s, you know, in his early twenties now.

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He’s been without a father figure for 20 years.

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He’s been having to kind of fend off suitors, who have come

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after Penelope and and trying to usurp you,

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Odysseus or Ulysses. And so

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he doesn’t belittle Telemachus’ role as the leader

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when he’s gonna be gone. He says he has his role. I have

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mine. And so finally, I just wanna just

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reaffirm that notion that Ulysses is also saying, I’m not

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dead yet. You know, like, from, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. You

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know? You know, I fear you’re unhappy. You know? I’m not dead yet.

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Don’t put me on the cart. I don’t wanna go on the cart. Ulysses here

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is saying that. I’m not dead yet. I have more to do. I’m

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gonna again, those those awesome verbs, you know, to strive, to

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seek, to find, and not to yield.

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Excellent. Thanks, thanks, Roman. There’s a I I took a bunch of different

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notes there. Yeah. I wanna ask some follow-up questions around that. But

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first, Ryan, what did you think of of this

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poem? What what struck you about this? Well, I wanna thank you, and, Hassan, as

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always, it’s a it’s a joy, to be here. And,

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you know, echoing a lot of sentiments, but also the the thing

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that I think struck me, there’s a there’s a there’s an

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acceptance here, and

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the theme of fate

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emerges or he even mentions, Ulysses mentions,

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and just the acceptance

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of that. Almost if I know there’s the the first

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paragraph of Cat’s Cradle, the Vonnegut book.

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It’s, you know, even if I was born, I forget the name, but even if

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I was born a Thomas, I would have been a Brian. You know? So it’s

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like you can’t run from who you are. Mhmm.

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And I think there’s an acknowledgment of that.

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As he sort of pines about, you know, getting, you

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know, getting into trouble. It’s it’s, you know, it’s also to to to mention

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another contemporary movie. It’s, you know, Oliver Stone talks about,

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you know, that in Natural Born Killers. He’s he’s doing the interview, and they’re in

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the prison, and Robert Downey junior asked him the question. He says, man, I’m just

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a natural war killer. So there’s there’s, like, an acknowledgment and acceptance of

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this thing that’s it’s it’s a it’s an outlier of a

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personality. That’s one. And the

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the idea of not being able to rest,

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I don’t know The

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thirst for knowledge I don’t know. Is there an acknowledgment of that’s

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the thing that is also, like, leading him to his death or that’s what he

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I don’t think it’s leading to his death. It’s what it’s how he wants to

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go. It it

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seems like he’s lived a a a a pretty exciting life. And

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so even after all is said and done, this is how I would like

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to spend my time, my last day sort of thing, even acknowledging,

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passing on to, to Leni Cussen and so forth. And I think,

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what else do I have here?

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Tennyson does this so beautifully, but also as

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Ulysses in the poem

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despite all of his

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his motivations and his he still has

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time to acknowledge the

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beauty of the natural world and the

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language that he uses to describe that.

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Where is the

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where is Well, he talks

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about the sunset. Yes. Yeah. There was one particular

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line, though. But, yeah, that’s so there’s there’s there’s

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there’s, there’s still an agnologist of the not the beauty of the

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natural world. And I think, you know, someone who’s

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sailing off into, you know, the great unknown,

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what a wonderful thing is it’s like living it’s the it’s kind of distilled in

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into living in the moment. And wouldn’t we all really like to do that?

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Well, we’ve we’ve got a little bit of a thing here with,

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with Ulysses. And, you know, I’m a person who I’ve

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I’m not obsessed with the Odyssey, but I’ve read it a

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lot. And Odysseus I am obsessed.

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You’re you’re obsessed. Okay. What was that? Yeah. I teach it every time.

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Yeah. He he he has to be obsessed.

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And, you know, how Homer had tied, you know, the

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Iliad and the Odyssey together, and then how they really need to be

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read and studied together, I I’m fascinated by by all of that.

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As a leadership idea, though, there’s there’s a

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couple of different leadership ideas that I think are are in this poem, that I

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would like to get your thoughts on. A moment you hit on 1, this idea

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of passing along your legacy

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to others, but also acknowledging that you’re not done. And and we have this

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in our society and culture right now where, quite frankly,

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people in the baby boomer generation have struggled

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to let go. We can see this most notably in

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politics, but there’s other areas, entertainment,

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culture, corporate business, where, know, you just have a generation that has had an

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outsized influence on American culture in the latter half or had an outsized

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influence on American culture in the latter half of the 20th century who

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just will not let go.

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And I’m in my mid forties and being a person in my mid forties,

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the the I won’t say the ship is almost passed,

308
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but I can see the ship, like, sliding away

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as people just won’t let go. You know? And And so there’s and then

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there’s generations behind me who are much younger, who are screaming at the boomers

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to let go. Yeah. And and so we have this tension to

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struggle in our culture. So that’s at one level, at a leadership level, which, by

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the way, and you see this sort of reflected in the poem.

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One of the challenges of not letting go is you don’t create a succession plan.

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You have no plan for letting go. You have no plan

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for release. Right? And, and I liked how you talked

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about how Tennyson’s poem here reflects the spirit of the

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Victorian age. The Victorian age had zero

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interest in letting go of anything.

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First, we just covered All Quiet on the western front on this podcast,

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a couple episodes ago. And so, you know, the first

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big trauma that had to happen to the Victorian age was World War 1.

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But it didn’t the stuffing didn’t all get knocked out of them until around World

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War 2 and the cult and the collapse of the British Empire. Right?

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And I would assert that that was because the Victorian age did not want to

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let go. It did not want to surrender

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to the next zeitgeist, the next historical cycle,

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that was, that was coming into, into being. And so and and part of the

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00:21:29,785 –> 00:21:33,145
reason why it didn’t wanna surrender was that succession. It could not

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see who was going to pick up the baton

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and move the thing forward. I think it’s very important for leaders to

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have a succession plan. Thoughts on this

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00:21:44,580 –> 00:21:48,340
idea of succession plans and sort of how you do this as

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a leader leveraging some of the ideas in this, in this

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poem? Do you want me to jump in there? Yeah. Go

336
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ahead. So in the Odyssey, of course, Homer’s

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epic poem, Telemachus

338
00:22:03,485 –> 00:22:07,085
is it it’s an interesting poem. It starts off by talking

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about sing to me, oh, muse, of the man of complicate who’s

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00:22:10,845 –> 00:22:14,090
complicated, the man of twists and turns, the complicated

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00:22:14,230 –> 00:22:18,070
man, you know, and it’s Odysseus. And, and

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you think, oh, this is gonna be a story about Odysseus. And then the

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next chapter goes right into Telemachus.

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Right. And the next chapter is about to let I mean, in other words,

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00:22:29,745 –> 00:22:33,505
we don’t really get to Odysseus way way into the until way

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00:22:33,505 –> 00:22:37,185
into the poem, and then we find him on a shore crying to go

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home, wanting to go home. He’s on the island with Calypso. But

348
00:22:40,890 –> 00:22:44,430
Telemachus is the one who the focus is on,

349
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and the focus is on Telemachus as

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a man, as a young man who has

351
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he’s finally kind of bridged that gap

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from adolescent and young adulthood into now,

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what’s he gonna do? And he’s just he’s downhearted. He’s, you know,

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downtrodden. And and I think that a lot of the

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00:23:08,255 –> 00:23:10,820
poem is

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concerned with who is Telemachus,

357
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what is his true temperament, is he

358
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a man, or is he

359
00:23:23,565 –> 00:23:27,245
less than masculine and less than able to to take the

360
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lead? And it’s one of those things where we

361
00:23:30,845 –> 00:23:33,024
see that he has a wonderful,

362
00:23:34,524 –> 00:23:37,985
side to him that’s very compassionate. He practices this

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00:23:38,125 –> 00:23:41,950
code that, Zeus has instituted called the code

364
00:23:41,950 –> 00:23:45,410
of xenia, the the the code of hospitality.

365
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He sees a person who has walked into this palace

366
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after, you know, several years of suitors abusing

367
00:23:53,385 –> 00:23:56,825
their hospitality. He sees a man there who has not been attended

368
00:23:56,825 –> 00:24:00,265
to, and he walks to him and says, who are you?

369
00:24:00,664 –> 00:24:04,424
Not not who are you, but welcome. Let us take care of you.

370
00:24:04,424 –> 00:24:07,670
Become refreshed. Let’s feed you. And,

371
00:24:08,470 –> 00:24:12,310
and that man happens to be a a gentleman named Minties, but

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00:24:12,310 –> 00:24:15,670
it’s actually Athena in disguise. And she

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00:24:15,670 –> 00:24:19,025
realizes in the form of Minties that Telemachus

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is is discouraged, at you know, wondering

375
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if his father is alive or not. And

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00:24:26,765 –> 00:24:30,525
from that point on, we see a really wonderful person

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00:24:30,525 –> 00:24:34,070
in Telemachus who’s about taking

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00:24:34,690 –> 00:24:38,450
care not of just his mother but also in the in the

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00:24:38,450 –> 00:24:42,130
absence of his father taking care of the palace, taking care of the

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00:24:42,130 –> 00:24:45,750
kingdom. When Odysseus finally does return

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to the land of his home

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and he finally gets to

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00:24:52,675 –> 00:24:56,055
meet back up with Telemachus, he

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00:24:56,275 –> 00:25:00,110
tests him immediately about, are you

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a a kind of a,

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less than male? Are you less than masculine? Did you allow this to

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happen at the pallet? What did you do? Who are you? Yeah. Are are you

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worthy? Are you worthy? Are you, you know or, you know, to

389
00:25:16,125 –> 00:25:19,725
use, Dana Carvey’s, you know, kind of,

390
00:25:20,045 –> 00:25:23,805
you know, imitation of, Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know. Are

391
00:25:23,805 –> 00:25:27,565
you a girlie man? You know? And and he’s he’s really trying

392
00:25:27,565 –> 00:25:31,180
to get a bead, a be you know, like, who are

393
00:25:31,180 –> 00:25:34,940
you, Telemachus? So I’m just saying, he’s trying to figure it out.

394
00:25:34,940 –> 00:25:38,560
He does realize, though, oh, Telemachus is somebody

395
00:25:39,180 –> 00:25:42,640
who who I would be very proud of. And finally,

396
00:25:43,174 –> 00:25:46,794
Telemachus gets back with the suitors with Odysseus’

397
00:25:47,015 –> 00:25:50,855
father with him. They don’t know that it’s Odysseus, but one of

398
00:25:50,855 –> 00:25:54,315
the suitors starts abusing Telemachus in front of everybody.

399
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And Telemachus stands up and says, the boy you

400
00:25:58,200 –> 00:26:01,820
once knew is gone. Now I’m a man.

401
00:26:02,120 –> 00:26:05,880
You know? And that that’s something that’s really, makes

402
00:26:05,880 –> 00:26:09,660
Odysseus proud. Now let’s go back to Tennyson. He he writes,

403
00:26:10,265 –> 00:26:14,025
you know, I’ve been back 3 days, you know, basically, after this

404
00:26:14,025 –> 00:26:17,565
long 20 year journey, you know, 10 years fighting in,

405
00:26:18,105 –> 00:26:21,705
Troy and 10 years trying to get home. Now I’ve been back 3

406
00:26:21,705 –> 00:26:25,385
days, and I’ve gotta in the original, you know, in the

407
00:26:25,385 –> 00:26:28,630
poem, he’s got to take care of the suitors’

408
00:26:29,570 –> 00:26:33,270
relatives who are gonna come after him for killing their pappy.

409
00:26:33,330 –> 00:26:37,090
Right? And or whoever. You know? And he

410
00:26:37,090 –> 00:26:40,690
now knows that he has to take care of wrap some some business

411
00:26:40,690 –> 00:26:43,525
up. So he goes to the land of his father,

412
00:26:44,545 –> 00:26:48,305
and Athena has to step in and say, it’s

413
00:26:48,305 –> 00:26:51,365
time to put an end to all this fighting,

414
00:26:51,985 –> 00:26:55,825
and she hands down finally the last lines of of the Odyssey

415
00:26:55,825 –> 00:26:59,390
are, you know, she hands down the packs of peace. Right?

416
00:26:59,390 –> 00:27:03,070
But the whole point there is that

417
00:27:03,070 –> 00:27:06,770
Odysseus has to take care of this business.

418
00:27:07,230 –> 00:27:10,845
But in the meantime, he can leave Telemachus at home and

419
00:27:10,845 –> 00:27:14,684
and know that everything’s in good hands. And I like that

420
00:27:14,684 –> 00:27:18,445
Tennyson says, basically, Telemachus is good at

421
00:27:18,445 –> 00:27:22,225
this. He’s good at managing people. He’s good at dealing with

422
00:27:22,445 –> 00:27:26,240
diplomatically dealing with and he’s, with all sorts of,

423
00:27:26,240 –> 00:27:29,299
you know, factions, but he’s also good at hospitality.

424
00:27:29,840 –> 00:27:33,679
And so he realizes that the the the kingdom is gonna be in good

425
00:27:33,679 –> 00:27:37,220
hands while he’s gone, doing what he does.

426
00:27:38,400 –> 00:27:42,105
But there is the sense that he does expect one day

427
00:27:42,105 –> 00:27:45,945
to come back home, but he he still has, there is

428
00:27:45,945 –> 00:27:49,705
an element of an uncertainty in there, which, of course, we’ll talk about in

429
00:27:49,705 –> 00:27:52,445
these other poems that we we’re gonna examine.

430
00:27:53,705 –> 00:27:57,330
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead,

431
00:27:57,330 –> 00:28:00,850
Ryan. I was gonna say just tackling from the angle

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00:28:00,850 –> 00:28:03,670
of, Tennyson

433
00:28:04,610 –> 00:28:08,370
and the role in literature, you know, moving from

434
00:28:08,370 –> 00:28:11,985
the Victorian period, the renaissance before that. So you have

435
00:28:11,985 –> 00:28:15,365
this burst of creativity, then you go into the Victorian period

436
00:28:15,825 –> 00:28:18,885
where, the focus is on,

437
00:28:20,145 –> 00:28:23,585
re, some some reason thinking. And then,

438
00:28:24,465 –> 00:28:27,290
and I think for,

439
00:28:28,230 –> 00:28:31,690
for Tennyson to he there’s just about every

440
00:28:31,990 –> 00:28:35,830
poetic device is used in the

441
00:28:35,830 –> 00:28:39,530
poem. The, there’s there’s internal

442
00:28:39,590 –> 00:28:43,105
rhymes, assonist, dissidents. He’s he’s using neater. He’s

443
00:28:43,105 –> 00:28:45,845
using all of these things in different ways,

444
00:28:46,625 –> 00:28:50,384
throughout the and I think there’s and and as

445
00:28:50,384 –> 00:28:53,764
contemporary poetry moves forward because we get to

446
00:28:54,059 –> 00:28:57,580
after the Victorian is the modern period. That’s where, like, form and

447
00:28:57,580 –> 00:29:01,120
things start to fall apart. And so I half wonder

448
00:29:01,419 –> 00:29:05,179
if Tennyson is is, because

449
00:29:05,179 –> 00:29:08,965
this is it is it is a it is masterful from, like, from the

450
00:29:08,965 –> 00:29:12,725
first word to the last word. It is masterful. And I kinda called

451
00:29:12,725 –> 00:29:16,565
Haysan and thanked him. I was like, dude, I forgot what role

452
00:29:16,565 –> 00:29:20,184
this person played for me writing poetry 20 years ago

453
00:29:20,245 –> 00:29:24,080
and coming across him, learning about him. And but to

454
00:29:24,080 –> 00:29:27,760
go back and look at this and to see how it’s you know,

455
00:29:27,760 –> 00:29:31,200
even to go through with, like, a fine tooth scansion, it’s,

456
00:29:32,320 –> 00:29:36,160
it’s, it’s still there’s more and more and more. The more I looked at

457
00:29:36,160 –> 00:29:39,625
it, the more there was, and I can almost go, like, line for

458
00:29:39,625 –> 00:29:43,405
line and let me get back to it here. Where is it?

459
00:29:45,705 –> 00:29:46,205
So,

460
00:29:50,505 –> 00:29:54,299
the use of, consonants here and

461
00:29:54,299 –> 00:29:57,519
manners, climates, councils, governments.

462
00:29:58,220 –> 00:30:01,980
So you have the repetition of m, the repetition of the c’s, and have these

463
00:30:01,980 –> 00:30:05,740
internal rhymes and these slant rhymes. And as the poem starts, it’s

464
00:30:05,740 –> 00:30:09,275
way, the form as far as like end

465
00:30:09,275 –> 00:30:11,615
rhymes and how he’s using punctuation is

466
00:30:12,875 –> 00:30:16,635
way, is is, there’s a there’s a form

467
00:30:16,635 –> 00:30:20,415
to it. And as the poem goes on, it kind of unravels.

468
00:30:21,049 –> 00:30:24,809
Mhmm. And it it becomes almost, it it it almost

469
00:30:24,809 –> 00:30:28,650
looks like a like a like a helix, like a double helix. If you

470
00:30:28,650 –> 00:30:32,490
look at it in like a three-dimensional form, like my brain kind of does. Yeah.

471
00:30:32,490 –> 00:30:36,190
Yeah. So, just the fact that he is

472
00:30:36,885 –> 00:30:40,725
honoring the language and, clearly has a love of

473
00:30:40,725 –> 00:30:44,085
the language and and and, and and

474
00:30:44,085 –> 00:30:47,925
syntax. And so kind of like looking at it from that end

475
00:30:47,925 –> 00:30:51,730
to add to the nostalgic end of things of, like, you know,

476
00:30:51,730 –> 00:30:55,409
this is these are all of the tools from the beginning that got

477
00:30:55,409 –> 00:30:58,470
us here, and this is kind of like, you know, the the masterpiece.

478
00:30:59,330 –> 00:31:02,769
And so kind of looking at it from that end, it was really wonderful thing

479
00:31:02,769 –> 00:31:06,135
to and to to learn that he worked on these for such a long time.

480
00:31:06,535 –> 00:31:10,295
Mhmm. So this isn’t that’s a misconception of poetry, and I know a lot

481
00:31:10,295 –> 00:31:14,055
of poets will do will will will will be kind of

482
00:31:14,055 –> 00:31:17,815
sinister in how, how they speak out about their works. Will

483
00:31:17,815 –> 00:31:21,590
say, oh, that took me to that’s that just flew right out of me. You

484
00:31:21,590 –> 00:31:25,430
know? And often that is a

485
00:31:25,430 –> 00:31:29,030
lie. And this is evidence that it was

486
00:31:29,030 –> 00:31:32,595
17 years, at least, Mariana, but I know this one was worked on for quite

487
00:31:32,595 –> 00:31:36,115
some time as well. So that’s kind of just my my approach and angle at

488
00:31:36,115 –> 00:31:39,575
it. Like, just I love the language and and and I love the, you know,

489
00:31:39,715 –> 00:31:42,294
all that aspect, like the nerdy stuff of poetry.

490
00:31:43,395 –> 00:31:47,200
One one thing you mentioned though, I think you, after the

491
00:31:47,200 –> 00:31:51,039
renaissance, which which we have, the enlightenment age, we

492
00:31:51,039 –> 00:31:54,880
all we also have the romantic era. And so, you know, you have people

493
00:31:54,880 –> 00:31:58,720
like, words worth talking about, poetry being

494
00:31:58,720 –> 00:32:02,335
inspired by. It’s, it’s memory, you know,

495
00:32:02,335 –> 00:32:06,174
it it that inspires the feelings that you had back when you

496
00:32:06,174 –> 00:32:09,715
actually experienced the thing. So we before

497
00:32:10,414 –> 00:32:14,050
in between the renaissance and the Victorian age, we had a

498
00:32:14,050 –> 00:32:17,810
lot going on there. And, of course, the romantic era is a really important

499
00:32:17,810 –> 00:32:21,250
one. And but you mentioned nature, which the romantics were

500
00:32:21,250 –> 00:32:24,690
very into. And and you mentioned the

501
00:32:24,690 –> 00:32:28,290
Victorian era being more centered on reason. I think what’s going

502
00:32:28,290 –> 00:32:31,995
on with this notion of reason is that it’s in

503
00:32:31,995 –> 00:32:34,255
tension with the

504
00:32:37,035 –> 00:32:40,015
the old ways of thinking in terms of

505
00:32:40,475 –> 00:32:44,280
religious faith and the certainty that comes

506
00:32:44,280 –> 00:32:47,960
from dogma and from from various, you

507
00:32:47,960 –> 00:32:51,640
know, Christian doctrines. And so we’re I I know

508
00:32:51,640 –> 00:32:55,320
that Tennyson deals with that in in memoriam. We’re gonna

509
00:32:55,320 –> 00:32:58,515
see the that kind of tension between faith

510
00:32:59,295 –> 00:33:03,055
and certainty and doubt and the new

511
00:33:03,055 –> 00:33:06,655
scientific, discoveries that are

512
00:33:06,655 –> 00:33:10,115
happening geologically, archaeologically, and so forth. And so,

513
00:33:11,360 –> 00:33:14,960
you know and then you you Haysan, you mentioned earlier, you know,

514
00:33:14,960 –> 00:33:18,260
after the after the Victorian era, you’ve got the Edwardian,

515
00:33:18,880 –> 00:33:21,860
but then it goes right into, you know, finally,

516
00:33:22,880 –> 00:33:26,595
you know, when we do have the modernists, right, and then into the

517
00:33:26,595 –> 00:33:30,115
postmodernist, you know, it’s like we’re no longer thinking in terms of

518
00:33:30,115 –> 00:33:33,875
Victorian anymore. We’re thinking more like, you know, what

519
00:33:33,955 –> 00:33:37,575
whatever, you know, Elizabeth is. You know? Yeah. Yeah.

520
00:33:37,715 –> 00:33:41,350
Well and and that’s one of the things that is interesting to me

521
00:33:41,350 –> 00:33:45,030
about literature, and and as well as film, you

522
00:33:45,030 –> 00:33:48,470
know, but let’s let’s keep it to literature here for just a

523
00:33:48,470 –> 00:33:48,970
second.

524
00:33:52,325 –> 00:33:55,785
One of the challenges of a postmodern mindset, a postmodern

525
00:33:56,245 –> 00:34:00,085
deconstructionist mindset and I

526
00:34:00,085 –> 00:34:03,925
don’t really care what your politics are on this. This

527
00:34:03,925 –> 00:34:07,530
is not a political statement. This is a

528
00:34:07,750 –> 00:34:11,510
this is a factual statement about what happens in postmodernism and

529
00:34:11,510 –> 00:34:15,190
deconstructionism when those two forces are combined together. So

530
00:34:15,190 –> 00:34:18,650
postmodernism devolves everything to power.

531
00:34:18,755 –> 00:34:22,295
Everything’s about power and who has it and who doesn’t. But deconstructionism

532
00:34:23,795 –> 00:34:27,554
devolves everything down to you could pull everything apart and

533
00:34:27,554 –> 00:34:31,395
argue every single side sophistry, basically. You can argue every single side of

534
00:34:31,395 –> 00:34:34,535
every single argument, and then you argue it into nothing.

535
00:34:35,580 –> 00:34:38,540
And one of the things I’ve asserted on this podcast over the course of the

536
00:34:38,540 –> 00:34:42,220
last year, and I’m going to also be asserting it next year, is that and

537
00:34:42,220 –> 00:34:45,980
you mentioned nature and religion. Right? You mentioned dogma. Right?

538
00:34:45,980 –> 00:34:49,724
You mentioned romanticism. One of the things that

539
00:34:49,724 –> 00:34:53,424
postmodernism and deconstructionism do is they destroy romantics.

540
00:34:54,605 –> 00:34:58,285
They destroy romanticism. Camille Paglia would would would say this,

541
00:34:58,285 –> 00:35:02,099
right, in her examination of culture. But so

542
00:35:02,099 –> 00:35:05,140
would Michel Foucault, by the way. He would agree with that. He would agree. We’re

543
00:35:05,140 –> 00:35:08,440
we’re destroying romanticism. Right? We’re we’re exposing

544
00:35:08,740 –> 00:35:12,180
reality to the harsh light of reason. Well, to the

545
00:35:12,180 –> 00:35:15,619
idealism. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. It’s a critique of I the

546
00:35:15,619 –> 00:35:19,285
idealism of where the real Well, I would even go a step further than that.

547
00:35:19,285 –> 00:35:22,885
It’s even more than just the critique of the idealism. It’s the critique of the

548
00:35:22,885 –> 00:35:26,105
emotion behind the idealism. Sure. Sure.

549
00:35:26,325 –> 00:35:30,085
And you can be an idealist or be

550
00:35:30,085 –> 00:35:33,580
a rationalist, but it’s really

551
00:35:33,580 –> 00:35:37,260
hard. It’s really difficult because your

552
00:35:37,260 –> 00:35:41,099
own idealism gets eaten up by the acidity

553
00:35:41,099 –> 00:35:44,320
of rationalism, at which, of course, it devolves into just deconstructionism,

554
00:35:44,700 –> 00:35:47,715
and now you’re in a hole. That you’re you’re back in a doom loop, basically,

555
00:35:47,715 –> 00:35:50,435
basically, as the kids say these days. One of the things that I think we

556
00:35:50,435 –> 00:35:52,595
have to do as leaders is we have to and I and I’m gonna say

557
00:35:52,595 –> 00:35:53,095
something.

558
00:36:01,310 –> 00:36:04,770
At moment. I I know you’re you’re, you know, you’re a professor in English department,

559
00:36:04,990 –> 00:36:08,510
Tarleton State University. Ryan has a long background in in

560
00:36:08,510 –> 00:36:12,050
creativity and in, in writing and in publishing and in poetry.

561
00:36:12,750 –> 00:36:16,175
I’m going to say something that I think will probably, if not,

562
00:36:16,315 –> 00:36:19,375
offend you both at the very minimum, poke you

563
00:36:19,755 –> 00:36:23,595
both. Right. Okay. Here

564
00:36:23,595 –> 00:36:27,035
we go. Here here’s here’s my statement. But maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe as soon

565
00:36:27,035 –> 00:36:30,869
as I think about it, maybe I won’t. I

566
00:36:30,869 –> 00:36:33,990
think we have to find a way to build at this point in time in

567
00:36:33,990 –> 00:36:37,769
western culture. No more deconstructing.

568
00:36:39,349 –> 00:36:42,809
We’re we’re done. Because when you deconstruct

569
00:36:43,750 –> 00:36:47,385
at the end of that road, what do you have? You have you have

570
00:36:47,385 –> 00:36:50,905
Nisha’s abyss, basically, that stares back through

571
00:36:50,905 –> 00:36:54,445
you. You that’s all you got. Right? You don’t have anything there.

572
00:36:54,745 –> 00:36:58,185
And human beings human beings need to

573
00:36:58,185 –> 00:37:02,030
create, and they need the emotion that goes

574
00:37:02,030 –> 00:37:05,630
along with creation. This is why our movies

575
00:37:05,630 –> 00:37:09,230
suck now. Our movies suck now because they’re wandering in a

576
00:37:09,230 –> 00:37:12,785
circle. Oh, and of course, nobody knows how to write. You know? But

577
00:37:13,085 –> 00:37:16,285
those are 2 those are 2 separate problems that combine. So our GPT is pretty

578
00:37:16,285 –> 00:37:19,325
good at writing. Oh, well, well, don’t get me started on the AI then. Don’t

579
00:37:19,325 –> 00:37:23,005
get me started on that because, see, here’s what we’ll do. We devolve to

580
00:37:23,005 –> 00:37:26,789
our technology. Right? We devolve to our technology. We say our technology will

581
00:37:26,789 –> 00:37:30,630
allow us to be creative. Thinking machines. Right. Except the problem with the technologist is

582
00:37:30,630 –> 00:37:34,230
you run to the Ray Bradbury problem or the Isaac Asimov problem depending

583
00:37:34,230 –> 00:37:38,045
upon which way you wanna go. Right? And, yes, you run

584
00:37:38,045 –> 00:37:41,724
into the Aldous Huxley and brave new world and George Orwellian, you know,

585
00:37:41,724 –> 00:37:44,924
surveillance state and giving you all the pleasures that you want and dah dah dah

586
00:37:44,924 –> 00:37:48,525
dah. And the and the flip side of the postmodern idea of

587
00:37:48,525 –> 00:37:52,290
power is just pleasure, right, and hedonism. But those

588
00:37:52,290 –> 00:37:56,070
are 2 twin 2 twin tracks that don’t lead anywhere but into an abyss.

589
00:37:56,130 –> 00:37:59,730
And so how do you build on the other side of an abyss? How do

590
00:37:59,730 –> 00:38:02,770
you build on the other side of that? I think that’s the challenging question of

591
00:38:02,770 –> 00:38:06,434
our time. And I think romanticism, the romanticism

592
00:38:06,655 –> 00:38:10,414
of Tennyson is part of the answer to that question, but I don’t know how

593
00:38:10,414 –> 00:38:14,015
we would capture that. I have zero idea how we go back and

594
00:38:14,015 –> 00:38:17,454
recapture that. So so this is so this is interesting. You you brought up, you

595
00:38:17,454 –> 00:38:21,130
you brought up early on, like, a plan b? Yeah. Mhmm. So

596
00:38:21,130 –> 00:38:24,650
the plan b for industrialism industrialization was

597
00:38:24,650 –> 00:38:26,430
what? The Internet era?

598
00:38:29,210 –> 00:38:32,810
Because that’s it’s it’s because they’re they’re pushed out. Right? Those

599
00:38:32,810 –> 00:38:35,975
things are are are forced out. Of

600
00:38:36,355 –> 00:38:39,895
whatever the the movement is or the the zeitgeist as you said.

601
00:38:42,115 –> 00:38:45,735
And, well, I I keep thinking about the form

602
00:38:45,955 –> 00:38:49,475
is commensurate with, like, the industrial revolution. Things are taking

603
00:38:49,475 –> 00:38:53,230
form, becoming more sort of homogenized. Sure. Okay. And

604
00:38:53,230 –> 00:38:56,670
so that kinda, like, mirrors the poetry, but then the

605
00:38:56,829 –> 00:39:00,510
after the industrial revolution, you get kind of the Internet age, and now

606
00:39:00,510 –> 00:39:03,730
we’re devolved into this formless cloud.

607
00:39:04,224 –> 00:39:06,964
And so it kinda makes sense that,

608
00:39:09,505 –> 00:39:12,484
you know, if if our if if art

609
00:39:13,105 –> 00:39:16,619
and culture, how they influence each other, if there’s

610
00:39:16,619 –> 00:39:20,460
not a if if there’s not a ballast, then nothing

611
00:39:20,460 –> 00:39:24,299
is like, what is what is, like, what

612
00:39:24,299 –> 00:39:27,660
is it tethered to? Well What is our what is our

613
00:39:27,660 –> 00:39:31,345
predicament tethered to? And is that the is that the issue? I think in the

614
00:39:31,345 –> 00:39:35,105
west, we’ve decided that our predicament is tethered to identity. I think we’ve

615
00:39:35,105 –> 00:39:38,705
decided that. We’ve decided that identity is the thing. Whether you’re

616
00:39:38,785 –> 00:39:42,405
whether it’s a racial identity, class identity, gender identity,

617
00:39:43,185 –> 00:39:47,010
it doesn’t matter. We’ve decided that that’s the the ballast. I love

618
00:39:47,010 –> 00:39:50,850
that word or the anchor. I would use that term, but ballast

619
00:39:50,850 –> 00:39:54,450
is probably better. That’s the ballast that we are. We are

620
00:39:54,450 –> 00:39:58,050
we are we’re going to we’re

621
00:39:58,050 –> 00:40:01,575
gonna we’re gonna hook our ley lines to. Right?

622
00:40:01,575 –> 00:40:05,335
Because that will be the thing that will never change, will be our identity. Except

623
00:40:05,335 –> 00:40:09,035
here’s the problem. The technologists are bringing us a transhuman

624
00:40:09,255 –> 00:40:12,875
future where we’ll even be able to manipulate that

625
00:40:13,480 –> 00:40:17,160
all the way down to the biological level. Forget what you may think about

626
00:40:17,160 –> 00:40:20,380
the politics or the biology of transgenderism.

627
00:40:21,480 –> 00:40:25,240
That’s the beginning of the fact is transgenderism is the beginning of the

628
00:40:25,240 –> 00:40:28,685
transhuman movement. It’s the beginning of the manipulation of identity at a

629
00:40:28,685 –> 00:40:32,445
biological level. Whether it’s right or

630
00:40:32,445 –> 00:40:36,205
wrong is outside the pale of this current this current conversation we’re

631
00:40:36,205 –> 00:40:38,685
having. We’re not talking about the right or wrongs of it. I’m merely talking about

632
00:40:38,685 –> 00:40:42,490
the fact of its existence in the zeitgeist Because to your point, there’s

633
00:40:42,490 –> 00:40:45,409
no balance, so there has to be something. Because you have to be able to

634
00:40:45,529 –> 00:40:48,890
to my point, I think my assertion is you have to be able to

635
00:40:48,890 –> 00:40:52,490
build. We have to build. We can’t

636
00:40:52,490 –> 00:40:56,175
just keep deconstructing or going down the swing

637
00:40:56,175 –> 00:40:59,795
poles of power and pleasure. The sand is the deconstruction.

638
00:41:00,175 –> 00:41:04,015
And if you’re building on sand, that’s your that’s your problem. And

639
00:41:04,015 –> 00:41:07,455
by the way, that works for a guy like Foucault or for or for

640
00:41:07,455 –> 00:41:11,150
Deridian thinking. It works for that sort

641
00:41:11,150 –> 00:41:14,450
of idea because that’s the logical end of Nietzsche and nihilism.

642
00:41:15,069 –> 00:41:18,690
That’s the logical end. That’s where you wind up at. But the thing is,

643
00:41:18,750 –> 00:41:22,485
as I said before, it’s a cul de sac. Right? It turns back on you.

644
00:41:22,645 –> 00:41:25,545
Right? The abyss stares back through you.

645
00:41:26,805 –> 00:41:29,925
Bowman, you’ve been you’ve been thinking about what I’ve been saying. I can see your

646
00:41:29,925 –> 00:41:33,685
brain working. Go ahead. Well, I’m just for one, I think

647
00:41:33,685 –> 00:41:36,265
that, you know, like, you you mentioned that the transgender,

648
00:41:37,685 –> 00:41:41,420
kind of, I don’t know, maybe dilemma. Or I

649
00:41:41,420 –> 00:41:44,619
would say I would say moment. Right? The moment that we’re having. That’s a good

650
00:41:44,780 –> 00:41:48,400
you know? I think that it’s not that it’s about

651
00:41:48,700 –> 00:41:51,760
deconstruction into into

652
00:41:52,765 –> 00:41:56,525
such a fragmentation that we have basically no center

653
00:41:56,525 –> 00:42:00,365
or no, no foundation. I think, if anything,

654
00:42:00,365 –> 00:42:04,205
we’re just more aware of science. We’re just

655
00:42:04,205 –> 00:42:08,050
more aware of the kind of particularizations

656
00:42:09,310 –> 00:42:11,490
that that science

657
00:42:12,830 –> 00:42:15,790
reveals. And so it’s it’s not that,

658
00:42:17,150 –> 00:42:20,655
that there’s all of a sudden these new kind of, categories

659
00:42:20,875 –> 00:42:24,655
or it it it’s just being able to put some

660
00:42:25,275 –> 00:42:28,734
some language to scientific

661
00:42:29,275 –> 00:42:33,090
facts. Right? So when when we go

662
00:42:33,090 –> 00:42:36,770
all the way back to the Victorian age, you know, when Tennyson writes in his

663
00:42:36,770 –> 00:42:40,530
poem, Ulysses, he says, it may be that the

664
00:42:40,530 –> 00:42:44,290
gulfs will wash us down. It may be we shall touch the

665
00:42:44,290 –> 00:42:47,775
happy aisles. He doesn’t

666
00:42:47,775 –> 00:42:51,535
know. Right? There’s a there’s a sense of there’s

667
00:42:51,535 –> 00:42:55,375
a sense of uncertainty, and I think that the Victorian age was

668
00:42:55,375 –> 00:42:59,135
very much in engaged with the

669
00:42:59,135 –> 00:43:02,630
implications of science and or

670
00:43:03,010 –> 00:43:06,690
scientific thinking and thought. Like, let’s bring

671
00:43:06,690 –> 00:43:10,530
Charles Darwin into the conversation. He says Darwin would like to

672
00:43:10,530 –> 00:43:14,305
enter the chat. Yeah. Dar yeah. He’s he he’s,

673
00:43:14,685 –> 00:43:17,905
you know, a a person of faith who’s also observing

674
00:43:18,045 –> 00:43:21,505
scientific, phenomenon phenomena.

675
00:43:21,725 –> 00:43:25,085
Right? And he’s putting language to it, and it’s

676
00:43:25,085 –> 00:43:28,465
creating with the archaeological and the geological

677
00:43:29,500 –> 00:43:32,880
discoveries, a sense of, oh, no.

678
00:43:33,580 –> 00:43:36,960
Maybe what we have the answers we have,

679
00:43:37,740 –> 00:43:40,960
offered in the past aren’t going to satisfy

680
00:43:42,085 –> 00:43:45,605
a lot of what we’re now discovering. Right? So it’s like

681
00:43:45,605 –> 00:43:49,225
the the the Victorian era is

682
00:43:49,925 –> 00:43:52,825
really dealing with this struggle between

683
00:43:53,365 –> 00:43:56,665
faith and science. Right? And the Right.

684
00:43:57,190 –> 00:44:00,230
Right. And it’s a struggle that has not I would agree with you. Yes. That’s

685
00:44:00,230 –> 00:44:03,670
the victorian. And it has it has It hasn’t gone away. That’s right.

686
00:44:03,670 –> 00:44:07,450
And, you know, but then we have people like Matthew Arnold saying,

687
00:44:08,070 –> 00:44:11,615
you know, here it is. This these armies ignorant armies

688
00:44:11,615 –> 00:44:15,375
clashing by night. Right? Mhmm. You know? And he goes, all

689
00:44:15,375 –> 00:44:19,135
love, let us be true to one another. You know? Let

690
00:44:19,135 –> 00:44:22,670
us cling on to one another, basically. We we

691
00:44:22,670 –> 00:44:26,130
can’t be certain of everything else, but we can be certain of our,

692
00:44:26,349 –> 00:44:29,970
maybe, our connection with each other. I think with with

693
00:44:30,430 –> 00:44:34,049
with Tennyson, he’s doing, he’s at least

694
00:44:35,275 –> 00:44:38,895
tapping into a similar kind of, anxiety.

695
00:44:39,515 –> 00:44:42,815
And that that’s all throughout the In Memoriam poems.

696
00:44:43,195 –> 00:44:46,955
That’s all through, you know, Ulysses. Anything that that has to

697
00:44:46,955 –> 00:44:50,255
do with this struggle between what we know for certain,

698
00:44:50,740 –> 00:44:54,580
but also now things that are that are going to

699
00:44:54,580 –> 00:44:57,160
to start to, you know,

700
00:44:58,340 –> 00:45:01,940
question and interrogate that. And it and Right. It you know, to

701
00:45:01,940 –> 00:45:05,684
where now it’s not about the certainties

702
00:45:05,744 –> 00:45:09,424
of the past. Now it’s, oh, wait. Maybe how do we

703
00:45:09,424 –> 00:45:12,405
reconcile these new discoveries or these new ideas?

704
00:45:13,265 –> 00:45:16,405
It is an age of rationality in the sense that

705
00:45:18,099 –> 00:45:21,640
that they’re they’re now they’re dealing with with

706
00:45:21,780 –> 00:45:25,619
new scientific facts. So how do we deal with that

707
00:45:25,619 –> 00:45:29,300
in in in light of our faith? Right? Well well and and the

708
00:45:29,300 –> 00:45:32,945
question that science can never answer, it can’t because it’s

709
00:45:32,945 –> 00:45:36,245
not ill equipped, right, to answer this question,

710
00:45:37,185 –> 00:45:39,605
is what does the discovery

711
00:45:40,865 –> 00:45:44,640
mean? Well, it’s it’s I’m sorry

712
00:45:44,640 –> 00:45:47,859
to interrupt, but, like, language is being left out of the equation,

713
00:45:48,480 –> 00:45:52,079
and I think it’s really important. So for instance, there’s a Japanese

714
00:45:52,079 –> 00:45:55,299
phrase, koi koi no koi no yoken.

715
00:45:55,680 –> 00:45:59,234
Mhmm. And what that means is it’s a

716
00:45:59,714 –> 00:46:03,234
that that I see someone and I know without a

717
00:46:03,234 –> 00:46:06,775
doubt that that is the person I will spend the rest of my life with.

718
00:46:07,474 –> 00:46:09,414
There’s not a word in English for that.

719
00:46:11,310 –> 00:46:14,990
So what you what you guys were just talking about is, like, it

720
00:46:14,990 –> 00:46:18,270
was the melding of these two things that otherwise don’t have an ident

721
00:46:18,590 –> 00:46:22,350
an identifier to pull them together. So something has to be created. Koi no

722
00:46:22,350 –> 00:46:25,810
yokken has to be created because it is the melding of 2 things or otherwise

723
00:46:26,755 –> 00:46:30,195
unidentifiable as, you

724
00:46:30,195 –> 00:46:33,875
know, you know, separate, they are not as, you know, great as their, you

725
00:46:33,875 –> 00:46:36,835
know, their total of the parts. As their total of the parts. Yeah. Kind of

726
00:46:36,835 –> 00:46:40,595
creating, and that that’s kind of what I I see. It’s

727
00:46:40,595 –> 00:46:44,010
kinda coming in from from it’s it’s

728
00:46:44,010 –> 00:46:47,850
not like I don’t know. How do you is it a a a

729
00:46:47,930 –> 00:46:51,770
an an invented emotion? Well, I think

730
00:46:51,770 –> 00:46:55,230
you got a I think you yeah. Yeah. I think that not an invented emotion.

731
00:46:55,370 –> 00:46:58,725
It’s definitely putting language like, you’re saying it’s putting

732
00:46:58,725 –> 00:47:02,485
language. That’s what Tennyson’s so good at. He’s putting language

733
00:47:02,485 –> 00:47:06,245
on the the the spirit of an age and the anxiety

734
00:47:06,245 –> 00:47:10,005
of an age, in a way that that no other poet

735
00:47:10,005 –> 00:47:13,360
could do it. And with our and with the atomization of our

736
00:47:13,360 –> 00:47:17,120
postmodern culture, we have many voices trying to put

737
00:47:17,120 –> 00:47:20,960
language on an age and on a on a set of anxieties. And it’s

738
00:47:20,960 –> 00:47:24,500
the it’s the, you know, the analogy is the the

739
00:47:24,880 –> 00:47:28,545
the the blind Hindus touching the elephant. Right? We we know

740
00:47:28,545 –> 00:47:32,225
this story. Right? One touched the trunk and thought it was a rope. One

741
00:47:32,225 –> 00:47:36,065
touched the right. And they can’t they’re not talking to the interesting thing about

742
00:47:36,065 –> 00:47:39,825
that tale or that allegory, such as it were, is that

743
00:47:39,825 –> 00:47:43,080
none of the none of the blind Hindus talk to each other.

744
00:47:44,740 –> 00:47:48,260
In that story. In that story. Right. Which is which is to me really

745
00:47:48,260 –> 00:47:52,020
interesting, which is why it’s used very often or

746
00:47:52,020 –> 00:47:54,740
references a way where or as a,

747
00:47:57,525 –> 00:48:01,365
not a seductity. I don’t know why I just thought of that word. It’s used

748
00:48:01,365 –> 00:48:03,224
as a it’s used as

749
00:48:05,925 –> 00:48:09,224
a vessel. Right? Well, it’s yeah. For for understanding

750
00:48:09,925 –> 00:48:13,280
atomization. Right? And for blindness to,

751
00:48:14,540 –> 00:48:17,980
to the to the bringing together of

752
00:48:17,980 –> 00:48:21,680
things or the or the uniting of things. And my only assertion,

753
00:48:21,740 –> 00:48:25,194
this is my only assertion, is that we

754
00:48:25,194 –> 00:48:28,575
need something in order to build forward

755
00:48:28,795 –> 00:48:32,575
because otherwise, you know, then

756
00:48:33,915 –> 00:48:37,214
2064 is just gonna have better technology with the same arguments.

757
00:48:39,035 –> 00:48:42,609
Or gonna be having the same arguments just with ro personal robots walking around.

758
00:48:42,990 –> 00:48:46,829
If Elon Musk has his way, which okay. Like, you know, like, we’ll all

759
00:48:46,829 –> 00:48:49,970
have personal robot. Like, we’ll have carbs. Right? Or iPhones.

760
00:48:50,589 –> 00:48:54,285
And to what end? Why? We we why?

761
00:48:54,285 –> 00:48:57,885
And that’s the question again that science can’t answer. Why do

762
00:48:57,885 –> 00:49:01,565
I need this? What is the meaning of

763
00:49:01,565 –> 00:49:05,345
this thing? Science just says we can do it,

764
00:49:05,600 –> 00:49:09,220
to paraphrase from Jeff Goldblum in the great original Jurassic park.

765
00:49:09,360 –> 00:49:12,960
You were so worried about whether or not you

766
00:49:12,960 –> 00:49:16,560
could. You didn’t sink top to think about whether or not you

767
00:49:16,560 –> 00:49:20,335
should. Sure. And now you’ve packaged it and he slaps the table. I

768
00:49:20,335 –> 00:49:23,375
love that. And now you packaged it and you put it on lunch boxes and

769
00:49:23,375 –> 00:49:26,755
it’s on t shirts. And we laugh at this because it’s the combination of consumerism

770
00:49:27,775 –> 00:49:31,615
Mhmm. And the sort of postmodern cynicism. We won’t be romantic about this

771
00:49:31,615 –> 00:49:35,350
and scientific rationalism. And then the dinosaur eats all the people,

772
00:49:36,530 –> 00:49:39,350
which is which is kinda where we’re at right now.

773
00:49:40,530 –> 00:49:44,070
And we have to my concern, my concern always for leaders,

774
00:49:44,130 –> 00:49:47,635
is how do they take Tennyson’s work, which may be

775
00:49:47,635 –> 00:49:51,475
romantic and inspiring and stirring? And I agree Ulysses is an

776
00:49:51,475 –> 00:49:54,995
inspiring and stirring poem. I love reading that out loud. How do we take

777
00:49:54,995 –> 00:49:58,835
that at a practical level to our people and say, let’s build

778
00:49:58,835 –> 00:50:02,490
on this inspiring, stirring thing? Let’s build

779
00:50:02,490 –> 00:50:05,950
on that. Let’s move that forward in spite of

780
00:50:06,490 –> 00:50:10,250
everything we’re seeing in our crises that I I

781
00:50:10,250 –> 00:50:13,850
think fundamentally go back to meaning. We could talk about that. But our

782
00:50:13,850 –> 00:50:17,385
crises that are all around us. Because unlike in the Victorian era, the

783
00:50:17,385 –> 00:50:20,825
Victorian era was right buttressed up next to faith. As much as they wanted to

784
00:50:20,825 –> 00:50:23,485
get away from it, churches were still being filled filled.

785
00:50:24,505 –> 00:50:28,205
Public, public and private acknowledgment

786
00:50:28,265 –> 00:50:31,730
of religion was still going on in the Victorian era. Sure.

787
00:50:31,730 –> 00:50:35,569
Darwin only really captured the elites, really, if we’re gonna be honest about

788
00:50:35,569 –> 00:50:39,109
Darwin. Darwin’s ideas captured the elites from Barry Wollstonecraft

789
00:50:39,890 –> 00:50:43,569
all the way to Percy Shelley, and

790
00:50:43,569 –> 00:50:47,155
that’s not very far of a gap. But, like, you know, it

791
00:50:47,155 –> 00:50:50,595
captured the ideas of the I know. It captured the mindset of the

792
00:50:50,595 –> 00:50:54,115
elites. But the average person, the common

793
00:50:54,115 –> 00:50:56,855
person that was walking around in the west,

794
00:51:00,410 –> 00:51:04,250
They were still they were still going to church. Well, they were going to church,

795
00:51:04,250 –> 00:51:07,930
but they were they were it’s the same kind of argument that people are

796
00:51:07,930 –> 00:51:11,690
having today when they go to the creation museum down in Glen

797
00:51:11,690 –> 00:51:15,150
Rose. It’s like, you know, it’s like, well, did would did

798
00:51:15,535 –> 00:51:19,375
people really, you know, exist when dinosaurs did? You

799
00:51:19,375 –> 00:51:22,815
know, it’s sort of like you can talk to people who are just as kind

800
00:51:22,815 –> 00:51:26,035
of adamant about the creation story, not

801
00:51:26,735 –> 00:51:30,435
involving evolution, and then others who who’ve really

802
00:51:31,280 –> 00:51:34,260
pushed back against evolution. There’s a lot of people,

803
00:51:35,520 –> 00:51:38,660
who, you know, would just

804
00:51:39,920 –> 00:51:43,119
not hear it, you know, especially in this part of the world. And

805
00:51:43,635 –> 00:51:46,855
you know? But I’m gonna come back to Tennyson. He says,

806
00:51:48,195 –> 00:51:51,715
old age hath yet his honor and his toil. Death

807
00:51:51,715 –> 00:51:55,495
closes all. Right? So there is the sense that

808
00:51:55,555 –> 00:51:58,860
we do know some answers even in spite of the

809
00:51:59,180 –> 00:52:02,460
the swirl of the age, which is, you know,

810
00:52:02,860 –> 00:52:06,480
like you said, Darwin, you know, with the beagle and all. You know,

811
00:52:06,860 –> 00:52:10,700
he he even if even if there’s a

812
00:52:10,700 –> 00:52:13,664
disconnect in terms of their timelines,

813
00:52:15,085 –> 00:52:18,865
maybe in their discussions with each other, there is still in that zeitgeist

814
00:52:19,005 –> 00:52:22,605
a sense of what do we do with with a a

815
00:52:22,605 –> 00:52:26,020
past. I mean, the renaissance, they were still wondering, like, does

816
00:52:26,020 –> 00:52:29,700
purgatory exist, or do we need to, you know, rely on our

817
00:52:29,700 –> 00:52:33,320
reason? And do we have to have facts and data

818
00:52:33,700 –> 00:52:37,540
to support our interpretations versus just going

819
00:52:37,540 –> 00:52:41,195
with superstition or with with, you know How he comes

820
00:52:41,195 –> 00:52:45,035
full circle. Right. Right. But but one thing is true.

821
00:52:45,035 –> 00:52:48,635
It is certain death. Right? Whether you’re a a a faith

822
00:52:48,635 –> 00:52:52,235
based person or a evolution based person, you need death.

823
00:52:52,235 –> 00:52:55,890
Right? Old age hath yet his honor and his toil, he says. Death

824
00:52:55,890 –> 00:52:59,730
closes all, but and there’s the big but, you know,

825
00:52:59,730 –> 00:53:02,789
the big contrast. Something ere the end.

826
00:53:03,329 –> 00:53:07,030
Some work of noble note may yet be done.

827
00:53:07,089 –> 00:53:10,445
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.

828
00:53:10,825 –> 00:53:14,185
So, I mean, to me, I think that still can apply

829
00:53:14,185 –> 00:53:17,705
now, whether or not you put gods in a

830
00:53:17,705 –> 00:53:21,325
metaphorical, you know, light or

831
00:53:21,385 –> 00:53:25,109
as a faith based or, you know, who believes that there may be

832
00:53:25,109 –> 00:53:28,470
a a creator god or what what have you. The the

833
00:53:28,470 –> 00:53:32,250
idea some work of noble note may yet

834
00:53:32,630 –> 00:53:36,345
may yet be done. That’s awesome. Because

835
00:53:36,345 –> 00:53:39,725
especially you’re you’re young to to me. I’m 5th I’m 62.

836
00:53:40,185 –> 00:53:43,225
Right? I look at it like, do I have 5 years? Do I have 10

837
00:53:43,225 –> 00:53:46,825
years? Do I have 15? If I’m lucky, do I have, you know, we don’t

838
00:53:46,825 –> 00:53:50,125
even know if tomorrow’s guaranteed. Right? But I would like to believe

839
00:53:50,890 –> 00:53:54,490
that something before my end, some work of noble

840
00:53:54,490 –> 00:53:58,090
note, may yet be done, you know, including being part of your

841
00:53:58,090 –> 00:54:01,850
podcast. Well, I will say that’s Go

842
00:54:01,850 –> 00:54:05,230
ahead. Some work of may yet be done,

843
00:54:05,555 –> 00:54:09,155
and and and the scene that he’s painting is is it

844
00:54:09,155 –> 00:54:12,675
mirrors the the language. So work may be done and the

845
00:54:12,675 –> 00:54:16,355
lights, but, the the day wanes, and so it’s

846
00:54:16,355 –> 00:54:20,130
sort of like the ending. It’s it’s they’re they’re they’re mirroring each other. The

847
00:54:20,130 –> 00:54:23,570
language and the sentiment and the idea are mirroring each other

848
00:54:23,890 –> 00:54:27,650
Mhmm. Which is a really wonderful thing. Well, we just we’ve

849
00:54:27,650 –> 00:54:31,250
just only been through one poem. We’re probably, like, we’re

850
00:54:31,250 –> 00:54:35,025
probably, like, probably, like, 45 minutes into the show. And we’ve only

851
00:54:35,025 –> 00:54:38,785
been through 1 poem. And moment,

852
00:54:38,785 –> 00:54:42,545
I I I’ve taken a, I’m not gonna say what town I live in because

853
00:54:42,545 –> 00:54:45,985
this is good. This podcast goes everywhere, but moment knows the town that I live

854
00:54:45,985 –> 00:54:49,570
in Yeah. Very well. And, I could tell you looking around, I

855
00:54:49,570 –> 00:54:53,410
am going I am saying to myself internally, I got

856
00:54:53,410 –> 00:54:57,010
30 years of good work probably left in me already at this

857
00:54:57,010 –> 00:55:00,550
stage. I’m like, I got 30 years, and that’s going to go by like

858
00:55:00,850 –> 00:55:04,435
that. Yeah. You know? And I’ll turn around and it’ll be gone.

859
00:55:04,435 –> 00:55:08,275
And and and before I moved to this current town that

860
00:55:08,275 –> 00:55:11,175
I was in, I I that I’m in, I always thought

861
00:55:12,115 –> 00:55:15,520
I, you know, wander around to, like, beige a 100 or something like that. But

862
00:55:15,520 –> 00:55:19,220
now I’m realizing maybe that might not be the thing.

863
00:55:19,599 –> 00:55:22,980
Yeah. It’s it’s sobering.

864
00:55:23,200 –> 00:55:26,960
Right? It’s it’s, it’s it’s not it

865
00:55:26,960 –> 00:55:30,215
doesn’t create an existential crisis in me because to your point, I’m one of those

866
00:55:30,215 –> 00:55:33,975
people of faith, so I don’t have an existential crisis about that. I

867
00:55:33,975 –> 00:55:37,115
have existential crises about other things, not about that.

868
00:55:38,375 –> 00:55:42,135
Well, it is interesting. So the Camus is a is

869
00:55:42,135 –> 00:55:45,890
a so, Camus, one of his, like, tenets would

870
00:55:45,890 –> 00:55:48,789
be, you know, beyond anything, do not despair.

871
00:55:49,410 –> 00:55:52,930
And reading Tennyson, it’s like, okay. Well, we’re

872
00:55:53,089 –> 00:55:56,529
there’s the existential, and I know that Camus often gets confused with

873
00:55:56,529 –> 00:55:59,510
existentialists and absurdists, blah blah blah. But,

874
00:56:01,625 –> 00:56:05,325
it’s Ted is insane, despair. Despair away.

875
00:56:05,625 –> 00:56:09,145
It’s okay. It’s okay. You know? It’s

876
00:56:09,145 –> 00:56:12,605
acknowledging that instead of yeah. You’re right. It’s it’s

877
00:56:13,040 –> 00:56:16,720
the like I said, grieving isn’t the end. It’s the beginning. He

878
00:56:16,720 –> 00:56:20,560
is just in the middle of it. He’s lost his best friend,

879
00:56:20,560 –> 00:56:23,780
and he writes in memoriam. He writes Ulysses.

880
00:56:24,560 –> 00:56:28,185
If you read it from that lens of someone who misses his

881
00:56:28,185 –> 00:56:31,865
best friend, you can see that this poem really does

882
00:56:31,865 –> 00:56:35,625
say despair is okay. Right? I mean, it

883
00:56:35,785 –> 00:56:39,405
in the sense that, it’s an honest

884
00:56:40,420 –> 00:56:44,260
it’s an honest response to to

885
00:56:44,260 –> 00:56:48,020
loss. Right? And he doesn’t know if he

886
00:56:48,020 –> 00:56:51,540
will return if he will reunite with Arthur Henry Hallam. He

887
00:56:51,540 –> 00:56:54,865
doesn’t know, you know, if he, Odysseus, or Ulysses

888
00:56:55,325 –> 00:56:59,165
will reunite with Achilles, the great Achilles whom we

889
00:56:59,165 –> 00:57:02,605
knew. Right? Something just clicked over in my

890
00:57:02,605 –> 00:57:06,380
head with what Womong Womong was

891
00:57:06,380 –> 00:57:09,920
just saying there with Ryan with your focus on the language and and Camus.

892
00:57:11,740 –> 00:57:15,579
And then I’ll go into because we’ve already talked around Tennyson and through Tennyson.

893
00:57:15,579 –> 00:57:18,444
So let’s talk a little about Tennyson’s background here. We’ll we’ll sort of switch this,

894
00:57:18,444 –> 00:57:20,684
but this is the thing that clicked open my head, and maybe this will be

895
00:57:20,684 –> 00:57:24,365
valuable for people who are listening. I think in

896
00:57:24,365 –> 00:57:27,964
America, we don’t do a good job with the number 1, we don’t do a

897
00:57:27,964 –> 00:57:30,944
good job with grief. But number 2, we don’t do a good job with endings.

898
00:57:31,640 –> 00:57:35,400
We just don’t. We don’t do it at a good job at a private

899
00:57:35,400 –> 00:57:39,160
level. We don’t we and we really don’t do

900
00:57:39,160 –> 00:57:43,000
a good job of it at a public level. So 2 of

901
00:57:43,000 –> 00:57:46,685
the worst disasters probably of the last 20

902
00:57:46,685 –> 00:57:50,525
years have been 911 and COVID for

903
00:57:50,525 –> 00:57:54,285
the United States of America. Not talking globally. I have listeners all over the

904
00:57:54,285 –> 00:57:58,045
world. Your mileage will vary. But in

905
00:57:58,045 –> 00:57:59,665
my country, in America,

906
00:58:01,640 –> 00:58:03,340
9 11 and COVID. And

907
00:58:06,120 –> 00:58:09,100
I think that the the

908
00:58:10,120 –> 00:58:10,620
cultural

909
00:58:13,795 –> 00:58:17,555
breakdowns and challenges that have occurred over the last 25 years around those

910
00:58:17,555 –> 00:58:21,075
2 twin, such as it were, twin

911
00:58:21,075 –> 00:58:24,135
towers of disasters, and I’m not being funny here,

912
00:58:26,470 –> 00:58:29,850
the lack of grief, the lack of public grieving,

913
00:58:30,390 –> 00:58:34,010
the lack of being able to engage in despair publicly

914
00:58:34,310 –> 00:58:37,990
and and sort of exist sort of

915
00:58:37,990 –> 00:58:41,755
sort of sort of, you know, push all of that out, right, and

916
00:58:41,755 –> 00:58:45,455
get rid of it. You don’t have any tools

917
00:58:45,515 –> 00:58:49,195
in the in a postmodern context where your 2

918
00:58:49,195 –> 00:58:52,910
poles are either power or pleasure because grieving or the

919
00:58:52,910 –> 00:58:56,110
opportunity to grieve can be seen as a as a statement of, I’m gonna use

920
00:58:56,110 –> 00:58:59,870
another p word here that’s often used, privilege. Only privileged people

921
00:58:59,870 –> 00:59:02,370
can grieve. I gotta get up and go to work.

922
00:59:03,390 –> 00:59:07,145
Right. And when we don’t get how much just

923
00:59:07,145 –> 00:59:10,605
that sentiment is postmodernist insanity

924
00:59:10,665 –> 00:59:13,645
because exactly every single culture forever,

925
00:59:14,265 –> 00:59:17,785
grieving is, is it was a integral part

926
00:59:17,785 –> 00:59:21,599
of their society and how they interface with

927
00:59:21,599 –> 00:59:25,119
each other and had their strength as a culture. And we don’t Yeah. But I

928
00:59:25,119 –> 00:59:28,960
would say that postmodernism is not the boogeyman here. There are peep

929
00:59:29,119 –> 00:59:32,785
I mean, people as in India that I

930
00:59:32,785 –> 00:59:36,245
know, because I’m, you know, half Indian, half Pakistani.

931
00:59:36,465 –> 00:59:40,065
Right? The yeah. I I heard it. We

932
00:59:40,065 –> 00:59:43,825
don’t have time to grieve. We I mean, not grieve. We don’t have we

933
00:59:43,825 –> 00:59:47,220
don’t have the energy to be depressed. The

934
00:59:47,220 –> 00:59:51,060
energy. We’re we’re working on just, you know, making a

935
00:59:51,060 –> 00:59:54,740
life and and having you know, just getting getting by. And some I

936
00:59:54,740 –> 00:59:58,500
mean, not not all my relatives were like that, but definitely there

937
00:59:58,500 –> 01:00:02,015
was a sense of even from my father, it would be like,

938
01:00:02,395 –> 01:00:06,155
why what’s with all this depression? You know? And

939
01:00:06,155 –> 01:00:09,355
I’ve I think he was in denial. But I mean, like, I don’t have time

940
01:00:09,355 –> 01:00:12,955
for depression. You know? And, that’s different from

941
01:00:12,955 –> 01:00:16,790
national mourning. I understand. When you look at that let’s go back to the

942
01:00:16,790 –> 01:00:19,130
Victorian era. I mean, she is

943
01:00:20,550 –> 01:00:24,250
the poster child for National Morning.

944
01:00:24,470 –> 01:00:28,230
You know? She wore she you know, everyone knows her, not

945
01:00:28,230 –> 01:00:31,825
as the vivacious, you you know, kind of German girl who

946
01:00:32,065 –> 01:00:35,665
I mean, English girl with the you know, who spoke

947
01:00:35,665 –> 01:00:39,505
German and was a German. He had to get that German

948
01:00:39,505 –> 01:00:42,725
accent, you know, erased as much as possible. But still,

949
01:00:43,850 –> 01:00:47,530
when when, her beloved husband passed

950
01:00:47,530 –> 01:00:51,290
away, she was in black for the rest of her life, you know, with

951
01:00:51,290 –> 01:00:55,050
these you close that went all the way up from her neck down to

952
01:00:55,050 –> 01:00:58,855
her, you know, like, wrists and and ankles

953
01:00:59,075 –> 01:01:02,915
can’t be shown for you know? But, I mean, it’s not just modesty. She

954
01:01:02,915 –> 01:01:06,455
was in black. Right? And so she was,

955
01:01:06,994 –> 01:01:10,755
you know, modeling a sense of this is what we do, you

956
01:01:10,755 –> 01:01:14,590
know, as a nation when when, prince Albert

957
01:01:14,890 –> 01:01:18,490
is, you know, dies. Right? I mean,

958
01:01:18,490 –> 01:01:22,030
so Tennyson is in good company, you know, with with

959
01:01:22,490 –> 01:01:25,845
the the notion that you can you can grieve, you can

960
01:01:25,845 –> 01:01:29,685
mourn. People like CS Lewis come along later and and he has

961
01:01:29,685 –> 01:01:33,385
to resurrect in a sense the, you know, like, hey. It’s okay.

962
01:01:33,765 –> 01:01:37,525
You know? So he writes a grief observed. Right? He writes

963
01:01:37,525 –> 01:01:41,089
these these wonderful, you know, observations of

964
01:01:41,089 –> 01:01:44,789
just what what it is to to go through loss.

965
01:01:44,930 –> 01:01:48,690
And and even as a person of faith go, you know, it’s

966
01:01:48,690 –> 01:01:52,305
okay to grieve. It’s okay to to be depressed

967
01:01:52,305 –> 01:01:55,525
or, you know, we gotta work through it. You know? Yeah.

968
01:01:56,545 –> 01:02:00,305
Yeah. So I I don’t but I don’t think it’s a postmodern has a rate

969
01:02:00,385 –> 01:02:03,920
you know, somehow made it to where you’re making

970
01:02:03,920 –> 01:02:07,520
the postmodernism. I what it was more it was

971
01:02:07,600 –> 01:02:11,200
what was I what I was thinking was actions like we’ve made money God. We’ve

972
01:02:11,200 –> 01:02:14,880
made God money our God, and so that Yeah. Kinda, like,

973
01:02:14,880 –> 01:02:18,585
breaks everything down. And my only point and my only point

974
01:02:18,585 –> 01:02:21,725
is if you don’t offer with those 2 twin

975
01:02:22,265 –> 01:02:25,805
those 2 twin events, if you don’t offer the public an opportunity,

976
01:02:27,305 –> 01:02:31,109
even a national day of mourning. Right? Like Yeah. Yeah. And and

977
01:02:31,109 –> 01:02:34,470
by the way, this is this is, irregardless of

978
01:02:34,470 –> 01:02:38,230
party, and I know irregardless is not a word. If George w Bush had declared

979
01:02:38,550 –> 01:02:42,230
right. Had declared a national day of mourning or if Joe Biden had declared a

980
01:02:42,230 –> 01:02:45,815
national day of mourning. Yeah. After

981
01:02:45,815 –> 01:02:49,494
COVID? Yeah. Right. Like, just give us a

982
01:02:49,494 –> 01:02:53,335
minute. You’re right. The the thing is is the

983
01:02:53,335 –> 01:02:56,934
American response is often, let’s get

984
01:02:56,934 –> 01:03:00,460
even. Let’s Or let’s just push through it. Yeah.

985
01:03:00,460 –> 01:03:04,140
Let’s just push through it. Let’s go to war for 20 years now that you

986
01:03:04,140 –> 01:03:07,819
know, with people who didn’t even engage with 911, for

987
01:03:07,819 –> 01:03:11,339
example. Right? We just we’ve we’ve finally just got out of

988
01:03:11,339 –> 01:03:14,155
Afghanistan, you know, during the Biden administration.

989
01:03:15,495 –> 01:03:19,255
So it’s it’s like, yeah, there is a sense of you know,

990
01:03:19,255 –> 01:03:23,095
it’s it’s almost like like you said, it it’s not

991
01:03:23,095 –> 01:03:26,460
about even observing a day of just

992
01:03:26,780 –> 01:03:30,540
grievance, you know, not grievance, but, grieving Mhmm. As

993
01:03:30,540 –> 01:03:33,920
opposed to, the day of grievance. Griefence.

994
01:03:33,980 –> 01:03:37,680
Right. Right. Which we don’t we already had a summer in 2020.

995
01:03:38,220 –> 01:03:41,119
It was a little bit of that. Anyway, moving on. Yes.

996
01:03:43,735 –> 01:03:47,575
Let’s talk a little bit about Tennessee because we’ve sort of talked around and through

997
01:03:47,575 –> 01:03:51,255
and over and above this man. So, when we look at the literary

998
01:03:51,255 –> 01:03:54,680
life of Alfred, lord Tennyson, he was a

999
01:03:55,059 –> 01:03:58,740
baron. His name is actually Alfred Tennyson, born

1000
01:03:58,740 –> 01:04:02,339
August 6, 1809, and died

1001
01:04:02,339 –> 01:04:06,180
in, the 6th October of 18 92. He

1002
01:04:06,180 –> 01:04:09,480
was a poet laureate during much of queen Victoria’s reign.

1003
01:04:09,805 –> 01:04:13,565
And in 18/29, Tennyson was awarded the chancellor’s gold medal at

1004
01:04:13,565 –> 01:04:17,085
Cambridge for one of his first pieces, Timbuktu, which, by the way, is in the

1005
01:04:17,085 –> 01:04:20,845
collection of poems, that I have here of Tennyson. We will not

1006
01:04:20,845 –> 01:04:24,620
be reading Timbuktu today, but I would recommend going and taking a look at it

1007
01:04:24,620 –> 01:04:27,840
just for the strength of, Ulysses alone.

1008
01:04:28,860 –> 01:04:32,700
He published his first solo collection of poems, poems chiefly

1009
01:04:32,700 –> 01:04:36,460
lyrical in 18 30. So this guy had a long and

1010
01:04:36,460 –> 01:04:40,085
storied career in, in England. Although

1011
01:04:40,085 –> 01:04:43,385
described by some critics as overly sentimental, interestingly

1012
01:04:43,445 –> 01:04:47,125
enough, his poems ultimately proved popular and brought Tennyson to the

1013
01:04:47,125 –> 01:04:50,565
attention of well known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor

1014
01:04:50,565 –> 01:04:53,920
Coleridge. Tennyson’s early poetry with its media

1015
01:04:54,220 –> 01:04:57,900
medievalism and powerful visual imagery was a major

1016
01:04:57,900 –> 01:05:00,559
influence on the Pre Raphaelite brotherhood.

1017
01:05:01,900 –> 01:05:04,895
This is a part that’s interesting to me about Tennyson’s writing.

1018
01:05:05,515 –> 01:05:08,955
And, Ryan, I know this probably jumps out to you with the language piece. A

1019
01:05:08,955 –> 01:05:12,555
number of phrases from Tennyson’s work have become commonplace in the English

1020
01:05:12,555 –> 01:05:16,235
language, including nature, red, tooth, and claw,

1021
01:05:16,235 –> 01:05:19,670
which, by the way, I thought was Kipling until I I started doing some research

1022
01:05:19,670 –> 01:05:23,510
into tennis, and I thought Kipling had come up with that. Just better to have

1023
01:05:23,510 –> 01:05:26,809
loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Most people think that Shakespeare.

1024
01:05:27,510 –> 01:05:31,049
Theirs is not your reason why there’s much to do and die.

1025
01:05:31,665 –> 01:05:35,025
Again, most people think that many people think that Shakespeare, if they think of any

1026
01:05:35,105 –> 01:05:37,605
if they even think of that at all, I don’t know that that’s a common

1027
01:05:37,665 –> 01:05:40,885
common phraseology that’s used anymore in our time.

1028
01:05:41,745 –> 01:05:45,279
My strength is as the strength of 10 because my heart is pure, to

1029
01:05:45,279 –> 01:05:48,019
strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Okay.

1030
01:05:48,960 –> 01:05:52,559
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. I love that one.

1031
01:05:52,799 –> 01:05:56,160
That should be tattooed on the foreheads of anyone who,

1032
01:05:56,319 –> 01:05:58,500
accesses the Internet via their phone.

1033
01:06:01,615 –> 01:06:04,755
And the old order changeth, yielding place to new.

1034
01:06:05,454 –> 01:06:08,655
He is the 9th most frequently quoted writer, I did not know this, in the

1035
01:06:08,655 –> 01:06:12,480
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. We’ve kind

1036
01:06:12,480 –> 01:06:16,320
of talked about the importance of Tennyson and his poet his his

1037
01:06:16,320 –> 01:06:19,060
poem Ulysses on Western literature.

1038
01:06:20,160 –> 01:06:23,600
Clearly, the man had an outsized impact, as I mentioned in the in in the

1039
01:06:23,600 –> 01:06:26,965
intro, with his poetry in general on the

1040
01:06:26,965 –> 01:06:27,465
west.

1041
01:06:31,125 –> 01:06:34,505
Very briefly, if you were going to sell

1042
01:06:34,565 –> 01:06:38,325
Tennyson to someone, and I think we probably done that already, but if you

1043
01:06:38,325 –> 01:06:40,320
were gonna sell Tennyson to somebody,

1044
01:06:53,360 –> 01:06:56,085
hardcore psychology of how to lead people, why should I care about

1045
01:06:58,325 –> 01:07:02,125
Tennyson? Why should I care about his writing? Why should I care about poetry?

1046
01:07:02,325 –> 01:07:05,845
About Tennyson because consuming to I

1047
01:07:06,005 –> 01:07:09,605
this is great because are either of you familiar with Ahman

1048
01:07:09,605 –> 01:07:13,170
Hillman as a classicist? No. I am

1049
01:07:13,170 –> 01:07:16,930
not. And he and, so he makes

1050
01:07:16,930 –> 01:07:20,610
some really, I don’t know, arguments for, how important the

1051
01:07:20,610 –> 01:07:24,105
Greek language is and kind of, like, going and his,

1052
01:07:24,464 –> 01:07:27,684
I I missed his name. What what what did you say? A m m

1053
01:07:28,785 –> 01:07:32,305
o n At Hillman, h a hill h

1054
01:07:32,385 –> 01:07:35,505
Hillman. Okay. And,

1055
01:07:36,470 –> 01:07:40,069
and it it is interesting. He he, he he really,

1056
01:07:40,630 –> 01:07:44,309
advocates for reading, like, kind of nothing

1057
01:07:44,309 –> 01:07:47,769
before. It’s it’s all classics. It’s all Plato, Aristotle,

1058
01:07:48,549 –> 01:07:52,089
and it’s like the foundation of thought. And in order to

1059
01:07:53,695 –> 01:07:57,375
in order to kind of understand what’s happening, you

1060
01:07:57,375 –> 01:08:00,815
know, 2000 years ago, and more with those

1061
01:08:00,815 –> 01:08:04,655
writings is almost imperative to have the foundation on something like

1062
01:08:04,655 –> 01:08:06,275
this, if that makes any sense.

1063
01:08:08,240 –> 01:08:12,000
Okay. So I should read it because it’s good for me,

1064
01:08:12,000 –> 01:08:15,760
like my vegetables? Well, I I think because you were talking about,

1065
01:08:15,760 –> 01:08:19,600
like, yeah. Absolutely. Let me Okay. Go without

1066
01:08:19,600 –> 01:08:23,175
fiber for 6 weeks and see how you do. Tell me

1067
01:08:23,175 –> 01:08:26,854
tell me how life is. And why we’re gonna ride this

1068
01:08:26,854 –> 01:08:30,215
stuff. Build to build so in order to

1069
01:08:30,215 –> 01:08:33,594
build on steady in order to build on solid ground.

1070
01:08:33,814 –> 01:08:37,239
Right. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I would suggest that

1071
01:08:37,239 –> 01:08:40,140
Tennyson is

1072
01:08:42,840 –> 01:08:46,460
a remarkably accessible poet.

1073
01:08:46,840 –> 01:08:50,375
Mhmm. Like, you’ve you just mentioned those quotes. Well, I

1074
01:08:50,375 –> 01:08:54,215
mean, I recognized all those poems. The charge of

1075
01:08:54,215 –> 01:08:57,835
the light brigade, you know, of course, has relevance

1076
01:08:57,975 –> 01:09:01,595
because, you know, Russia’s already, taken over Crimea,

1077
01:09:02,780 –> 01:09:06,380
but now is going into Ukraine. But the the that

1078
01:09:06,380 –> 01:09:09,820
that battle, you know, the charge of the light

1079
01:09:09,820 –> 01:09:13,420
brigade was all about the Crimea at the time.

1080
01:09:13,420 –> 01:09:17,020
Right? So but the the lines that you mentioned, you know,

1081
01:09:17,020 –> 01:09:20,835
there’s not, to make reply. There’s not to reason

1082
01:09:20,835 –> 01:09:24,435
why. There’s but to do and die into the valley of death, rode the

1083
01:09:24,435 –> 01:09:28,215
600. You know? The it’s just very

1084
01:09:29,234 –> 01:09:32,580
inspiring, very accessible

1085
01:09:32,640 –> 01:09:36,160
language and when someone reads the poem

1086
01:09:36,400 –> 01:09:40,240
when they hear the words in memoriam, for example, they may

1087
01:09:40,240 –> 01:09:44,080
think, oh, well, that’s Latin or that’s, you know, that’s

1088
01:09:44,080 –> 01:09:47,805
not for me, you know. But then when you read the poems and you see

1089
01:09:47,805 –> 01:09:51,564
they’re very short little, like, almost fragments, they’re

1090
01:09:51,564 –> 01:09:55,325
just almost little, not all of them

1091
01:09:55,325 –> 01:09:58,925
are long, but most of them are very short. You you go, oh, look at

1092
01:09:58,925 –> 01:10:02,590
what he’s saying. He he he has

1093
01:10:02,590 –> 01:10:06,210
very, pedestrian

1094
01:10:06,590 –> 01:10:10,429
mundane images that he’s using to talk about, you know, what

1095
01:10:10,429 –> 01:10:14,135
it is that he’s feeling. And I would say the

1096
01:10:14,135 –> 01:10:17,975
same thing with with, the language that we read, like, whether

1097
01:10:17,975 –> 01:10:21,275
it be in in, you know, Mariana

1098
01:10:21,655 –> 01:10:25,335
or, Mariana. I don’t know how how you know? But

1099
01:10:25,335 –> 01:10:28,135
you look back, a lot of like you said, a lot of people think, oh,

1100
01:10:28,135 –> 01:10:31,310
this is Shakespearean. It’s like, no. No. No. He’s saying

1101
01:10:31,850 –> 01:10:35,530
it’s better to have loved and loved and lost than never do have loved at

1102
01:10:35,530 –> 01:10:39,130
all. That’s very accessible. So, you know,

1103
01:10:39,130 –> 01:10:42,855
Ryan’s, celebrated the language of of

1104
01:10:42,855 –> 01:10:46,535
Tennyson, but I, you know, I I just second that. You

1105
01:10:46,535 –> 01:10:49,275
know? It’s it’s, like, it’s accessible and it’s readable.

1106
01:10:49,895 –> 01:10:53,575
And I think also this, the the Brits were

1107
01:10:53,575 –> 01:10:57,330
reading it going, oh, he writes an incredible,

1108
01:10:58,590 –> 01:11:01,730
rewriting of the Arthurian legend.

1109
01:11:02,270 –> 01:11:05,489
Right. You know? And and it’s so it’s also

1110
01:11:05,949 –> 01:11:09,725
tapping into not just a a mythological

1111
01:11:10,345 –> 01:11:14,025
past, but it’s bringing that past into the

1112
01:11:14,025 –> 01:11:17,805
present and saying, it’s still relevant for us,

1113
01:11:18,025 –> 01:11:21,545
and it’s still something that speaks to us

1114
01:11:21,545 –> 01:11:25,350
now. I would suggest that we could do the same thing that he did

1115
01:11:25,350 –> 01:11:29,110
then. Go back to the old stories, bring them into the new,

1116
01:11:29,110 –> 01:11:32,470
like, Odysseus is now Ulysses, but not just

1117
01:11:32,470 –> 01:11:35,910
Ulysses, the man who’s going to, you know, end up having

1118
01:11:35,910 –> 01:11:39,735
Athena deliver packs of peace. But now he’s this person who may just

1119
01:11:39,735 –> 01:11:43,335
go traveling again for a whole bunch of years, you know, leaving

1120
01:11:43,335 –> 01:11:47,094
his aged wife at home, after, you know, being away

1121
01:11:47,094 –> 01:11:50,695
from her all those years. I’m just saying he takes those things from the

1122
01:11:50,695 –> 01:11:54,060
past, like Ryan mentioned, 2,000, 3000 years

1123
01:11:54,060 –> 01:11:57,520
before. He brings it into the Victorian age.

1124
01:11:58,140 –> 01:12:01,900
Now I think that we, you know, just a

1125
01:12:01,900 –> 01:12:05,200
mere 200 years later can bring those things

1126
01:12:05,580 –> 01:12:09,085
from that era into our present age,

1127
01:12:09,305 –> 01:12:12,825
and they still are relevant, they still matter, and it

1128
01:12:12,825 –> 01:12:16,505
still strikes a note or strikes a chord. Who

1129
01:12:16,505 –> 01:12:20,285
doesn’t feel sad when someone is lost?

1130
01:12:20,345 –> 01:12:23,870
Who doesn’t feel, proud of their nation when it does

1131
01:12:23,870 –> 01:12:27,710
something right, you know, who doesn’t feel, like

1132
01:12:27,710 –> 01:12:31,489
we wanna go back and resurrect the heroes from our

1133
01:12:31,790 –> 01:12:35,550
from our, in our memory, you know, and bring

1134
01:12:35,550 –> 01:12:39,185
them into the present. You know? I think that’s what Tennyson

1135
01:12:39,185 –> 01:12:43,025
does for us. It’s interesting. Hey, Sinead. You were talking

1136
01:12:43,025 –> 01:12:46,625
about the deconstruction deconstruction. It’s like, and and,

1137
01:12:47,105 –> 01:12:50,385
moment to your to your point, it it’s I think that’s the first thing that

1138
01:12:50,385 –> 01:12:54,100
I was drawn to was like, oh, shoot. We have to read Tennyson. This is

1139
01:12:54,100 –> 01:12:57,940
gonna be a beast. And then I was like, wait a minute. This

1140
01:12:57,940 –> 01:13:01,780
is pretty easy. I was like, this guy is is is is making it

1141
01:13:01,860 –> 01:13:04,900
like you’re saying, this is for everyone. It’s not this it’s not this thing that’s

1142
01:13:04,900 –> 01:13:08,545
hoarded and I can’t do it. I’m I’m brilliant. I’m smarter. It’s

1143
01:13:08,545 –> 01:13:12,304
like no. No. No. No. No. I’m gonna share all of this with you. You

1144
01:13:12,304 –> 01:13:16,005
know, clearly, this is a a, you know, a touched person in this area,

1145
01:13:16,065 –> 01:13:19,284
and why not share? That could that kinda builds on the spiritual

1146
01:13:19,880 –> 01:13:23,720
end of things as well when you talk about, the the the the use of

1147
01:13:23,720 –> 01:13:27,400
nature in his writing as well. So that’s a I really

1148
01:13:27,560 –> 01:13:31,000
I appreciated that. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Thank

1149
01:13:31,000 –> 01:13:34,440
you. And the thing is is this poem, this these

1150
01:13:34,440 –> 01:13:37,864
poems, these this poetry

1151
01:13:38,324 –> 01:13:42,165
is oh, you

1152
01:13:42,165 –> 01:13:45,925
just you just made you you made me think something, and then it just, it

1153
01:13:45,925 –> 01:13:49,145
just zipped away. But he’s speaking to not just

1154
01:13:49,970 –> 01:13:53,730
the the the feelings that we experience, but he’s also

1155
01:13:53,730 –> 01:13:57,410
saying something about poetry. He’s saying something about the

1156
01:13:57,410 –> 01:14:01,170
poet. He’s saying that there are things that that

1157
01:14:01,170 –> 01:14:04,390
people who are creative, who are tapping into

1158
01:14:05,235 –> 01:14:08,675
something else that is super this may be

1159
01:14:08,675 –> 01:14:12,034
supernatural. You might wanna say we transcend by getting into

1160
01:14:12,034 –> 01:14:15,475
this this this act of creation. You know?

1161
01:14:15,475 –> 01:14:18,870
He’s he’s engaging us in it in it and he’s

1162
01:14:18,870 –> 01:14:22,710
inviting us into that space. And when we

1163
01:14:22,710 –> 01:14:26,310
go there, we’re not disappointed, you know, but it’s

1164
01:14:26,310 –> 01:14:30,150
just a lot of times people think, oh, it’s not not

1165
01:14:30,150 –> 01:14:33,770
you, you know, but I’m a lot of times people come into it thinking

1166
01:14:34,205 –> 01:14:38,045
it’s gonna be beyond me. It’s gonna be too erudite. It’s

1167
01:14:38,045 –> 01:14:41,725
gonna be too, you know, whatever. Now

1168
01:14:41,725 –> 01:14:45,485
that doesn’t mean that an educated reader can’t get a lot more of the

1169
01:14:45,485 –> 01:14:49,270
references or illusions. I mean, it’s gonna happen when someone

1170
01:14:49,270 –> 01:14:52,870
knows the Arthurian legend. They’re gonna come to, you know, more to

1171
01:14:52,870 –> 01:14:55,910
Arthur and go. Oh, yeah. I get it. You know, there’s a lot more going

1172
01:14:55,910 –> 01:14:59,750
on here or when they read Anoni, right, they’re gonna be

1173
01:14:59,750 –> 01:15:02,730
like, oh, okay. I know about, Paris

1174
01:15:03,270 –> 01:15:06,965
and, you know the the promise of Helen based

1175
01:15:06,965 –> 01:15:10,665
upon you know his the judgment that he met out to

1176
01:15:10,725 –> 01:15:14,565
you know between Hera Athena and Aphrodite right. I mean we

1177
01:15:14,565 –> 01:15:18,079
when you read those poems then and you know the back

1178
01:15:18,079 –> 01:15:21,780
stories from those classical stories. Yeah. It’s a lot richer,

1179
01:15:22,079 –> 01:15:25,840
but that doesn’t mean that you have to be all educated to come to those

1180
01:15:25,840 –> 01:15:29,460
poems and not get you could still get something tremendous

1181
01:15:29,520 –> 01:15:32,505
from it. It’s so, yeah, it’s accessible.

1182
01:15:33,284 –> 01:15:37,125
And if you just read the words on the page, even, you

1183
01:15:37,125 –> 01:15:40,724
know, like, even the last lines of Mariana, you know, she

1184
01:15:40,724 –> 01:15:44,485
wept, I am a weary, a weary, oh god that I were dead.

1185
01:15:44,485 –> 01:15:48,230
Who doesn’t get that? Well, speaking of speaking

1186
01:15:48,230 –> 01:15:51,910
of Mariana or Mariana, we’re

1187
01:15:51,910 –> 01:15:55,350
gonna read that one next. So let’s pick up let’s pick up

1188
01:15:55,350 –> 01:15:58,570
with Mariana by Alfred

1189
01:16:00,150 –> 01:16:03,894
Mort Tennyson With blackest

1190
01:16:04,434 –> 01:16:08,135
moss, the flower plots were thickly crusted, one and all.

1191
01:16:08,355 –> 01:16:11,875
The rusted nails fell from the knots that held the pair to

1192
01:16:11,875 –> 01:16:15,474
the gable wall. The broken sheds looked sad and

1193
01:16:15,474 –> 01:16:19,070
strange. Unifin, unlifted was the clinking latch

1194
01:16:19,530 –> 01:16:22,990
we did and warn the ancient batch upon the lonely meted

1195
01:16:23,290 –> 01:16:26,970
range. She only said my life is dreary. He

1196
01:16:26,970 –> 01:16:30,670
cometh not. She said, she said, I am a weary, a weary.

1197
01:16:30,765 –> 01:16:32,945
I would that I were dead.

1198
01:16:34,605 –> 01:16:38,385
Her tears fell with the dews that even tears

1199
01:16:38,445 –> 01:16:42,125
fell air. The dews were dry. She could not look on the

1200
01:16:42,125 –> 01:16:45,505
sweet heaven either at born or even tide.

1201
01:16:46,219 –> 01:16:50,060
After the flirting no. After the flitting of the bats, when thickest

1202
01:16:50,060 –> 01:16:53,739
dark detrans the sky, she drew her casement curtain

1203
01:16:53,739 –> 01:16:57,500
by and glanced athwart the glooming flats. She only said

1204
01:16:57,500 –> 01:17:00,955
the night is dreary. He cometh not, she said. She said I am

1205
01:17:00,955 –> 01:17:03,775
weary, a weary, I would that I were dead.

1206
01:17:05,515 –> 01:17:09,115
Upon the middle of the night, walking, waking, she heard the night

1207
01:17:09,115 –> 01:17:12,655
fowl crow. The cock sung out an hour ere light

1208
01:17:12,795 –> 01:17:16,270
from the dark fed, the oxen’s low. Came to her

1209
01:17:16,270 –> 01:17:19,489
without hope of change, in sleep she seemed to walk forlorn,

1210
01:17:19,949 –> 01:17:23,630
till cold winds woke the gray eyed morn, about the lonely

1211
01:17:23,630 –> 01:17:27,310
moat at Grange. She only said the day is dreary, he cometh not,

1212
01:17:27,310 –> 01:17:30,985
she said. She said, I am a weary, a weary, I would

1213
01:17:30,985 –> 01:17:34,505
that I were dead. About a

1214
01:17:34,505 –> 01:17:37,945
stone cast from the wall a sluice with blackened water

1215
01:17:37,945 –> 01:17:41,405
slept, and o’er at many round and small the clustered,

1216
01:17:42,105 –> 01:17:45,690
marish mosses crept. Hard by a poplar shook all

1217
01:17:45,690 –> 01:17:49,530
way, all silver green with gnarled bark. For leagues no

1218
01:17:49,530 –> 01:17:53,150
other tree did mark, the level waste, the rounding gray.

1219
01:17:54,010 –> 01:17:57,795
She only said my life is dreary. He cometh not, she said. She said

1220
01:17:57,795 –> 01:18:01,335
I am a weary a weary I would that I were dead.

1221
01:18:03,074 –> 01:18:06,855
And ever when the moon was low and the shrill winds were up and away,

1222
01:18:06,995 –> 01:18:10,435
in the white curtain to and fro, she saw the gusty shadow

1223
01:18:10,435 –> 01:18:14,260
sway. But when the moon was very low and wild

1224
01:18:14,260 –> 01:18:18,040
winds bound within their cell, the shadow of the poplar

1225
01:18:18,100 –> 01:18:21,940
fell upon her bed across her brow. She only said the night

1226
01:18:21,940 –> 01:18:25,540
is dreary. He cometh not, she said. She said, I am a weary, a

1227
01:18:25,540 –> 01:18:28,275
weary. I would that I were dead.

1228
01:18:29,454 –> 01:18:33,054
All day within the dreary house, the doors upon their hinges

1229
01:18:33,054 –> 01:18:36,895
creaked. The blue flies sung in the pain. The mouse behind

1230
01:18:36,895 –> 01:18:40,290
the moldering Wayne’s cot shrieked, Or from the

1231
01:18:40,290 –> 01:18:43,890
crevice peered about, old faces glimmered through the doors. Old

1232
01:18:43,890 –> 01:18:47,250
footsteps trod the upper floors. Old voices called or from

1233
01:18:47,250 –> 01:18:51,090
without. She only said my life is dreary. He cometh not, she

1234
01:18:51,090 –> 01:18:54,864
said. She said I am a weary, a weary, I would that I were

1235
01:18:54,864 –> 01:18:58,465
dead. The sparrows chirrup on the roof, the

1236
01:18:58,465 –> 01:19:02,305
snow, the slow clock ticking, and the sound which to the wooing

1237
01:19:02,305 –> 01:19:05,364
wind aloof, the poplar bay did all confound.

1238
01:19:06,349 –> 01:19:10,110
Her sense, but she most but most she loathed the hour

1239
01:19:10,110 –> 01:19:13,869
when the thick moted sunbeam lay, athwart the chambers and the day

1240
01:19:13,869 –> 01:19:17,550
was sloping towards his western bower. Then she

1241
01:19:17,550 –> 01:19:21,230
said, I am very dreary. He will not come, she

1242
01:19:21,230 –> 01:19:24,555
said. She wept. I am weary, weary.

1243
01:19:25,255 –> 01:19:28,635
Oh, God, that I were dead.

1244
01:19:34,390 –> 01:19:37,530
I gotta say when I first read that for

1245
01:19:37,910 –> 01:19:41,510
this podcast, the image that came

1246
01:19:41,510 –> 01:19:45,270
into my head, and because I

1247
01:19:45,270 –> 01:19:48,710
I I I have I think it words first and then images because my brain

1248
01:19:48,710 –> 01:19:52,155
is weird. The the the words thing converted to

1249
01:19:52,155 –> 01:19:55,755
images. I converted those images from or

1250
01:19:55,755 –> 01:19:59,135
converted those words into images in my head of,

1251
01:20:00,795 –> 01:20:04,550
the the old school animated show on television, Tiny

1252
01:20:04,550 –> 01:20:08,390
Toons, which almost no one remembers, back in

1253
01:20:08,390 –> 01:20:11,750
the day. Steven Spielberg’s attempt to do Looney Tunes. I used to watch it in

1254
01:20:11,750 –> 01:20:15,514
high school when I would come back from back from school. And

1255
01:20:15,514 –> 01:20:18,235
then Batman, the animated series would come on after that. That was your 1, 2

1256
01:20:18,235 –> 01:20:21,114
punch. And then my grandma would watch a Oprah, and then that was it. I

1257
01:20:21,114 –> 01:20:24,415
was off the TV for the rest of the day. But for that hour,

1258
01:20:25,114 –> 01:20:28,820
I would have Tiny Toons. And and and they did a really good job on

1259
01:20:28,820 –> 01:20:32,500
that show of hearkening back to and I’ve talked about Looney Tunes weirdly

1260
01:20:32,500 –> 01:20:36,340
enough on this podcast before. But hearkening back to what Looney Tunes did in

1261
01:20:36,340 –> 01:20:40,040
the 19 fifties sixties seventies in incorporating

1262
01:20:40,500 –> 01:20:44,105
classical elements into, the, the

1263
01:20:44,105 –> 01:20:47,905
cartoon, classical elements of literature, music, all of that. As a matter

1264
01:20:47,905 –> 01:20:51,545
of fact, if you go onto my Facebook page currently, you will see the Barber

1265
01:20:51,545 –> 01:20:54,765
of Seville with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.

1266
01:20:55,429 –> 01:20:59,130
Everything I know about classical music, I learned from Looney Tunes. Anyway,

1267
01:21:00,310 –> 01:21:04,150
so on Tiny Toons, they had an episode where

1268
01:21:04,150 –> 01:21:07,210
they lampooned Edgar Allan Poe

1269
01:21:08,550 –> 01:21:12,345
and the raven. And weirdly enough, that

1270
01:21:12,345 –> 01:21:15,725
was the imagery that popped into my head when I read this Tennyson

1271
01:21:15,785 –> 01:21:19,405
poem. Those are the two things that clicks together in the mashup

1272
01:21:19,705 –> 01:21:21,645
of Hasan’s fertile brain.

1273
01:21:23,530 –> 01:21:27,210
This poem is

1274
01:21:27,210 –> 01:21:30,889
also puts me in mind of Galatians 59 where it says,

1275
01:21:31,210 –> 01:21:34,889
a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. All you need is a

1276
01:21:34,889 –> 01:21:38,405
little drop of yeast. Right? If you know anything about making bread and then it

1277
01:21:38,405 –> 01:21:41,665
just expands and grows. And this poem

1278
01:21:42,445 –> 01:21:46,125
is a little drop, and then it expands, and it grows, and it

1279
01:21:46,125 –> 01:21:49,804
grows, and it grows. And that is evidenced in the

1280
01:21:49,804 –> 01:21:53,300
background of this poem. Again, from

1281
01:21:53,360 –> 01:21:57,119
SparkNotes, gonna grab grab this off the Internet. The subject of this

1282
01:21:57,119 –> 01:22:00,880
poem of, Mariana is drawn from a line in

1283
01:22:00,880 –> 01:22:04,659
Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure, Mariana in the Moted Grange.

1284
01:22:05,175 –> 01:22:08,775
This line describes a young woman waiting for her lover, Angelo, who has abandoned

1285
01:22:08,775 –> 01:22:12,535
her upon the loss of her dowry. Just as the epigraph from

1286
01:22:12,535 –> 01:22:16,215
Shakespeare contains no verb, the poem too lacks all action or

1287
01:22:16,215 –> 01:22:19,830
narrative movement. Instead, the entire poem serves as an extended

1288
01:22:19,830 –> 01:22:21,370
visual depiction of melancholy

1289
01:22:25,350 –> 01:22:28,950
isolation. But it does have a lot of action. So,

1290
01:22:28,950 –> 01:22:32,550
anyway, I’m gonna argue with SparkNotes on that one. Yeah. Go ahead. Argue with

1291
01:22:32,550 –> 01:22:35,575
SparkNotes. SparkNotes. The same thing, and I was like, I don’t know.

1292
01:22:37,395 –> 01:22:40,915
Well, we we we we will we will go into the AI

1293
01:22:40,915 –> 01:22:44,755
generated Google Gemini, and we will correct SparkNotes. I

1294
01:22:44,755 –> 01:22:48,435
just think they were referring that she’s kind of just sitting wearily by a window

1295
01:22:48,435 –> 01:22:50,510
or some. Like, that’s that’s sort of the what,

1296
01:22:52,010 –> 01:22:55,630
and, and I love the chorus. There’s a chorus. Mhmm.

1297
01:22:55,690 –> 01:22:59,310
Yes. Yeah. So Refrain. Yeah. There’s a lot of

1298
01:22:59,770 –> 01:23:01,710
interesting elements in this poem.

1299
01:23:03,685 –> 01:23:05,864
And so while Ulysses is about

1300
01:23:07,205 –> 01:23:10,965
adventure leadership, it’s more of a direct hit to what we actually cover on

1301
01:23:10,965 –> 01:23:14,745
this podcast, picking someone for succession, all of that. Mariana

1302
01:23:14,804 –> 01:23:18,450
is a little bit more about the zeitgeist of the time. It’s a little bit

1303
01:23:18,530 –> 01:23:21,510
about some of the things we’ve already been talking about, existential dread.

1304
01:23:22,290 –> 01:23:25,190
Really though, existential dread, remorse, grief,

1305
01:23:26,210 –> 01:23:29,990
my lover will not come, you know, I wish that I were dead,

1306
01:23:30,050 –> 01:23:32,640
all these kinds of things. Right? And there’s no there’s

1307
01:23:34,505 –> 01:23:38,344
no sort of sugarcoating this to moments point earlier. I

1308
01:23:38,344 –> 01:23:41,864
wish that I were dead. I’m weary. I’m weary. I I I gotta get out.

1309
01:23:41,864 –> 01:23:45,545
Right? And the

1310
01:23:45,545 –> 01:23:48,925
zeitgeist of our time is driven by existential dread of the large things.

1311
01:23:49,870 –> 01:23:52,850
But I think that that dread is driven by

1312
01:23:53,710 –> 01:23:57,310
or is driven as a distraction for dealing with or acknowledging the small

1313
01:23:57,310 –> 01:24:00,989
things. And we see this on both the left and the right

1314
01:24:00,989 –> 01:24:04,770
sides in our political world. One of one of the things that

1315
01:24:04,975 –> 01:24:08,035
has has really been obsessing me the last 5 or 6 years

1316
01:24:08,735 –> 01:24:12,195
has been how our social media platforms

1317
01:24:12,255 –> 01:24:15,875
allow us to take very local existential dread

1318
01:24:15,935 –> 01:24:19,740
and scale that up to a national level. My and

1319
01:24:19,740 –> 01:24:23,260
I the example I always use is this. My son lives my oldest son lives

1320
01:24:23,260 –> 01:24:26,860
in New York state. He has he should have he should

1321
01:24:26,860 –> 01:24:30,300
never be getting news about anything going on in the town in which I live

1322
01:24:30,300 –> 01:24:32,880
in in North Central Texas, and yet he does.

1323
01:24:33,985 –> 01:24:37,825
That’s insane. Now we can say on a good end that

1324
01:24:37,825 –> 01:24:41,505
that connects us all. Right. But there’s a

1325
01:24:41,505 –> 01:24:44,405
downside to this. And the downside to this is

1326
01:24:45,345 –> 01:24:48,500
I I have no control

1327
01:24:49,040 –> 01:24:52,100
other than a sense of dread or

1328
01:24:52,560 –> 01:24:56,160
or dismay or remorse on

1329
01:24:56,160 –> 01:24:59,220
whatever may be going on in his town in upstate New York.

1330
01:25:00,985 –> 01:25:04,745
Just like he has no control, direct ability to

1331
01:25:04,745 –> 01:25:08,185
impact and influence events in the town that I live in in North Central

1332
01:25:08,185 –> 01:25:11,945
Texas. And yet, we can see those things,

1333
01:25:11,945 –> 01:25:15,380
and thus, our dread is triggered, which, by the way, I think is one of

1334
01:25:15,380 –> 01:25:18,659
the things that one of the reasons why those platforms exist. They exist to trigger

1335
01:25:18,659 –> 01:25:21,380
that dread. That’s just a they they like that because it keeps you on the

1336
01:25:21,380 –> 01:25:24,900
platform more and keeps you clicking because you’re constantly clicking around trying to resolve that

1337
01:25:24,900 –> 01:25:27,880
dread with more dopaminergic, you know, pushing. Right?

1338
01:25:28,645 –> 01:25:32,485
Yeah. They’ve monetized our anxiety. They’ve bingo. Excellent. Very

1339
01:25:32,485 –> 01:25:36,025
good. Yeah. Exactly. I love that. They’ve monetized our anxiety,

1340
01:25:36,645 –> 01:25:40,244
and there’s no reason for it. And this poem is an

1341
01:25:40,244 –> 01:25:43,304
example of localized anxiety remaining local,

1342
01:25:44,270 –> 01:25:47,310
which is one of the things I think that it should be, local. Go ahead,

1343
01:25:47,310 –> 01:25:50,989
Ryan. Just just also reading it as well. It it’s

1344
01:25:50,989 –> 01:25:54,670
like so writers, again, and if you’re a good writer and

1345
01:25:54,670 –> 01:25:58,450
you’re a remembered writer, they’re by default of no fault of the there

1346
01:25:59,375 –> 01:26:02,195
are historians as well, so

1347
01:26:03,935 –> 01:26:07,535
it starts as time goes on, it starts to

1348
01:26:08,095 –> 01:26:10,915
it also becomes part of history.

1349
01:26:11,535 –> 01:26:12,515
Right. And

1350
01:26:15,500 –> 01:26:19,120
we which is why it’s important to look at what was going on in, Tennyson’s

1351
01:26:19,180 –> 01:26:22,940
life at the time and not just you know, he just he

1352
01:26:22,940 –> 01:26:26,780
just wasn’t plucked down, you know, this time period. A few stole

1353
01:26:26,780 –> 01:26:30,505
his beautiful things and then went back to wherever he was.

1354
01:26:30,505 –> 01:26:33,704
So, I don’t it it it

1355
01:26:35,945 –> 01:26:39,704
when you were talking about social media Mhmm. And it’s

1356
01:26:39,784 –> 01:26:43,224
it just sent me it’s just like the author of an Instagram person. Like, somebody

1357
01:26:43,304 –> 01:26:47,050
someone has an Instagram page. Through no fault of their own, they are naturally

1358
01:26:47,050 –> 01:26:49,930
a part of history. They’re they’re part of,

1359
01:26:51,210 –> 01:26:55,050
yeah, they’re part of the historical conversation because of what they

1360
01:26:55,050 –> 01:26:58,265
represent in the movement. And so whether

1361
01:26:58,665 –> 01:27:02,265
and largely, that’s determined on the relevance or popularity

1362
01:27:02,265 –> 01:27:05,645
or being sort of remembered. Right. It was just an observation.

1363
01:27:06,425 –> 01:27:10,099
Yeah. No. I know. I I I agree. And that is how

1364
01:27:10,260 –> 01:27:13,780
that’s the upside of what of of these platforms that are sold to us is

1365
01:27:13,780 –> 01:27:17,619
that we will be it’s the unstated upside. Right? You’ll be a part of

1366
01:27:17,619 –> 01:27:21,079
history. We will we will we will rise above

1367
01:27:21,755 –> 01:27:25,135
the un the unwashed masses of the vast,

1368
01:27:26,075 –> 01:27:29,755
expanses of history who never had a voice. We now

1369
01:27:29,755 –> 01:27:33,275
all have a voice to rise above those unwashed masses of

1370
01:27:33,275 –> 01:27:35,855
history and to be remembered in the future

1371
01:27:36,635 –> 01:27:39,590
except when Instagram shuts down.

1372
01:27:42,290 –> 01:27:46,130
Well, if everybody’s memorable, is anybody memorable? Well and then it all

1373
01:27:46,130 –> 01:27:49,250
gets memory hold, and you wind up in the way back machine of the Internet

1374
01:27:49,250 –> 01:27:52,905
and no one looks for you, which is why when I pass

1375
01:27:52,905 –> 01:27:56,745
away, I’m I’m asking my family to scrub all evidence

1376
01:27:56,745 –> 01:28:00,585
of me ever being on the Internet. Just scrub it from

1377
01:28:00,585 –> 01:28:03,870
existence. Even this podcast will go away. So there is an ending, by the way,

1378
01:28:03,870 –> 01:28:06,210
to this podcast, Gary. I’ve started that, by the way.

1379
01:28:09,550 –> 01:28:12,929
I mean, I I kinda like it. I kinda like the idea

1380
01:28:13,070 –> 01:28:16,670
that I could just disappear from the Internet upon

1381
01:28:16,670 –> 01:28:20,135
death. And and I don’t wanna be resurrected with AI. I

1382
01:28:20,135 –> 01:28:23,815
don’t I don’t want thousands of hours of my voice on

1383
01:28:23,815 –> 01:28:27,335
this podcast. I’m saying this publicly. I do not want thousands of hours of my

1384
01:28:27,335 –> 01:28:31,175
voice on this podcast being combined with images so

1385
01:28:31,175 –> 01:28:34,830
that some nephew or niece or 4th

1386
01:28:34,830 –> 01:28:38,670
generation great great grandkid, you know, a 150 years

1387
01:28:38,670 –> 01:28:42,429
from now or a 120 years from now, can somewhat see an I don’t want

1388
01:28:42,429 –> 01:28:45,390
that. I don’t want them to see an avatar of me. I want to go

1389
01:28:45,390 –> 01:28:49,235
away. When I’m done, I want to be forgotten. I want to descend back

1390
01:28:49,235 –> 01:28:52,295
into the mass of humanity and

1391
01:28:53,235 –> 01:28:55,975
be gone because that’s okay.

1392
01:28:56,835 –> 01:29:00,535
There’s it’s a bookend. We’re supposed to be gone.

1393
01:29:01,250 –> 01:29:04,370
Yeah. He says it right there in the poem. I have a Bowman, I have

1394
01:29:04,370 –> 01:29:07,890
a question for you. How and and this is all you

1395
01:29:07,890 –> 01:29:08,390
know?

1396
01:29:11,650 –> 01:29:14,790
How do you think someone like Tennyson would process

1397
01:29:22,015 –> 01:29:25,215
the oh my god. The the indestructibility of the Internet. I don’t know. Like, I

1398
01:29:25,215 –> 01:29:29,055
don’t how how do you think minds and then,

1399
01:29:29,055 –> 01:29:31,155
like I said, this is not a question, but

1400
01:29:32,730 –> 01:29:36,489
just because of kind of, like, how we interpret it and how we experience the

1401
01:29:36,489 –> 01:29:40,170
Internet today, if you were to go back and tell that to or a modern

1402
01:29:40,170 –> 01:29:42,909
day person, ex describe what the Internet is. How

1403
01:29:44,170 –> 01:29:47,525
do you think someone like Tanneson would

1404
01:29:48,864 –> 01:29:52,305
would process? I

1405
01:29:52,305 –> 01:29:55,605
guess I guess more succinctly would be like,

1406
01:29:57,760 –> 01:30:01,120
do you think Tennyson would share share the same opinion that

1407
01:30:01,120 –> 01:30:03,940
Hassan has of himself about being wiped?

1408
01:30:07,680 –> 01:30:09,700
About being wiped? Wiped from the Internet.

1409
01:30:13,125 –> 01:30:16,804
Or wiped? I didn’t hear what you were talking the last Wiped from the

1410
01:30:16,804 –> 01:30:20,645
Internet. So so

1411
01:30:20,645 –> 01:30:24,405
Hasan hey. Hasan’s claim is basically after he’s dead, he wants

1412
01:30:24,405 –> 01:30:28,210
to be as if he never existed. And someone

1413
01:30:28,210 –> 01:30:31,910
is a poet like Oh, yeah. Yeah. Tennyson, who’s nostalgia

1414
01:30:32,050 –> 01:30:35,410
in this rich language, and how does that

1415
01:30:35,810 –> 01:30:37,910
is there a cognitive dissonance in there?

1416
01:30:40,824 –> 01:30:43,465
I don’t see Tennyson as having the same,

1417
01:30:44,425 –> 01:30:48,105
desire to be, erased after he’s passed

1418
01:30:48,105 –> 01:30:51,565
away. I don’t I don’t think Tennyson is,

1419
01:30:52,870 –> 01:30:56,230
I mean, he’s left behind so many writings and poems

1420
01:30:56,230 –> 01:30:59,990
and and, you know, and, of course, he

1421
01:30:59,990 –> 01:31:03,430
had a long life of poetry. He was a, a poet

1422
01:31:03,430 –> 01:31:07,190
laureate for many, many years. And, you know,

1423
01:31:08,045 –> 01:31:11,724
but I I don’t see I I think he would have

1424
01:31:11,724 –> 01:31:15,405
embraced the Internet and just, you know, he would have just, like,

1425
01:31:15,645 –> 01:31:19,324
any great poet now, you know, would have, you know, the

1426
01:31:19,324 –> 01:31:22,830
best would have gotten on there and the all the other would have been just

1427
01:31:22,830 –> 01:31:26,510
in notebooks or whatever. And you know what I mean? I but I don’t think

1428
01:31:26,750 –> 01:31:30,290
I think, Hassan, you’re you’re selling yourself short. You know, like,

1429
01:31:30,590 –> 01:31:34,125
you’ve got this wonderful out creative output and

1430
01:31:34,125 –> 01:31:37,665
you’ve got guests that you’ve invited to be part of it.

1431
01:31:38,125 –> 01:31:41,665
And, if there’s some insight to be

1432
01:31:41,725 –> 01:31:45,565
gleaned or gained now, well, at least

1433
01:31:45,565 –> 01:31:49,280
as a as a historical artifact, it’s gonna be useful in

1434
01:31:49,280 –> 01:31:52,960
the future because, you know, it it’ll it’ll

1435
01:31:52,960 –> 01:31:56,560
hopefully just like when Ovid says in

1436
01:31:56,560 –> 01:32:00,080
Metamorphoses, you know, help me, oh, muse, to

1437
01:32:00,080 –> 01:32:03,655
write, a a a continuous

1438
01:32:03,715 –> 01:32:07,315
poem that’s not just relevant for back then, but

1439
01:32:07,315 –> 01:32:11,015
also for our time, which in his time was the age of Augustus.

1440
01:32:11,555 –> 01:32:14,915
Right. So I’m just saying, you know, now 2000 years

1441
01:32:14,915 –> 01:32:18,600
later, reading it and going, woah. These stories are so

1442
01:32:18,600 –> 01:32:22,280
relevant. So so much so that, say, 400 years ago,

1443
01:32:22,280 –> 01:32:26,040
Shakespeare is using those stories to help

1444
01:32:26,040 –> 01:32:29,420
him write his plays. Right? And then Shakespeare’s

1445
01:32:29,800 –> 01:32:33,415
plays helped Tennyson get inspired to

1446
01:32:33,415 –> 01:32:37,095
write this poem. You know? So, how how is

1447
01:32:37,095 –> 01:32:40,535
your podcast gonna end up inspiring future

1448
01:32:40,535 –> 01:32:43,435
leaders to do a similar kind of,

1449
01:32:44,820 –> 01:32:48,580
you know, initiative and and and

1450
01:32:48,580 –> 01:32:52,040
teaching tool. And, you know, I I think it’s all wonderful. I’m sad

1451
01:32:52,340 –> 01:32:56,020
that the library at, Alexandria, you

1452
01:32:56,020 –> 01:32:59,635
know, burned down Ptolemy’s, you know, life. You know what I mean? It’s

1453
01:32:59,635 –> 01:33:03,475
like so I I I like the idea, you know.

1454
01:33:03,475 –> 01:33:06,995
But going back to Marianna just for a second Yeah. It’s not

1455
01:33:06,995 –> 01:33:10,835
that you you mentioned her localized grief. Right? And

1456
01:33:10,835 –> 01:33:14,559
I again, going back to, to Ulysses

1457
01:33:14,780 –> 01:33:18,219
and in memoriam, of course, she wrote he wrote this in, what was it,

1458
01:33:18,219 –> 01:33:21,599
18:30? Right? And, Ulysses is 18:33.

1459
01:33:22,059 –> 01:33:25,420
The in memoriam is between, you know,

1460
01:33:25,420 –> 01:33:29,005
about those 10 basically, 20 years of

1461
01:33:29,005 –> 01:33:32,525
writing, you know, but, but I think that,

1462
01:33:34,525 –> 01:33:37,505
he, again, is reasserting that it’s okay to grieve,

1463
01:33:38,445 –> 01:33:41,970
in a sense. You know, he’s he’s capturing her

1464
01:33:41,970 –> 01:33:45,730
grief. Right? Oh, I am weary. I am weary. I

1465
01:33:45,730 –> 01:33:49,270
am a weary a weary. I’m I would that I were dead. Right?

1466
01:33:49,410 –> 01:33:53,170
But it it’s okay, you know, and the

1467
01:33:53,170 –> 01:33:57,015
the poem shows us that grieving itself has a

1468
01:33:57,015 –> 01:34:00,855
rhythm of its own. You know, the mourning of

1469
01:34:00,855 –> 01:34:04,295
the perceived past, certainties, you

1470
01:34:04,295 –> 01:34:07,835
know, now are replaced with with different concerns,

1471
01:34:08,055 –> 01:34:11,755
with new concerns. Right? But one thing that is happening

1472
01:34:11,815 –> 01:34:15,380
is the world still goes on all around

1473
01:34:15,380 –> 01:34:19,219
her. Right? And that’s why I think there is action in

1474
01:34:19,219 –> 01:34:22,660
this poem. It’s not though located in what

1475
01:34:22,660 –> 01:34:26,500
Mariana is doing. It’s located in all of the

1476
01:34:26,500 –> 01:34:30,074
birds chirping and the moss even doing its

1477
01:34:30,074 –> 01:34:33,915
thing and the rusting of the nail. Like, there’s a lot of

1478
01:34:33,915 –> 01:34:37,755
stuff happening all around her and we get to

1479
01:34:37,755 –> 01:34:41,150
see it happen in this in the in the

1480
01:34:41,290 –> 01:34:45,050
cycle of an entire night and day. Right? So

1481
01:34:45,050 –> 01:34:48,810
at the very end, it’s not just, it’s

1482
01:34:48,810 –> 01:34:52,270
in the middle of you know, we see, the blackest

1483
01:34:52,330 –> 01:34:55,955
moss, the broken sheds,

1484
01:34:56,255 –> 01:35:00,015
the look look sad and strange. Right? We didn’t

1485
01:35:00,015 –> 01:35:03,074
warn the ancient thatch upon the lowly moated grange.

1486
01:35:03,535 –> 01:35:07,050
Right? It it’s like all this stuff is happening, then it happens at

1487
01:35:07,050 –> 01:35:10,890
the the dues and even right the dues were

1488
01:35:10,890 –> 01:35:14,410
before the the dues were dried. She couldn’t even

1489
01:35:14,410 –> 01:35:18,090
look on the sweet heaven either at more or

1490
01:35:18,090 –> 01:35:21,525
even tide and then we have bats We

1491
01:35:21,844 –> 01:35:25,685
you know, even in the middle of the night, waking, she heard the

1492
01:35:25,685 –> 01:35:29,364
night fell crow. The cock sung out

1493
01:35:29,364 –> 01:35:32,885
an hour air light and keep keeps going down the

1494
01:35:32,885 –> 01:35:36,470
poem, to where it’s not just

1495
01:35:37,410 –> 01:35:41,250
during the nighttime, but even it says, when the moon

1496
01:35:41,250 –> 01:35:44,310
was low and the shrill winds were up and away

1497
01:35:45,010 –> 01:35:48,614
and on and on. Right? And finally, near the last part of the the

1498
01:35:48,614 –> 01:35:52,455
poem, it says, the sparrows cheer up on the roof, the slow tick

1499
01:35:52,455 –> 01:35:55,974
clock ticking, and the sound which to the wooing wind aloof the

1500
01:35:55,974 –> 01:35:59,700
poplar made did all confound her since. But

1501
01:35:59,700 –> 01:36:03,080
most she loathed the hour when the thick moded

1502
01:36:03,220 –> 01:36:06,739
sunbeam layeth worth the chamber. So it’s not just that

1503
01:36:06,739 –> 01:36:10,440
she’s sad in the nighttime in the middle of the night. She’s also

1504
01:36:11,060 –> 01:36:14,440
sad and really, really sad. Oh god, that I were dead.

1505
01:36:14,795 –> 01:36:18,635
In the middle of the day, right, when the sun is revealing the dust

1506
01:36:18,635 –> 01:36:22,395
of the of her surroundings. I mean so it’s just sort of

1507
01:36:22,395 –> 01:36:26,014
this the the again, the rhythm of of grief

1508
01:36:26,474 –> 01:36:29,860
doesn’t have a predictability. And at the same

1509
01:36:29,860 –> 01:36:33,480
time, it shows us that sometimes

1510
01:36:33,620 –> 01:36:37,160
you just have to ride it out. And, hopefully,

1511
01:36:38,260 –> 01:36:41,780
you will you, you know, you won’t just succumb to

1512
01:36:41,780 –> 01:36:45,435
the feelings or or the thought, I am a weary, oh

1513
01:36:45,435 –> 01:36:48,955
weary, oh god, that I were dead. You gotta you gotta kind of

1514
01:36:48,955 –> 01:36:52,335
almost embrace it and then move ahead.

1515
01:36:52,795 –> 01:36:56,155
Right? And and I’m such a

1516
01:36:56,155 –> 01:36:59,775
reactionary person. Mhmm. To sit in it.

1517
01:37:00,420 –> 01:37:03,860
Yeah. Is is it’s beautiful. Really

1518
01:37:03,860 –> 01:37:07,699
is. Uh-huh.

1519
01:37:07,699 –> 01:37:08,920
When I think about

1520
01:37:11,940 –> 01:37:15,465
what I’m doing here, I wanna tie these 2 things together, these

1521
01:37:15,465 –> 01:37:18,985
2 threads together, what we’re doing here.

1522
01:37:18,985 –> 01:37:19,385
Right?

1523
01:37:23,465 –> 01:37:27,085
There’s so many books to read, so many insights to be had. Right.

1524
01:37:27,410 –> 01:37:31,090
And I as I already mentioned, I only have 30 good years of work probably

1525
01:37:31,090 –> 01:37:34,770
left in me. So I

1526
01:37:34,770 –> 01:37:38,450
gotta I gotta hustle. Right? I gotta I gotta get after it. Right? I

1527
01:37:38,450 –> 01:37:41,810
gotta be on it. Right? I gotta read 4 books a

1528
01:37:41,810 –> 01:37:45,625
month. I’ve gotta line up guests. I’ve gotta bring people in. Right? I gotta I

1529
01:37:45,625 –> 01:37:49,385
gotta I gotta. Right? Yeah. Yeah. If I’m and and and at the end

1530
01:37:49,385 –> 01:37:50,045
of that,

1531
01:37:53,225 –> 01:37:57,030
I think a lot of I think of the I

1532
01:37:57,030 –> 01:38:00,170
think of the, the pivotal scene at the end of Schindler’s list

1533
01:38:00,870 –> 01:38:04,470
when Liam Neeson is Oscar Schindler takes off his ring.

1534
01:38:04,470 –> 01:38:07,930
Right? His, his Nazi ring. Right? Mhmm.

1535
01:38:09,285 –> 01:38:12,825
And he says, how many more Jews could this have bought?

1536
01:38:13,525 –> 01:38:16,905
I didn’t do enough. Right. I didn’t do enough.

1537
01:38:17,365 –> 01:38:20,885
The, what, this, this, see points to something else I can’t, you know, it’s been

1538
01:38:20,885 –> 01:38:24,000
a long time since I’ve been 16 years old. Exactly. Takes a pin. Right. Yeah.

1539
01:38:24,160 –> 01:38:27,940
Jacket. Yeah. Jacket. Yeah. How many more lives could this have bought?

1540
01:38:28,400 –> 01:38:30,980
Yeah. How much more could I have done? Right.

1541
01:38:32,880 –> 01:38:36,260
And when you look at sort of the

1542
01:38:36,480 –> 01:38:40,275
commercialized consumerist promises of social media and of the

1543
01:38:40,275 –> 01:38:43,635
Internet. What we’re doing here

1544
01:38:43,635 –> 01:38:47,095
goes in the exact opposite direction of all of that

1545
01:38:48,835 –> 01:38:52,380
and and and thrusts defiantly

1546
01:38:53,080 –> 01:38:56,920
against all of that. And at a certain

1547
01:38:56,920 –> 01:39:00,600
point, you just gotta be like, I think, at least for me

1548
01:39:00,600 –> 01:39:04,220
anyway, I have to be like, or I have to take the posture of

1549
01:39:04,744 –> 01:39:08,184
to paraphrase from Ariana. I am a weary, a

1550
01:39:08,184 –> 01:39:11,864
weary. Not that I wish I

1551
01:39:11,864 –> 01:39:14,684
were dead. Death will come when it comes.

1552
01:39:15,784 –> 01:39:19,560
Don’t need to wish it or, or or fear or live in fear of it.

1553
01:39:19,560 –> 01:39:22,700
Right? It’ll come when it comes, however it comes, whenever it comes.

1554
01:39:23,720 –> 01:39:27,100
Am I doing enough with the skills and talents and abilities?

1555
01:39:27,960 –> 01:39:31,485
And my larger concern is

1556
01:39:31,485 –> 01:39:35,245
that we are so wedded to the short term games. I just did

1557
01:39:35,245 –> 01:39:38,844
a shorts episode on this. As leaders, we’re so wedded to the

1558
01:39:38,844 –> 01:39:42,304
short term click based games that we know we can win right now

1559
01:39:43,100 –> 01:39:46,560
that we don’t go on the other side of that

1560
01:39:46,700 –> 01:39:50,480
arc, right, to do the deep long term things

1561
01:39:51,580 –> 01:39:55,100
where we may wind up at the end of 10 years of

1562
01:39:55,100 –> 01:39:58,745
work or 15 years of work and go, it wasn’t enough. I could’ve I

1563
01:39:58,745 –> 01:40:02,505
could’ve done more. It wasn’t enough. And so people will often

1564
01:40:02,505 –> 01:40:05,625
ask me, how long do you why are you doing a podcast that you don’t

1565
01:40:05,625 –> 01:40:09,469
sell ads on? And I

1566
01:40:09,469 –> 01:40:11,949
say the the typical answer that I give, and it is a true answer, it’s

1567
01:40:11,949 –> 01:40:15,469
part of the true answer, is that I don’t wanna have an advertiser tell me

1568
01:40:15,469 –> 01:40:19,070
what books I can read and what books I can’t. I don’t want an advertiser

1569
01:40:19,070 –> 01:40:21,969
to tell me what guests I can have on and what guests I can’t.

1570
01:40:23,045 –> 01:40:26,485
If I’m going to do something outrageous, like, I’m gonna read Mein

1571
01:40:26,485 –> 01:40:30,324
Kampf Mhmm. I’m probably gonna wanna have an expert on

1572
01:40:30,324 –> 01:40:33,284
there who may be a little unsavory, who might have some things to say about

1573
01:40:33,284 –> 01:40:37,110
Mein Kampf. We’re gonna I’m gonna I want the

1574
01:40:37,110 –> 01:40:40,710
freedom to go get that guy or woman. I do. I want that

1575
01:40:40,710 –> 01:40:44,310
freedom. Well, I would hope so. I mean, I’m a scholar of Mein

1576
01:40:44,310 –> 01:40:48,010
Kampf in my new order. It doesn’t mean I’m a Nazi. Exactly.

1577
01:40:48,815 –> 01:40:52,655
Exactly. And I don’t need to do a negotiation with

1578
01:40:52,655 –> 01:40:56,355
a, very well meaning

1579
01:40:56,415 –> 01:41:00,175
advertiser who has a brand to protect Mhmm. Around what you

1580
01:41:00,175 –> 01:41:03,330
might or might not say or around who you might might or might not be.

1581
01:41:03,330 –> 01:41:07,130
I don’t need to have that. That’s a level of complication and ridiculousness in

1582
01:41:07,130 –> 01:41:10,730
my life that I don’t need. So just know. Well, it’s Just know. There’s also

1583
01:41:10,730 –> 01:41:14,570
another thing. You you you’re talking about you’re you’re talking about willingly putting yourself

1584
01:41:14,570 –> 01:41:17,310
in a a position that would render you powerless.

1585
01:41:18,195 –> 01:41:21,415
Sure. Yes. Exactly. I think that’s also

1586
01:41:22,275 –> 01:41:26,114
the powerlessness, it can be applied to this this this piece as

1587
01:41:26,114 –> 01:41:29,715
well. Mhmm. Because how much we we have we

1588
01:41:29,715 –> 01:41:32,840
have, you know, we we we just said how many times moment and and he

1589
01:41:32,840 –> 01:41:36,440
signed. He said, we can go at any moment. Any moment. And and we we

1590
01:41:36,440 –> 01:41:40,060
can we can we can have we we have control over our response or reaction,

1591
01:41:40,280 –> 01:41:43,935
that sort of thing. That’s it. Very good. Outcome. Go ahead. And

1592
01:41:43,935 –> 01:41:47,735
so Yeah. And then the other but the other reason

1593
01:41:47,735 –> 01:41:50,055
is what and then, Ryan, I’ll go back to you for just a second, but

1594
01:41:50,055 –> 01:41:53,415
I wanna close. The other reason I don’t have advertisers is

1595
01:41:53,415 –> 01:41:56,955
because advertisers play a short game.

1596
01:41:58,369 –> 01:42:01,889
They play a game of of of short term content in

1597
01:42:02,050 –> 01:42:04,530
and and and by the way, that’s fine if that’s the game you wanna play.

1598
01:42:04,530 –> 01:42:07,889
I don’t object to you. I wanna be very clear. Me critiquing you playing that

1599
01:42:07,889 –> 01:42:11,695
game does not mean I object to the game existing. Because if I objected

1600
01:42:11,695 –> 01:42:14,655
to it existing or not, it wouldn’t matter. The game is gonna exist anyway. This

1601
01:42:14,655 –> 01:42:18,495
is how human beings are. It just saying I don’t have to play

1602
01:42:18,495 –> 01:42:22,255
it. If you perceive it as a critique and you’re defensive

1603
01:42:22,255 –> 01:42:25,795
about it, cool. I’m merely saying

1604
01:42:26,600 –> 01:42:30,360
I don’t wanna play that, but the game exists. And so advertisers do

1605
01:42:30,360 –> 01:42:33,480
play that and I don’t wanna be part of that game. Right? I would rather

1606
01:42:33,480 –> 01:42:36,780
go in the opposite end and do something different and more interesting

1607
01:42:37,640 –> 01:42:41,065
that just might not work

1608
01:42:41,065 –> 01:42:44,844
out. And that’s where part of the

1609
01:42:44,905 –> 01:42:48,744
erasure idea comes from because maybe at the end of it, it

1610
01:42:48,744 –> 01:42:52,105
doesn’t work out. Maybe I did all these thousands of

1611
01:42:52,105 –> 01:42:55,920
hours, and the meter didn’t even move 5 inches.

1612
01:42:56,880 –> 01:43:00,660
It sounds like investment and outcome, Hasan. Well well

1613
01:43:01,280 –> 01:43:05,040
well and so this is how I think about it. Right? And Mariana is the

1614
01:43:05,040 –> 01:43:08,560
kind of poem that puts that front and center. Ryan, go

1615
01:43:08,560 –> 01:43:12,305
ahead. No. Interestingly

1616
01:43:12,305 –> 01:43:15,844
enough, the ability to stay in the moment, her the the

1617
01:43:16,065 –> 01:43:19,425
the ability to stay in the moment, while

1618
01:43:19,425 –> 01:43:23,205
also identifying everything that’s in the moment.

1619
01:43:23,745 –> 01:43:27,230
Right. Is that Yeah. Well, at least the poet’s

1620
01:43:27,230 –> 01:43:30,850
identifying it. You know? And, you know, eve however

1621
01:43:30,910 –> 01:43:34,290
she’s, you know, in the pocket of this

1622
01:43:34,350 –> 01:43:38,030
despair, you know, I I loved what you said before about

1623
01:43:38,030 –> 01:43:41,865
just sort of sitting in it, you know, just kind

1624
01:43:41,865 –> 01:43:44,765
of almost nesting. You know?

1625
01:43:45,465 –> 01:43:48,765
It’s like it’s a tough it’s a tough thing not to

1626
01:43:49,305 –> 01:43:52,920
wanna keep fixing yourself, right, or moving out

1627
01:43:52,920 –> 01:43:55,739
of that space, right, that you were mentioning, Ryan.

1628
01:43:57,239 –> 01:44:00,840
But going back to the poem, I love, you know, that Ryan started off the

1629
01:44:00,840 –> 01:44:04,600
whole analysis back when we were looking at Ulysses with

1630
01:44:04,600 –> 01:44:08,225
looking at the language. You know, We see a lot of repetition in this

1631
01:44:08,225 –> 01:44:11,905
poem. Of course, we do see the refrains, you know. But when he

1632
01:44:11,905 –> 01:44:15,745
says when Tennyson writes, old faces glimmer through the

1633
01:44:15,745 –> 01:44:19,505
doors. Old footsteps trod the upper

1634
01:44:19,505 –> 01:44:23,250
floors. Old voices called her from

1635
01:44:23,250 –> 01:44:27,010
without. She only said my life

1636
01:44:27,010 –> 01:44:30,530
is dreary. Right. Come with not. Right? The

1637
01:44:30,530 –> 01:44:34,150
the the fact is is though she does have these other people

1638
01:44:34,905 –> 01:44:38,265
who are still reaching out to her and, you

1639
01:44:38,265 –> 01:44:41,785
know, tapping in into, you know,

1640
01:44:41,785 –> 01:44:45,405
her space in a sense by saying, you know,

1641
01:44:45,865 –> 01:44:49,465
there’s still this is this there’s still stuff happening. Right?

1642
01:44:49,465 –> 01:44:52,440
Mhmm. And, but

1643
01:44:53,140 –> 01:44:56,500
somehow or another, there’s there’s gotta be something to be said

1644
01:44:56,500 –> 01:44:59,800
for embracing

1645
01:45:00,500 –> 01:45:04,114
the grief, but also maintaining your

1646
01:45:04,114 –> 01:45:07,895
grit. I don’t know, you know, in measure for measure,

1647
01:45:08,275 –> 01:45:12,035
if if it if it’s that Tennyson takes it to its lodge you know,

1648
01:45:12,035 –> 01:45:15,875
to what happens with that story. But I think that,

1649
01:45:17,520 –> 01:45:20,260
you know, when when,

1650
01:45:21,360 –> 01:45:24,659
Tennyson is writing, he’s basically

1651
01:45:24,800 –> 01:45:28,500
saying you gotta you gotta

1652
01:45:28,639 –> 01:45:32,265
observe the rhythm of this grief. Right? You have

1653
01:45:32,265 –> 01:45:35,785
to embrace it in a sense. It’s good if you’re

1654
01:45:35,785 –> 01:45:38,765
surrounded by a support system. Mhmm. Right?

1655
01:45:39,865 –> 01:45:43,705
But also remember he writes in memoriam after

1656
01:45:43,705 –> 01:45:47,085
this. He writes for Ulysses. You know, he’s still

1657
01:45:47,690 –> 01:45:51,130
writing, but he’s in the midst of his grief. It’s like when

1658
01:45:51,130 –> 01:45:54,969
Milton’s John Milton says, you know, in a kind of an

1659
01:45:54,969 –> 01:45:58,489
ironic sonnet, you know, that he’s, like,

1660
01:45:58,489 –> 01:46:01,630
lamenting that his light has been lost.

1661
01:46:02,925 –> 01:46:06,685
Oh, when I consider how my light is spent, you know, basically, he’s

1662
01:46:06,685 –> 01:46:10,125
saying I’ve lost my eyesight, but he’s like, I’m

1663
01:46:10,125 –> 01:46:13,885
worthless now. I don’t have any I can’t do the rest of my mission in

1664
01:46:13,885 –> 01:46:17,570
life. But the reality is he wrote another poem.

1665
01:46:17,570 –> 01:46:21,250
He’s doing it. He’s in the acting field. Very thing that he’s lamenting that he

1666
01:46:21,250 –> 01:46:25,010
can’t do anything. You know? And I think it’s a similar kind

1667
01:46:25,010 –> 01:46:28,710
of dynamic we have here too. You know? It’s like,

1668
01:46:29,305 –> 01:46:32,125
you know, we’re we’re not done yet.

1669
01:46:33,385 –> 01:46:36,045
Well and and and creatives, athletes,

1670
01:46:38,105 –> 01:46:41,725
high functioning high functioning entrepreneurs, small business owners,

1671
01:46:42,345 –> 01:46:46,090
anybody who Ryan made a point about, you

1672
01:46:46,550 –> 01:46:50,389
know, with with the podcast. Right? About where my power lies. Right?

1673
01:46:50,389 –> 01:46:54,070
And then powerlessness with an advertiser. Right? Well, the

1674
01:46:54,230 –> 01:46:57,590
and the 4 types of folks I’ve just mentioned, entrepreneurs, small business

1675
01:46:57,590 –> 01:47:01,115
owners, athletes, and, and

1676
01:47:01,115 –> 01:47:04,735
creatives, there is a sense of

1677
01:47:06,635 –> 01:47:09,275
and this is why Michael Jordan is still considered to be the one of the

1678
01:47:09,275 –> 01:47:12,790
greatest basketball players of all time, period, full stop.

1679
01:47:15,490 –> 01:47:19,250
Even when he hasn’t played in the league in 25, 30 years

1680
01:47:19,250 –> 01:47:22,850
almost now. His name still the taste of his name still falls out of

1681
01:47:22,850 –> 01:47:26,525
people’s mouths. Right? Why? Because he he did

1682
01:47:26,665 –> 01:47:30,345
everything that he could do at a very high level, and he only

1683
01:47:30,345 –> 01:47:33,005
left when he couldn’t keep doing it at a high level. That’s Milton.

1684
01:47:34,025 –> 01:47:37,305
Mhmm. He’s writing the poem at a high level even though he thinks he’s lost

1685
01:47:37,305 –> 01:47:40,800
it. Yeah. He thinks it’s not there anymore. That’s

1686
01:47:40,800 –> 01:47:44,400
how you know Milton and

1687
01:47:44,400 –> 01:47:48,159
Jordan and the entrepreneur who you know who’s built a

1688
01:47:48,159 –> 01:47:51,760
business that you’ve never heard of and yet is everywhere. Right? Or the small

1689
01:47:51,760 –> 01:47:55,325
business owner on your block. Right? I’ve known many small business

1690
01:47:55,325 –> 01:47:58,845
owners, right, who the reason they can and this gets back to the idea of

1691
01:47:58,845 –> 01:48:02,445
succession that we were talking about earlier, around Ulysses. The

1692
01:48:02,445 –> 01:48:05,645
reason they can’t give away the business is because they don’t think that their son

1693
01:48:05,645 –> 01:48:08,385
or daughter can do it at the same high level that they did it.

1694
01:48:09,230 –> 01:48:12,989
They just don’t believe it. Mhmm. There’s also elements of,

1695
01:48:12,989 –> 01:48:16,670
like, regardless of what is occurring in your life, like, the

1696
01:48:16,670 –> 01:48:19,730
show must go on, man. And

1697
01:48:20,429 –> 01:48:23,570
I worked with it I I worked with a woman. It was unbelievable.

1698
01:48:24,725 –> 01:48:28,485
She was a dishwasher at a restaurant, a small restaurant. I was

1699
01:48:28,485 –> 01:48:32,005
a friend of hers, a meat market. The the the back was sandwich and bar

1700
01:48:32,005 –> 01:48:35,785
shop. She had a baby on, like, a Monday.

1701
01:48:36,405 –> 01:48:39,065
She was back washing dishes on, like,

1702
01:48:39,810 –> 01:48:43,250
Thursday. Oof. And we were like, what? And she’s like,

1703
01:48:43,250 –> 01:48:46,690
hey. Show must go on. You

1704
01:48:46,690 –> 01:48:50,310
know? And that’s it. That’s it.

1705
01:48:50,770 –> 01:48:54,130
Alright. We’ve been talking about In Memoriam. It is a

1706
01:48:54,130 –> 01:48:57,625
long poem. There are, my

1707
01:48:57,625 –> 01:48:59,805
gosh, multiple parts to In Memoriam.

1708
01:49:01,625 –> 01:49:05,145
Yeah. And then when I first looked at it, I thought, oh my lord. The

1709
01:49:05,145 –> 01:49:08,765
Roman numerals never end on the numbering of this one.

1710
01:49:09,370 –> 01:49:12,810
It gets into the Roman numeral c, which I’m not even clear. I don’t even

1711
01:49:12,810 –> 01:49:15,070
remember what the Roman numeral c is.

1712
01:49:16,490 –> 01:49:19,530
And I’m sure Hundred. I I guess something like it’s gotta be. Right? I thought

1713
01:49:19,530 –> 01:49:22,830
that was l. Wait. No. L’s 50. So c has to be a hundred.

1714
01:49:23,245 –> 01:49:27,085
Right. Okay. Alright. Cool. All I know is

1715
01:49:27,085 –> 01:49:30,685
there aren’t as many Super Bowls as there are parts of the

1716
01:49:30,685 –> 01:49:34,145
poem in memoriam. Not yet, anyway.

1717
01:49:34,844 –> 01:49:38,590
There’s a lot of poems and yeah. Yeah. And each one of the

1718
01:49:38,590 –> 01:49:42,130
poems in In Memoriam ties into the next one,

1719
01:49:42,909 –> 01:49:46,449
in sir with certain elements. But each one of the poems can stand

1720
01:49:46,510 –> 01:49:49,389
individually on its own. So we’re just gonna pull one that has a very famous

1721
01:49:49,389 –> 01:49:52,925
line at the end, and then I want to, what, I wanna wrap up because

1722
01:49:52,925 –> 01:49:56,684
we’ve talked extensively today. Both of you have been very gracious

1723
01:49:56,684 –> 01:50:00,144
with me, and we’re we’re we’re rounding the horn here.

1724
01:50:01,005 –> 01:50:04,764
So I’m gonna read in memoriam, as I tell

1725
01:50:04,764 –> 01:50:08,539
my sometimes tell my son when I’m reading him Jules Verne and Journey

1726
01:50:08,539 –> 01:50:11,840
to the Center of the Earth, my 7 year old boy, XXVII.

1727
01:50:16,219 –> 01:50:17,920
27. That’s right.

1728
01:50:20,715 –> 01:50:24,315
I envy not in any moods, the captive void of noble

1729
01:50:24,315 –> 01:50:27,994
rage, the linnet born within the cage that never knew the

1730
01:50:27,994 –> 01:50:31,755
summer woods. I envy not the beast that takes his

1731
01:50:31,755 –> 01:50:35,540
license in the field of time unfettered by the sense of crime to

1732
01:50:35,540 –> 01:50:39,300
whom a conscience never wakes, nor what may count

1733
01:50:39,300 –> 01:50:43,140
itself as blessed to the heart that never plight his trough, but

1734
01:50:43,140 –> 01:50:46,785
stagnates in the weeds of sloth, nor want

1735
01:50:46,925 –> 01:50:50,685
nor any want to be gotten rest. I hold it true.

1736
01:50:50,685 –> 01:50:54,305
Whatever befall, I feel it when I sorrow most.

1737
01:50:54,925 –> 01:50:58,065
Tis better to have loved and lost than never

1738
01:50:58,925 –> 01:51:01,185
to have loved at all.

1739
01:51:04,010 –> 01:51:07,770
And, again, there’s tons more, right, of these poems. Go out and

1740
01:51:07,770 –> 01:51:11,610
pick up the collection of Tennyson’s poems and plays. It will

1741
01:51:11,610 –> 01:51:14,465
enrich your life, and you will not regret

1742
01:51:15,005 –> 01:51:18,845
it. I wanna make one comment right here. Reading this, it’s the

1743
01:51:18,925 –> 01:51:22,285
it’s so beautiful. Like, it really is going back and and and seeing this and

1744
01:51:22,285 –> 01:51:24,545
be like, I had this book, though. What am I doing?

1745
01:51:26,295 –> 01:51:30,020
But so Picasso went into the cave of

1746
01:51:30,020 –> 01:51:33,400
Lascaux, the Mhmm. Cave paintings, and he

1747
01:51:34,100 –> 01:51:36,760
said, we’ve invented nothing.

1748
01:51:38,260 –> 01:51:41,755
So when I read this or listen to you read

1749
01:51:41,755 –> 01:51:45,195
this Mhmm. It it makes me

1750
01:51:45,435 –> 01:51:49,275
it it it helps me remember that we’re standing on the

1751
01:51:49,275 –> 01:51:51,835
shoulders of of

1752
01:51:52,635 –> 01:51:56,400
yeah. They’re they’re almost gods at this point. You know?

1753
01:51:56,860 –> 01:51:59,200
Yeah. Yeah. Well said. Because,

1754
01:52:02,220 –> 01:52:05,280
not not only do we quote these people,

1755
01:52:06,635 –> 01:52:10,075
you know, rightfully, you know, but what they’re saying

1756
01:52:10,075 –> 01:52:13,515
is is it feels timeless. It

1757
01:52:13,515 –> 01:52:17,275
feels prophetic. It feels like

1758
01:52:17,275 –> 01:52:20,880
more than just a lecture from a professor. It

1759
01:52:20,880 –> 01:52:24,420
feels like that because they are prophetic.

1760
01:52:24,560 –> 01:52:28,020
They are prescient. They are brilliant,

1761
01:52:29,360 –> 01:52:33,140
the these poems by Tennyson. And he

1762
01:52:34,045 –> 01:52:37,724
he says things that get to the real

1763
01:52:37,724 –> 01:52:41,324
heart of the matter. You know? And, again, he

1764
01:52:41,324 –> 01:52:44,925
is he is, like, he is mourning the loss of his

1765
01:52:44,925 –> 01:52:48,710
best friend who was really young when he died. And

1766
01:52:48,710 –> 01:52:52,230
he thought there was all this potential. There was all

1767
01:52:52,230 –> 01:52:56,070
this, he thought he was that Arthur Henry Hallam was better

1768
01:52:56,070 –> 01:52:59,910
than Tennyson himself. Wow. And the but and

1769
01:52:59,910 –> 01:53:03,290
so he thought this is an extinguished light.

1770
01:53:03,735 –> 01:53:07,195
What in the world is going on with this thing called life?

1771
01:53:07,335 –> 01:53:10,855
Right? And, but then he observes the

1772
01:53:10,855 –> 01:53:14,695
world around him and says, I envy not in any

1773
01:53:14,695 –> 01:53:17,675
moods the captive void of noble rage,

1774
01:53:18,840 –> 01:53:22,680
the linnet born within the cage that never knew the Summer Woods. Right? I mean,

1775
01:53:22,680 –> 01:53:25,900
he’s in other words, he gets in to he gives us these images

1776
01:53:26,520 –> 01:53:28,620
that ultimately he will tell us,

1777
01:53:30,200 –> 01:53:33,420
you know, that it’s better to have loved

1778
01:53:34,015 –> 01:53:37,855
and lost than never to have loved at all. So he goes, it was worth

1779
01:53:37,855 –> 01:53:41,535
it. Right? And Yeah. It sounds very romantic, like

1780
01:53:41,535 –> 01:53:44,895
it’s about a man and a woman. You know, I think that’s how a lot

1781
01:53:44,895 –> 01:53:48,095
of pop culture kind of takes it. But this is really, you know

1782
01:53:48,255 –> 01:53:51,579
Tennyson the poet is is

1783
01:53:51,639 –> 01:53:54,780
revealing himself as the speaker of this poem saying,

1784
01:53:55,800 –> 01:53:59,500
it’s better to risk it than to to

1785
01:53:59,960 –> 01:54:03,574
to to to break

1786
01:54:03,574 –> 01:54:07,335
yourself off from the world. Right. Mariana. Right.

1787
01:54:07,335 –> 01:54:11,094
Right. And, Yeah. And it it it it’s worth it. And,

1788
01:54:11,415 –> 01:54:14,775
I hold it true whatever befall, he

1789
01:54:14,775 –> 01:54:18,310
says. Right? So there is truth for

1790
01:54:18,310 –> 01:54:22,150
Tennyson. He holds some things true. Right? He can still

1791
01:54:22,150 –> 01:54:25,910
hold on. And that’s one one of the thing that’s things that’s

1792
01:54:25,910 –> 01:54:29,750
so comforting in these the midst of these poems. He will talk

1793
01:54:29,750 –> 01:54:33,575
about the this this tension

1794
01:54:33,635 –> 01:54:36,995
between let’s just call it evolution as

1795
01:54:36,995 –> 01:54:40,615
opposed to science. Well, like and faith

1796
01:54:40,675 –> 01:54:44,515
or, you know, religion. Right? He in memoriam is full of

1797
01:54:44,515 –> 01:54:48,230
that. There’s a lot of poems that deal with with those 2, you

1798
01:54:48,230 –> 01:54:51,990
know, mad those 2, issues, and and he’s trying

1799
01:54:51,990 –> 01:54:55,830
to, like, trying to reconcile those two things. But

1800
01:54:55,830 –> 01:54:59,385
here he says, ultimately, I hold it true whatever

1801
01:54:59,385 –> 01:55:03,225
befall. I feel it when I sorrow most to

1802
01:55:03,545 –> 01:55:06,685
it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

1803
01:55:10,345 –> 01:55:14,100
Reconciliation of tension, access to

1804
01:55:14,100 –> 01:55:17,684
knowledge. Right? Mhmm. And yet a a

1805
01:55:17,684 –> 01:55:19,960
a a a a sure fit of wisdom,

1806
01:55:21,620 –> 01:55:25,160
relationships, and the meaning of them and the depth of them,

1807
01:55:25,540 –> 01:55:29,385
life, and what is this thing? It’s almost the Beatles

1808
01:55:29,385 –> 01:55:30,845
could have almost written that line.

1809
01:55:33,945 –> 01:55:37,545
Institutions, bureaucracies, systemic structures that build cages

1810
01:55:37,545 –> 01:55:41,225
around people, and then demand that we exist inside of them when

1811
01:55:41,225 –> 01:55:44,290
everything in us is maybe screaming to burst out.

1812
01:55:50,510 –> 01:55:54,050
I I I I frame my last part of this as the eternal sunshine

1813
01:55:54,350 –> 01:55:57,170
of the inscrutable mind. I was being clever there.

1814
01:55:58,925 –> 01:56:02,445
Yeah. And I think

1815
01:56:02,445 –> 01:56:05,665
that our minds are inscrutable to us.

1816
01:56:06,125 –> 01:56:09,965
We actually don’t know ourselves. And a poet like

1817
01:56:09,965 –> 01:56:13,570
Tennyson opens the door for us to know

1818
01:56:13,570 –> 01:56:17,329
ourselves by exposing what we don’t know in a raw

1819
01:56:17,329 –> 01:56:20,710
kind of way, but doing it in a way that is,

1820
01:56:21,570 –> 01:56:25,090
gentle, that is, fundamentally, I

1821
01:56:25,090 –> 01:56:28,655
think, loving. Right? And loving from

1822
01:56:28,715 –> 01:56:32,475
a agape sense, not an eros. This is

1823
01:56:32,475 –> 01:56:35,515
not this is not eros. You may wanna put arrows to moment to your point.

1824
01:56:35,515 –> 01:56:38,075
You may wanna place arrows on top of this, but it is not that’s not

1825
01:56:38,075 –> 01:56:41,695
what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about agape love. We’re talking about

1826
01:56:42,090 –> 01:56:45,390
the love of between that exists just between people

1827
01:56:46,410 –> 01:56:50,090
in a who are pursuing a common goal called trying to

1828
01:56:50,090 –> 01:56:52,190
figure out life. Mhmm.

1829
01:56:54,185 –> 01:56:57,945
And this is this goes beyond productivity. This goes beyond our tools. This goes

1830
01:56:57,945 –> 01:57:01,625
beyond our systems and processes. This goes beyond our science and

1831
01:57:01,625 –> 01:57:05,325
our rationality. This even goes beyond our religious structures and our dogma.

1832
01:57:05,625 –> 01:57:09,325
This goes to something else, and poetry is the

1833
01:57:10,720 –> 01:57:14,260
vehicle for that something

1834
01:57:17,440 –> 01:57:21,120
else. And so It’s a big Go for it. Yeah. So, you know,

1835
01:57:21,120 –> 01:57:24,480
usually, I wind up these or I try to wind up these podcast episodes with,

1836
01:57:24,480 –> 01:57:28,265
like, this is what you should maybe take from this. But occasionally, I’ll run I’ll

1837
01:57:28,265 –> 01:57:31,625
run across episodes or I’ll do episodes where the answer will

1838
01:57:31,625 –> 01:57:35,385
be, I’ve concluded nothing. I have no conclusions for you. It’s

1839
01:57:35,385 –> 01:57:38,850
an open ended episode. I’m thinking this is gonna be an open

1840
01:57:38,850 –> 01:57:41,830
ended episode because I have no conclusion here. There’s no

1841
01:57:42,690 –> 01:57:46,469
there’s no dating mall from the climax. Right?

1842
01:57:47,090 –> 01:57:50,145
I do I do believe in what t e Lawrence said, never outstay a climax.

1843
01:57:50,145 –> 01:57:53,765
So we’re gonna we’re gonna let we’re gonna let Roman Ryan

1844
01:57:53,985 –> 01:57:57,045
close off here. Come back to your points, though. Socrates

1845
01:57:58,785 –> 01:58:02,465
was wise in that he said the unexamined life isn’t worth

1846
01:58:02,465 –> 01:58:06,040
living. Yeah. Right? And Tennyson repeats

1847
01:58:06,040 –> 01:58:09,640
that in his own way by saying I envy not the beast that takes his

1848
01:58:09,640 –> 01:58:13,180
license in the field of time, unfettered by the sense of crime,

1849
01:58:13,400 –> 01:58:16,540
to whom a conscience never wakes.

1850
01:58:17,445 –> 01:58:20,905
Right? I mean, it’s embedded. Right? It ultimately,

1851
01:58:21,045 –> 01:58:24,805
he’s saying it’s good to think and

1852
01:58:24,805 –> 01:58:28,165
to have a conscience and to be bothered

1853
01:58:28,165 –> 01:58:31,705
by the various aspects of life

1854
01:58:31,765 –> 01:58:34,650
and not just be sort of,

1855
01:58:35,690 –> 01:58:39,450
kind of not slothful, just, you know, not taking advantage of

1856
01:58:39,450 –> 01:58:42,989
the moments. Right? You you you, in Ulysses,

1857
01:58:43,210 –> 01:58:46,270
he says, I wanna drink life to the lees,

1858
01:58:47,074 –> 01:58:50,215
right, to the bottom of the cup where the sediment is.

1859
01:58:50,594 –> 01:58:54,275
Right? I think it’s the same thing here. It’s like, what does that look

1860
01:58:54,275 –> 01:58:57,015
like? What does that sense of

1861
01:58:57,635 –> 01:59:01,449
living life to the leaves, drinking it to the bottom of the cup

1862
01:59:01,590 –> 01:59:05,270
look like? It’s not just a hedonistic. It’s not just a, you

1863
01:59:05,270 –> 01:59:08,949
know, a sense of, to eat,

1864
01:59:08,949 –> 01:59:12,230
drink, and be merry for tomorrow, we die. I think there but there is a

1865
01:59:12,230 –> 01:59:15,935
sense of urgency Even if you’re gonna live into your

1866
01:59:15,935 –> 01:59:19,695
eighties or nineties or or beyond, who knows what’ll happen when we’re

1867
01:59:19,695 –> 01:59:22,755
ultimately at that age, you know, I would hope.

1868
01:59:23,535 –> 01:59:27,380
It’s it is the sense of if you’re gonna

1869
01:59:27,380 –> 01:59:31,060
live, you’ve gotta live. And to

1870
01:59:31,060 –> 01:59:34,679
be in it, like Ryan said earlier, just

1871
01:59:34,980 –> 01:59:38,580
in it. And so I don’t know. These poems

1872
01:59:38,580 –> 01:59:41,555
inspire me to take

1873
01:59:42,335 –> 01:59:46,095
the life that we’ve been given, however

1874
01:59:46,095 –> 01:59:49,775
that works, and just ex just ring

1875
01:59:49,775 –> 01:59:53,455
it out to where at the end of it, that

1876
01:59:53,455 –> 01:59:57,219
cloth is that is dry. You know? The the cup

1877
01:59:57,219 –> 02:00:00,900
is down to its bottom of the, you know, the the sediment in the

1878
02:00:00,900 –> 02:00:04,580
bottom of that cup. And, and it it will

1879
02:00:04,580 –> 02:00:08,235
have been better to have loved and lost than never to

1880
02:00:08,235 –> 02:00:11,775
have loved at all. I think you could change that out. It’s it’d

1881
02:00:12,074 –> 02:00:15,835
be better to have lived and lost than never to have lived at

1882
02:00:15,835 –> 02:00:19,440
all. Ryan, final words?

1883
02:00:20,560 –> 02:00:24,400
That I think, Tennyson is do both both of you beautiful, by the way.

1884
02:00:24,400 –> 02:00:25,300
Thanks so much.

1885
02:00:30,080 –> 02:00:33,625
Not only I think

1886
02:00:33,784 –> 02:00:37,485
I I get a sense of Tennyson’s

1887
02:00:38,105 –> 02:00:41,705
character through reading all of

1888
02:00:41,705 –> 02:00:45,145
these, and it’s not I mean, I’ve I’ve I’ve

1889
02:00:45,145 –> 02:00:48,720
read it’s this is this is and I’ve never spent this much time on

1890
02:00:48,720 –> 02:00:52,080
Tennyson, but it has affected me much differently than

1891
02:00:52,080 –> 02:00:55,920
before. And I the

1892
02:00:55,920 –> 02:00:59,304
takeaway is I get a sense that he, you know,

1893
02:00:59,445 –> 02:01:02,025
he, you know, it’s a,

1894
02:01:03,125 –> 02:01:06,965
he did the dance. Like, he, you know, he put his money money

1895
02:01:06,965 –> 02:01:10,405
where his mouth is, that sort of thing. Like, he didn’t just glaze over

1896
02:01:10,405 –> 02:01:14,080
the the summary and then and then, you know, and then turn all

1897
02:01:14,080 –> 02:01:17,760
this stuff out with some you know? The the there is that that

1898
02:01:17,760 –> 02:01:21,360
book years ago called million little pieces Mhmm. And,

1899
02:01:21,920 –> 02:01:25,760
found out, after the fact so short story. I’m in

1900
02:01:25,760 –> 02:01:29,155
recovery. I haven’t had a drink. The other day was, 20 years, and,

1901
02:01:29,554 –> 02:01:33,014
a friend of mine by the name is Cynthia. I’ve known her my entire life.

1902
02:01:33,074 –> 02:01:35,715
She bought this book for me, A 1000000 Little Pieces. She was like, it was

1903
02:01:35,715 –> 02:01:39,074
so inspiring. Blah blah blah. I’ve read the first three pages, and I was like,

1904
02:01:39,074 –> 02:01:42,034
this is BS. This guy didn’t do any of this. And then he was on

1905
02:01:42,034 –> 02:01:45,320
Oprah, like, a few weeks later Yeah. And it was K. And

1906
02:01:46,260 –> 02:01:49,620
someone who’s experienced who did the deed, I knew that he was

1907
02:01:49,620 –> 02:01:53,220
lying. But everyone else who read it, they thought it was a

1908
02:01:53,220 –> 02:01:57,060
miracle. And so that is sort of my takeaways. Like, he

1909
02:01:57,060 –> 02:02:00,020
did all the shit. Yes. And so

1910
02:02:00,435 –> 02:02:04,275
yeah. And with

1911
02:02:04,275 –> 02:02:08,115
that, I would like to thank Ryan

1912
02:02:08,115 –> 02:02:11,735
Stout and Momen Kazi for coming on the Leadership

1913
02:02:11,795 –> 02:02:15,639
Lessons from the Great Books podcast one more time. This is the

1914
02:02:15,639 –> 02:02:19,480
first time we’ve had them both on together at the same time. And,

1915
02:02:19,800 –> 02:02:23,639
and with that, well, guess what? We’re

1916
02:02:23,639 –> 02:02:27,020
out. Goodbye. Thank you. Bye. It was a pleasure.