AMMDI is an open-notebook hypertext writing experiment, authored by Mike Travers aka mtraven. It's a work in progress and some parts are more polished than others. Comments welcome! More.
Hah: Erik Davis is so hip, he won't even eat a square meal
audio editing error at the start?, ED's first comment seems kind of abrupt.
I do not get their theory of the paranormal at all. If it's just "imaginal" then why is it so fucking interesting and controverisal? I mean, the most extreme materialist in the world will acknowledge that imagination is a real phenomenon, depending on what "real" means of course.
Like, PF said something like, before you recognize that light in the sky as a passing plane or something mundane, it is actually and literally as UFO. I mean, sure? But then why a cult around them?
I think the answer is something like, we are interested in various phenomenon at the border between the real and the imaginal. How they are not all that distinct. (This is what High Weirdness was about).
Fiction opens up imaginal doorways, even realist fiction.
ED: there is a place for irony (or deflationary) in fantasy, although it's atypical. The gap between the prose and the enchantment. Lord Dunsany. Orechestrating the tensions. David Lynch. This book is very light-touch ironic
Kenneth Burke irony is a perspective of perspectives. The word "recursion" is used.
Expansive rather than dismissive irony.
At 1:00 or thereabouts, ED on techne, crafting, making...need to relisten
Later, both on the reality of the imaginal. An artist describes an ancient moss-covered cottage, the image might be brand new but the cottage has always been ancient.
This makes me want to scream. What is the point? I mean yes the imaginal has a kind of reality to it...I just don't quite get it. I mean if all this is is anti- gradgrindian then I'm on board but I don't see the point, who doesn't believe in imagination really?
JFM: an acausal layer.
I had forgotten the part about Frederick Barbarossa...emperor of the US.
Architecture. The interpentration of human and non-human agencies. Wonder if they ever mentioned Christopher Alexander? Looks like not.
Varieties of magic. Folk vs literate, thin-edge vs thick-edge.
Discussion of the elementals and whether they are agentic by Hawksquill? at end of book
ED: can't ethically snigger at astrology even in a crowd that is doing it...it would go against his experience. Hm. "An ethical demand" rather than an ontological one.
Hm I think this answers my earlier questions. It's a question of treating imaginal entities with a kind of respect, not sneering dismissal.