Poeta Doctus

Tim Morton recently posted the proceedings of a conference on the nature of reality. In response to the make-up of the panel, Morton remarks the absence of, for example, a humanist perspective, which got me thinking along the following lines….(And I mean lines! Damn WordPress, HTML, or my own lazy ignorance for the lack of hanging indents that would indicate that each of the seven statements that follow are each a poetic line!)

A neurobiologist, a theoretical and a computational physicist, an anaesthesiologist, and Deepak Chopra walk into a lecture hall to discuss The Nature of Reality.

Better to have staged a dramatic recitation of Plato’s Sophist, the Tao te Ching, or The Divine Comedy; even better if nobody knew Greek, Chinese, or Italian.

Better to’ve performed Schubert’s last sonata in B flat or had Ahad Master improvise, had everyone enter an anechoic chamber to hear their blood circulate and nerves hum,

Gone to The National Gallery of Canada and gazed on Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire,

Had everyone guided through a sequence of novice yoga moves or instructed how just to sit and fix the wandering mind on the breath swelling their bellies,

Fast forty days and forty nights, take a heroic dose of Psilocybe Cubensis (with due care to set and setting), cry for a vision, or participate in a potlatch,

Consider the view of the proverbial fly on the wall, the air in the room.