Excerpts From Aesthetical Sermons

We conclude our diversion into the story-telling capabilities of Joris with his description of the Valkyries from the Norse tradition. Transcription of Joris:The daughters of Asgard, angelic gatherers of dead men. Flying with their winged steeds over battlefields and singing godly melodies. Godly I say! What other melodies are there for goddesses. And yet so coy, so confident. Their eyes sifting through piles of dead heroes and selecting only the most marvelous to join them. But oh, who to choose? And their sinuous bodies, unveiled by discourteous winds, crudely exposing their nudity. And what of this body? His there—that one of exceeding beauty. That one body that, even in death, outmatched the living in brute sensuality. “He is mine!” Shrieked one sister. “Nay, I shall carry him!” Cried another. And turning upon themselves, these two flashed wrathful eyes and hurled malevolence at one another. “Hateful gaswhistler!” “Hog moth[er?] of merchants!” Such delicious obscenities they exchanged. Truly, they in

In episode 19, we continue with another story excerpted from Joris' Sermon on Familiar Stories. This time, we examine his retelling of the Trojan War. Transcription of Joris:Imagine instead that your daughter's liquid insides were spread upon an altar to Poseidon, and imagine the aspect of your wife's, the queen's, face as you dedicated this sacrifice to ten years of war: ten years of blood and savagery, and spears piercing jaws and ribs, and rapacious men and their many paramours, and great machines of destruction, and in their wake heaps of fallen soldiers flowering as their festering wounds bloomed a great phalanx of flies; ten years of venomous oaths against foreign men and ten years of incensed incantations to inconstant gods and their constant attacks on our fevered brains and pained hearts that yearn for glory as they do for omnisexual passions. Such was Achilleus' heart and wrathful brain, whose actions, to this day, we celebrate by dragging men in our own time through the streets behind horses until

Returning in spite of ourselves, we revisit a sermon once excerpted upon the request of our listeners. In this excerpt, we hear Joris' rendition of a well-loved tale.Transcription of Joris:Who were they? These pigs. These lightly-haired construers of architectural ingenuity and manufacturers of inhabitable poetry? They were a brotherhood, and it is said in parchments that smell of mould and millennia, that they wielded rare imaginative powers that spanned the very circumference of creation, and even, from time to time, piercing its gauzy membrane to gaze upon the sublimity of chaos. With what delicate care they arranged their artifacts, and with what subtlety they executed their construction, we can only dream—and only in the most tumultuous of dreams. But their contemporaries needed not dream, and with the gross regional prestige the brothers acquired, they quickly became visited by innumerable admirers, who flocked to gaze upon their works and to hear their poems deploying both pastoral and bestial themes.I

We take a break from Joris this week for another display of Philip's musical genius.

For our first livecast, we will be hearing Joris' idea of how heaven looks.Unfortunately, our question and answer session is cut short due to unseen circumstances.Transcription of Joris:I am frequently asked by those seeking inspiration about what sort of landscapes I believe heaven and hell to be. The simplest answer would be to describe them as metaphysics has painted them: the sewers for that wonderful fluid called life that the spigot of nature pours upon the earth. A tawdry collection of human souls celebrating themselves in a monochromatic  zone of cloud and air. But this answer is often unsatisfactory to those unfortunate creatures incapable of imagining the afterlife on their own. And so I psychically transport myself for them, describing every detail along the way.There would be in heaven, nay, must be, a great mountainside covered in conquering pine. And where the tips of their crowns reach the sky, I would espy an owl or some great raptor preening herself with a great hooked beak. And I would

In the concluding episode of our 2-part special on Joris Planck's "Sermon on Passion and Consequence," we hear a story of captivating pathos told by our beloved Chief Zealot.Transcription of Joris:The Maple was not always Maple to the Cedar. At one point, the two looked upon each other and saw no difference. ’Twas a love marked by rapture and moistened brows. Such was their love that one unto the other would whisper the sweetest of nothings, all the while continuously  churning the surrounding air with leaféd limbs. Such was their love. But this sublimity, this state of pleasure swollen by tender, woody caresses, eventually capitulated to time. It became uneasy and fitful. It demanded new experience and novel circumstance, for no other reason than that time insisted upon it. And with this evolution, Maple imagined new ways to admire her lover. She drew in her mind new landscapes, in which the cedar struck a handsome silhouette and beautified the otherwise naked stone.“There!” said she, “about the barren

This week's episode will be the first of two excerpts taken from Joris Planck's "Sermon on Passion and Consequence."Part I will address Passion. It should help us come to new knowledge about the human experience.Transcription of Joris:"I have no measurable love for man or woman. I've barely love for myself, save that particular sort of love that manifests in resentment and pity. The sort that we might feel for an old donkey that staves off predatory species but that brays terribly whenever he sees your face. And I have visited that variety of surgeon who specializes in madness and foul humors, and he instructed me that the pernicious sort of love I bear for myself only benefits those accretions of toxins in the blood and in the joints, and which eventually leads to the systematic degradation of digestive juices required to convert victuals into heat and kinetic bodily movements, and that for this reason I shiver and remain frozen in my wild catalepsies. He was a surgeon who, to most, would be thanked, and he

The choice of clip for Episode 13 was inspired by the heat we're feeling at the moment. It certainly has made all us here feel a combined sensation of discomfort and irritation.In the clip, Joris attempts to join in local festivities, only to be disillusioned by its philosophical shortcomings. Transcription of Joris:"What a hateful object, the sun. It has become obvious to me in my old age that it delights in nothing other than to radiate all life with heat. Even the sea is galled into filing the air with noxious humidity. I am boiled into a torpor. I am rendered wide-eyed, perturbed and motionless, put in a veritable coma of hot ferocity and left wishing that I were some fish of preternatural sloth and contentedness. Must I go to the local themed park for spiritual rejuvenation? Must I partake in its controlled ecstasies and the selection of creamed ice it peddles? But they are uncivilized! There is always the conspicuous absence of gooseberry and bitter marigold amongst their choices of flavors.As a ph

Episode 12 returns to our favorite chief zealot. As per a listener request, we will be sampling one of his more simple arguments for examination. In it, Joris weighs the need to identify as one particular animal or another—to shocking results.Transcription of Joris:"I used to think poorly of those who considered themselves either a dog person or a cat person. And then I became a cat person. And then I became a dog person. And then I became a person once again who thinks lowly upon those dog and cat people. And then I became a dog person again. And after that a cat person two consecutive times. And then there was a period I forget, for they were the many tortured years when I found myself struggling to determine which was more beautiful, the zinnia or the peony... it is of course the peony. But coming out of that period, I recommenced as the kind of person who thought poorly of those who consider themselves either a dog or a cat person. As you can imagine, I'm entering a new era, one in which I must once again

Episode 11 will provide us with a momentary break from our beloved Joris Planck, to give our minds a moment to breathe. Instead, we will be sharing an a cappella creation by Philip that should inspire both terror and joy in us.

Episode 10 will showcase one of Joris' invocations that sporadically appear within his sermons. His "Invocation to Polyhymnia" is both a poem and an act of devotion to the muse of meditation, pantomime, and eloquence.Transcription of Joris:"I sing the praise of Polyhymnia:Dame most dower, dame of word and dance,Who has the cheeks of cherubs and the armsOf nereids about the jagged rocks.Thou art the power that can o’erswell the mouthsOf poets. Thou art she whose pantomimeConvinces us that even silence speaks.Thou art my muse most favored. And, by your robes,Of alabaster white and honeyed thread,Do I commit my song. Your fatted mouthFrom which spill words exuberantly, is a fount—Nay, cataract, in a prehistoried landWhich floods the basin of a verdant wood.Lift not thy finger thus if it's to hush.Seal not thine orifice, unless it isTo stop yourself from growing more thine waist.Instead give us your guidance to escapeThis savagery to lands where dwell the menAnd women who speak lovely as thou art.Let's drink to l

Episode 9 gives us insight into Joris Planck's belief in the gods of mythology. The excerpt is taken from his "Sermon on Familiar Stories," which tackles the epic task of weaving together every story under the sun. Transcription of Joris:"I wonder, should we maintain a perverse belief in these gods of old once sung of in metered hymn and marbled relief? They were as various as my moods and just as lackluster about mankind. Their intention has never been to inspire faith, nor even love, nor even fear: fear in their elemental power and aloof disposition. Love for their brute hegemony and painted faces. The dryads perhaps we love. Yes, their tantalizing limbs are too beautiful to be ignored. But faith? We would be fools to believe the gods' antics were meant as lures for the faithful. We should sooner celebrate the mutability of stone. So, wanting nothing from us (for no thing could we offer to counterbalance their extravagance), why shouldn't we abandon these ancient gods as we have all other things natura

Episode 8 excerpts a moment from Joris Planck's "Sermon on Companionship," wherein he considers how much time he wastes. We'll be challenged to decide if we, the listeners, aren't somehow implicated in his metaphors.Transcription of Joris:"Watching my chickens, the overbearing gravity of wasted time oppresses me. Then again, seeing anything overwhelms me with this sentiment. Why, I could have mentioned clouds dissolving, or wind carrying outrageously engineered seeds as they parachute wildly to mock the Mother Earth, who is all too desperate to cultivate each and every one. By Jove, and it pains me to speak in such frank words, my mind cannot conjure a single thing that doesn't sag with the appalling avowel that time is wasting away savagely, inexorably, and, in a desperate attempt to dissuade me from discovering its accelerating atrophy, it searches frantically the endless corridors of memory for some thing, some image, that may challenge this intellectual blockade. But there is nothing there, Mind! Mind, th

Episode 7 showcases a passage from one of Joris Planck's many sermons on aesthetics. Joris asks himself if his art is bettered or worsened by education.Transcription of Joris:"Sometimes I wish that I were a precocious practitioner of aesthetics able to justify having never enrolled in university or having ever proffered an art debased by learning. I would spit on education and all others instructing me to read this tome or to open my eyes to that masterpiece. My creations would be unsullied by the overbearing insufficiency accompanied by that confession that at one point my work was not as good as it is now. My confidence would soar, and my image would forever be etched in history as a monolithic know-it-all, perennially aged, never pink-skinned, and woefully unschooled. A decrepit and acerbic old monster to whom the world looks for unblemished sagacity and sublime, horrible foreshadowing.But as it is, I must only dream of such accolades, the reason being that I never tire of taking notes on lectures given by

Episode 6 presents us with a second clip from Joris Planck's early work, the "Sermon on Strolling." In this passage, he recounts a story wherein he adopted a practice of walking in a group. Transcription of Joris:"I have of late partaken in a procession of playfully costumed and coiffured paraders, who on occasion flood my street in a monsoon of pageantry and vociferations. Their language is incomprehensible, but that has not stopped me from joining their rank and file. Though to be sure, my reasons for joining are vague...Despite having processed with them some 3 dozen times, their unwillingness to accept me has not waned. The children accost me with insult, and the elders appear annoyed. But not once have I been asked to leave, and so I remain glued to their number as it wends its way through lovely stands of animated aspen and beech.When we reach a common area, some race to the rockier perches, while others the grassy sprawls, where their fill is eaten and their heads butted ceremoniously. When I atte

In episode 5, we hear the first of 2 clips from Joris Planck's "Sermon on Strolling." We hope to shine some light on what Joris thought when he took walks.Transcription of Joris:"My friends, by which I mean my thoughts suggest leaving my incommodious apartment to visit some public venue or market square. Where wears are whimsically strung betwixt wooden post and lintel, and shrieking children confuse every tall individual within arms reach as their parent.... They tell me to visit manicured gardens where I might espy the governors family eating paté. They tell me to meander the artist quarter to have my silhouette torn from thick paper. And love. Those thoughts, those invasive friends, demand I court and be courted, woo and be wooed. That I might flourish and sire offspring, thereby extending my influence beyond and futurewards. Well... go into society? Perish the thought, by which I mean send that friendly inhabitant of my mind to the block so as to cleave its gregarious head from its overburdened shoulders.

In episode 4, we hear a clip from Joris Planck's "Sermon on Natural Philosophy." In it, Joris seems to waver on his opinions of science and what it "offers."Transcription of Joris:"Why should I care for the sciences, which blast my otherwise illiterate hours with images and scream light upon my gloom. And what of this tedious landscape it proposes? Should we not protest? Aseptic laboratories and perfect mathematics offer a vision of purgatory or worse. I say, show me a mathematics frequently tormented by a trickster god, who adds five daffodils together to make 15, and then shall I take interest in your bleak numerology. But I daren’t frighten my daffodils by bedding them beside beakers and equations. But do I speak too soon, for what exquisite loneliness this science has to offer, and upon such brilliantly chrom-ed plates — consider: a house on the moon! Why, I can think of no other meditation on solitude more arousing. Imagine, a perpetual horizon of black and grey. Surely such is an existence unparalleled

In episode 3, we will hear a passage from Joris Planck's "Sermon on Whimsy." Plus, we will hear some feedback from you our listeners!Transcription of Joris:"Sometimes I imagine myself some relation of mercurial puck. Perhaps a melancholy uncle who delights not in faerie politics, but the gainful exploitation of their eldritch pastimes of counting winged creatures and wheezing upon too too pollinated air. I would happily take up those less then glamorous occupations of flower disposal and tree maintenance. And while my dainty companions argued over the distribution of magical powders or the intensity of our pixied auras, I would dip hither and thither amongst the mossy stumps, cataloging the growths of imperialist molds. Insects would come to see me as the Francis of the faeries, and I would repay their adulation with lectures upon wistfulness. In fact, wistfulness would be our only repast, for no food would we handle, our hands sticky from weaving garlands out of resinous foliage. But happily we would all sur

In episode 2, we will hear a passage from Joris Planck's "Sermon on Respiration."  I hope to provide some pragmatic insight into this passage, but I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you.Transcription of Joris:"Grim, grim, and ever grimmer grow the weary days as they assault me with their vulgar passings. And with them go all hope of ever catching my breath. I swear, if the air could grow hands from out of its vaporous nothingness, I'm most certain that those moist claws would reach their awful talons around my wrinkled neck and finally achieve what would seem like a decade long conspiracy of the atmosphere's to suffocate me. Why it seems the very sea and air have switched places, and I am to drown as I stand upon dry land. What have you against me, ye clouds and gases? Why anoint my already disappointing open-eyed hours with invisible hatred? And if you must, then at least offer me sweet flavors in which to drown. May the humid gasps I strain be tinted with peppermint oils and orange blossoms. Ma

For this inaugural episode, we hear a sample from the "Sermon on Ethical Action"Transcription of Joris:"Do not envy the trees. They are forced to share the company of other trees indiscriminately. A neighborhood of stoic monoliths, a cathedral teeming with wooden clerics. Notwithstanding the lurid nakedness of their boughs in drearier months, they are an aristocratic lot with sugary blood, dressed in whatever is fashionable that season and crowned with gossiping robins, and only entertaining the attention of those capable and willing to endure being blasted with gales or sharing quarters with insects. A condition reserved for saints and not the commonplace of humanity. But we are the commonplace of humanity! Not one amongst us earns the crown of sainthood, not one should dare claim such a title, and if one rises amidst the crowd of mediocrity, declaring himself modeled upon ministerial morality, then rise the gallows and condemn him to a saintly end. For he proclaimed himself envious of the trees and their sa