At Home on the Web, H.M.S. Pinafore and Grandpa McLuhan

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Dear Friend and Listener:

In tonight’s edition of Planet Waves FM, we have the Gemini special for you. First I go over the manifold ingress into the mutable air sign: since last we spoke, the Sun, Venus and Vesta ingressed Gemini.

325+web-karsh-portrait
Grandpa McLuhan, at home amongst his tools.

Once again I elaborate on Vesta, my personal asteroid goddess and apparently a popular item among my readers, who get how beautiful this energy is.

In the second segment, I read the chart of opening night for H.M.S. Pinafore, from May 25, 1878. This spectacular operetta / light opera was the first smashing success for Gilbert and Sullivan, and contributed to the invention of modern musical theater.

I play four numbers from this play, describe its Bob Dylan-esque chart and tell some family stories (my mom played Josephine, the lead, at age 13 in a college production).

In the third and fourth segments, I return to the work of the spiritual grandfather of Planet Waves, Marshall McLuhan. In the spirit of Vesta in Gemini — making a home of our communications media — I refer to two quotes from grandpa, one about the development of literacy and its impact (which to me explains the Internet) and then one about politics going from the ballot box to the box office.

All in all, a fun, diverse program, presented free of commercial interruption thanks to you, our members, subscribers, contributors and customers. If you’re not already a member, do something you will appreciate and feel good about: sign up and do your part to have a positive impact on Planet Waves.

With love,
eric

Planet Waves

This Way To the Planet Waves Boutique!

Your readings are always so insightful and their timing tends to unfold in a way that refers to a point that we may not have reached yet but will be experiencing soon (at least that’s how it has felt to me). Thank you for listening and for your art, which nourishes us all!
— Winter Clark

Wishing for some sort of sign telling you, “This way”? Or for a huge gust of wind that picks you up and takes you on a breathtaking journey to peace, insight and clarity? Wish, wait and search no further.

As Winter Clark expresses above, Eric has a way of leaving you feeling well nourished at the end of his readings.

Yet, there is more than just ‘one way’ of exploring your life and taking charge. Here in the Planet Waves Boutique, you’ll find insight and wisdom; better yet, you’ll discover tools to help you reclaim your own power and choose the direction right for you.

Explore another way of life: one that leaves you excited for your next experience, constantly learning and creating your own destiny.

 


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Free, Featured Video: The Secrets of Gemini

This special Planet Waves TV broadcast on the Gemini solar chart drew the following comment from Marjorie Lipari: “Thank you. You were speaking so much about my chart, being that I am a Gemini with Gemini rising.” Alexandra Marx said Eric’s “understanding of Gemini is quite extraordinarily precise.” You won’t want to miss out on his reading for your year ahead. (The video above is indeed free and lavishly interesting.) Pre-order here for the well-worth-it discount price of $19.97.

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Eric’s hand-painted journals are going like hotcakes, but some of the first batch are still available. You can see a gallery of the notebooks here — they come in a variety of sizes, styles and painting techniques.

More Than ‘Just A Notebook’

Do you see a notebook? Or do you see a portal into a new narrative; a screen onto which you can project the movie of your life; a sanctuary where you can retreat when you need to make sense of the world or improvise a new one?

Whether you love to draw, write stories or simply keep a diary with mental meanderings and scribbles, you can receive one of Eric’s hand-painted notebooks when you upgrade to — or extend — your Backstage Pass membership. That’s the level that includes all the birthday readings, the Spring and Midyear readings, and discounts on everything else Eric has to offer (such as classes, and the annual reading).

When you extend your Core Community membership for a year (or become a Core Community member for the first time), you can receive one of the Planet Waves custom-branded journals (while supplies last). These are emblazoned with the Planet Waves logo in Eric’s print-script handwriting, welcoming you home.

One comment

  1. Re MM quote at top of show:

    in this talk, he was referencing the development of visual literacy.

    basically the wider theme is: when old media (reading and writing for ex) evolved into radio, TV, film, photography, etc. it left behind basically everyone in terms of how those new things are made. and it did so for decades. those who took part in reading and writing could also make those things; they could work deftly in the media of the day. a printing press is easy to understand. most people have seen one.

    but those who as passive audience took in photography, TV, radio, film, etc. generally had no clue whatsoever even about the actual processes involved. it was all a mystery — the glam of ’technology’ as mystique.

    now, all of these media have manifested in one huge upheaval and orgy of participation called the internet. this development is forcing a new level of literacy on some people, some have made the transition gracefully and others are eagerly leaping to it — and everyone else is getting sucked along by the undertow.

    either way there is an upsurge of new literacy, in particular of visual expressive modes, the kind that has been lacking through much of the electronic revolution principally TV. (Imagine how exotic a TV studio would have seemed even 30 or 40 years ago.)

    suddenly everyone is a photographer or videographer now and enticed or compelled to work in a visual medium that they in some way author no matter how rudimentary – such as email, Facebook, selfie, iPhone, etc. this is a radical reversal from prior generations of those exposed to electronic media in potato mode: now we have direct participation. and anyone can hit the ‘viral lottery’ at any time.

    my impression hearing Marshall offer that idea is that one way or another, the involvement theme of the internet is going to provoke huge mass involvement in society of an unusual number of people as the whole training of the net environment is involvement per se.

    we might critique it also as a place that consumes involvement and siphons it off of other perhaps “better” directed targets…yet even if that is true the impact of radically expanding knowledge in total (via net access) must express itself somehow as progress.

    PS that recording is taken from a much larger compilation that I happened to click on because the date was my year of birth (the child of the future!). later in the same series of recordings he says basically that people need to learn new literacy with live feedback – to write poetry publishing as you go – basically the kind of instantaneous publishing made possible by the internet.

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