Hi, this is Mark Linsomire and you are listening to Partially Examined Life, but not a regular episode.

Episode 107 Edmund Burke on the Sublime will be released shortly, and if you want you can take this as a pre-cognition or non-verbal exemplar of the sublime.

Maybe.

According to Burke, a philosopher before him talking about aesthetics were too focused in general on the beautiful,

but Burke rightly thought that there are plenty of things that are artistically interesting that beautiful is not the word you would use.

And by the sublime, Burke was pointing out phenomenon like a giant, imposing mountain, a ferocious tropical storm, a deep black ominous pit.

And he thought that you could give a completely different origin story for our experiences as the sublime is compared to our experiences as beautiful.

What you're about to hear, at least as much as you listen to, is our special musical holiday gift to you.

For a number of years now, I periodically driven my family crazy by singing a little of the song at an aggravatingly slow speed.

Finally, this year I got up the gumption to record it, the whole thing, with every verse slower than the previous one.

And I could make this actually listenable, even with my voice doing hideous and unnatural things.

If each verse had its own very interesting arrangements, that when you slow down a melody enough, it stops being a melody, it starts being a piece of atmosphere.

It's so legato, it doesn't even set a particular tempo or particular rhythm.

It goes with almost anything.

So I put out a call to all my musician friends and PEO listeners, even celebrities that I thought might participate.

And largely in the space of one weekend, we as a group pounded out this epic.

This is a worldwide effort with cracked past, back and forth over the internet.

Not a lot of second-guessing, very spontaneous.

I want to spend out a special thanks to Jonathan Siegel, who plays violin for one of my favorite bands, the Camp of the Ant Bay Toven.

And it's done many solo albums and other projects.

Also Daniel Gustasson, Jason Dursow, Shannon Farrell, Wilson, Max Bartko, Tim O'Carlier, Alex Fasella, Al Baker, Ken Bush, Jenny Green,

Kylie Jordan, Ray Tango, Greg Thornberg, and Adam Sank.

...