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Another three podcasts today and I have to say that the usual high quality of self-playing snooker suffered due to the mental strain. Luckily the two book clubs I recorded in the afternoon were fun/fascinating and I am now a couple of weeks ahead on that one, giving me a chance to read some more books! Book Club will take a hiatus over August as we go to three RHLSTPs a week, but will be back in September. I’ve already recorded a chat with Richard Ayoade which will go out when the show returns.
Guests were Laura Lexx whose debut novel Pivot is a bubbly ball of fun, rather like Laura herself and then I spoke to Guy Leschziner, about his fascinating and unsettling book The Man Who Tasted Words, and was completely unable to pronounce his name, even after quite a lot of practice. I don’t think he minded. But maybe he’ll throw an E Grant and refuse to allow me to put the podcast up. His book is about our senses and the weird and terrible things that can happen when they go wrong, but ultimately suggests that it’s possible that our senses are there not to help us observe reality, but in fact to hide it from us. It’s a complex idea and not one that Guy is really on board with, but obviously we only “see†and experience a select band of light and sound waves and it’s possible that time and space are constructs that help us keep alive, but in fact there’s no such thing. It sort of makes sense to me as I’ve always thought it’s a bit suspect that our perception of the universe and of maths depends on the concept of infinity, which is impossible to comprehend and seemingly impossible from our perspective. We are almost certainly a part of something that we can’t possibly understand from our perspective and have as much change of working out what’s going on around us as a bacteria living in your gut. Even if it could somehow come to comprehend it’s role in the stomach or even what its inside, it doesn’t have the perspective to be able to work out or even observe anything beyond that. Not knocking humans though. We’re done incredibly well to get as far as we have with understanding what life is, but I think it’s probably all going to just turn out to be a dream that I was having. So sorry to let you know that you’re a figment of my imagination. Even sorrier to let you know that I am too.
But within this “reality†that we perceive, whether real or not, there’s some incredible stuff going on and Guy’s book gives you a real understanding of the magnificence of our nervous systems. There’s even a bit about aphantasia. Guy says there’s no cure at the moment, which is disappointing. I am very annoyed to be blind, though he says it’s all a sliding scale and I have some ability to visualise, even though it’s just like a reflection on a pond from behind my field of mental vision. He writes about a woman who can’t have doors on her cupboards because she can’t visualise what’s inside (and she’s someone who lost her mind sight, having been an artist, which must be tougher than just never really having it). I know there are eggs on the top shelf of my fridge without opening the door. So maybe I should stop complaining.
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