An Array of Utopian Flowers
-
Reclaiming Land, Culture, & Narrative Through Black, Indigenous, & Queer Stewardship
Posted on October 3, 2022 | 1 Comment - Historic Political Transitions in Honduras, Colombia, and Haiti
Posted on September 26, 2022 | No Comments - Cultural Fire: Native Land Management and Regeneration
Posted on September 20, 2022 | 3 Comments - Tales of the Fifth Dimension – The Fifth Fedora Anthology
Posted on September 19, 2022 | 1 Comment - How to Establish a Food Forest with Jim Gale
Posted on September 11, 2022 | No Comments
-
WilderUtopia in 102 Languages
‘Medicine Walk’ Featured in SBLitJo
Santa Barbara Literary Journal released ‘Bellatrix: Volume 3’ in June 2019, which among adventurous fiction, poetry, essays, and lyrics, features an excerpt of Jack Eidt’s psychic-animism fiction, Medicine Walk. Buy the book!
Performance Archive
-
Tales of the Fifth Dimension – The Fifth Fedora Anthology
Posted on September 19, 2022 | 1 CommentThe Fifth Fedora: Amazing and transformative tales of the Fifth Dimension, that thrive in the world of Lost Souls, Fallen Angels, Shapeshifters, Extra-Planetary Dragons, and Lucky Charms. from an assortment of writers, now available from Borda Books and WilderUtopia Books is The Fifth Fedora: An Anthology of Weird Noir & Stranger Tales, curated by Jack Eidt and Silver Webb. -
Poetry & Politics: City on the Second Floor with Matt Sedillo
Posted on March 5, 2022 | No CommentsOne of the best political poets today, Matt Sedillo discusses and recites poetry from his book City on the Second Floor. -
Paul Bowles Documentary: ‘Let it Come Down’
Posted on March 26, 2021 | 2 CommentsExpatriate writer, composer, and traveler Paul Bowles (1910-1999) stepped away from it all and reported back to us through his novels and short stories and is featured here in a documentary 'Let it Come Down'. He lived 52 years in Tangier, Morocco, and wrote evocatively of the place and its peoples. His most famous for his influential 1949 novel, The Sheltering Sky, was filmed by Bernardo Bertolucci. -
Corridor of the Surreal: Silver Webb and Jack Eidt Talk ‘City of Illumination’
Posted on January 27, 2021 | 2 CommentsJack Eidt talks with Silver Webb on his surreal trip to the Underworld story "City of Illumination," published by Borda Books in Delirium Corridor, A Dark Anthology, curated by Max Talley. It includes fifteen tales of psychological suspense, altered states, noir crime, and the surreal. -
Courting Delirium: Max Talley and his Dark Zeitgeist
Posted on January 9, 2021 | 2 CommentsJack Eidt from WilderUtopia.com had a chat with novelist Max Talley about the recent book he curated and contributed two stories to, called Delirium Corridor, A Dark Anthology, from Borda Books/Santa Barbara Literary Journal. -
Samuel Beckett, Confessions and the Human Condition
Posted on December 5, 2019 | 1 CommentSamuel Beckett’s legacy endures, and reaches far beyond the written word. Of all the English-language modernists, Beckett's work represents the most sustained attack on the realist tradition, dispensing with conventional plot and the unities of time and place in order to focus on essential components of the human condition. -
Sampling of Found Sound – Composer Pierre Henry
Posted on October 17, 2019 | No CommentsThe Art Of Sounds is a 2007 documentary on French electronic music pioneer Pierre Henry (1927 – 2017). Henry, along with his colleague Pierre Schaeffer, creating a form they dubbed musique concrète – an approach to electronic music based on using recorded sampling (also known as ‘found-object’) as source material. -
‘Medicine Walk’ Featured in Santa Barbara Literary Journal
Posted on June 3, 2019 | 4 CommentsSanta Barbara Literary Journal releases Bellatrix: Volume 3 this June, which among adventurous fiction, poetry, essays, and lyrics, features an excerpt of Jack Eidt's psychic-animism fiction, Medicine Walk. Join us for readings and other entertainments in SB on June 14. -
Pauline Oliveros and her Beautiful Canopies of Sound
Posted on April 15, 2019 | 2 CommentsPauline Oliveros was a vital creator of new music, a renowned electronic art music innovator and composer, an accordionist, the founder of deep listening and other experimental practices, a genius inventor of sound-making software, and a fearless champion on issues of gender, race, ability, and sexual orientation. Following is an essay on her "Sonic Meditations." -
Amazon Oil, Biodiversity and Human Rights in “Yasuni Man”
Posted on July 12, 2018 | 4 CommentsIn this episode of EcoJustice Radio, host Jack Eidt speaks with Ryan Killackey, filmmaker of the award-winning documentary film set in the Ecuadorian Amazon, "Yasuni Man." Plus, Zoe Cina-Sklar, campaigner for the #EndAmazonCrude effort by Amazon Watch, shares how California communities can play a powerful role in the fight for a just transition off fossil fuels. -
Cinematic Cultural Change in West Africa with Idrissa Ouédraogo
Posted on June 3, 2018 | 2 CommentsIdrissa Ouédraogo, whose simple, carefully observed movies about cultural change in Burkina Faso and elsewhere in Africa, brought him international acclaim and a top award at the Cannes International Film Festival, recently died. We share his first film, Yam Daabo (The Choice) about a family facing famine in the Sahel. -
Mild Satire, Outrage and Hostility, with Philip Roth
Posted on June 2, 2018 | No CommentsHis alter-ego Zuckerman, unconsciously frightened of success and of failure, frightened of being admired and also despised, frightened of being frightened, he unconsciously suppressed his talent, frightened of what it might do next. On the passing of Philip Roth, we look into his often black comic chronicles of an imagined life, his taking down and reshaping the meaning of 'Jewish American', and his play at historic re-creating the zeitgeist within the form of the novel. -
Big Noise from Big Band Drummer Gene Krupa
Posted on April 10, 2018 | 1 CommentGene Krupa (1909 – 1973) pioneered orchestral jazz and Big Band from the flamboyant drum side, pounding tom-toms, high hats, and cymbals through the 30s, 40s, and 50s, as one of the most remarkable percussionists out there. -
Iannis Xenakis and the Notion of a Cosmic Utopia
Posted on February 21, 2018 | No CommentsIannis Xenakis, the Greek-French experimental composer and protege designer for the famous architect Le Corbusier, advanced theories of the vertical "Cosmic" city as the only sustainable way forward. Here, he wrote this essay in 1966, decrying decentralization (read: suburban sprawl) in favor of building up, up, up...5 million inhabitants to be housed in a single megastructure, a hyperbolic paraboloid of more than 3,000 meters high and 50 meters wide. -
Tribute to SomaFM’s Darkwave channel ‘doomed’
Posted on January 22, 2018 | 7 CommentsSomafm.com has streamed an inventive radio channel pioneered by Rusty Hodge featuring, as they called it "Dark industrial/ambient music for tortured souls." The service was recently discontinued until October Halloween season, which to the Gothic-Ambient-Industrial music crowd signifies the end of an era. Following is a sample of sounds from the dark side. -
The Christmas Cat, in Shadowplay
Posted on December 25, 2017 | No Comments"Everyone knows the Christmas Cat, he's angry, huge, and mean," begins the story of inequality and injustice for the poor, with the feline ogre who punishes those who fail to perform for their overlords. Retold in a shadow puppet play from the Icelandic story of Jólakötturinn, by Layla Holzer and Spike Dennis. -
Stranger in Tangier: Paul Bowles Under The Sheltering Sky
Posted on November 14, 2017 | 3 CommentsPaul Bowles during his life (1910-1999) remained aloof from all the hipsters and hypesters of U.S. letters. Living in self-imposed exile in Tangier, he had cast a spell over such talents as Tennessee Williams, Libby Holman, Truman Capote, and Allen Ginsberg. We revisit an essay penned by Jay McInerny in 1985, on how the inimitable expatriate writer-composer's dark arts retain their power, even more so 32 years later. -
La Belle et La Bête – Natural Surrealism of a Misunderstood Beast
Posted on November 6, 2017 | 1 CommentWe feature the popularized story version of the French fairy tale 'La Belle et La Bête' (Beauty and the Beast), which became a classic 1946 Jean Cocteau film accompanied by composer Philip Glass's mesmerizing 1994 score. -
Hindu Epic ‘Mahabharata’ in Balinese Shadow Theatre and Dance
Posted on August 14, 2017 | 3 CommentsThe timeless brilliance of the Hindu epic Mahabharata, illuminated by the mysterious art of Balinese shadow theatre, enacted to the percussive metallophones of traditional gamelan ensembles. -
Gogol’s Vision of Metaphysical Unraveling Amid the Dark Arts
Posted on August 9, 2017 | 1 CommentWatch the 1967 supernatural horror story "Viy" based on the 1835 novella by the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, where a student philosopher from the Christian seminary encounters a young woman with dark powers who can summon the ogre, King of the Gnomes, which the author claims comes from Ukrainian folklore tradition. -
Jean-Michel Basquiat: Poverty and Power, Scrawled on Walls
Posted on July 11, 2017 | 2 CommentsLiving and dying close to the edge in the 1980s Manhattan world of art and culture, Jean-Michel Basquiat moved from guerrilla street artist to producing innumerable works worth millions, until his drug-induced end in 1988. -
LA Poet Wanda Coleman on Smog Addiction and Angel Wings
Posted on July 7, 2017 | 2 CommentsIn "Angel Baby Blues," from Wanda Coleman's collection Heavy Daughter Blues, she offered a take on the failed promises of her home in Southern California. A prolific poet, fiction writer, and journalist, she was considered for a time Los Angeles' unofficial and controversial Poet Laureate. -
Poet Antonio López on the “Road Rage” of Clashing Histories
Posted on June 30, 2017 | No CommentsAntonio López won the Poetry Award at the 2017 Santa Barbara Writers Conference with 'Which Cobija Feels Most Comfy?: A Letter to Sister Nabra', about the murder of a teenage Muslim girl beaten and killed by a bat-wielding motorist near a Virginia mosque. -
Bukowski’s ‘Born Into This’ – Treachery, Hatred, Violence, Absurdity
Posted on June 29, 2017 | 2 CommentsThe documentary, 'Bukowski: Born into This' rehashes stories of the inimitable misanthrope, poet, and author Charles Bukowski. Post features the poem, 'Dinosauria, we.' -
Jack Eidt’s ‘The Blue Basement’ on Luna Review
Posted on June 18, 2017 | No CommentsAn excerpt of Jack Eidt's recent novel 'Nowhere Beckons' was published in the Luna Review. Called 'The Blue Basement', it narrates the protagonist T.'s visionary descent into the urban underworld, where ideas, light, and color blend, and surviving on the journey to the end of the night is everything.
