Pig on the Wall

Several years ago, Marls told me I was too dumb to make a podcast. He was probably right, but I proceeded anyway. I made 82 episodes of a rambling, disorganized, sometimes compelling, sometimes tangential show called We Defy Augury. 

I'm glad I did it-- but I didn't really know what I was doing, and the audio quality is inconsistent. 

I also felt like I had unconsciously duplicated my one complaint about Gheorghe: The Blog . . . I gave my project a name that is challenging to convey. 

We all know the drill: by the time you explain George the Magazine, Gheorghe Muresan, and how many "h"s are in the title of this blog, most people's eyes have glazed over. I had the same problem with We Defy Augury-- by the time I explained the Shakespearean context, the meaning of the word "augury," and the connection to my theme, people were either snoring or annoyed with my intellectual pretensions.

So my new project is going to be more organized, purposeful, and focused (but not THAT organized, purposeful, and focused-- let's be real here). 

It also has a much simpler name: Pig on the Wall. 

I made an introductory episode explaining the meaning of the title and how it connects to my theme.

Essentially, I want to tell the story of great works of art and most excellent human achievements-- and my thesis is that these accomplishments are most often in some way, shape, or form collaborative: the work of many minds from many times. So it is a podcast that celebrates cooperation, influence, human interaction, intellectual borrowing, and-- sometimes-- outright plagiarism, 

I'm also really trying to do the audio correctly-- you're supposed to use compression and normalization to get to a certain volume level (Marls could have told me this initially).

Pig on the Wall is going to be less like the typical podcast and more like Andrew Hickey's A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. The typical podcast features two or three people talking, often intelligently or eloquently, about some topic. Hickey's podcast is painstakingly researched and contains a plethora of musical clips, woven into the narrative. He takes. along time to make each episode. This is the route I'm selecting. There are enough "smart people talking" podcasts out there. 

I wanted to start ambitiously, so right now I am in the midst of Shakespeare's Hamlet-- which is an incredibly messy collaboration between Shakespeare and a number of other authors, stretching back to a tenth-century Norse legend. If you're interested in the context and history of the play, listen to the first couple of episodes-- but they do get a bit technical. 

But my most recent episode: "Hamlet: Act Three . . . To Be or Not to Be?" is intended for general audiences. 

I do some analysis of the most famous monologue in literature, and then present a sample of the many interpretations of both the soliloquy and the following (disastrous) scene. 

Hamlet is the most produced dramatic performance in the history of film and theater. It's been enacted countless times, and there are dozens and dozens of films based on the play (including The Lion King). 

I collected a slew of my favorite productions, put them all in Logic, and then pulled out the best and most interesting moments.

I then wove these moments into my analysis. It was a pain-in-the-ass, but it was worth it. I don't think there's anything like it.

I also prompted AI to make me a logo. It was very difficult to get AI to collaborate with me-- I should have just drawn it myself. 

The logo is based on an ancient painting of a pig on a cave wall. 

This is where we started . . .

There were a lot of ugly iterations along the way-- and a bunch of five-legged pigs!-- but we eventually arrived at this:

Perhaps this is the future of collaboration?

I know my premise (and Hamlet) sounds daunting, but give it a shot. I hope you enjoy it, and I promise, there will be lighter, less literary episodes in the future! 

But first, I need to finish Hamlet. Three more episodes to go . . .