I've been spending my evenings the past week listening to audio recordings of the philosopher and lecturer Alan Watts. I've accumulated dozens of these free recordings over the past couple of years through the Apple iTunes Store, and I'm now finally getting caught up on them.
I'm not going into a lot of the details. You can learn more about Watts here or at the web site linked at right.
But I'll tell you it's an uncanny feeling to listen to Watts talking amiably in these lectures and realize he's been dead for 35 years. Hearing him in these recordings – many of which were originally done for public radio – is like listening to him as if he were on the air live right that instant.
Someone – I think it was Aldous Huxley – once described Watts as 'half monk. half race track operator.' It was a description Watts himself is said to have endorsed. There is a certain 'hey, lighten up' quality that comes through in his professorial speaking style that you don't hear from Christian preachers, nor from the ponderously sincere New Age gurus that dot the spiritual and intellectual landscape. I can't bear to listen to TV pundits blather – not even the ones whose positions I share. But listening to Watts is sheer pleasure.
It's a shame we don't have him with us today for our 900-channel universe.
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