{"id":43149,"date":"2015-01-25T18:04:41","date_gmt":"2015-01-25T18:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=43149"},"modified":"2015-01-26T15:47:16","modified_gmt":"2015-01-26T15:47:16","slug":"sunday-second-surprise-ferdinando-buscema","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=43149","title":{"rendered":"Sunday second surprise: Ferdinando Buscema"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[ by <strong>Charles Cameron<\/strong> &#8212; from Tesla to St Augustine is a short creative leap ]<br \/>\n.<\/p>\n<p>I recently received a LinkedIn invite from one <strong>Ferdinando Buscema<\/strong>, who described himself to me as a <em>Glasperlenspieler<\/em>, a player of the Glass Bead Game. I must say that pleased me, there&#8217;s a quiet humility there that calling oneself <em>Magister Ludi<\/em> or <em>Master of the Game<\/em> would lack. He&#8217;s a player, I&#8217;m a player, let&#8217;s play.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the <a href=\"http:\/\/boingboing.net\/2013\/09\/10\/ferdinando-buscema-magic-won.html\"><strong>BoingBoing<\/strong> video<\/a> he sent me when I accepted his invite:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RW7GYxRA2m0?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Not for nothing does Ferdinando call himself a <strong>Magic Experience Designer<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>As you&#8217;ll see, in the video Ferdinando very warmly recommends <strong>Erik Davis<\/strong>&#8216; book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/TechGnosis-Magic-Mysticism-Information-Paperback\/dp\/1852427728\">TechGnosis: Myth, Magic &#038; Mysticism in the Age of Information<\/a> &#8212;  which has also been highly praised by the likes of <a href=\"http:\/\/techgnosis.com\/techgnosis\/tgreviews.html\"><strong>Howard Rheingold<\/strong>, <strong>Hakim Bey<\/strong>, <strong>Mark Dery<\/strong>, <strong>Bruce Sterling<\/strong>, <strong>Terence Mckenna<\/strong>, and <strong>Mark Pesce<\/strong><\/a>, to which intriguing list you may add myself.<\/p>\n<p>Erik and I began a never-completed HipBone game many years ago &#8212; it was around the topics of <strong>Hanibal Lecter<\/strong>, his recreational collection of church collapses, and the origins of the <strong>Memory Palace<\/strong> in <strong>Simonides<\/strong>&#8216; encounter with the gods <strong>Castor and Pollux<\/strong> &#8212; and Erik mentions the <strong>HipBone Games<\/strong> briefly in his book. At the moment, I owe him an update on the games, which I&#8217;ll post here at <strong>Zenpundit <\/strong>in due course. <\/p>\n<p>It was a particular delight for me, then, to see Ferdinando&#8217;s obvious and full-throated praise of Erik&#8217;s stunning book in his video, followed up by equal praise of <strong>Ramon Llul<\/strong> &#8212; one of those writers in the Hermetic tradition whose work precedes not just the Bead Game but much of today&#8217;s science, from digital computers via genetics to genetic algorithms and cryptography.<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Ferdinando&#8217;s third treasure turned out to be <strong>Nikola Tesla<\/strong>, and in particular the remark he made about his mode of creativity. I hadn&#8217;t come across this remark before, but it cried out for <strong>DoubleQuotation <\/strong>with a remark of St Augustine&#8217;s, which I have carried with me since I first read of it in Dom <strong>Cuthbert Butler<\/strong>&#8216;s book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Western-Mysticism-Butler\/dp\/0710306628\">Western Mysticism<\/a>, back in my teens better than half a century ago.<\/p>\n<p>Here, then, are the two luminous \/ numinous quotes, from Tesla and Augustine, <strong>DoubleQuoted<\/strong> by me for Ferdinando as an offering on first meeting:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/SPEC-DQ-Tesla-Augustine.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/SPEC-DQ-Tesla-Augustine.png\" alt=\"SPEC DQ Tesla Augustine\" width=\"602\" height=\"633\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-43150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/SPEC-DQ-Tesla-Augustine.png 602w, https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/SPEC-DQ-Tesla-Augustine-285x300.png 285w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 602px) 100vw, 602px\" \/><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>It doesn&#8217;t hurt, of course, that the word &#8220;ictus&#8221; which Augustine uses also features in the context of <strong>Gregorian Chant<\/strong>, where it indicates the almost simmultaneous touchdown of a bird on a branch and its takeoff on a new curve of flight. I had the honor to learn the word from Dom <strong>Joseph Gajard<\/strong>, choirmaster at the <strong>Abbey of St Pierre de Solesmes<\/strong> &#8212; then and I suspect now the center of the world&#8217;s musical paleography and liturgical perormance of the chant, and in my teens my favorite vacation and retreat &#8212; under whose cheironomic hand I had the good fortune, once, albeit without much skill, to sing.. <\/p>\n<p>And so the beads are dropped into the lake: we watch as their ripples ripple out and intersect..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ by Charles Cameron &#8212; from Tesla to St Augustine is a short creative leap ] . I recently received a LinkedIn invite from one Ferdinando Buscema, who described himself to me as a Glasperlenspieler, a player of the Glass Bead Game. I must say that pleased me, there&#8217;s a quiet humility there that calling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[526,627,912,624,652,742,480,501,19,648,946,1,259],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charles-cameron","category-doublequotes","category-glass-bead-game-2","category-hipbone-games","category-literature","category-magic","category-music","category-myth","category-recommended-reading","category-rheingold","category-sunday-surprise","category-uncategorized","category-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43149"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43175,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43149\/revisions\/43175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}