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Episode 519 - The Call of Wings (Patreon)

Published:
2020-10-12 23:16:00
Edited:
2024-12-12 19:00:35
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

Mystery writers continue to get weird as we answer Agatha Christie's The Call of Wings!

Special thanks to superstar reader Andrew Leman!

Featuring Rienzi: Overture by Wagner recorded by Wiener Philharmoniker.

Next up: The Leopard Lady by Dorothy L. Sayers!

Comments

Sanjay Mathew

I hate to comment adversely on the silken voiced Andrew Leman's dramatic choices but it's unlikely that an East End parson in the 1930s would actually *be* an East Ender (as per the accent choice in the opening reading). Dick Borrow, like most Church of England clerics would likely have been from a solidly middle class, definitely university-educated background and would be unlikely to have a Cockneyesque accent. Stereotypically the inner city parsons were among the more dedicated of the Church of England's personnel choosing to work among the poor rather than trying for a richer and more comfortable parish. (In fact in some more obscure early 20th C English Weird fiction you do occasionally have the trope of a worn-out inner city vicar taking a holiday by serving as the locum to a soft rural or suburban parish). This, incidentally is why Borrow talks about a Vision driving him. You'd have to be pretty idealistic to do the work he does when as a Church of England man there would be the possibility of easier billets- it's the early 20th century Anglican equivalent of being a social worker. If anything it's the self-made Silas Hamer who'd be more likely to sound like an East Ender. I apologise for this tiny quibble. I love Andrew's work- his voice plays upon my ears like the piping of the flutes of the Outer Gods.

witchhousemedia

Andrew often gets the selections out of context (as in this case) and that was my direction, because it doesn't specify his background in the story, and that's what I wanted to hear:) The second option I offered was Drunk Romanian so

MonsterTalk

Why would Pan help out a Christian narrative? Because it dehooved him to do so.

MonsterTalk

Also, when you’ve given away your wealth and materialist habits all you’ve left is change.

Stewart

Thanks for covering this, guys! I thoroughly enjoyed hearing this story analyzed and helping me understand a story whose weirdness has always confused and intrigued me. I especially enjoyed Chad's tangent on minimalism. Listening to this it occurred to me that even when Pan is (apparently) more benevolent, no one seems to survive an encounter with him, and he often seems to be the key to some sort of ascension, whether for good or for ill (usually the latter). There's something a little unnerving about Pan in this, because he still serves as a lure into something almost unknowable, and I think its only because Silas is rising that it feels beneficent.

Joe Hodgson

You both need a weighted blanket in your life, I sleep so much better since getting one!

Ethan Cordray
>>45752811

My wife got a weighted blanket, and her experience has been somewhat ambivalent. She enjoys it sometimes, especially in the winter, but GOSH is it heavy! And very hard to move around, because it's both heavy and floppy, almost as bad as a futon. But she got the heaviest one she could fins, which might have been a mistake. I would recommend trying out a middle-weight one instead, heavy enough to make a difference but not so bad as to be unwieldy.

Ethan Cordray
>>45746465

Well said. But perhaps to elaborate: the classical symbology of the satyr associates the goat legs with animal appetites, primarily sexual. For Pan, or a satyr, to remove his own legs and call them "evil" would signify discarding the animal nature for the purely spiritual transcendent/ecstatic desire expressed by the music. Nietzsche labeled this split the "Dionysian" vs. "Apollonian" tendencies of art (N. specifically thinking that 19th c. art had gone too far toward Apollo and needed a reintroduction of Dionysus). Music is interestingly associated with both physical/sexual frenzy and intellectual/abstract ecstasy. In the case of this story, though, the minimalism and the indescribable ascent of the music put it completely in the realm of the Apollonian transcendental -- just what you'd expect from a Pan who'd abjured his own goaty legs.

Steve

Proprioception is about knowing where your body and limbs are in relation to each other. Have you been reading Temple Grandin on cows?

The Screaming Moist

Regarding the death and mortality discussion, I lost my dad unexpectedly back in August, and the question of circumstance is such a weird one. He went peacefully in his sleep, which in a lot of ways has made the process easier. But, on the other hand, nothing drives home the reality of your own mortality quite like having a conversation with someone, then getting a call five hours later that they’re dead. No accident or trauma or outside force - just dead. Still not sure if that means we shouldn’t worry because it’s entirely out of our control, or if we should just be worried all the time.

Jason Thompson

It’s impressive hearing Chad talk about music and being reminded of his super skills!!

Karlandos

talking about mortality makes me think of a moment i had out at sea. it was swim call and i really had no reason to do so because i wasnt a good swimmer (like at all). i jumped in and after a bit i started to go under but i didnt shout or panic and didnt teally feel afraid. even after being pulled out i didnt panic. Now when i think about it i kind of wondered what i would have done if i was allowed to keep going. im not going to pretend the thought doesnt scar me and i find myself more concerned about my detatchment when people around me pass and i dont react right away. Then again i imagine if or when i experience an actual violent trauma then that will change but i cant begin to imagine how that will go.

William Rieder

"Artists talk a lot about freedom. So, recalling the expression 'free as a bird,' Morton Feldman went to a park one day and spent some time watching our feathered friends. When he came back, he said, 'You know? They’re not free: they’re fighting over bits of food.' - John Cage

Forrest Rush

I loved Agatha Christie when I was a teen, but not stories like this. I saw the de-legged Pan thing a mile away and was immediately put off by the whole story. It must be a trope of some kind, guy in a wheel chair or obviously missing legs turns out to be a satyr or full on Pan, and this is why sex or fun is bad, blah blah blah. I think I must have been suspicious of Professor X for ages.

Pete Williams

For anyone interested, even slightly, in music and how it effects us, I highly recommend Adam Neely on youtube. It's hard to describe it's kind of pop culture/music history/sociology from a pro a musician's POV, and he often explains concepts in music theory in an accesable way too. Well worth a watch.

Corey Wittig

I was imagining the human blanket as the chair guy, too! Beat me to the joke, you comic genius, Chad. Maybe he could market himself as a more “realistic” Japanese body pillow. But whichever image you choose you’re still gonna get that chair guy layin’ on top of you.

Anonymous
>>45750407

I too greatly enjoyed Chad's tangent on minimalism, and found it rather moving. I look forward to the next tangent on Manimalism!

Ravewolf

Having first read the author's And Then There Were None (Not the original title, I know.) before reading anything else, I was initially under the impression that she was either a macabre fiction writer, or at least easily could have been one, if not distracted by other genres.

Shana Carter

While reading "The Call of Wings" I kept bracing for turns that the story didn't take. Hamer's sensations of floating or rising led me to expect that he was going to share the fate of Barzai from Lovecraft's "The Other Gods" and fall into the sky. Later, when Hamer described dreams of "great stretches of reddish sand… and here and there straight, long lines of water like canals," and Seldom mused, "Surely the materialist, the man who loved the flesh and denied the spirit, was the last man to see the sights of another world," I thought they were referring to the planet Mars. However, on reflection, I wonder if Hamer wasn't seeing the city of Sister Marie Angelique's visions in "The Hound of Death"? I *did* totally call Pan's amputation of his legs, because his nonchalant "They were evil" reminded me of the One-Armed Man in TWIN PEAKS who declares, "When I saw the face of God, I was changed. I took the entire arm off." So, one for three!

Anonymous
>>46147387

Definitely got the Twin Peaks vibe when he said that. I wonder if David Lynch has read this story, or maybe it's a basic enough sentiment to remove a limb considered 'evil'... lookin' at you, Ash.

Tuesday Wildfire

Just listened to this last night and all I could think was that the Call of Wings is what I get after a couple of pints in a sports bar

Anonymous
>>46300112

I thought it was what you call it when you have a sudden yearning to listen to Paul McCartney's post-Beatles project.

Pam Winkler

The mentions of the music made me think of the auditory illusions, where music seems to be going always higher and higher.

Anonymous
>>45774242

I think Temple personifies an intellectual/spiritual common good. Intellectual and emotional honesty and a willingness to bravely share. Here I risk a quote “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost…” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Anonymous
>>45776127

I am reaching through the computer Videodrome-like to give you a hug...and you are running away screaming which is understandable I guess. Had to try. I had a cancer scare that continues to reverberate for me. I think we do what we always do with stuff too large to actually resolve, whatever that has been. It is a chance to observe and expand our inner reality, but, that comes later.

Cacodaemoniacal

I have developed a taste for Bizarro-Christie. While I dislike the idea that we must divide ourselves from the physical to evolve; I like her descriptions of a transcendent experience. Not the aftermath so much, but the experience. Maybe it's just that someone with her bono fides gets a lingering regard from me; but, I don't feel like I have to agree with her beliefs to entertain her concepts.

Anonymous
>>45738856

By making them roughly equals, at least between themselves, it would support the division and duality she's exploring in the story. It's one of those implicit cultural realities that can be easy to miss or misinterpret unless you are twigged to it already--like Burma Shave sign rhymes and Warner Brother Cartoons.

Anonymous
>>45816681

yes, that part was a train whistle outside of your bedroom obvious. On the other hand I really liked the part where she was describing the sensation of transcendence as being in part confusing and scary.