{"id":1174,"date":"2013-07-24T17:23:34","date_gmt":"2013-07-24T22:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/futureisfiction.com\/blog\/?p=1174"},"modified":"2016-12-26T14:15:02","modified_gmt":"2016-12-26T22:15:02","slug":"alan-watts-natural-animal-and-serendipity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/futureisfiction.com\/blog\/alan-watts-natural-animal-and-serendipity\/","title":{"rendered":"Alan Watts, Natural Animal and Serendipity"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"ttr_start\"><\/div><p>You know how when you learn a new word, suddenly you start hearing it everywhere? Well my new word is &#8220;Alan Watts.&#8221; Someone on Reddit mentioned this fellow, so all week I&#8217;ve been listening to his lectures on YouTube. New Age stuff isn&#8217;t generally my thing, but someone on Reddit linked to a video which had the line &#8220;What was it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep? That was when you were born.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/futureisfiction.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/alan-watts-sudden-clarity-clarence-meme.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1176\" alt=\"alan watts quote in sudden clarity clarence meme\" src=\"https:\/\/futureisfiction.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/alan-watts-sudden-clarity-clarence-meme.png\" width=\"685\" height=\"387\" \/><\/a>Having had my Sudden Clarity Clarence moment delivered to me (my actual thought was, &#8220;Like, <em>whoa.&#8221;<\/em>) I figured I&#8217;d give this guy a listen, even if he does advocate sitting really still and thinking about nothing.<\/p>\n<p>A fun way to get the flavor of Alan Watts is with this Alan Watts animation from the makers of South Park.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7YgEhvZDZVg?rel=0\" height=\"360\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;good stuff, though in fairness I don&#8217;t think these videos capture Watts&#8217;s sense of humor.<\/p>\n<p>Anyhow, my intent isn&#8217;t so much to focus on Alan Watts as that feeling that &#8220;I bet now that I know who this guy is I&#8217;m going to see his name everywhere.&#8221; Kind of like how before I knew who <a title=\"Who is Joseph Campbell, a guest post I wrote\" href=\"http:\/\/erinoriordan.blogspot.com\/2011\/10\/who-is-joseph-campbell-and-why-writers.html?zx=8f2d07cf8d99bdcd\" target=\"_blank\">Joseph Campbell<\/a> was, he was never mentioned, and then suddenly I heard about him on a weekly or monthly basis.<\/p>\n<p>So today I was listening through the most popular new releases in the blogosphere, and this chilled out little electro tune buzzed in my ears by Natural Animal. I didn&#8217;t pay it much attention, until Alan Watts started talking over it. I had a YouTube tab open and paused on one of his lectures so I figured it had kicked in it&#8217;s autostart. But it turned out to be embedded in the song. Which was pretty neat, because I got to feel in-the-know. And now that I&#8217;m feeling all in-the-know, I must praise Natural Animal for being in-the-know as well.<\/p>\n<p>And here I just wanted to share that little moment of serendipity with ya&#8217;ll. So you can be in-the-know, because nothing screams &#8220;hip&#8221; like a\u00a0 Buddhist lecturer who died twenty years ago.So you can raise your eyebrows knowingly when they start selling Alan Watts t-shirts at Urban Outfitters.<\/p>\n<p>Is there a name like that, or a word or a place, that once you learned about it you started hearing about it everywhere?<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s that song by Natural Animal, &#8220;Who You Are.&#8221; Also check out &#8220;Dance Alone,&#8221; just as dreamy but a bit more uptempo. If you dig &#8220;Who You Are,&#8221; you can download it for free.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F102271690\" height=\"166\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div class=\"ttr_end\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know how when you learn a new word, suddenly you start hearing it everywhere? Well my new word is &#8220;Alan Watts.&#8221; Someone on Reddit mentioned this fellow, so all week I&#8217;ve been listening to his lectures on YouTube. New Age stuff isn&#8217;t generally my thing, but someone on Reddit linked to a video which &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/futureisfiction.com\/blog\/alan-watts-natural-animal-and-serendipity\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Alan Watts, Natural Animal and Serendipity<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1176,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[56,586,626,804,853],"series":[],"class_list":["post-1174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-music","tag-alan-watts","tag-memes","tag-natural-animal","tag-serendipity","tag-sudden-clarity-clarence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureisfiction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureisfiction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureisfiction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureisfiction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureisfiction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/futureisfiction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17191,"href":"https:\/\/futureisfiction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174\/revisions\/17191"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureisfiction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureisfiction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureisfiction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureisfiction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1174"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureisfiction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=1174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}