I’ve been doing video calls with subscribers1:
A Serbian psychiatrist who spent 7 years working at an “old-fashioned madhouse” outside of Belgrade: a broad Slavic face, a beard worthy of an Orthodox priest, and a name that translates to something like Wolf Wolfowitz.
Or: an attorney in his 70s who rides a Harley and believes himself to be a Christian prophet — in the months leading up to the Ukraine war, he’d wake up in the middle of the night and find himself eavesdropping on Putin’s debates with God: God would go, “DO NOT DO THIS,” and Putin would go, “I’ve got to do what is best for my country.” We talked in the summer of ‘22, and he gave me “a prophetic word”: there is more war and chaos to come, and Armenia is not the place I will settle in. It looks like he was right on both counts.
Or: a woman in a sun-lit room, Italian but living in Ireland, in the middle of nowhere, with animals. She said, “I feel so awkward. I’m in my fifties, I don’t have social media, I don’t do these parasocial relationships on the Internet. But when I saw your invitation to talk, something made me reach out.” We talked about borders and war and AI and human connection and animal cognition — and made tentative plans to meet up in Europe. It felt like talking to a family member, a favorite aunt I hadn’t seen since childhood.
All of this has been incredibly nourishing. I feel like I’m finding “my people.”
You can book a time to chat here.
I have not been recording these conversations, but I want to experiment with a call-in show after I move to Spain early next year (I hope I don’t jinx it). I was thinking about this the other night, laying in bed, starting to drift into sleep, when I remembered a dream I had had four or five years ago. It suddenly seemed prophetic.
This is how I described it last year in Fear and Power in the Russian Dreamscape:
In another old dream, I’m running down a cobbled street in a vaguely Mediterranean town. There are a few friends by my side and an armed-to-the-teeth police squad behind me.
I’ve been worried and on the move the whole day. It started out hazy, but little by little I began to gain some lucidity, and the more attention I paid to the plot, the more suspicious it made me. There was a corpse in a bathroom, then handcuffs, and then a chance to escape. There was no time to think whether it made any sense.
But as I am running, something clicks. I realize I am dreaming. Which means guns can’t hurt me.
I stop and turn around slowly. A barrel of a gun is staring me in the face, and I’m looking back at it. Then I look up and meet the cop’s eyes.
I need to reassess my situation. I see he’s reassessing it too.
“This is a dream. We don’t need to run.”
I say something to that extent to a friend, but I can’t hear his reply. The cops, who are filling the street, simultaneously turn their heads to each other and start talking loudly, drowning our voices in theirs. Even thinking becomes difficult.
What I do understand is it’s not a cop squad that I’m dealing with. It is an impersonal, psychic force, not quite separate from me, that wants to keep me distracted, isolated, confused, or afraid.
When it’s successful, the dream feels very real. The better I get at paying attention and keeping my cool — and I’ve gotten pretty damn good at it by the end — the trippier reality gets, the more freedom I have in it, and the better I understand what’s going on.
Later in the same dream, I find myself in an alcove in an old brick basement. Around me are colorful fairytale characters that need my help.
They say, “We are like living sentences. Each one is a message that keeps repeating itself. But what these messages mean we don’t know ourselves.”
I ask them to say what they are, to pronounce the sentences, one by one. I listen attentively and try my best to understand. The messages do seem related, and by holding them in my mind, I start to piece together a narrative.
But soon, we hear loud footsteps — the police state of mind has found us, and we decide to disperse.
Running away from people with guns sounds very much like my voluntary exile from Russia. Talking to “colorful characters” in a “vaguely Mediterranean town” sounds like the call-in show I’m planning to do out of Málaga.
This role of a magical interlocutor has been shown to me in another dream, too. In it, a character I refer to as Mystical Baby was explaining my method to somebody else: “Gnostics wanted to bring the Moon down to Earth. Nikita does not possess gnosis, but he has something called co-gnosis.”
In the dream, I knew what this meant: that I’m as spiritually blind as the next guy, but sometimes, in conversation, my partner and I both feel like we get it, like we’ve got the Moon in the palms of our hands.
This all sounds goofy and grandiose. These are just dreams.
Anyway,
what I wanted to say is: tomorrow, on Thursday the 21st, at 11 a.m. US Eastern Time, I’m doing a Q&A livestream with my long-time collaborator of the Nonzero Newsletter.
You can watch it on Youtube:
…or join us on Zoom by clicking this link.
Talk to you soon!
Details that follow may or may not be accurate — I’m writing from memory, and my memory is not very good.
I have such a big smile and a light heart reading your post just now. A gift. People are so wonderful. Thanks.
I look forward to listening to the coming live stream. I am hazarding asking a question here,ahead of the talk. Listening and typing don't work well for me when done in the same moments. Of course if my question does not fit the flow of the conversation that is perfectly understandable.
I have been reading again-Spring and All by William Carlos Williams.
The following lines helped create my ? "Only through the imagination is the advance of intelligence possible,to keep beside growing understanding."
How might world leaders be assisted to access imagination when attempting to end military conflicts? (Every world actor seems mostly reactive,quick to use available tools yet separated from any forethought beyond immediate self interest.) :)