We come to the Valley of Disease, the pit of the worst kinds of falsifiers: “modifiers” of the material of the world, impersonators, counterfeiters, perjurers, each with their own appropriate disease. It’s pretty awful, but we attend with our usual good cheer, and interruptions from the Kinks, Firesign Theatre, Fraggle Rock, and others. You are invited to attend.
Dante gives us the bloodiest episode yet, but we handle it gracefully, and examine what happens to those who promote divisions and factions and all kinds of splits in society – both in the past and, of course, in our present world. A variety of music from Martha and the Vandellas, Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, Leonard Cohen, Snatam Kaur, Frank Zappa, and Simon and Garfunkle. You are invited to attend.
You are invited to attend with us to Dante’s images of flattery, and related subjects, such as bluffing (bull), and alternative facts, and fake news. (Also fake orgasms – another form of flattery.) And warning: Dante brings us some disgusting imagery this time.
“There was a wicked messenger” – lots of wicked messengers, and Dante shows what becomes of them in Hell, and all those prophets who are out to make a profit. You are invited to attend and join us in this week’s episode.
Dante and Virgil come to a new section of fraud, and hear the story of the death of Ulysses, who could not settle into retirement, and the story of the famous general Guido da Montefeltro, the fraudster who was befrauded by a fraudulent pope, and at whose death a devil came and snatched him from out of the hands of St Francis, dragging him into Hell. Why? Come along and find out. There’s also a bit of Montaigne, and Tennyson, and a famous chapter from Primo Levi. You are invited to attend.
Shape-shifting with thieves and serpents, as Dante looks on in horror – but also brags about his superlative poetic talent, able to describe things never before attempted. You are invited to attend the latest episode of Evening under Lamplight.
Dante and Virgil descend to the level of the hypocrites, who shuffle painfully around in an endless circle, weighed down with cloaks golden on the outside but leaden within. We look at various aspects of hypcrisy, including Jekyll and Hyde, Dylan, actors, and all sorts of role-players. You are invited to attend.
We follow Dante and Virgil to the ditch where the grafters writhe submerged below boiling pitch, or, if they rise above the surface for some relief, they run the danger of being ripped apart by sadistic devils. It’s every creature for itself around here, with fraud, deceit, double-crossing creating a scene that mixes both vivid torture with slap-stick comedy. We try to make it all come alive, and you’re invited to attend.
In this episode, Dante enters the area of the sorcerers, wizards, magicians – all twisted – and we play around with all this twisted imagery, including a true story of when your host was put under a real spell, and was robbed right on the streets of London: a tale of real-life evil spell-casting. You are invited to attend – to the show, not the spell-casting, of course.
We continue with Dante at the ditch of the seducers, with songs about seduction, including the seduction gone wrong in “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”, and a Southern Gothic story by Flannery O’Connor about a seduction that goes even more wrong, with surprising results. And there’s the first public playing of a new song by Rukeia. You are invited to attend.
