Update: The extended broadcast of the first installment of a multi-part Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, “Romantic Total Revolution” (broadcast 8/25/25), is now available for listening on the “Archived Musical Essays” webpage, along with the corresponding playlist on the “Program Playlists” page, of the Tower of Song website at revradiotowerofsong.com.
Part 1 is entitled “The Longing for Total Revolution in the 18th & 19th Centuries,” focusing on two Romantic poet-prophets of that time, Friedrich Schiller and William Blake, and their re-visioning of political revolution in the wake of the failed French Revolution.
Be sure to check out the fantabulous “Romantic Total Revolution” webpage that is dedicated to this musical essay series, which is loaded with images, memes, and supplemental information concerning the people, places and things discussed in the musical essay–so listeners can literally “see what I mean (or meme).” (For instance, the above image of the meme “All Power to the Imagination” is Blake’s illustration from America: A Prophecy of his archetypal, fiery revolutionary.)
Note: This musical essay series is presented at this particular time, given the current authoritarian administration of America, because the Gypsy Scholar feels that it’s some vitally important but overlooked information. It, therefore, intends to offer a radically different perspective on a program for social change, in terms of going beyond the limits of strictly political revolution in times of great oppression by examining the sub-political roots of social discontent to formulate a greater ideal of how to ultimately get to a better world through the Romantic ideal of “total revolution.”
