Dr. Noah Pression spent nearly two decades as a university professor and empiricist. Now he is stepping out of the confines of ontological materialism to explore the stranger sides of Nature and reality.
He writes poems, songs, and polemics, and sets the words of history's agitators to music: a miners' hero, a forest outlaw, a rocket-building mystic, the drowned of a company town. Every piece comes with its Roots, a short explainer with the theory, the data, and the history underneath it.
The work draws on anti-authoritarian politics, childhood encounters with the paranormal and more recent psychedelic experiences. It blends idiosyncratic storytelling and hypercuriosity with the habits of a formal scientific inquiry: gather the evidence, integrate it, and say plainly what it means.
How this site works
There are three sections.
- I · My Words: poetry, prose, polemics, essays, and op-eds.
- II · My Words and Music: original songs, as lyric videos and music videos.
- III · Their Words, My Music: poems by agents of social change, set to music. When a text has been adapted, the page says so.
Every piece has its Roots: a short, visual explainer with the theory, the data and the history underneath it. Look for "Read the roots" at the end of a piece, or browse them all under Roots.
The music is on YouTube and Bandcamp. The first collection is the Storytime EP.
Why the black flag and the roots
Radical comes from the Latin radix, root. To be radical is to go to the root of a thing, and that is what the explainers try to do.
The black flag belongs to anti-authoritarian politics: no masters. The circled A in the name is the old mark of anarchy, which means order without rulers, not chaos.
And the name can be read another way: Noah Pression, No Oppression.
Also from Dr. Noah Pression
Star Wars Death Math. Same habit of mind, different galaxy.