As painful as it is to say, the Omphalos Cafe YouTube channel has gone live. The first episode was no easy task, and pretty much took up the better part of two years to get out. Sitting in front of a camera and enunciating the sort of things that generally get written in posts here is utterly foreign to me, indeed talking about Cafe material and the books that populate its shelves is just something I haven’t done. That’s part of what has made the Cafe what it is… a genuine place apart, undiscussed, outside the norm, beyond boundaries. That being said, episode one—stumbling and wordy as it is—is finally done and now it’s time to move on to episode two!

You see, after four odd years of blogging, a certain distrust of written media had crept in upon me. ‘Who reads this stuff?’ I found myself asking more and more. Of course much of the fault is my own, poor habits and admittedly obscure material, but still the answer to me seems too heavily larded with student and academic types. Truth be told, those are not the types the Omphalos Cafe hopes to appeal to. No offence you understand, but they think too much.

As I quote in YouTube episode one:

“Can you listen to me completely silently, without any interference of thought?—Seeing that the moment you try to do this you are already in thought.” —Krishnamurti, You Are The World

We are bombarded with learning and thought at the highest and sharpest levels… and where is it getting us? In circles, that’s where… and non-organic, abstract circles at that. The truth is books breed books which breed academic types and more books. If we are to move forward we need break from their thrall.

Hey, that’s good… and the writing of it was easy!

Just don’t expect me to say it as easily when the camera is rolling.