Tag: pirate radio

Clairvoyant Confessional #9: Sipping the Right Stuff

This is why the podcast is going cyberpunk. Put so much time into doing a self-narrated podcast that I need to skip this week’s Sunday Tarot Turnover.

Instead, I give you….Confession #9, Sipping the Right Stuff.

Transcript:

I’m a clairvoyant and I have a confession: my stuff ain’t right

Hi everyone. My name is Ronda. I read tarot, write stuff and make things.

The idea of “pushing the envelope” was made popular by Tom Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff and the movie by the same name back in the 80s. It’s still part of the American vernacular. We’ve all heard of pushing the envelope, although it has come to mean challenging ourselves and stepping outside of our individual comfort zone rather than putting lives on the line to test the physical limits of a new aircraft.

In the movie Dennis Quaid as Gordon Cooper talks about the pilots still “out there somewhere…pushing back the outside of that envelope and hauling it back in.”

Everybody loves to talk about pushing the envelope. Nobody ever seems to talk about hauling it back in.

That’s an important part too. As I understand it a SUCCESSFUL test program is one that ends with a live pilot, an intact airplane and usable data, not a hollywood style fireball.

Which in a way, begs the question of how you define success? Success isn’t always expansive. Sometimes quality really is more important than quantity.

Which brings me back to the stuff I’m putting into this podcast. I’m not so sure it has been the right stuff.

It’s been a stretch. Starting a podcast at all was way outside of my comfort envelope. A rambling pirate radio persona like the movie Pump Up The Volume was more fun in theory than in practice. It pushed the envelope to give Clairvoyant Confessional a try. But it is time to haul the envelope back in. I’m not pulling the plug on the podcast, but I am making a change in style and aesthetics.

One thing I’ve learned from this test flight is that podcasts are valuable and fun BUT it really is about the conversation and chemistry like we had on Menage a Tarot, which, btw, is still available on itunes if you’d like to give it a listen.

I still want to offer something to the podcasting environment for anyone who is interested in Tarot and Tarot readings. BUT I also learned that vocal performance is not my strong suit. So here is the deal: the pirates and test pilots are going cyberpunk.

Thanks to the brilliant text to speech conversion available through wordpress and anchor fm for better or worse I’m letting technology take over the narration.

Clairvoyant Confessional is now the TaoCraft Tarot podcast and serves as the audio edition of the TaoCraft Tarot blog.

By letting Siri’s second cousin Remy take over the speaking part, I can put my energy into the writing part so I can give all of you the best of me and my actual clairvoyance.

Thank you for listening to Clairvoyant Confessional and its new incarnation as TaoCraft Tarot podcast. I hope you’ll stay tuned for the short sip nano-episodes that give you Tarot guidance for your day in the time it takes to sip from your morning coffee as well as the slightly longer episodes like the YouChoose Interactive readings.

As always, thank you for any likes, subs, shares, or follows that you can spare. As always, helpful links are in the episode description.

Also a special thank you to dinosoul for giving permission to use their song dimension as an outro for the past several confessional episodes.

Thanks again for listening. I’ll see you on the print side and see you at the next sip.

I’m a clairvoyant and I have a confession: my stuff ain’t right

Scratch oniep

Hi everyone. My name is Ronda. I read tarot, write stuff and make things. 

The idea of “pushing the envelope” was made popular by Tom Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff and the movie by the same name back in the 80s. It’s still part of the American vernacular. We’ve all heard of pushing the envelope, although it has come to mean challenging ourselves and stepping outside of our individual comfort zone rather than putting lives on the line to test the physical limits of a new aircraft.

In the movie Dennis Quaid as Gordon Cooper talks about the pilots still “out there somewhere…pushing back the outside of that envelope and hauling it back in.” 

Everybody loves to talk about pushing the envelope. Nobody ever seems to talk about hauling it back in.

That’s an important part too. As I understand it a SUCCESSFUL test program is one that ends with a live pilot, an intact airplane and usable data, not a hollywood style fireball.

Which in a way, begs the question of how you define success? Success isn’t always expansive. Sometimes quality really is more important than quantity. 

Which brings me back to the stuff I’m putting into this podcast. I’m not so sure it has been the right stuff. 

It’s been a stretch. Starting a podcast at all was way outside of my comfort envelope. A rambling pirate radio persona like the movie Pump Up The Volume was more fun in theory than in practice. It pushed the envelope to give Clairvoyant Confessional a try. But it is time to haul the envelope back in. I’m not pulling the plug on the podcast, but I am making a change in style and aesthetics.

One thing I’ve learned from this test flight is that podcasts are valuable and fun BUT it really is about the conversation and chemistry like we had on Menage a Tarot, which, btw,  is still available on itunes if you’d like to give it a listen. 

I still want to offer something to the podcasting environment for anyone who is interested in Tarot and Tarot readings. BUT I also learned that vocal performance is not my strong suit. So here is the deal: the pirates and test pilots are going cyberpunk.

scratch

Thanks to the brilliant text to speech conversion available through wordpress and anchor fm for better or worse I’m letting technology take over the narration.

Clairvoyant Confessional is now the TaoCraft Tarot podcast and serves as the audio edition of the TaoCraft Tarot blog. 

By letting Siri’s second cousin Remy take over the speaking part, I can put my energy into the writing part so I can give all of you the best of me and my actual clairvoyance.

Short dimension

Thank you for listening to Clairvoyant Confessional and its new incarnation as TaoCraft Tarot podcast. I hope you’ll stay tuned for the short sip nano-episodes that give you Tarot guidance for your day in the time it takes to sip from your morning coffee as well as the slightly longer episodes  like the YouChoose Interactive readings.

As always, thank you for any likes, subs, shares, or follows that you can spare. As always, helpful links are in the episode description.

Also a special thank you to dinosoul for giving permission to use their song dimension as an outro for the past several confessional episodes. 

Thanks again for listening. I’ll see you on the print side and see you at the next sip.

Thank you to everyone who supported the Clairvoyant Confessional incarnation of the podcast.

Your purchase of email Tarot readings combined with the “buy me a coffee” virtual tip mug, ko-fi memeberships to the “TaoCraft Tarot Table” and purchases from the ko-fi shop all support the creation of the free-for-everybody Tarot content.

Siri, sort of.

I’m old enough to remember when people wrote letters on actual paper and had actual conversations on landline telephones, so I still appreciate the technology that lets this blog and podcast happen. It warms my Gen X cyberpunk loving heart. I’m also self aware enough to know I’ve got work to do as a media speaker. Dammit Jim, I’m a writer and this automatic thing is going to make a better, more articulate, more entertaining podcast, right?

Right?

I’m not so sure.

Basically, I’m thrilled to bits if anyone reads or listens to any of this. I’ll be doing a full on happy dance if anyone decides to get a reading because of anything in the blog or podcast. But it bothers me that the automated audio doesn’t sound the same as the words sounded in my brain when I wrote them.

My narration may not be Webby worthy – yet – but at least it has more emotional tone and verbal context than the electronic version. It is, after all, human. Humanity is what intuition, clairvoyance, psychology, Tarot and personal development are all about. This tech part is fun as heck and only going to get better as time goes on. But it is what it is, and so is the human side of it all.

I propose a hybrid. When you see “Confession” in the title, you’ll know that’s me recording the episode. If you see “Today’s Tarot” or some other title, you’ll know to expect the cyber side of the podcast.

True to the renegade pirate radio motif, nothing about Clairvoyant Confessional is set in stone. It is naturally evolving to be short, little jelly bean sized episodes. There is no sense holding something like that to a regular release schedule. Text to speech will let me drop content more often, as the inspiration hits. The “confession” episodes will happen less often, BUT they will also be longer and take a deeper dive into the humanity of clairvoyance, psychics, intuition and Tarot. Q&A episodes will always be recorded and never automated.

Did you hear that sound? That was the loud thud of a hint being dropped. If you want to submit a question to be answered in the podcast, possibly in the form of a Tarot reading, just visit the Clairvoyant Confessional podcast page on TaoCraftTarot.com. There is a link in the episode description if you are listening to the podcast. The page is in the top menu for those of you reading the blog.

Thank you all for reading and listening. I really do appreciate any follows, subscriptions, likes, or shares that you can spare. And please, for the love of your own ears, send some feedback or some questions. I can’t read for a question until you ask it.

Thanks again, and I’ll talk to you all when the next jelly bean drops.

Confession #2: Yo-ho

I’m a clairvoyant and I have a confession: I like pirates.

Not the real life ones. I’m talking the gnarly haired, eighteenth century, Caribbean styled, Adam-Ant-reminiscent movie, book and TV kind of pirate. I wasn’t kidding when I said Pirate Radio was part of my vision for this podcast.

I know, I know. Pirate radio isn’t THAT kind of pirate. But you have to admit, both kinds have, as J.K. Rowling wrote “a certain disregard for the rules.” Or, as Barbossa said in The Curse of the Black Pearl, “the code is more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules.” That’s the cool thing about not knowing anything about the conventions of media or podcasts or any sort of broadcasting. The guidelines can go overboard and I’d never even notice (insert loud SPLASH sound effect.)

Unless and until somebody somewhere out there sends some psychic tarot questions to clairvoyantconfessional@gmail.com, the rando pirate DJ monolog aestheitic will be a big part part of the podcast. I plan to schedule things that way, too. Which is to say there isn’t going to any sort of schedule whatsoever. Just stay tuned, subscribe to podcast on Spotify or Pocketcast or subscribe to the blog on TaoCraftTarot.com. You never know when the SS Clairvoyant Confessional will come sailing through.

That being said, so what if I like pirates? What does that have to do with clairvoyants, psychics, Tarot, intuition, or any of that stuff?

Surprisingly, a good bit. Mainly because both are rich in metaphor and symbolism. A ship’s captain is a poetic symbol of autonomy and authority. Psychics are more like the navigators. We are all the captains of our metaphoric life ships. Think of your favorite fictional Captain. Would Blackbeard, or Barbarossa or Jack Sparrow – or Captain Kirk for that matter – surrender command? Even in their outlandish fictional situations, they owned their decisions, adapted to the outcomes, and stayed in charge. Sure, the navigator may have set the ship’s course, but the captain was the one who decided where the ship was going in the first place.

And so it is with you and Tarot / psychic readings. Yes, readings help you keep a weather eye on the horizon, but you still have the con, you still turn the wheel. If a captain refused the navigator’s advice and get the ship got lost, it wasn’t the navigator’s fault. If a navigator’s course stranded the ship on a reef, the captain was still responsible for agreeing to the directions that got them stuck. The captain was still responsible for getting the ship to port. And the captain would get themselves another navigator. If the captain and the navigator worked well together and got to where they needed to go, then they both got a share of the booty. Whichever way it turned out, the adventure is still under the captain’s command. The same is true for psychic readings. Your choices are still in command. Your choices steer the ship. I wrote the Tarot layouts that I use the most to show and respect exactly that. The 5 and 7 card layouts highlight your choices and the command that you have over the course that you take.

That’s it. That’s the confession: I like pirates because I’m the captain of this merry pirate Tarot ship. There may not be an exact schedule, but there will be some interesting episodes to come as we sail along. Thanks for listening, and welcome aboard.

Arrrrrrrr