What I find incredible about Watt's history is how so many of his talks were recorded with fairly high fidelity. There was almost nothing that could have been done with these in the 60s, yet they were preserved for 40 years until an appropriate distribution mechanism materialized.
I do like his content but there is almost kind of a defeatist element to it. I often wonder if this somewhat dark shading was, in part, due to the alcoholism.
I disagree about the defeatism. Acceptance and "giving up" in the productive sense of not bashing your head against a wall and maybe doing something else are encouraged, but I think defeatism is part of a world vs me attitude which is exactly what he is trying to offer a counterpoint to.
He also speaks about mastery as a key element to his philosophy, and to enjoying the world, and of discipline as being the key to mastery - I think, the opposite of defeatism.
Off topic, but talking about recorded talks, it bugs me that there seems to be no recordings of this:
“In 1985, [Powell] Janulus entered into the Guinness World Records for spoken fluency in 42 languages. To qualify, he took a two-hour conversational fluency test with a native speaker of each language he spoke at that time. This testing took place over one month. Powell said that he considers himself skilled in 64 languages” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powell_Janulus
That is recent enough that it could have been recorded on tapes or video and extraordinary and interesting enough to be worth it, but it doesn’t seem that it was.
> so many of his talks were recorded with fairly high fidelity
Just a possibility here. I have the impression he worked for KQED TV for a time in the 1950s. That might have put him in touch with competent sound techs.
I recall someone who was also at KQED at that time relating this: Alan Watts told her he would write a blurb for any book author who requested one. (Speaks to some flare for self promotion.)
I thought he had a steady job working for KPFA on an assigned slot, which is where he honed his talent for talking for long stretches to fill the air on the radio—all while chain smoking at the console and answering calls from little old ladies in Berkeley, who would ask him obscure questions about whatever topic he was going on about. I think I remember reading that the archival audio tapes for those shows are still around somewhere, but I’ve never once heard them. I got interested in this like 15 years ago or so, and took a look-see in the Pacifica archives, and I think they are still there locked up in a vault somewhere, unless a fire or a flood took them out, which happens more than you might think.
Probably right -- mine was based upon impressions.
In terms of archives, and 20/80, whatever "Alan Watts from the archives" they now offer as a donation premium is probably enough for KPFA's purposes. I don't know when they moved to the new building, except it must have have been since 1990. So possibly "fire, flood" or move between facilities.
I do like his content but there is almost kind of a defeatist element to it. I often wonder if this somewhat dark shading was, in part, due to the alcoholism.