Thinking the Float Tank – Saturday, August 26, 2023 (Day 3)
The Story Structure of Reality and Eternal Form According to Laws of Form
Speaker Bio:
Leon is an independent academic, writer, playwright, poet, educationalist, storyteller, and polymath. He enjoys figuring out answers to questions we don’t yet have answers to.
He was invited to be poet-in-residence at the first Edinburgh Food Festival in 2006.
His books include Story and Structure: A complete guide (The Squeeze Press, 2022), History Riddles; Odyssey: Dynamic Learning System (co-authored with David Pinto) (Liberalis Books, 2013); and Aesop the Storyteller – a book of versified fables (Aladdin’s Cave Publishing, 2008).
His plays, Aesop the Storyteller and Under the Arabian Moon were premièred at the Camden Fringe in July 2006 and at the London Bridge Theatre in 2009 respectively.
Over a three-year period (2013–2016), he provided a regular monthly column for the Russian in-flight magazine Flight Line for Anglophile Russian travellers on the vagaries of the English language.
Leon is an acknowledged expert in the field of historic needlework. He was the first person in about 400 years to rediscover how the complex Elizabethan embroidery stitch known as ‘Plaited Braid Stitch’ was worked. A fully illustrated guide to working the stitch was published in The Historic Needlework Guild’s magazine, Fine Lines, in July 2003. He has an MA Degree in the History of Design and Material Culture of the Renaissance (V&A/RCA, 2008) and a Graduate degree in Music (LTCL, Hons). His academic articles, draft papers, and MA thesis on English 16th and 17th Century woven and embroidered textile bookbindings appear at https://independent.academia.edu/LeonConrad.
Leon has contributed to radio and TV programmes, and published papers in specialist journals. He has written on voice-centred communication skills and coaching techniques for publications such as Training Journal, and The Teacher magazine, and his work has been featured in PR Week, The Church Times and The Daily Telegraph. He is a regular contributor to the English Language & Usage Stack Exchange community, where he ranks in the top 6% of users.
He has given a TEDx talk on The Magic of Words, with marimba player Aristel Škrbič, (YouTube: HYit3MYAoqM) and an on-line lecture on early findings based on the system outlined in The Unknown Storyteller for the School of Civic Education (YouTube: Vosu0gsdtYo).
As a freelance editor and proofreader, he’s helped many authors get their works accepted for publication. From 2013 until his death in 2016, Leon had the privilege of being able to study regularly (on a weekly basis) with polymath George Spencer-Brown, author of Laws of Form (1969/2011) and was his last student. He’s gone on to use his methodology in teaching logic, and in analysing story structure. A paper outlining the novel application of Spencer-Brown’s methodology to the analysis of story structure was the top-ranked paper selected to be presented at The Unmarked State Conference: the 50th anniversary conference of the first publication of Laws of Form (2019). A PDF of the presentation is available at http://www.LoF50.com/day2 and the video features as part of Alphabetum III, an on-line and live exhibition at West Den Haag: https://tinyurl.com/alphabetum3.
As a storyteller, Leon has been studying the Drut’syla Midrash tradition with storyteller Shonaleigh Cumbers since 2015, and has a particular interest in tracing the influence of oral traditions on the development of the classical progymnasmata curriculum.
He is orator in residence at The Next Society Institute; co-founder and lead trainer at The Academy of Oratory (previously The Conrad Voice Consultancy) and founder and lead tutor at The Traditional Tutor. Leon works with public speakers and students across the world using an integrated approach to a classical liberal arts education.
Contact details:
Website: leonconrad.com
Email: leon@leonconrad.com
The Story Structure of Reality and Eternal Form According to Laws of Form
Abstract:
Our lives are permeated by story structure, and the heavens are organized into a cosmos by story structure, so what is story? How are the stories of a structure, such as a building, related to story structure? These questions thematize the essence of story, and also offer a unique perspective on the use of Laws of Form in the float tank and in everyday life and the life of the imagination. Story is not only articulated through telling, but we are immersed in it always. By considering story in isolation, we can access the pure form of story, and this grants us the possibility of telling the deepest and highest story there is: the five-storied structure of eternity.
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