M.R.M. Parrott(philosophy, wiki, original, Proteus)
M.R.M. Parrott
Mark Ray Martin Parrott (born 12 Oct 1966) is an American
philosopher, writer, musician, photographer, designer, and programmer, known for his early adoption of independent, small press
Publishing, and as developer of
GetWiki, a
wiki/blog website focusing on
Philosophy and other subjects. M.R.M. Parrott's books include the
"Timeless" Trilogy of novels,
"Driving Home" Travelogue, the
"Dynamism" Series of Philosophy and
Science treatises, and a number of chapbooks of
poems and short stories. Also a Philosophy professor, M.R.M. Parrott's books include detailed work on
Kant and
Gilles Deleuze, refutations of Objectivism, String Theory, Dark Energy, Intelligent Design and other popular ideas.
Life and Works
Born in Fairhope AL, Mark grew up in Mobile and Gulf Shores on the Gulf Coast. "Metaphysically precocious", as he has said of himself, Mark questioned the validity of Religion and embraced Atheism at the age of seven, despite being raised in a Southern Baptist and Methodist family and having lost his Father at age two in a car accident. He grew up playing the drums and racing cars, then attended University of South Alabama in Mobile, pursuing
Art,
Poetry,
Journalism and
Theatre, wrote and edited for student newspaper
The Vanguard, and by his second year in 1987, moved to Columbia SC and continued study at University of South Carolina, where he pursued
Philosophy and Art,
Film and
Photography, Theatre,
Music,
Science, earning the BA in 1990. He continued at South Carolina in 1991, studying Philosophy,
Logic and
Mathematics, Photography and Theatre, composing Music, and with his thesis,
What is Enlightenment?: The Foucauldean Ethos of Modernity, he earned the MA (1996), and has taught Metaphysics, Logic and Ethics.
In 1997, M.R.M. Parrott founded his small press, "
rimric press", and began releasing and touring his completed books in 1998 with his 1997 novella, "To Lie Within the Moment," set on the Gulf Coast. In published essays and accounts, he argued that big publishers, traditional academic houses, as well as commercial, New York publishers, were long behind the curve of new voices and ideas. Instead of devoting years of creative time merely toward getting published in an increasingly competitive marketplace, he published all of his remaining books of Fiction, Poetry, and Philosophy, and argued philosophical and technological issues on a variety of websites, developing his work independently of both academic and commercial demands.
At forty, Mark put everything in storage and travelled by car on an open-ended
road trip across the North American countries of Canada, United States and Mexico, writing about his experiences on what he called the "trip of a lifetime." He wanted to see, as he wrote in
Driving Home, "as much of North America as I could get away with seeing", to find a new home, "larger and denser than Atlanta or Charlotte, more cultural than New Orleans or Miami, more diverse than any city of the South, and hopefully, liveable". After his six-month, 40,000 mile (64,000 km) journey, during which he visited more than 400 cities, national parks and attractions, he settled in Chicago IL in the Spring of 2007. There, he released his travelogue and autobiography about the journey,
Driving Home: A North American Tour, along with the second book of his "Timeless Trilogy" and "Exfoliate", his fourth chapbook of poems and stories. He later returned to Columbia SC, resumed teaching and programming work, and by 2011 had released his first full-length play, formed the Blues-Rock band
Fury Road using the title from Part Three of "Driving Home", and released the second volume of "Dynamism". In 2012, he relaunched Fury Road as a solo recording artist with his own concept album of songs, "Intersections". The album features Parrott's songwriting, singing, drumming, virtual instruments, and sound engineering.
Classical and Contemporary
M.R.M. Parrott's written work is independent and does not fit within the traditional areas of American academia or the commercial traditions in the "New" South. Deeply influenced by the
Ancient Philosophy of
Plato and
Aristotle, as well as the European side of
Modern Philosophy, much of Parrott's work has focused on
Immanuel Kant. Studies of Kant, along with
Michel Foucault and
Gilles Deleuze, and new treatises on
metaphysical issues, describe a
Dynamism based upon the beauty and fallibility of individuals and societies and the infinite complexity of the
Universe. Ethical principles, for Parrott, are built up through the development of the social animals, derived from and applied to interpersonal situations.
Parrott's fiction and poetry works are often hybrids of many forms and traditions, where he has explored themes of "affluent decadence" and individual loneliness,
time travel and scientific triumph, backdrops of "timeless" love and familial belonging. His prose is influenced by
Virginia Woolf,
John Steinbeck,
Ernest Hemingway, and
Jane Austen, and his novella,
To Lie Within the Moment, shows influences from
Greek Mythology,
Plato, and
Contemporary Philosophy, along with nods to
Mrs. Dalloway,
Moby Dick,
Albert Camus and
Marcel Proust, and thriller films. In his
Timeless Trilogy, works rooted in
ethical dilemma and futuristic economic and geo-political theory, Parrott comments on causal
paradoxes and
Quantum Entanglement, present and future World
Politics and
History, and numerous
Science Fiction ideas, with direct structural allusions to Austen's
Pride and Prejudice,
Aeschylus'
The Oresteia Trilogy, and films such as the
Peter Jackson-filmed
Lord of the Rings. In
Poetry and short stories, there are daring, lyrical, sometimes intentionally incoherent or juvenile, sometimes restrained and erudite forms and tales. The many varied literary snapshots within his freeform
Chapbooks of poems and stories stand beside high criticism and seeming flights of fancy.
Having worked in Art, Design, Photography and other visual media, Parrott also designs and produces his books in a custom folio, making use of his own abstract photographs, publishing them through
rimric press. While titles have been commercially available through retailers, Parrott has made them directly available as
PDF downloads from
mrmparrott.com, a site linked with
rimric.com, where he published many essays and reviews on topics such as
The Matrix Philosophy and the
The Messiness of WikiDemocracy. Also the developer of websites and
database-driven
Software, in January 2004 he produced a "fork" of the software on which the popular, but troubled,
Wikipedia runs.
GetWiki became a topic of controversy, due to its then new
XML import of pages from the online encyclopedia, as well as its unconventional licensing. Parrott's other software programs have included an
XML-to-
PDF ebook application once used to produce his books,
SOHOdb, and other
PHP/
MySQL software for
LAMP systems.
Further Reading
Selected Bibliography
- Opening Lyric (Chapbook, 1984-88, 2002)
- Another Generation Cometh (Chapbook, 1991-94, 2002)
- The Generation of X (Essays, 1991-95, 2002)
- The Ethos of Modernity (Monograph, 1996, 2002)
- The Empiricism of Subjectivity (Monograph, 1997, 2002)
- To Lie Within the Moment (Novella, 1998)
- The Pure Critique of Reason (Monograph, 1999, 2002)
- Synthetic A Priori (Interviews, 1999)
- Bartered Tide (Chapbook, 1995-2000, 2002)
- Timeless: Book I (Novel, 2003)
- Dynamism: Volume I: Force (Treatise, 2005)
- Exfoliate (Chapbook, 2001-05, 2008)
- Driving Home: A North American Tour (Travel, 2006-07, 08)
- Timeless: Book II (Novel, 2008)
- Ctrl-V: A Play in Four Acts (Play, 2010)
- Dynamism: Volume II: Life (Treatise, 2011)
- Fury Road: Intersections (Lyrics and Notes, 2012)
Selected Discography
- Fury Road, "May Day" (Demo EP, 2010)
- M.R.M. Parrott, "Trilogy" (Drum Solo, Listen, 2010)
- Fury Road, "Intersections" (Concept Album, Listen, 2012)
External Links
(last updated by Proteus, 1:38am EDT - Wed, Oct 03 2012)
