Online Poetry Slam

One of the hallmark events at the biennial Tucson conferences "Toward a Science of Consciousness" has been the Poetry Slam/Zombie Blues. Performed late in the evening toward the end of the conference, the Slam offers attendees an opportunity to read their poems, or sing their songs (pertinent or otherwise) to a jeering, raucous and somewhat inebriated audience of their peers.

We conclude with a round of “The Zombie Blues”, sung to musical accompaniment of a Blues riff. Zombies are hypothetical constructs which look and behave like humans but lack conscious experience. The first verse (traditionally performed by David Chalmers) goes like this:

“I act like you act, I do what you do,

but I don’t know, what it’s like to be you.

What consciousness is, I ain’t got a clue.

I got the Zombie Blues!....” and so on.

Some verses get rather raunchy, as, e.g. zombies would have the capacity to perform sex but unfortunately lack the capacity to experience pleasure.

We are now initiating an online Poetry Slam/Zombie Blues here on the Center for Consciousness Studies website. Email your poems about consciousness or Zombie Blues verses with your name to center@email.arizona.edu

The live Poetry Slam/Zombie Blues will be held as usual at the conference April 4-8, 2006.