About Miguel Pulido

About Aspiring thinker-poet and studied musician: *long bio, favorite movies and music at the bottom—

I live in an old orange orchard in southern California about a block from the I-5. I grew up around here.

Through adolencse I studied classical guitar technique and interpretation with a minor emphasis in flamenco, jazz, and popular music, all the while, somewhat unknown to me, latently wanting to be a master singer-songwriter.

Though I received an extensive and unique musical enculturation, I’ve always been enchanted by the powers of language itself. I am the son of a gifted public speaker, an engineer turned local politician, and a nationally acclaimed, though now semi-retired, journalist.

I studied for my Bachelors at the Claremont Colleges Consortium in Claremont, California, specifically Pitzer College (though, somehow by accident, I only took 3 courses at Pitzer specifically, the rest of my courses scattered through the Claremonts).

After hopping around majors across the Claremonts, and failing in time to get my one missing credit necessary to redeem a degree in basic Music Composition from Pomona College’s music department, I was allowed by Pitzer college to design my own major titled ‘Music and Poetry.’ I took at least nine different poetry classes (though arguably more) in my time at school. Not broad enough for a Lit or English Major, but definitely deep enough to feel like I know something useful about poetry.

Through this self-designed major program I felt at last a sense of purpose after 4 years of expensive misery. I did a capstone project/thesis on the history, practice, and culture of the ‘singer-songwriter’ and its antecedents in the western canon of lyric poetry. I was advised by Jodi Rockwell (music) and Robert Von Hallberg (poetry).

My intuitive interests in poetic theory, and my hands on experience with various musical cultures and practices, has put me at an interesting intellectual cross-roads for the dissection of aesthetic principles and realizations.


I took a formal philosophy class in high school. My teacher was great. I took two half courses in philosophy in college before dropping out them: ‘Philosophy of Religion’ and ‘Spinoza and Leibniz.’ My teacher in these courses was great as well, but I just felt personally out of touch with philosophy and life in general at that time.

My senior year of high school I developed affinities and interests in vague notions of ‘eastern thought’ and ‘eastern spirituality.’ I understand two reasons for this: 1. a conviction that there was something tangible, amidst the many confusions, to be grasped and, ultimately, implemented, and 2. an abundance of strong role models in my life who had seemed to internalize the genuinely intellectually applicable values of maintaining and understanding the efficacy of a meditation practice.

My strongest and most long lasting influences in this ever-expanding eastern sphere are Alan Watts, Shunryu Suzuki, and the Tao Te Ching adapted by Stephen Mitchell.

For a long time I just blew out the lantern of ‘western philosophy’ in my life trying to see the stars of the east clouded by heavy light pollution here in the shadow of Los Angeles.

There are perhaps many reasons I now seek to strengthen the light of this lantern in my hands, but there are two main ones: seeing Slavoj Žižek speak at Pomona college in 2017 and being turned on to the ‘Making Sense Podcast with Sam Harris.’

Today in quarantine, after inundating my best friend with numerous small essays of my own, he suggested I join this community to see if anything positive come from it.

I feel like this is probably a long bio for this space, but I’m new to it so I’ll learn.

My favorite poets are: Rilke, Ashbery, Crane, Frost, Whitman, Dickinson, and Henri Cole.

*

My absolute favorite albums are: Abbey Road, Pink Moon, A Love Supreme, Live at Sin-é, In Rainbows, To Pimp a Butterfly, Bob Dylan Live at the Royal Albert Hall, and Blue by Joni Mitchell.

My favorite western classical composers: Bach, Chopin, Stravinsky, Bartok, Penderecki, Reich, Jonny Greenwood, and Caroline Shaw.

My favorite guitarists are: Roland Dyens, Paco de Lucia, Django Reinhardt, Jimi Hendrix, and of course, my most influential teacher, Jack Sanders.

My favorite films are: There Will Be Blood, Good Time, Lawrence of Arabia, Harold and Maude, The Graduate, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, Paris Texas, Ferris Beullers Day Off, Star Wars (A New Hope), The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Before Sunrise, Y Tu Mamá También, and the dyad of Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Location Southern California
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Favourite quotations Tomorrow is easy but today is uncharted
-John Ashbery
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