“I consider myself as deschooled: I learned how to unlearn, and continue to follow the twisted path of ‘disciplined dissidence.’”* (*“Disciplined dissidence” is a phrase of Ivan Illich, who speaks of it in his Deschooling Society as a quality “which cannot be measured against any rod, or any curriculum, nor compared to someone else’s achievements”… Continue reading

“In the arts the best performances allow observers to witness some deliberate, conscious thought in action. Consider the difference between listening to someone lecture on her feet and listening to someone read a paper…The performance bereft of the mind would be, in certain respects, like watching a machine: although the output could be amazing, the… Continue reading

“When we think technology can surpass our bodies in a comprehensive way, we are forgetting what we know about our bodies and physical reality. The universe doesn’t have infinitely fine grains, and the body is already tuned in as finely as anything can ever be, when it needs to be” (49). “The unceasing flow of… Continue reading

In their exceptionally readable book, The Runaway Species (2017), David Eagleman and Anthony Brandt offer four suggestions for cultivating creativity: • Don’t glue down the pieces. “We don’t just set out to improve imperfection—we also tamper with things that seem perfect” (134). • Proliferate options. “When the brain proliferates options, it gets off the path of least… Continue reading

  “Listening to music on a smartphone is not like listening to music on a Walkman. Again, the phone’s functions undermines one another. We are perennially subject to interruptions and temptations. Dead time—waiting for the bus, waiting in line, and so on—is filled by checking Facebook instead of letting our minds wander. While the Walkman… Continue reading

  “Music is what man owes to time” (85). “It is possible that listening to music consists less in distracting be mind from ‘acoustic suffering’ than in struggling to reestablish animal alert. What characterizes harmony is that it resuscitates the acoustic curiosity that is lost as soon as articulated and semantic language spreads within us”… Continue reading

“You must try to remember whether even in childhood you felt a strong natural inclination to this art and whether you were deeply moved by the beauty of concords.” – Johann Joseph Fux, The Study of Counterpoint (1725) Continue reading

“Art is not a substitute religion: it is a religion (in the true sense of the word: ‘binding back’, ‘binding’ to the unknowable, transcending reason, transcendent being).” – Notes, 1964-65 • “Art is the highest form of hope.” – Text for catalog of documents 7, Kassel, 1982 • Question: And what is it that connects… Continue reading