Reads from 2015

Italo Calvino on Photography and the Art of Presence

“The life that you live in order to photograph it is already, at the outset, a commemoration of itself.”

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Hannah Arendt on Being vs. Appearing and Our Impulse for Self-Display

“Nothing and nobody exists in this world whose very being does not presuppose a spectator.”

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The Gentle Giant: Oliver Sacks and the Art of Choosing Empathy Over Vengeance

An existential lesson gleaned from a brush with death and foolishness.

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Immortal Beloved: Beethoven’s Passionate Love Letters

“My heart overflows with a longing to tell you so many things…”

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How to Disagree: Amin Maalouf on the Key to Intelligent Dissent and Effective Criticism

“To approach someone else convincingly you must do so with open arms and head held high, and your arms can’t be open unless your head IS high.”

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Louis I, King of the Sheep: An Illustrated Parable of How Power Changes Those in Power

A subtle reminder that we are separated from those less fortunate than us by little more than unmerited cosmic odds.

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John Steinbeck’s Prophetic Dream About How the Commercial Media Machine Is Killing Creative Culture

Half a century before Buzzfeed, a nocturnal epiphany about the greatest threat to art.

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What to Think About Machines That Think: Leading Thinkers on Artificial Intelligence and What It Means to Be Human

“Once we had neurons. Now we’re becoming the neurons.”

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John Lennon’s Impassioned Letters on the Value of Meditation

“I suggest you try transcendental meditation through which all things are possible.”

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The Transfiguration of Aloneness: David Whyte on Longing and Silence

“Reality met on its own terms demands … an ability to live on equal terms with the fleeting and the eternal, the hardly touchable and the fully possible…”

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Reads from 2015

“The life that you live in order to photograph it is already, at the outset, a commemoration of itself.”

“Nothing and nobody exists in this world whose very being does not presuppose a spectator.”

An existential lesson gleaned from a brush with death and foolishness.

“My heart overflows with a longing to tell you so many things…”

“To approach someone else convincingly you must do so with open arms and head held high, and your arms can’t be open unless your head IS high.”

A subtle reminder that we are separated from those less fortunate than us by little more than unmerited cosmic odds.

Half a century before Buzzfeed, a nocturnal epiphany about the greatest threat to art.

“Once we had neurons. Now we’re becoming the neurons.”

“I suggest you try transcendental meditation through which all things are possible.”

“Reality met on its own terms demands … an ability to live on equal terms with the fleeting and the eternal, the hardly touchable and the fully possible…”

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