Old Material Is the Best Material
Hello, and welcome back! I’ve spent a lot of time in the last year learning to disconnect myself from the minute-by-minute stimuli of social media, to get on a slower cycle of information, to read more books and have more extended sessions of music-listening and -playing. And I have said that I want this newsletter to be, at least in part, about permanent things. With all that in mind — and just in time for Christmas! — here’s a newsletter full of old stuff. (Well, except for the recent painting you see below — but it's a recent painting of an ancient event, so I'm calling that a victory.)
[“Nativity and Angels,” by Craigie Aitchison]
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A little late in the season for this, but a few years ago I made a critical edition of Auden's long poem For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio. A poem worth reading — and buying!
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In another month or so we’re going to get a new album by the brilliant and endlessly fascinating Jeremy Denk, and this one is going to cover seven hundred years of music in 24 pieces. Can’t wait. You may preorder here.
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“In my head there is a permanent opposition-party; and whenever I take any step or come to any decision — though I may have given the matter mature consideration — it afterwards attacks what I have done, without, however, being each time necessarily in the right. This is, I suppose, only a form of rectification on the part of the spirit of scrutiny; but it often reproaches me when I do not deserve it. The same thing, no doubt, happens to many others as well; for where is the man who can help thinking that, after all, it were better not to have done something that he did with great deliberation?” — Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer also explains why you need to take breaks from social media.
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John Wesley’s advice to a pastor, though given in 1760, is remarkably relevant today.
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Speech-breathing, breath-penning, outreaching, unoutreaching, pitches of suchness
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And of course I’m writing a book about reading old stuff. Here’s a peek into the workshop:
