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Tension and Release
June 28, 2022
(Hi all. Long time no see. Keeping it simple: one good thing as the opportunity arises. No plan, no schedule, no big ideas. You can always unsubscribe here....
the compagnon’s staircase
March 30, 2020
the compagnon's staircase Niklas Luhmann always worked with a collaborator, whom he scrupulously credited: his Zettelkasten, a slip-box of pieces of paper on...
working from home
March 25, 2020
working from home Adolf Loos, dandy and architect, gave a series of talks in Paris in 1926: Der Mensch mit den Modernen Nerven, “Man with Modern Nerves,”...
flat land seen from above
March 22, 2020
(For breakfast, Rossini would have two hardboiled eggs and a glass of good Bordeaux. Chekhov would make pancakes to eat with gooseberry jam and a glass of...
the unusual solution
March 22, 2020
(Hello, my dears, to the end of the “Passing Current” newsletter and the beginning of something new. The day before the stay-in-place order, the man ahead of...
Passing Current 40: Tune a brook by moving the stones in it
June 1, 2019
Theme: "Yellow Mercury 4," off Empathy Moves the Water by the Crooked Jades (And we're back. I had to take a break from writing the newsletter to finish some...
Passing Current 39: Dancers at Akasaka Space Capsule Disco, 2
August 17, 2018
(Hello again, again.) Dancers at Akasaka Space Capsule Disco, 2 (This is a sequel to Passing Current number 8: the stories of the people dancing at Akasaka...
Passing Current 38: Futurist Tango
March 24, 2018
(Hello again.) futurist tango They didn’t know what to call jazz when they brought it to Russia. Parnakh came back from Paris in 1922 with the instruments...
Passing Current 37: Sister squares are reconciled
December 2, 2017
(Introducing a new recurring segment, “every yes” – ideas, sketches, and materials for things I’ll never get around to writing, and should stop thinking...
Passing Current 36: Run
November 24, 2017
(If you’re American and angry about the amazingly terrible tax plan and state of politics, may I recommend making a donation, however small, to some local...
Passing Current 35: Corner of Prince and Wooster
November 11, 2017
(Happy birthday Amy!) corner of prince and wooster They started with a space, at the corner of Prince and Wooster in SoHo in New York City, and an idea: the...
Passing Current 34: The human always (1/3)
September 25, 2017
(Glad to be with you again! Back from the road for the fall. (Recent offices: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.) Cranes, golden plovers, red-throated divers, parrot...
Passing Current 33: Mushroom dogsup
June 16, 2017
(Hello again, just before midsummer. This is the 33rd of these letters, and will be the last until fall. Parts of these letters so far have been notes and...
Passing Current 32: The oblique function
April 13, 2017
(My friend Amy – one of the smartest, most creative people I’ve ever met – has started a newsletter! Already it’s amazing: Ridiculous Ideas to Stave Off...
Passing Current 31: L'Insaisissable
March 31, 2017
(Ponderosas, lodgepole pines, sugar pines, incense cedars, manzanita and bitter cherry and rabbitbush. Steller’s jays and dark-eyed juncos and mountain...
Passing Current 30: Hearsay of the sun
March 23, 2017
(Been on the road, working. Missed you! Recent offices: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.) hearsay of the sun “Such evanescent shadows of probability,” said Benjamin Peirce,...
Passing Current 29: The overload
February 17, 2017
(Hello my darlings. It’s hard to write about anything else, isn’t it? There are almost-finished drafts for you about a constructed language for naming stars,...
Passing Current 28: Surface tension
January 10, 2017
(Happy new year, my dears.) surface tension Let’s start in London in 1968, with a kidnapping, and end in the high desert outside Twentynine Palms. Two...
Passing Current 27: The Torch
December 3, 2016
(»Mir fällt zu Trump nichts ein.«) the torch Every night, Karl Kraus sat down at his desk to face “the wall of fire”: burning cities, burning books, the...
Passing Current 26: Ghost story
November 1, 2016
(In the spirit of the season.) ghost story Robert Aickman wrote some of my favorite … what to call them? They’re not ghost stories, necessarily. He called...
Passing Current 25: The Low Road
October 26, 2016
(Seems like the time for this Marge Piercy poem.) the low road “The Low Road” Marge Piercy (1980) What can they do to you? Whatever they want. They can set...
Passing Current 24: Infinitely patient
October 2, 2016
(If you’re in a dark place in the northern hemisphere the next two weeks or so and you wake up a few hours before dawn you’ll be able to see the zodiacal...
Passing Current 23: Carnaro
September 24, 2016
(Hello again! Some recent offices: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Here are tuis and bellbirds singing in the rain at about 48 degrees and 52 minutes south latitude,...
Passing Current 22: The Moscow Refrigeration Institute
April 20, 2016
(All the flowering trees are blooming in New York City: callery pear trees, crabapple trees, eastern redbuds, hawthorns, magnolias, and the knockout kanzan...
Passing Current 21: He, She, Us, It!
April 12, 2016
(Short and sweet.) He, She, Us, It! Alfred Kubin’s The Other Side is a deeply unsettling novel from 1909 about a city, Pearl, constructed in isolation...
Passing Current 20: XXXXXXOOXXXOO
April 7, 2016
(Tomorrow is utopian dreamer Charles Fourier’s birthday! Who claimed, in later life, that at the age of nine he swore an oath to destroy trade and commerce,...
Passing Current 19: Solar's game
March 6, 2016
(This Tuesday, Jupiter will be exactly opposite the sun and visible all night.) Solar’s game Xul Solar lived more or less permanently in the future. “I am...
Passing Current 18: Found in Saragossa
February 28, 2016
(Tomorrow is a leap day!) Found in Saragossa The robots and the book turned up in the hands of French officers after the city of Saragossa (or Zaragoza) fell...
Passing Current 17: One-Way Ticket
January 23, 2016
(Back in New York at last, just in time for one of the biggest snowstorms in the city’s history. The Hudson’s slate-gray water vanishes into a whiteout...
Passing Current 16: Llano del Rio
December 7, 2015
(Here’s a way to donate to Planned Parenthood.) Llano del Rio In Llano del Rio, in the Antelope Valley in the farther reaches of Los Angeles County, you can...
Passing Current 15: PURE ENERGY LATENT OR RADIANT
November 21, 2015
(Bells ringing, bats out hunting, massive cumulus clouds gunmetal gray against the deep blue evening sky heading north over the Hudson. If you’re in New York...
Passing Current 14: of future nights / countless / stars
October 28, 2015
(105 days later, a little more than a quarter of a year. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The night after tomorrow a strangely dark asteroid more than 400 meters in diameter,...
Passing Current 13: Il pianeta come festival
July 14, 2015
(In California, around thirty eight degrees five minutes north latitude. Eucalyptus, madrone, coastal oak, fog, kelp beds in the blue Pacific, the red of...
Passing Current 12: More brightly than the sun
June 23, 2015
(Some recent offices: 1, 2, 3, 4.) (In the peninsula: bears, seals, lobsters, stories, generous hospitality, cats, fires, birch and fir and maple, and the...
Passing Current 11: Every leaf, every flower, every fruit, forever
June 7, 2015
(Yesterday’s office. Making a fire is all about leaving space, letting it breathe. In Walter Benjamin’s diary he thinks about writing novels and telling...
Passing Current 10: Saint Tree-Eater
May 29, 2015
(A passage in one of Schumann’s piano sonatas is marked “As fast as possible,” and is followed a few bars later by another admonition, “Faster,” and then,...
Passing Current 9: Chambers in the Fun Palace
May 22, 2015
(Fogs in the morning, Mercury and Venus in the sky, music in the streets. Late spring slowly turning into summer.) Chambers in the Fun Palace Cedric Price is...
Passing Current 8: Dancers at Akasaka Space Capsule Disco
April 23, 2015
(Tonight, as the sun sets, you can see the young and waxing moon low by the horizon to the west, with Mars slightly to the north and Venus high in the sky,...
Passing Current 7: Peradam
April 12, 2015
(Highlight of the week: sitting in the Rockford Fosgate SoundLab pressure chamber – which has built-in panic buttons! – at the NY Auto Show: you can feel the...
Passing Current 6: Something not known to anyone at all
April 9, 2015
(On Saturday night, Venus will be in the Pleiades. It’ll be gorgeous.) something not known to anyone at all Anna Akhmatova, “Everything is Plundered,...
Passing Current 5: Inflation Saints, 2
April 5, 2015
(In Philadelphia! The beautiful trees on the Swarthmore campus, from a splendid tuliptree to a young red oak, as trim and neat and lively as a whippet....
Passing Current 4: Rosemary and Liszt
March 30, 2015
Jupiter was very close to the waxing moon at nightfall this evening – Jupiter, the garden of storms. Rosemary and Liszt The first night of Anomalous Music in...
Passing Current 3: The invention of clickbait in Girard, Kansas in 1922
March 24, 2015
(Wilhelm Reich was born today, he of the blue-green “orgone” energy, the Sex-Pol project in Vienna (“psychoanalytic counseling, Marxist advice and...
Passing Current 2: Inflation Saints
March 19, 2015
Tonight’s the new moon, tomorrow’s the equinox. the inflation saints, 1: Gusto Gräser Try to picture him, Gusto, “precursor and stimulator of all the...
Passing Current 1: Cosmograms!
March 15, 2015
It’s a cloudy, slate-colored Sunday morning in New York City. (As the snow melts, it’s like a long-exposure photograph of the detritus and trash of weeks of...