The seven lamps project
Thanks for the email responses I received responding to the previous newsletter. There were interesting thoughts and links, and it's given me more to think about. Hearing feedback, positive or negative, helps me with my own thinking, so feel free to send any my way!
You might also notice that the links aren't as obfuscated in this newsletter any more. I've also found a way to turn off analytic tracking, which is what was making the links obfuscated. Now that I have no idea what anyone clicks on, I'll rely on any direct feedback you might have to know whether this continues to be an interesting newsletter for you.
One of John Ruskin's plate etchings from The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1849
I've started a new project I'm calling "The Seven Lamps project". Briefly, I'm rereading John Ruskin's The Seven Lamps of Architecture and working towards harmonizing and synthesizing it with the idea of software architecture. The eventually end goal will be either an essay and/or a conference talk. I wrote more about the project on my blog, along with a summary of the introduction of the book.
In Denver the spring/summer season is heating up, which means that as the sun stays out late Delilah and I have started taking an evening walk after tucking the kids in bed (we mostly just walk in a circle out front of our house, so the kids aren't left entirely alone.) It's a good time to get away from any kind of technology (i.e., a phone), get fresh air, and have a longer conversation that isn't interrupted by our kids. Speaking of walking, I thought this essay on Flânerie: The Art of Aimless Strolling was interesting. Craig Mod has a newsletter about walking, Japan, literature, and photography and his recent(ish?) entry about drumming as a kind of walking discusses the steady beat of walking as similar to a musical drum beat.
Perhaps it's time to bring back the Peripatetic school, where lessons were allegedly given by Aristotle while walking. I've always found walking to be a good way to lubricate thinking. What about you, what's an activity that you do that you find gets you into a rhythm of thinking differently?
In music, I've been thinking about how music is a form a poetry, but not one that frequently uses spoken-word for the poetic form in it. I think the juxtaposition can lead to some really interesting results. For examples, there's The Moody Blues' song Nights in White Satin (the poem starts at 7:30, but it's worth listening to the song beforehand to set the mood), and as a newer example, Saltillo's Ganglion album (check out the song A Hair On The Head Of John The Baptist for some spoken Shakespeare poetry or Giving In for Edgar Albert Guest's poem about children.) Do you know of other songs that use spoken poetry in during the music? What do you think of these kinds of songs?
One final suggestion for you; Diaries Of Note is a website/newsletter that has a short excerpt from a diaries of someone in the past, along with a short biography background about the person and context. There's a new snippet every day, and some really interesting stuff from people I'd probably never know about otherwise.