also reading/listening to

Along with reading Joyce today, I also happen to be reading Brentano and listening to Beethoven string quartets.

I enjoy these sorts of random synergies, partly because I like the idea of experiencing conjunctions that few if any people have ever experienced before. Namely, it’s at least possible that no one has ever read Joyce and Brentano and listened to Beethoven string quartets. And if they have, you can always imagine some new additional condition– probably no one’s ever done it in Cairo before, for instance. It allows you to think that you might be catching sight of some previously unknown synergy in the universe.

That’s also why I used to take a Heidegger Gesamtausgabe volume along to White Sox games at Comiskey Park. You might only be able to read a page or two between innings, but at least I could think: “This is seeing Heidegger in an utterly new light. No one is likely ever to have done this before.” It would be hard to put my finger on any concrete insights unlocked by the Comiskey environment, but there may have been subtle atmospheric effects.