"We imagine that our preferences are ours. But is the sunflower’s tilt toward the sun a choice? Or has the light seduced it since seed? So too, we bend toward some inner radiance—or shadow—that calls us. Some to anger. Some to art. Some to needle. Some to prayer."
"Should we consider this spectrum of simulation illusory relative to the experience produced through perception? In other words, to what extent is our subjective reality predicated on our immediate sensory circumstances?"
"Each new day is a new micro spawning from another darkened chasm of horizontality. We rise compulsively each morning ready to do creature things. But what does a creature need to do? What is a creature supposed to do?"
"...this dogged pursuit of material goods is a slippery slope to excess and betrayed expectations; discerning between wants and needs is a daily challenge with decades-long implications."
We stand on the brink of an era where the spinal cord may become redundant, skills could be downloaded, and silent mind-reading might become a reality.
Take one grand piano and have Glenn Gould and me each take a turn. The same instrument can in one case reveal a masterpiece, and in another, an objectionable assortment of sounds from a grand piano. The difference lies not in the instrumental constituency but in the patterns provoked by the player.
A professor once asked me where I thought the most great ideas in history could be found. As if I would know. I blanked. Then, after a pause... Cemeteries, he said. Because thoughts are ephemeral. Like ghosts—insights, intuitions, revelations, subtle observations... emerge, expand, and disappear, only to vanish altogether,