le chat dort.

Rimantas Dichavičius

In the meadow of Smilgai. 1965.

Friedrich Nietzsche - The Birth of Tragedy Part 2

In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche creates a dichotomy* between two positions in cultural expressions. The Apollonian - based on the Greek god Apollon, which for Nietzsche represents order and structure built on logic and reason. On the other hand, we have Dionysus, the expression of chaos and emotions. This is the language of myth and intuition.

The Apollonian inspiration is rational and, in many ways, closely linked to the strong scientific dominance throughout Nietzsche's lifetime. The mid to late 1800s saw a massive progress in scientific development, but with that came a wide variety of pseudoscience. Many of these new inventions and ideas would come to shape the next century, and often not for the better.

In contrast, we have human expression through mythmaking and storytelling. These are expressions of the human condition through narratives and metaphors. This is the language of symbols and archetypes. Here Nietzsche draws on the inspiration of Schopenhauer and Wagner, who saw the only true human expression in music, an idea Nietzsche later breaks with

*Dicothotomy means creating two opposing positions. Night and day are dichotomous from one another. You will often find people who criticise someone for creating a “false dichotomy”, thus doing what's often referred to as binary thinking.

Friedrich Nietzsche - The Birth of Tragedy Part 4

So how did we end up in the grasp of the Apollian logos? According to Nietzsche, there is one philosopher to blame for our descent into logos, Socrates. By most modern philosophers, Socrates is seen as the beginning of Western philosophy, and it's common to trace ideals from the Enlightenment all the way back to him. The result is that Nietzsche, in some ways, is not just criticising Socratic philosophy itself, but all of Western philosophical tradition. In later books, we will see some of the fruits of this seed of how deep Nietzsche's dislike for modern Europe goes. In many ways, this will be the start of Nietzsche's authorship, and he will continue to develop these ideas further in later books. He will break with the dialectical form and not use Apollon and Dionysus as images of his philosophical project. Still, at the end of his life, Nietzsche would sign letters as Dionysus, showing us where he placed himself in this dialectic conflict.

Library Interior - Sarah Spencer

British , b. 1965 -

Authors set out to correct under-representation of female sounds – and found some surprising revelations

When we hear the beautiful call of a bird from a high bough, we’re told it’s likely to be a male – singing for territory, or belting out tunes to woo a female. But as the annual dawn chorus reaches a crescendo this spring, a new guidebook is urging us to think again – and turn our ears to the hidden world of female birdsong. The songs, sounds and sights of female birds have historically been overlooked in field guides and sound archives. In 2016, just 0.01% of the bird sounds in the global Xeno-Canto sound library were labelled female. Another sound archive was just 0.03% female, according to a 2018 study. But the new book – The Sound Approach to Birding 2 – aims to correct this under-representation and properly explain female birdsong. Female birds sing for territorial displays, to ward off other females and to attract extra males, according to Lucy McRobert, a writer and researcher who studied the issue for the guidebook. The book comes with its own library of 300 sounds from 200 species, accessed via web or app. The clips are drawn from the larger online archive of Sound Approach, a birdsong project founded in 2000 with confirmed recordings of females for 41% of species found in the Western Palearctic, a biogeographical region encompassing Europe, north Africa and most of the Middle East...

It is that time again 🌸🌸🌸

red - the very best of enya by enya

orange - aerie by john denver

yellow - tracy chapman

green - the hurdy gurdy man by donovan

blue - an ancient muse by loreena mckennitt

purple - quantum flow by richard houghten

brown - deja vu by csny

black - grief in exile by mariee siou

white - graceland by paul simon

i accidentally did brown instead of pink so feel free to change up the colors!