Three Bottles

I always believed that whatever had to be written would somehow get itself written.

— Tegan Quin, of Tegan and Sara, on the benefits of collaboration.

“Readers may be divided into four classes: 1) Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied. 2) Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time. 3) Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read. 4) Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also”

A book is a blunt instrument and a block of eternity. It’s the physical manifestation of boredom. A book. ‘The book.’ Students never call it anything else in their essays: the book, a book, the books, some books.

I remember the joy of studying in the library at SLC.  I used to try and find deserted alcoves where students were unlikely to go.  A couple Genetic Counseling students and I dubbed one The Wombat Den for some reason.

“Books, Cats, Life is Good.”

If you’ve been acculturated to believe that you have certain obligations - familial, social, human - if multitasking has been your forte and that’s what’s been praised and rewarded, where do you find the single-mindedness, the selfishness to do something like art?

“Yes! the books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill! The only years of my life that I can look back on with something like pride… Early and late, through the long winter nights and the quiet summer days, I drank at the fountain of knowledge, and never wearied of the draught.”

To me a book is not just a particular file. It’s connected with personhood. Books are really, really hard to write. They represent a kind of a summit of grappling with what one really has to say. And what I’m concerned with is when Silicon Valley looks at books, they often think of them as really differently as just data points that you can mush together. They’re divorcing books from their role in personhood.