Greil Marcus has a new book coming about why he writes, adapted from a lecture he was invited to give at Yale.
Each speaker writes a book on why they write and then draws a lecture from it, he said. When? I said. September, he said. I can’t, I said. I’m still learning how to walk again. No, next year, he said. The idea that in a year, in the best circumstances, I’d be able to travel across the country and speak in public was so absurd—I’d been having speech therapy twice a day for months, having lost the ability to speak with any emotion, feeling, emphasis, flair, or really meaning—I said, sure, figuring why not, there’s no chance it will happen. At that point I didn’t know if I’d ever write again and did care if I did or not.
Via Futility Closet, Danny Jansen will become the first MLB player to play for both teams in a single game. (Rain, suspension, trade.)
Quanta has a great primer on the vagus nerve:
The vagus nerve is critical to generating mind by integrating the brain and body. Choking is terrifying because death could be mere minutes away. That heightened mental state is dependent on signals coming from the body — the inability to breathe or swallow — and the vagus nerve both senses and controls the choking response. If your heart suddenly starts racing, you might experience a panic attack; controlling heart rate is a prime function of the vagus nerve.
And at Nautilus, Steve Paulson goes deep on hallucinogens.
This question about a transpersonal reality hangs in the air, lurking behind this psychedelic moment. It shapes how we interpret the mystical experiences so common in psychedelic therapy. It informs metaphysics—the philosophical tradition that wrestles with fundamental questions about reality, like the relationship between mind and matter and the space-time continuum, which are precisely the kinds of questions that tend to surface in psychedelic experiences.
I had planned on being in Portland for XOXO, but life intervened. Jason Kottke isn’t helping my RAHMO (regret at having missed out):
And most of all, thanks to the Andys (Baio, McMillan) for putting on XOXO for all these years. It is a singularly impactful gathering that’s touched/changed/bettered too many lives to even count. XOXO is perhaps the most thoughtful thing I’ve ever experienced — I can’t imagine how difficult it’s been for them to sustain that level of kindness and attention to detail across this many festivals and years.
In lieu of being in Portland, I finished a rewatch of Damon Lindelhof’s HBO show The Leftovers. Season one hews close to the Perrotta book, and beats you about the head and neck with grief. But seasons two and three go somewhere beautiful, especially in the relationship between Kevin and Nora. If you haven’t watched it and are looking for something worthwhile on HBO Max, give it a spin. And then, once you’re through it, read Emily St. James’ and Caroline Framke’s review of the final episode, “The Book of Nora.” (Don’t worry, no real spoilers in the quote below.)
Why shouldn’t the series finale of The Leftovers send a goat to wander the desert, weighed down by figurative sin, until Nora found him tangled up in necklaces and metaphors? The Leftovers can be an incredibly subtle show, but it loves itself an obvious symbol, too, and the goat is a great one. Is it on the nose? Absolutely. But it also represents something The Leftovers does really well. Sometimes, life is incredibly on the nose; if you look for them, there are obvious symbols for whatever you’re going through lurking around every corner.
Emphasis mine.