Censorship constrains the realm of human expression, stifles creativity, and not only censors words but also thoughts. In solitary moments when readers seek a point of connection, they find themselves surrounded by dots that they must connect themselves. One cannot access voices that have been silenced. I too was left alone, dead silent. 

Are great philosophers great writers? I hear a loud “no!” from every student who’s struggled through Kant or Hegel. So, let’s ask the question this way: Is it possible to be as talented a creative writer as you are influential a philosopher? For the moment let’s agree that, while extremely rare, it’s plausible. But who fills the bill? Who’s a great philosopher and a great creative writer, too?

Energy symbols are a waveform language developed to depict the invisible world of our identities, fears, and desires as waves of energy that create and impel emotions, beliefs, and behaviors.

I knew within me something was waiting. Something I could not express with a musical instrument. My mother saw I was struggling with the instruments and said: ‘’Why not try to sing?’’ The question surprised me.

Unlike memory in a computer, fixed and therefore dead, human memory is twinned with forgetfulness. Hell, forgetfulness is most of what it is. Because it always has to be recaptured and recreated, human memory is dynamic and alive. What flows out of it is the complex mixture of chronicle and myth that is the only guide we have for finding our way through the obscurity of the real.

In one letter, Thomas Jefferson mentions a “pretty little instrument’’ Franklin carried around with him, a form of crystallophone with bars of glass. It is likely this little instrument gave Franklin the idea to invent the most dangerous instrument in the history of music: the glass harmonica.

Hard to drain your cup of sweet nectar and build a nation at the same time! Yes we Poles are unlucky. Franklin was born in Boston, not Warsaw. But it’s not too late! It’s been a couple centuries, and we have a long way to go, but who knows, perhaps, after some delay, Franklin medicine will be an antibiotic that heals the Polish soul.

Marta and I are on entirely different wavelengths. She’s down-to-earth, I’m a tosh-thinker. You don’t know the word “tosh?” It’s British, and I think it’s close in meaning to Polish word “banialuki” (our word for ‘fudge’) and English word “nonsense.”

As a youth I climbed steep, rocky mountains, participated in street demonstrations, and attempted to read Immanuel Kant. I boasted that thirty years of intensive life were preferable to a long-lasting life of boring vegetation. I was vocal, but aimless.

“As long as this woman continues to perform we cannot hope to make a career. She can play everything and plays them all very well.” - Alfred Brendel to Jean-Bernard Pommier in the early 1960’s

Nadia Boulanger, the great musician, teacher and conductor of the first half of the 20th century, lived well into the second half of the century.

At her tenth birthday party, celebrated at Mademoiselle Boulanger's salon on rue Ballu, Idil was round-faced, lighthearted, and fun, her corkscrew curls dark and bouncy. She wore a pink dress and giggled as she held Tascha, the beloved and spoiled cat.

All under heaven under its sway,
What is long divided must unite;
Long united, it must divide.

So begins the earliest Chinese novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms.