For centuries, the humanities have been taught with texts and lectures; art history with slideshows and lectures; the sciences with experiments and lectures. Then came VR and AR. And now, professors who have never felt the slightest desire to play a video game are downloading VR software, begging for I.T. help, and teaching their students—and themselves—how to construct worlds within worlds.
We lose our hair (and supposedly, our libido) with age, so that was my first suspect. I stood in front of the mirror, my wet hair combed and parting itself all over the place, lines of pink parceling out my head as though platting it for a subdivision.
There is magic in ancient, little-used languages. Like rusty gates to a secret garden, they invite you into an extraordinary experience. Why do so many beautiful traditions become tainted by the flaws and confusions of the next era?
Before Homer G. Phillips existed, Black St. Louisans often had to climb on a bus, feverish or in pain, and ride halfway across town, not knowing what attitude a White doctor might take toward them. Many had recovered from surgery in Ward 0400, a segregated surgical ward for Blacks in the basement of Barnes Hospital.
I miss finding a Christmas tree: the excursion, hopefully in the snow; walking up and down the assembled forest, looking so closely—too scrawny, not fat enough, crooked, ahhh—here’s one that’s perfect! Never perfect, in the literal sense, because it is real, and as flawed as we are.
“These twigs could be a Rorschach inkblot test!” I told him. “I keep seeing human figures in them. . . . ” Robert Cloninger, a psychiatrist and a geneticist at Washington University in St. Louis who has studied the evolution of human creativity and pattern recognition, was not in the least bit surprised.
“It’s not really play that makes you feel good,” Csikszentmihalyi realized, “but the playfulness which can be in play.” Once you experienced that relaxed, utter absorption, you wanted to feel it again and again.
Directors (like political handlers) can hesitate to be blunt, afraid to say, “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” Because it is safer or easier to let it ride, the mumbling is indulged.
Language fails. Cecilia, however, does not. She mixes each cocktail in perfect proportions—never a little heavy on the booze, to loosen you up, or lightly, when your request slurs.
Whenever we create structure and limitations, we are building ourselves a playground, a contained space in which it will be safe to play. That happens in an arena, a temple, a magic circle, a court of justice; at a temple; at a card table; on stage, on screen, on a tennis court.
What really triggered this project? For four decades, ABBA steadily refused to re-form, even when offered $1 billion in cash.
We love to personalize. We have our initials embroidered on towels that will fade and thin in a year. The idea of clothing custom-tailored to our bodies—unaffordably, by a human, or now, with computerized manufacturing—thrills us. So why not make our lives our own?