As ever, a beautiful and thought-provoking installment of this newsletter, offering not answers but better (less anachronistic and solipsistic, more imaginative and self-dissolving) questions. Your final line makes me think of Bruno Latour's challenge to us to think of objects as associations, networks, gatherings in which many participants past, present, and future are involved. Your essay brings that challenge to life! Also want to mention proto-Internet troll G.K. Chesterton's "The Ballad of the White Horse" (1911), considered one of the last great traditional epics written in English (and a favorite of Robert E. Howard's), in which nihilistic invaders are routed by Alfred of Wessex and allies — Saxons, Romans, Gaels — after which Alfred and his followers scour the weeds which have grown over the Uffington White Horse — an act intended to remind British Christians never to relax their vigilance. Yeesh. Here's my challenge to you: Write [a section of] your own version of "The Ballad of the White Horse" in which the invaders and defenders stand instead for Battles-esque concerns and goals... Naturally I'd expect t o be offered right of first refusal when it comes to publishing this poetic epic.
The ‘manger’ photograph is powerful
As ever, a beautiful and thought-provoking installment of this newsletter, offering not answers but better (less anachronistic and solipsistic, more imaginative and self-dissolving) questions. Your final line makes me think of Bruno Latour's challenge to us to think of objects as associations, networks, gatherings in which many participants past, present, and future are involved. Your essay brings that challenge to life! Also want to mention proto-Internet troll G.K. Chesterton's "The Ballad of the White Horse" (1911), considered one of the last great traditional epics written in English (and a favorite of Robert E. Howard's), in which nihilistic invaders are routed by Alfred of Wessex and allies — Saxons, Romans, Gaels — after which Alfred and his followers scour the weeds which have grown over the Uffington White Horse — an act intended to remind British Christians never to relax their vigilance. Yeesh. Here's my challenge to you: Write [a section of] your own version of "The Ballad of the White Horse" in which the invaders and defenders stand instead for Battles-esque concerns and goals... Naturally I'd expect t o be offered right of first refusal when it comes to publishing this poetic epic.