Years ago I started to find lost, forgotten, and intentionally discarded books on benches and bus seats throughout the city, in boxes marked “free”, and in trash bins. My favorites were well used, heavily marked and annotated books with remarkably flexible spines. It was sad, somehow, to find ones that were clean unspoiled and yet still abandoned. Regardless of the state of each book I could never shake the impression that language, if only accidentally, was being forgotten.
Shortly after discovering my free library I began to more seriously consider the books that I collect, collect but seldom fully read. Reading is, and always has been an arduous task for me. Words, specifically written words, are very slippery things. It is a time consuming and exhausting task to get them to stay put long enough for me to grasp their structure and syntax, let alone their meaning in relation to each other.
But regardless of how difficult I find the language in books to be, I have always respected their content because their content leads me to a language that I am very comfortable with; the language of thought. Whereas words and I do not often agree, ideas and I always have.
Language, ideas, questions, knowledge etc. everything is in a constant state of flux. New words are created to discuss new ideas and technologies which inevitably require new sorts of questions and commentary, which drives the next batch of ideas. It is questionable if knowledge is ever really accessed or if the pursuit of knowledge is not for the purpose of acquisition, but for the process itself. Regardless, each new idea is packaged in a nice set of ordered symbols intended to be legible and, thus able to be written into the pages of a book for the means of writing new content in the mind of the reader.
Each book in the discarded series was found abandoned and treated with an oxidizing agent that first seals the text closed and then rusts through the outer layers.
Years ago I started to find lost, forgotten, and intentionally discarded books on benches and bus seats throughout the city, in boxes marked “free”, and in trash bins. My favorites were well used, heavily marked and annotated books with remarkably flexible spines. It was sad, somehow, to find ones that were clean unspoiled and yet still abandoned. Regardless of the state of each book I could never shake the impression that language, if only accidentally, was being forgotten.
Shortly after discovering my free library I began to more seriously consider the books that I collect, collect but seldom fully read. Reading is, and always has been an arduous task for me. Words, specifically written words, are very slippery things. It is a time consuming and exhausting task to get them to stay put long enough for me to grasp their structure and syntax, let alone their meaning in relation to each other.
But regardless of how difficult I find the language in books to be, I have always respected their content because their content leads me to a language that I am very comfortable with; the language of thought. Whereas words and I do not often agree, ideas and I always have.
Language, ideas, questions, knowledge etc. everything is in a constant state of flux. New words are created to discuss new ideas and technologies which inevitably require new sorts of questions and commentary, which drives the next batch of ideas. It is questionable if knowledge is ever really accessed or if the pursuit of knowledge is not for the purpose of acquisition, but for the process itself. Regardless, each new idea is packaged in a nice set of ordered symbols intended to be legible and, thus able to be written into the pages of a book for the means of writing new content in the mind of the reader.
Each book in the discarded series was found abandoned and treated with an oxidizing agent that first seals the text closed and then rusts through the outer layers.