Recent Mountains
and current diamonds
Dear friends — Hello from Sedona, Arizona.
This is the week-off I promised to my brain if I could do fifty-two straight. One year ago I had tons of ideas to get off my chest and one very unscientific hypothesis about what might facilitate that: an unbroken chain of terrifying deadline mountains.
Did that strategy work? Yes!
Would I recommend it to anyone else? Maybe!
Going forward
Fine-tuning
I do love writing a 3,000 word essay that demonstrates several topics with half dozen animated videos… but quality control and personal sanity dictates that I stop trying to do that kind of heavy sledding every single week, and maybe play with the format and cadence of posts a bit.
This might be better for everyone, honestly? We’ll figure this out together.
Recent
Here’s some good stuff for those who just subscribed (hi!), or in case you missed it the first go-round:
Splitting - this is the article I have always wanted to write about a crazy performance practice where multiple brains do the work of one (from change-ringers all the way to marching bass drum lines). I’m also pretty sure this is the most “general-interest” thing I’ve ever written, so it’s a great place to start.
Symmetric Gardens - it is a huge point of pride for me that my most popular post of the year was a piece of new music released exclusively on this blog. If you like the track, it will also guide you to a follow-up post that explores the beautiful organic structures of its subtly alien tuning system.
A Beginner’s Introduction to Exploring the Lattice - a five-part dive into the music of mathematical visualization. To the extent that I allow myself to dream of a music theory textbook that I would have actually wanted to read when I was in music school, this is what I imagine one chapter might have looked like. The end of each post links into the next — like an express train from Victorian England all the way to Kevin Bacon. Take this ride with me.
Current
When not staring at red rocks or getting my aura read, this week I’ve been learning about “tetradic diamonds,” and I am obsessed:
… but not quite emotionally ready to talk about it just yet.
See you next week.
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You absolutely may NOT have a week off.
No worries, though. I'll just stand around, hands in pockets, whistling to myself in a melancholic way ...and wait until your next one.
👋