music clip of the day

Nils Økland, Hardanger fiddle
Sigbjørn Apeland, harmonium
“Blond blå,” live

What’s more surprising—that there’s so much ugliness in the world, or so much beauty?

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lagniappe

reading table

Who are we, if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly reshuffled and reordered in every conceivable way.

—Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium (trans. Patrick Creagh; 1988)