Andrew Boardman

I like overhearing more than I like being told. I love eavesdropping. That was the punishment in South America, that my Spanish is too bad for good eavesdropping.

We should see these old, archaic, religious observances, rites and rituals not as rarified, pre-technological, discrete phenomena but as behaviours that legitimately held important sway for people and cultures for thousands of years. We’ve somehow taken the various schticks out of spiritual practices and upended them into modern-day conveniences,... See more

James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake has (music) notes on the sides and bottom of its pages.

The poet Paul Valéry said that, for every poem you write, God gives you one line, and you supply the rest.2 Amy Lowell, another poet, described those in-between lines, the ones you provide, as “putty”. You get no credit for God’s lines; all artistry is in the puttying.

The things that endure — personal essays, strange little games, raw photography, handmade software — tend to feel like the opposite of brand work. They feel like someone trying, and risking.

“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” - Lilla Watson

Neshamah, one of the Hebrew words for breath, also means soul. The sages of the Talmud suggest that upon awakening in the morning, a person should say, Elohai neshamah shenatata bi tehorah. “My God, the soul that you have placed within me is pure.” Berakhot 60b