Philosopher of Shadows

Bret Schneider delves into everything from Indian ragas to Bach’s recreation of the mind with composer and pianist Michael Harrison.

Bret Schneider speaks with composer Katrina Krimsky about her career spanning half a century.

Baudelaire’s core complaint — that art had become “an infinitely precious good,” an object of connoisseurship stripped of genuine feeling, a science of enjoyment rather than an experience of truth — describes the situation of contemporary art as much as it did the Paris Salon.

Philippe Jaccottet’s 1981 essay on Osip Mandelstam, with poems translated by Matvei Yankelevich and John High.

Politically, melancholia may be more destructive than idealism, but aesthetically, doesn’t melancholia, as a kind of negative idealism, seem almost natural?

“Kierkegaard wrote a marvelous thing in Either/Or. He said he feels that when he dies, they are going to ask him only one question, when he gets up there. And the question is, ‘Did you make things clear?’”

Imagine driving in your car listening to MJ on the radio, grooving and enjoying the song until … wait … you stop to ask yourself … was this bassline played manually by a human, because if MIDI sequencing was involved, I don't like it anymore. Said no one ever!

Failure of failures. Gluck and Vika’s adventure comes to an end…for now!

Gluck turns a corner and encounters a challenge he’d never anticipated, revealing the true scale of his conflict. Will he give up…or find new strength?

Breaking out of jail is something of a specialty for Gluck. Finding his way around an unfamiliar city isn’t hard either. What does Gluck struggle with? I’m glad you asked!