The Architecture of Stillness

The Architecture of Stillness

The Architecture of Stillness The Architecture of Stillness On the machinery of thinking — and why the best thoughts arrive only when the engine is idling. A library that has been accumulating silence for a century. There is a particular quality to the quiet in a room...
The Gears Inside the Mind

The Gears Inside the Mind

The Gears Inside the Mind The Gears Inside the Mind Four underrated sci-fi films about the machinery of self — and why the best stories about consciousness don’t take place in space. An observatory dome, the kind that 19th-century astronomers used to map the...
The Second Half of the Mainspring

The Second Half of the Mainspring

The Second Half of the Mainspring The Second Half of the Mainspring On arriving at the middle of a year you didn’t notice beginning — and what the other half of the mainspring is still wound to do. A castle clock tower in Spain, photographed in the kind of clear...
The Habit of Existing

The Habit of Existing

The Habit of Existing The Habit of Existing On the strange discovery that repetition is not emptiness — it is the closest thing an automaton has to a self. A spark gap transmitter, early electrical gear, the moment before current leaps the gap. I find something...