Tagged: inspiration

“The Meaning of Human Existence”

  Biologist Edward O. Wilson has spent his life studying evolutionary biology, writing books, and winning Pulitzer prizes, among other things. He is still going strong at 85 years old, and recently published “The Meaning of Human Existence,” a book intended to explain and convince the general public of the scientific theory of evolution. Drawing […]

‘In The Waiting Room’ by Laura Sims

In her post for Poetry Foundation, Laura Sims discusses the strange inspiration that waiting rooms can bring, and how they can be “conducive to poetry”. Here is an extract: The speaker of Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘In the Waiting Room’ has a famously crucial moment in a doctor’s office, too. She looks around at all the adults, all the human beings […]

Giacinto Scelsi

From the Shutter Island Soundtrack: The Core presents Giacinto Scelsi, an Italian composer from the 20th century that remained largely unknown for most of his career. The impact caused by the late discovery of Scelsi’s works was described by Belgian musicologist Harry Halbreich: A whole chapter of recent musical history must be rewritten: the second half of […]

Twists on John Keats

The Core presents a poem by Dan Beachy-Quick titled The Cricket and The Grasshopper, named after the poem by Romantic poet John Keats, whose work is studied in the CC202 Core class. Here is the Dan B-Q poem: The senseless leaf   in the fevered hand Grows hot, near blood-heat, but never grows Green. Weeks ago the […]

The Saxophone and ‘The Odyssey’

Relating to the study of The Odyssey by CC101 every fall, here is an interesting fact: great saxophonist Chris Potter draws inspiration from the Greek epic for his music. In the article discussing the matter, Potter is quoted as saying: I read it [the Odyssey] in high school and thought it was cool but didn’t […]

LANDMARKS SERIES: Machiavelli’s The Prince After 500 Years

On February 6th, there will be a lecture on Machiavelli’s The Prince, by the great Michael Ignatieff, Edward Muir, and James Johnson. It will be located in the Photonics Building, Room 206, 8 St. Mary’s Street, and will last from 7:00pm – 9:00pm. The Core encourages students to attend this event, as these inspiring speakers will undoubtedly shed […]

‘The Strangest Art’ by Wendy Lesser

Relating to the work of CC202, which inspects Mozart, is an essay arguing that revivals of classic works do not hold back the opera genre from blossoming. Here is an excerpt: Nothing, perhaps, will ever be as good as Shakespeare, but that doesn’t prevent Tony Kushner or David Mamet from writing marvellous plays now. Shostakovich […]

Remixing the Classics

Judson Cowan, Senior Art Director for Morrison Agency and self titled freelance musician offers many free albums on his website, one of which is a remix of the music from Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), which has often been studied in CC202.  His remix adds a more modern emphasis on […]

Peter Hawkins on Birk’s Dante

Prof. Kyna Hamill writes… On Wednesday, March 7, the Core welcomed Prof. Peter Hawkins of Yale Divinity School for a talk about Sandow Birk’s modern illustrations (2004) of Dante’s Commedia. Hawkins’ lecture was the last of a four-part series on “Insight and Inspiration,” in which speakers explored instances where themes from the Core texts can […]

Analects of the Core: Mozart on inspiring situations

When I am traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly. — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose opera The Magic Flute will be examined in Prof. Roye Wates’ lecture tomorrow afternoon for the students […]