Curriculum
“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
The backbone of this blog is the literature and other forms of art that inform my posts and my life each week.
I’m on a self-made, ten year plan to read the entirety of the The Sacred Books of The East and The Great Books of the Western World by my 40th birthday in 2030. These two series translated into English the major primary texts of Eastern and Western thought respectively and each took decades to compile.
I then head out my front door in New York City (or wherever I happen to be) to test their perspectives on the world outside, returning home to detail my it findings here.
This, I call “my pilgrimage”.
To break things up and ensure stamina, I jump to modern fiction and modern non-fiction in between them. I am spending the first half of the 2020’s (2021-2025) tackling the East, in a cycle of Eastern Text > Modern Fiction > Eastern Text > Modern Non-Fiction [repeat cycle] with plans to take on the West in the latter half of the decade.
The entirety of the goal list, including other recurring to-do’s and categories beyond East/West, can be found in my original article detailing my plan and the reasoning behind it, found here. The texts range in length from a single paragrapg to thousands of pages. Below, you will find my readings (and album listens) as I complete them, with links to blogs referencing them as they’re written.
Reading #1 - 11/15/2020 - Eastern Text (not on the list, using as a precursor) - Sources of Indian Tradition by Ainslie T. Embree (Second Edition) first ed. 1958, second 1988
Album #1 - 11/30/2020 - Pronounced’ Leh-’Nerd ‘Skin-’Nerd by Lynyrd Skynyrd, 1973
Album #2 - 11/30/2020 - This is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing To Think About by Modest Mouse, 1996
Album #3 11/30/2020 - Magnolia Electric Co. by Songs: Ohia, 2003
Album #4 12/1/2020 - Live in Chicago by Ween, 2004
Album #5 12/1/2020 - Wheels of Fire by Cream, 1968
Album #6 12/2/2020 - Live at Leeds by The Who, 1970
Album # 7 12/3/2020 - For the Whole World to See by Death, from the 1970’s, re-released as album in 2009
Album #8 12/4/2020 - Prince and the Revolution: Live by Prince and The Revolution , 1985
Album #9 12/5/2020 - Musas by Natalia Lafourcade, 2017
Album #10 12/6/2020 - Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath , 1970
Album #11 12/7/2020 - Paranoid by Black Sabbath, 1970
Album #12 12/8/2020 - RR7349 by SURVIVE, 2016
Album #13 12/8/2020 - Szabodelico by Causa Sui, 2020
Album #14 12/9/2020 - Dopesmoker by Sleep, 2003
Album #15 12/14/2020 - Finest by Funkadelic (compilation released in 1994, from the 70’s)
Album #16 12/15/2020 - Maggot Brain by Funkadelic, 1971
Album #17 12/16/2020 - Evermore by Taylor Swift, 2020
Album #18 12/17/2020 - Live at Winterland ‘68 by Big Brother & The Holding Company , 1968
Album #19 12/25/2020 - Pink Flag by Wire, 1977
Album #20 12/27/2020 - The Colour In Anything by James Blake, 2016
here, I fell off the bandwagon of tracking…
Album #21 1/27/2021 - In a Silent Way by Miles Davis, 1969
*** took a several-months-long break from formally tracking while I onboarded at a new company***
Reading #2 (read during my “break”) - Severance by Ling Ma, 2018
Reading #3 (also during my break) - The Dhammapada by the Buddha - 5th to 4th century BC
Reading #4 (also during my break) - The Illiad by Homer - c. 1260 - 1180 BC
Reading #5 4/18/2021- How To Avoid A Climate Disaster by Bill Gates, 2021
** Large gap in progress to take on other projects **
Album #22 11/21/2021 - Led Zeppelin II by Led Zeppelin, 1969