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Alison Wilder

Musician, technologist, storyteller

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Archives for February 2020

February 28, 2020

Quote from “Double Birthday” by Willa Cather

Willa Cather "Double Birthday" Opening

Even in American cities, which seem so much alike, where people seem all to be living the same lives, striving for the same things, thinking the same thoughts, there are still individuals a little out of tune with the times — there are still survivals of a past more loosely woven, there are disconcerting beginnings of a future yet unforeseen.

This is a beautiful, kinda sad but also sweet little story written in 1929, a time that seems to me to be similar in some key ways to 2020. Success was the word of the day, and it meant money, and if you weren’t with it, and especially if you rejected it, you were OUT, friend. (We’re much more evolved today. Success means experiences, you see, the perfect, frictionless life, full of meaning, and beautiful things, and…oh wait. That shit is expensive, right?)

I’m not sure if our main character, Albert (the artist stuck in a time and place that doesn’t value art), turned out to be “the disconcerting beginnings” of the future or not. If he was, I guess that future is already past.

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