Luke Dennis

What does federal support make possible?

Arts & Culture Last February, I picked up Walden on a Saturday morning and hoped to get through the first chapter. But by evening, I had not started any work, had not eaten and had torn halfway through the book. On my walk back from the library, I felt that I was holding something sacred in my bag. I’m not sure how philosophy usually impacts the reader, but to say that Thoreau’s words had altered my normal ability to function would be a drastic understatement.

Before we call them genius, we call them strange. For some individuals, their immediate environment is insufficient to supply them with the intangible things they desire. The conversations and ideas they wish to engage with are absent from the voices around them. While most of these few will conform to normalcy, the strange ones will pursue means by which they express these unspoken, often disruptive, parts of themselves.