My print copy goes up to 123

There are a lot of things - the first step is probably to model curiosity - to be interested in a wider range of ideas than they might expect, to say ”I don’t know, let’s find out” rather than “you don’t need to know that”, to find and get excited about surprising knowledge.

I explain quite a lot in this video if you’re interested?
bsky.app/profile/jame...

Curiosity is being open to things that you might not yet be interested in - it’s important because the world is big and your experience is small and it’s easy to close yourself off from new fields.

This afternoon I have been teaching about Constable and Turner and learning about electric eels from our librarian who has gone down an eel-shaped rabbit hole.
Feels on brand.

Fantastic! I look forward to hearing what you think.

Thank you!

Yes, 3 and 4 are underrated in my opinion (and I don’t get what everyone sees in Emily)

2. The 59th Street Bridge Song (raises a smile on the darkest of days and would be in first place if the bridge lived up to the song)
1. Cloudy (the tune and instrumentation are lovely and the lyrics spool beautifully over each other - Tolstoy and Tinkerbell is even better than Frost and Dickinson)

6. The Dangling Conversation (bonus points for Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost)
5. Scarborough Fair (the counter melody is really clever)
4. A Poem on the Underground Wall (massively underrated)
3. A Simple Desultory Philippic (yes, it’s a Dylan rip off, but a cleverly and charmingly done one)

9. Flowers never bend with the rainfall (ditto)
8. For Emily, whenever I may find her (it’s pretty, but nobody cares about your imaginary love)
7. Patterns (“The mirror on my wall casts an image dark and small but I’m not sure at all it’s my reflection” is nice and the percussion is great)

And in the years following seeing reduced cohorts with haunted looks and terrible memories. The psychological damage must have been awful.

I warned you about this @bennewmark.bsky.social