“I would say that, in terms of the work of an architect, there are those projects which affect our daily life in a profound way. The workspace, how we live, the public realm. But also, as architects, we are called to rise to a much more profound, and demanding, symbolic level. That occurs when we design a place of worship, a memorial, a significant museum devoted to a significant subject. That is when architects go from “routine” music to “profound” music, if I’m to make a composer’s analogy.”
Sep 21, 2020•29 min
“What is going to become of public space? These places are so important. [I’ve been] thinking about the ways in which we acknowledge each other, the way we interact with each other, the way we see ourselves in a shared vision, shared responsibility, the ways in which we are connected and see ourselves in civic unison with each other.”
Sep 17, 2020•29 min
“If people can’t walk down the streets of Washington D.C. or Denver, Colorado and protest peacefully without being tear-gassed or assaulted by police or unmarked military forces, and put in unidentified vehicles, then we’re halfway towards a police state.”
Sep 16, 2020•29 min
“I was angry because this was something that was anticipated. This virus was first in China back in December. Italy in January. Our first case in the U.S. was back in February. By mid-March, all fifty states had COVID. We were all hearing and reading about what was quickly unfolding in Italy and I think we could have done better, we could have prepared better, but more importantly, I think our patients deserved better.”
Sep 15, 2020•30 min
“Opera is not always thought of in the same way as cinema or literature in terms of what representation means, and what it means to posit a future for humanity. But I think that opera very much plays a role in the shaping of a cultural identity.”
Sep 14, 2020•32 min
“Hope became fiction. You cannot build on anything when you see the amount of destruction.”
Sep 10, 2020•29 min
“You can ignore history, but it will not ignore you. To some extent what we are seeing unfolding in this extraordinary, concentrated, and dramatic way in this country is a country many of whose people thought they were somehow immune from history and politics and epidemiological disasters.”
Sep 09, 2020•28 min
On episode 095 of The Quarantine Tapes, Paul Holdengräber is joined by writer Maaza Mengiste.
Sep 08, 2020•30 min
“It’s really about how [we can] begin to look at this society and talk about what’s valued in it in order to see what’s not valued. Until you can do that, until you can name the things that are valued, you won’t be able to understand the things that aren’t valued.”
Aug 10, 2020•27 min
“It’s all been sort of turned on its head and it makes me wonder if some of what we’re seeing is performative and it doesn’t have a great deal of muscle behind it. But at the same time, I don’t want to be cynical, I don’t want to think in these terms, because sometimes what ends up happening when you look at history is that you do have a spark. Sometimes there is that matchstick. For some reason a lot of the matchsticks don’t catch, but one of the matches in the matchbook catches. Maybe what we’...
Aug 06, 2020•31 min
“Personally, I’m only interested in solutions. I’m not interested in the symbols that much. I’m interested in solutions that allow us who are on this planet to live a better life.”
Aug 05, 2020•28 min
“Some of the best ideas are those that are produced in struggle, in movement. The only way you’re going to be in a movement is because you love life, because you love the people you’re fighting for and with. Sometimes that love--the Agape love, the strong love--is one that does not at all depend on reciprocity.”
Aug 04, 2020•29 min
“Books are immortal and they allow you to have this thing that none of us can actually have, which is an immortality and indelibility that books do have. That’s why I think, ultimately, it’s a very optimistic gesture to write a book or to record a story or to commit to paper a memory or observation. I think there’s this optimism that this will last and people will be able to experience this.”
Aug 03, 2020•29 min
“I thought it was very important for the ACLU to be in strong solidarity with the leadership of Black Lives Matter and other organizations, and we will take our cues from them.”
Jul 30, 2020•31 min
“I feel that George Floyd’s killing, and all of the events that have followed, remind us that there is this terrible violence and distortion around which we have wrapped our lives and our society, and that we cannot transform or remake the world without going through this reckoning of our racial reality.”
Jul 29, 2020•26 min
“I hope [this moment] is a portal to policy change. I hope that we’re really at the beginning of radically transforming this country, that Americans are indeed serious about building equity and justice. That’s what I’m hoping. And I think in order for that to happen, we have to ensure that we’re transforming policy and we’re even transforming power.”
Jul 28, 2020•21 min
“I think what this pandemic has done is to expose years, sometimes decades, of social inequities.”
Jul 27, 2020•30 min
“Life goes on. The pandemic is not a pause, it’s a crucible. We move through it as we move through anything. Our lives go on. We’re continuing to engage, we’re continuing to have to deal with whatever we’re dealing with in our personal relationships. We’re not putting our lives on hold for six months, or one year, or two years, but figuring out how to navigate our lives in this period, with this set of conditions.”
Jul 24, 2020•30 min
“In America, there’s a really powerful attempt by the people who control wealth, who also control the media, to distract us from what’s best for us, to distract us from democracy, to distract us from where we sit inside the culture.”
Jul 23, 2020•29 min
“Whenever I say, ‘I want to be a director’ or ‘I want to write’, all these people say, ‘Oh, why don’t you write about your husband or your boyfriend’ or something. It doesn’t interest me. That’s not my muse. I want to write about animals. I feel like I am an environmental artist, my muse is the environment, it’s nature, it’s mostly animals.”
Jul 22, 2020•30 min
“I just hope that people sustain this energy and recognize that this is not something that you do just today. This is not something that you do just this week. You should always be reading diverse things, not only in terms of demographics, but in terms of aesthetics and ideology. I hope that we can see that happen.”
Jul 21, 2020•26 min
“I can tell you that the need for intimacy, and some form of companionship, and to be seen and understood is just as powerful as the need to be separate.”
Jul 20, 2020•30 min
“I think making a picture is listening and being ready and receiving, in some way, what’s happening around you.”
Jul 17, 2020•29 min
“If we want to stop this pandemic from spreading further, then we have to treat the weakest among us better. That means the migrants, that means providing different health care and housing, whether or not you have papers, because you are already in the country.”
Jul 16, 2020•30 min
“It’s important to fight for truth, but accepting the responsibility that we are shaping it rather than believing that truth just exists and it’s up to us to find it and talk about it. We need to take on the responsibility that we are shaping it together, collectively.”
Jul 15, 2020•27 min
“One of the things I’ve been doing these last three months in self-isolation is that I’ve been trying to answer this question of, 'How do cultures and civilizations articulate dissent?', because I think dissent is absolutely crucial to the health of any society.”
Jul 14, 2020•32 min
“I think [this moment] is at once philosophical but also a moment that demands practical action. Such moments are rare. Generally, you see a problem and you charge at it to fix it or you are faced with some kind of existential, emotional kind of crisis. I think this is a moment where it’s both.”
Jul 13, 2020•31 min
“I think humor is essential, for me, every day. It’s my way of dealing with anxiety, it’s my way of dealing with depression, and it’s my way of trying to learn my faults and become better.”
Jul 10, 2020•30 min
“For me, the way music works is in very small little granules of time. It might be a chord change, it might be a tambor, it might be a rhythm, but there’s something that strikes an element of what I call “the truth”. I’m not sure I can define it, but I can feel it.”
Jul 09, 2020•30 min
“This situation of separation has so many forms, doesn’t it? Throughout our world, this sense of disconnect. I do think that poetry is a way that we try to connect further somehow. If not with the other side (whatever that side will be), with our own selves, with our own thinking, with other meanings, trying to make connections.”
Jul 08, 2020•30 min
