Reverie Roundup: Julian Assange, Repetitive Music, Arthur Miller, Burrnesha, Germany’s Power Predicament

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 Reverie Roundup is an ongoing series curating quality ideas in quality writing. Some are long form, some are short form, some are just pure fun!

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Mr. Julian Assange.

– Thought writing that paper was bad? Try ghostwriting Julian Assange’s autobiography. Quite a long writeup, but extremely telling and an excellent, excellent read. It would be an injustice to our generation’s memory of WikiLeaks without having read Andrew O’Hagan’s essay and first-hand account on the man behind it all.

> “And there it is, the old conflation, implying that his detention is to do with his work against secret-keepers in America. It is not. He was detained at Ellingham Hall while appealing against a request to extradite him to Sweden to answer questions relating to two rape allegations. A man who conflates such truths loses his moral authority right there: I tried to spell this out to him while writing the book, but he wouldn’t listen, sometimes suggesting I was naive not to consider the rape allegations to have been a ‘honey trap’ set by dark foreign forces, or that the Swedes were merely keen to extradite him to America. Because he has no ability to see through other people’s eyes he can’t see how dishonest this conflation seems even to supporters such as me.”

> “He told me about a failed siege by the police and about some projects they were getting off the ground, but quickly, as always, turned to demolishing one of his supporters. He continued with his habit of biting the hand that fed him, satirising or undermining those who came to his aid.”

> “He has always cared too much about the fame and too much about the credit, while real relationships and real action often fade to nothing. Snowden was now the central hub and Julian was keen to help him and keen to be seen to be helping him. It’s how the ego works and the ego always comes first.”

– The power of repetition in music: the speech-to-sound illusion, the semantic satiation effect. (Try it out yourself!)

“Repetition can actually shift your perceptual circuitry such that the segment of sound is heard as music: not thought about as similar to music, or contemplated in reference to music, but actually experienced as if the words were being sung. This [speech-to-sound] illusion demonstrates what it means to hear something musically. The ‘musicalisation’ shifts your attention from the meaning of the words to the contour of the passage (the patterns of high and low pitches) and its rhythms (the patterns of short and long durations), and even invites you to hum or tap along with it. In fact, part of what it means to listen to something musically is to participate imaginatively.”

– Arthur Miller’s short essay on his boyhood in Brooklyn. (Always love me some Arthur Miller!)

– The Mountains Where Women Live as Men.

“Don’t confuse who I am with being a lesbian,” he said, “or I’ll kick you in the shins.

The word burrnesha translates as “he-she.” And like most burrneshas, Haki was a virgin who had taken a vow of celibacy that elevated him to a time-honored position in the community, the in-between person. The origins of the tradition weren’t clear, but historically, when the male heirs of a family died or had been killed and property could no longer be passed in patrilineal fashion, an allowance was made: If a virgin daughter remained, she could assume the role of patriarch by swearing in front of a dozen village elders that she would remain celibate for the rest of her life. By this declaration, the burrnesha secured the family estate—and honor. It was, as one observer told me, “a choice of force, not happiness,” a social construct and selfless act to protect the family.

– The Reluctant Giant: Why Germany Shuns Its Global Role. (history has both hindered & inspired)