Research Notebook · Annotated Bibliography
The Working Notebook
Every book, paper, idea, experiment, conference, and conversation becomes an entry. The intellectual engine of this archive.
REF: NB-042
OPEN
2026-05
On Homeric Multiplicity
Summary
A reading of Homer's thumos / noos / psyche trichotomy as a productive multiplicity rather than a precursor to the unitary self. Connects to the flagship essay.
Connections
Deleuze
Guattari
Homer
Open Questions
How does this reading change when applied to the Odyssey?
REF: NB-039
READING
2026-04
Shostakovich and Tonal Memory
Summary
Reading Shostakovich's late string quartets as a study in what music remembers. The Testimony memoir anchors the biographical reading.
Connections
Shostakovich
Testimony
memory
Open Questions
Does trauma compose differently than joy?
REF: NB-035
DRAFT
2026-03
Reading Deleuze on the Body Without Organs
Summary
A close reading of A Thousand Plateaus, plateau 6. The BwO as a limit, not a destination.
Connections
Deleuze
Guattari
Plato
Timaeus
Open Questions
Is the BwO a concept or an experience?
REF: NB-031
CLOSED
2026-02
Mead, Self, and the Cat
Summary
George Herbert Mead's "I" and "Me" applied to comparative cognition in domestic cats. The conclusion: selfhood in cats is plausible but not the same self.
Connections
Mead
comparative cognition
Open Questions
What would settle the question empirically?
REF: NB-028
READING
2026-01
Hebbian Learning and Memory
Summary
Working through Hebb's original 1949 paper and modern restatements. The current computational project is grounded here.
Connections
Hebb
neuroscience
computational neuroscience
Open Questions
How does spike-timing-dependent plasticity fit?
REF: NB-024
OPEN
2025-12
Damasio on the Feeling of What Happens
Summary
A first pass through Damasio's distinction between emotion and feeling. The feeling is what the self is for.
Connections
Damasio
consciousness
self
Open Questions
How does the somatic marker hypothesis survive criticism?
REF: NB-019
DRAFT
2025-11
The Iliad as a Study in Registers
Summary
Reading the Iliad not as a story but as a phenomenological study of how selfhood registers — affective, perceptual, reflective — at different moments.
Connections
Homer
phenomenology
Deleuze
Open Questions
Which register does the opening of Book I invoke?
REF: NB-014
CLOSED
2025-10
Anne Rice and the Architecture of Memory
Summary
A reading of Interview with the Vampire as a meditation on what is preserved when the body is not. Memoir as the form of immortality.
Connections
Anne Rice
memory
narrative
Open Questions
Why does this novel still work after fifty years?
REF: NB-011
READING
2025-09
On Shakespeare and the Willing Self
Summary
Troilus and Cressida as a study in a self that knows what it wants and refuses to want it. The Importance of Being Earnest as the parody.
Connections
Shakespeare
Wilde
rhetoric
Open Questions
Is the willing self possible?
REF: NB-007
OPEN
2025-08
Nirvana, Loud, and the Body in Pain
Summary
A first reading of Cobain's lyrics as documents of a body in pain. The Kurt-derived question: what does popular music know that the philosophical tradition does not?
Connections
Nirvana
popular music
embodiment
Open Questions
What does the popular song remember?
REF: NB-003
DRAFT
2025-07
Bizet and the Architecture of Desire
Summary
Carmen as a study in what cannot be willed. The opera form as a way of holding desire at a distance.
Connections
Bizet
opera
Merleau-Ponty
Open Questions
Is opera a method?
REF: NB-001
CLOSED
2025-06
The Archive as Form
Summary
A reflection on whether keeping an intellectual archive changes what is being archived. Probably yes.
Connections
Archive
memory
autobiography
Open Questions
Will this still be true in twenty years?