The Living Library: A Substack
The Living Library is a newsletter and community of readers on Substack. We enjoy grappling with complexity and humanity and new paradigms—but, you know, in a fun way.
I created The Living Library to share work in the vein of Dan Pink’s concept of symphony: a right-brain mode of connecting the dots between disparate things, and seeing what’s good at the intersections.
Living in a time of complex change, whether at the global level or the individual level, means finding new dots to connect, and new ways to join the new dots to old dots.
We look in different books, articles, and arts, and add to our collection of dots. We then carry them about, like the living libraries we all are.
Living in a time of complex change also means finding good company and contexts that support you with all that damned grappling.
When you are part of the Living Library, you receive 2ish posts per month that take an idea or excerpt and expand on it, or synthesise it somewhere else, often using a complex systems lens. A surprising amount of these are about ideas and artifacts that are simply fun (an underrated piece of the complex existence puzzle).
In joining The Living Library, you receive a lovely (and blessedly short) form of intellectual and emotional company.
Paid subscribers receive:
Two a month showcasing an idea, expanding on it or synthesising it into something else;
Membership in the Living Library community, including the ability to comment and converse among ourselves.
It’s readers like you that make it possible. At a discounted rate of $60NZ per year, an annual subscription to Symphonia costs less than you might pay for a couple of paperbacks at you independent bookshop of choice. I am so grateful to my paid Library members for supporting my independent work, and independent writers more generally.
Free subscribers receive:
Public posts