Curated playlist
20th-century mystics
- Jorge Luis BorgesJorge Luis Borges once described his blindness as a gift wrapped in cruel irony. In a poem he wrote that God, with splendid irony, granted him books and night at a single touch. By the late 1950s he was the director of the Argentine…
- Arthur Conan DoyleArthur Conan Doyle arrived in Portsmouth in June 1882 with less than ten pounds to his name and no patients waiting for him. He set up at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea, and while the waiting room stayed empty he wrote. What came out…
- Philip K. DickPhilip K. Dick died on the 2nd of March 1982, in a Santa Ana hospital, having never seen the film that would make his name famous. Blade Runner opened four months later. His daughter had to bury his ashes next to the grave of his twin…
- Hermann HesseHermann Hesse died on the 9th of August 1962, aged 85, in Montagnola, Switzerland, and a memorial in The New York Times called his works largely inaccessible to American readers. Within a few years that judgment collapsed completely. By…
- Erwin SchrödingerErwin Schrödinger was born on the 12th of August 1887 in Vienna, and by the time he died on the 4th of January 1961, he had left behind an equation that altered how humanity understands the fabric of reality. He had also coined a phrase -…
- Aldous HuxleyAldous Huxley died at 5:20 pm Pacific Standard Time on the 22nd of November 1963 - and almost nobody noticed. His death was overshadowed by the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which happened less than seven hours later that same day. The…
- Alexander ScriabinAlexander Scriabin died on the 14th of April 1915 from a pimple. That sentence sounds absurd, but it is true. A small sore on his upper lip, first noticed as early as 1914 while he was in London, returned after his last triumphant concert…
- Deepak ChopraDeepak Chopra was born on the 22nd of October 1946 in New Delhi, British India. His father Krishan Lal Chopra served as a prominent cardiologist and held a lieutenant rank in the British army. The elder Chopra worked at the Moolchand…
- Colin WilsonColin Henry Wilson spent a winter sleeping rough on Hampstead Heath in a sleeping bag, working by day at the British Museum's Reading Room on a novel he had been rewriting for years. He was in his early twenties, broke, and so determined…
- Eric GutkindEric Gutkind sent Albert Einstein a copy of his book "Choose Life: The Biblical Call To Revolt" sometime before January 1954. Einstein wrote back from Princeton on the 3rd of January 1954, and what he said was blunt. God, Einstein wrote,…
- Alan WattsAlan Wilson Watts was born on the 6th of January 1915 in Chislehurst, Kent, into a middle-class household at Rowan Tree Cottage, 3 Holbrook Lane, where his father worked as a representative for the London office of the Michelin tyre…