Lexington’s words and thoughts, and even a few pictures:
1. Gear
This one is tough for me because when I think of the ways I “dress up,” it is exactly that: a suit, worn to teach a class or to do lawyer things. But even in that, as I am a Thornmouth, I am also a scholar, so I take with me the symbol of “the ancient and honorable company of scholars” even when I don’t actually wear it.
2. Lists
Years ago I made playlists dedicated to the four Classical elements. The one I made for Air was designed to provoke big and deep thoughts, sometimes the storm-tossed feeling of a disruptive idea, and the open feeling of wonder that can’t be encapsulated in anything so small as an idea. Sadly, I threw away all of the tapes (yes, they were mixtapes) years ago, and have since tried to reconstruct all of them, including this one. It is unapologetically weird and eclectic, and represents layers of time.
- Making Love Out of Nothing at All (Air Supply)
- Tutim (EtniX)
- Silent Running (Mike & the Mechanics)
- Allegro non molto (Vivaldi, Four Seasons, “Winter” mvt. 1)
- Kyrie (Mr. Mister)
- Kyrie (Mozart, Requiem)
- Solsbury Hill (Peter Gabriel)
- American Dreaming (Dead Can Dance)
- Cloudless (Peter Gabriel)
- Fragile (Sting)
- It Is Accomplished (Peter Gabriel)
- Pi (Kate Bush)
- Shape of My Heart (Sting)
- Mad About You (Sting)
- Sky Blue (Peter Gabriel)
- The Wings (Gustavo Santaolalla)
- I Am Free So Now I Fly (Philip Sheppard)
- Illuminated (Hurts)
- Conquest of Spaces (Woodkid)
- Wanderer (Geoffroy)
- The Expanse (Clinton Shorter, theme from The Expanse)
- What Did You Do (Clinton Shorter)
3. Places
Libraries and classrooms, of course, and observatories of all kinds, seem to be Thornmauvian. (So, I suppose, is making up new words.)
So of course the Livraria Lello in Porto, Portugal:
But also two other places:
The first is a coffee shop. Virtually any coffee shop, but especially those in Italy. It’s hard to think of them as observatories, but they are: so often the chairs face outward, not toward each other. This is one of the places you learn to be human and humane.
The last is a place I don’t have a picture of, but a memory—a Magimystic Memory, so it is my next entry.
4. Magimystic Memories
The New Hampshire Astronomical Society would, especially on full moons, take telescopes out into the town squares. One freezing-cold night in Portsmouth, I watched a little girl seeing the surface of the moon for the first time. The combination of scholarship and wonder crystallized in that moment like the beam from a lighthouse flashing past.
As for that cramming habit Thornmouth sometimes have … I have it too. And also the obsession with words from other languages that express subtleties sometimes lost in English—because all language ultimately falls short of the reality it describes. Reading words like “sonder,” “kumorebi,” and “backpfeifengesicht” and knowing that I needed to know those words.
5. Elementals
I have had so many symbols of Thought around me it isn’t funny. At one point I paid out the Ace of Swords from every Tarot deck I owned in order to cast a spell (and it did work, in the end). These are the two main ones I have now: a prismatic glass pyramid my parents gave me as a gift when I was a kid, and a letter opener/athame I’ve used for years (turquoise on one side, sodalite on the other). The former symbolizes focus, and the latter is a tool for directing the powers of intellect at a problem.
6. Mood Board
One of the things I think can get lost to Thornmouth is a sense of design and arrangement. In a sense, Thornmouth is about arranging ideas into constellations, then arranging letters and words into the right patterns to convey those ideas to others with as little loss as possible. The lights we kindle are not only in words, but also in architecture, design, mathematics, and even fashion. (Credits where known: the food image is a dish from Alinea in Chicago, and the satin robe that I dream of as a Thornmouth is made and worn by Tom Ford.)
One of the ways we Thornmouth is when we arrange things to be beautiful, because that beauty conveys a truth.
