This isn't Simon and Garfunkel.

It's hard for me to describe my intellectual interests, even to the specialists in my field. It'll be still harder for them to swallow the surprises I have in store.

There are shadows that form the gestalt of those interests, though, or perhaps it's better to say that the shadows create a perimeter that obliquely defines the gestalt within.

Consider this: I retold a protean form of my commentary on the media, polar bears, and the zodiac at a Drunk Lunch (of Doom™) with The Wrathful Poet Goddess, Isis, and Fluidity. They laughed, and then their laughter stuttered down.

The Wrathful Poet Goddess: It really is horrid to see what's happening. I was in Pennsylvania to visit family. There are people who like The Polar Bear.

Isis: I could never forgive America if she became president. It's taken my whole life to undo my father's misogynistic views on women...she would reaffirm everything he thought.

Fluidity: Something definitely needs to be done.

At which we all fell silent; as so many of our Russian or Marxist or existentially-conscious forebears have understood before us, the intellectual gap between asking ЧТО ДЕЛАТЬ [What is to be Done?] and the choice of action [or choices or vacillations between moral codes, e.g. showing here] is almost too large for any but the bravest, most stalwart, most foolish to cross.

The silence that fell among us is where my interests begin. When those Soviet architects participated in the politics of monumental art and architecture, what defined their silences and their speech? When the "little people" of Europe lived their pre-modern existences, what kept even their alien existence human? When the concerned citizen wants to act, how can they?

Something needs to fill that silence, lest it mark the shadowed perimeter of a gestalt of despair.