Opus 1: Welcome to The Opus Letter
My musings (and some music) about the world we live in.
What is that? A new newsletter? Why do we need another one of those? We certainly don’t, but, selfishly, this is the best way for me to force myself to write regularly, which means I am reading and thinking non-stop.
What is an Opus?
\ ˈō-pəs \
Definition: Latin: Work.
Especially a musical composition or set of compositions usually numbered in the order of its issue.
I started playing piano when I was five years old and have only missed a few days of practice since then. Over the last 18 years, it has been a source of inspiration and a place of sanctuary where I get lost for hours frustratingly practicing and pseudo-composing pieces of my own. With that said, I would not label myself anything more than an amateur at best.
Throughout my piano playing years, classical music has been the main focus. I’ve gotten lost (many times literally) in the pages of Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, and dozens of others. If you ever look at one of these title pages you will most likely see something like the following:
“Opus posthumous 66” means workpiece #66, and "posthumous" meaning it was published after Chopin’s death in 1849.
Just like a newsletter, composers label their pieces of work chronologically as a filing system. This post is my Opus 1.
What is The Opus Letter?
They say combining your passions, especially those that are completely orthogonal to one another, often results in the greatest work you will ever create. Well, The Opus Letter is just that.
Just like the best classical pieces, the best works of journalism, reporting, technology, builders, and other people are often found on the fringe. I try my best everyday to hang out on the edge where the lesser-knowns hide. The highest ROI reading isn’t found on the top news sites or within the most eye-grabbing headline. No, it is located on the Nth page of some obscure forum written by a pseudo-anonymous author. While everyone knows the classical greats such as Mozart’s Turkish March or Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, I’d argue there are equally great measures of music hidden away in the archives that just need a dusting off to be enjoyed. Much like the news, the billboard 100 of music is an incredibly inaccurate representation of what people enjoy.
I will be sending out The Opus Letter periodically (hopefully, converging towards daily) where I will share personal thoughts, reflections, and interesting things I find in my daily rabbit holes. Most of my job as a venture analyst is to find these weird places (as my coworker calls them) on the internet and wander around. I think we are all in need of a detour from the current zeitgeist of virus not only infecting our bodies but also our brains as it is the only thing we can talk about today.
And to accompany the current happenings of the world, whether it be a virus or a new trend, I will add a personal favorite piece of music - an Opus - to every post. I will work to find a piece that pairs with the issue and I encourage you to scroll down to the bottom of every new post and listen to the piece while reading.
I hope these findings are as interesting to you as they are to me, and I welcome all feedback and personal reflections.
Today’s Musings
“Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself” - FDR’s First Inaugural Address
I have been thinking about this quote quite a bit recently. I am using my one mulligan to talk about the virus since everyone has to have an opinion on it today, sadly.
FDR’s quote was in regards to the country’s fear of The Great Depression and how the psychology factor of the times was half the battle. Today is very different though.
The Great Depression was an anthropological issue. It was driven by overstepping greed which was then whiplashed into fear. Today, the virus, and subsequent crash in consumer purchasing, asset prices, etc., are a biological one. No aggregate upbeat in the public’s psyche will help reverse the crisis. Our habits are thrown out the door once mortality is brought into the discussion. The market’s lack of response to the monetary powers throwing everything but the kitchen sink is appropriate as interest rates don’t help viral immunity.
Mirroring FDR, my take on the situation would be the antithesis:
“Only Thing We Have to Fear Is The Lack of Fear”
I was fearful when the American populous was dismissive of this strange virus that was only affecting those overseas. I am now feeling far better now that everyone has become deathly terrified of the infection. It is anti-reflexive: the more we dismiss it, the more it will hurt us. I find comfort in everyone’s discomfort about the current situation.
In closing, while fear-mongering is the popular story-de-jour it has proven time, and time again, that betting on human innovation, ingenuity, and drive is a bad trade. It is fun to relive the movies and talk about doomsday prepping and companies collapsing, but the world is getting better in almost every possible way. And that won’t change because of an invisible virus.
Homework Reading:
Plot Economics - Venkatesh Rao
"Global narrative collapse events tend to have a very surreal glued-to-screens quality surrounding them. That’s how you know everybody has lost the plot: everybody is tracking the rawest information they have access to, rather than the narrative that most efficiently sustains their reality" (13min Read)
100 Little Ideas - Morgan Housel
"Outgroup Homogeneity: Perceiving your own group as a collection of diverse thinkers and everyone outside your group as having similar views. Makes it easy to characterize outside groups with singular, often derogatory, labels." (13min Read)
The Cultural Distances Between Us - Brian Gallagher
“"People often think, “Why are some countries corrupt?” To me, that’s not the puzzle. The puzzle is: Why are some countries able to suppress corruption? The reason I frame it that way is because, from a cultural evolutionary perspective, corruption is what is natural to us. We cooperate with friends who we regularly interact with through direct reciprocity. You scratch my back, I scratch yours, I help you, you help me, screw me over, I screw you over. We rely on reputation, and so on. Corruption, I argue, is one scale of cooperation—a lower, more natural, more stable scale—undermining another.” (8min Read)
"This is a question of balance. Those who come to me and say, “You know, I work 15 hours a day,” I say, “I am not interested.” I am interested in the quality of working hours, not the quantity. The brain of the human being. Do you think that during the first five hours of the day you are the same as you are in the last five hours? No way. You’re tired, and if you’re tired, you stop listening, and the decisions you make are risky" (30min Read)
2019: The Year Revolt Went Global - Martin Gurri
"Any attempt to sort out the consequences of the 2019 upheavals will soon bump into the inadequacy of our thinking on the subject. Consequences must refer to initial conditions: and these varied wildly. Algeria was ruled by a corrupt dictatorship. France, on the other hand, is one of the oldest democracies in the world. In the last two decades, the sectarian cliques that run Lebanon have destroyed a once-thriving economy, increased poverty, and blighted the infrastructure. In the “30 years” that sparked the Chileans’ indignation, however, their country became the wealthiest in Latin America, with the lowest poverty rate. Levels of acceptable violence also diverged broadly: the death of a single bystander shocked Hong Kong, but hundreds have been killed in Iraq. Given such an untidy tangle of starting-points, it may be futile to search for common landing-places."
Today’s Music
For the first issue, I am contradicting the above statement regarding the lesser-known pieces of the classical world. The example photo above shows the first eight bars to my all-time favorite piece, Chopin’s Fantaisie - Impromptu, Op. 66:
This specific recording is that of Arthur Rubenstein, the greatest Chopin performer in history. His interpretation falls on the faster side - many fall in the 5:20-5:30 time while Rubenstein clocks in at 5:07 - which adds to the intensity of the first and final movements. The opening bars are perfect representations of the world we live in today with its never-ending haste while the middle movement provides a break reminding us all to take time to reflect, something I hope this newsletter can provide both you and I time to do.
Thank you for taking the time and reading this far. I really do welcome thoughts, comments, and all feedback. Just reply to this and it will go to my inbox. Talk to you there.