I am reading Moby Dick with a friend.

We are reading it, outloud a chapter at a time. I call this Lectio Divina and I have read other books this way. My reading partner is a math genius, maybe just a regular genius, and was inspired by the math in the book - from this NYTimes article.

I read quickly, trying to ingest and metabolize as much as possible, as quickly as possible. But reading out loud with a partner, and reading a book like Moby Dick feels like a creative act.

Here are some thoughts:

History Matters

Melville wrote Moby Dick in 1851.

Moby Dick exists before Marx wrote Das Capital, half a century before Freud wrote Interpretation of Dreams, ten years after Self-Reliance by Emerson, seven years before Darwin's On the Origin of Species, and half a century after the German Naturalist Romantics like Novalis and Von Humbolt.

Moby Dick is about workers in the industrial energy system of the time. I wonder how Moby Dick would read if it was written after Marx.

Embodiment Matters

When I slow down reading, which is a consequence of reading out loud, with another person, I notice all the nuances.

Chapter one talks abou how the ocean draws everyone, the city dweller and the country dweller, like a magnet on a compass (the metaphor Melville uses. People are connected to nature and their environment.

It talks about how the narrator has a disturbed spleen, and feels a rainy November in his soul - today, after Freud, we call this depression.

I live in NY, my reading partner lives in Montreal. In chapter one Melville writes about manhattan landmarks like Corlears hook and Coenties slip. These geographical locations still exist - I used to live across from Corlears hook.

My partner was shocked, you mean these places really exist - she exclaimed! What is fact and what is fiction?

Personal Experience Matters

The narrator states that he has been a commodore and a cook, and now he is just a regular sailor.

I was a business owner and a CEO, and then I left that and became an individual contributor for a time. I feel a connection with the narrator. His life is like mine.

Interpretation is Creation

Everyone has someone they have to answer to, the sailor, the cook, even the commodore, says the narrator.

What would it mean to write about the energy system today, or the economy today? Are people drawn to silicon valley to work as developers rather than as sailors on sea. What does it mean to work with in an organization, as a cook, a commodore or a sailor? What does it mean for the environment to pull us somewhere?

I read this brief chapter and it nourished me, and I wrote this reflection.

It is an act of interpretation and creation.