Susan Howe
Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives, 2014
(Christine Burgin/New Directions)

"As they evolve, electronic technologies are radically transforming the way we read, write and remember. The nature of archival research is in flux… While I realise that these technologies offer new and often thrilling possibilities for artists and scholars, Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives is a collaged swan song to the old ways."

Susan Howe, from the introduction to Spontaneous Particulars





Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) manuscript number 60 from Spontaneous Particulars (page 20).
A note from Susan Howe regarding the solution to this rebus.

Oft, in the stilly night
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me.

I had chosen this particular rebus image from among other Peirce doodles, diagrams, and puzzes without knowing its source. I discovered the solution to the rebus too late to include the above in the endnotes. It's the first verse of a song by Thomas Moore. The song is familiar to me from childhood because my mother loved it dearly, particularly in the recorded version sung by the great Irish singer, John McCormack. It figures in John Huston's film of James Joyce story "The Dead." I thought my choice was random. Simply a question of its humor and mystery. Now it seems either telepathic or Peircian–"Love in a Universe of Chance."