We live amidst a deluge. Music, movies, art, news, education, products and services of all kinds are instantly accessible from nearly anywhere. Broadly, there is good in abundance: triumphs of human ingenuity and the proliferation of creativity lead to an improved human condition.

But something else happens, too: the special character, the rough edges, the meaning of things, they become detached from the original thing itself. Which begs some questions: what have we lost? what are we missing? And amidst so many streams, are we paying attention? To the world around us? The land below us?

It’s not an entirely new phenomenon, but in the age of generative AI, the provenance of things obscures further and faster than ever before.
 

And anyway, does this improved human condition necessarily lead to what Aristotle referred to as the good life?

 

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I’ve often felt I better understand a place once I leave it. From the outside. 

 

When somewhere new, when truly immersed in a different place, you are confronted with the conscious patterns and subconscious expectations that flow from a culture, that is, the way we live.

 

You begin to recognize what you took for granted: the norms that dictated your interactions with strangers, the way you greeted your friends, the food you eat and how you eat it, what you assumed to be true simply because it was so.

An early personal example: choosing between music schools in Southern California and Chicago. I’m quite sure I practiced more living through the Chicago winters than had I gone to a school tempted by the ocean and mountains of sunny Southern California. I’m also quite sure I was more burned out.

The place shaped my experience.

 

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Some of us have lived in several vastly different places, different climates, different topographies, different economies and modes of living. The meaning of “home” blurs. The ties that bind us to communities grounded in a specific place loosen. It’s a phenomenon that would have been unthinkable for all but the last hundred years of human history. I wonder if we’ve fully grasped that shift. I wonder if we've internalized it.

Others of us never really left the place we were born. Technological and economic changes alter the landscape at breakneck speed, providing new opportunities, or, more often, leaving many to feel stuck or left behind. 

Returning to the question of place is a way of slowing down and asking what places matter to us and why they matter.

It asks us to notice where things come from. To recognize context.

 

To both celebrate progress and preserve what we otherwise might lose.

Our curiosity here mirrors what winemakers refer to as terroir: the unique attributes in a particular area that affect the grapes and ultimately the flavor of the wine.

Understanding the various attributes of culture, deepening our awareness of them, helps us also to better connect across cultures and even appreciate our own culture anew.

When we practice this kind of attention, appreciation isn’t about skill or refined taste, and it’s not even about preference. 

The act of attention becomes a way of grounding ourselves in a time and place that so often feels fast-paced and built on shifting sands.

In 2026, the act of attention feels important.

Join us in this exploration of Place.