The Soul of a Library

Clear and sweet and savory emotion did not run in a rippling stream in my personal world- more pity to it! But in stories and poems I found passion unfettered, and healthy.



Additional Voices-

The Library: An Illustrated History- Stuart Murray (2009)
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts- Joshua Hammer (2017)
The Library of Babel- Jorge Luis Borges (1941)
The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders- Stuart Kells (2017)

Video credits:

All geographical footage from Google Earth

Additional Footage: Jesse Guarascia

Footage Used: Bloodborne, Dark Souls, Library of Babel 3D, Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Assassin's Creed: Origins

Music Used: Bayonetta (The Angels Descend, God’s Hymns,), Bioshock (Cohen’s Masterpiece), Bloodborne (Micolash, Nightmare Host), Chrono Cross (Another Voyage), Dark Souls (Daughters of Chaos), Disco Elysium (Evrart), Firewatch (Camp Approach), Gris (Karasu, In Your Hands), Nier Automata (Pascal (Instrumental), Voice of No Return), Octopath Traveler (On a Knife’s Edge), To the Moon (For River- Johnny’s Version)

Description Credit: Mary Oliver- Staying Alive

[eliwatson]

Another point I’d like to make: you can go to a public library with no intention of checking out a book, you can go without a library card, you can just go there and read as much as you want, and it’s free. You can use that service or just use the space without any guilt or judgement and without paying a penny. I can’t think of another public space in the modern day where it’s acceptable to simply exist without spending money.

[VenusAsAFormerBoy]

I love how every single video essay ever made by anyone ever eventually morphs into a dark souls video

[razbuten]

One of the most interesting things to me about libraries is just how inspiring the aesthetic of them is. In college, I would go to the library to study, write, and read, but I don't think I ever once actually checked out a book from my college library. I just liked sitting at the desks in the dimly lit room, surrounded by more books than I could feasibly count. It felt cozy and infinite. The kind of place that you'd want to stay for hundreds of years because of the promise of knowledge.


In regards to the Library of Babel, that place would drive me insane because there would be millions of versions of my scripts that are written better than the ones I made. A true nightmare.

[yorenfromabove]

A recent version of a burning up the scale of Alexandria - but as a total burnout -, while not a library, is the burning of Brazil's National Museum. Which housed 200 years worth of Brazil's history. It burned because there was no more budget for the maintenance of the hydrants, so it was a victim of Brazil's long term austerity politics. While the whole thing is disastrous for everybody, the museum also housed many objects which were once stolen from Brazil's indigenious peoples, including cultures which are no longer around. There were also audio recordings of indigenious languages which are no longer in use, as writings and physical remains. Basically: we lost 200 years of cultural memory of a country that is only ~500 years old, and the proof of existence, culture and languages of peoples that have been made extinct through colonialism.

[pavarottiaardvark]

I was lucky enough to live within a mile of a Copyright Library for a few years - a facility which seeks to have a copy of every book published in that country. It wasn't a normal library - you could get a tour, but to read a book, you had to request it and then wait around for about 45 mins for it to be retrieved from the vast stacks. Then you have to read the book there - you can't take it away. Obviously, this was massively useful for certain things - research, old maps, art, you name it.

Once however, I really did get them to retrieve a trashy sci-fi novel that I wanted to read but couldn't find elsewhere. The professional archivist who handed it to me laughed with joy that someone was using the Library for such things.

[kvothekingkiller]

when my anxiety first got really bad, the thing that blew me away about libraries the most was that... they don't have any loitering rules. it's the only public place where you are allowed to exist without serving a purpose, spending money, being a customer, etc. for someone who was convinced that they could not serve a purpose, that's the most comforting concept in the world.

[colinhendrikx]

The absolute density of this man's beard is truly distracting

[lollyblizowo]

Librarian here-

Thank you, so, so much. This needs to be said, shouted, screamed from the heavens, and with your audience, I pray someone will hear it.

[ZacFrazier]

I can confirm our library system does indeed have Animorphs In the Time of Dinosaurs Part 2

[shodan]

One of my favorite quotes: "When my father died, it was as if an entire library burned down."
- Laurie Anderson, live in concert, circa 1990
This quote has changed the way I think about death.

[theprocastinators]

"The attack was predictable, at least to one man named Abdel Kader Haidara; pictured here wearing a Legend of Zelda scarf like the absolute boss that he is."

[HarperNell]

In the 70's-90's my grandma was an author. All her books are out of print now, but she has well over 30 different novels. You can't find them in libraries or in bookstores; only on ebay listings which are few and far between. She gifted me copies of most of them, which I wish I had been more careful with over the years since many I'll be unlikely to find again. It's crazy to me that this story isn't even that uncommon. So many books, out of print, never popular enough to be reinstated. Sometimes I read goodreads reviews of the books for fun, just happy to think that some stranger out there decades ago bought something my grandma wrote for 20 cents as a paperback at a thrift store and had that become a huge part of their life. And I'll never meet them and they'll probably never know I exist.

[furtado]

Am I crying over the efforts of people trying to save very old books? Yes, most certainly. Being a classicist, saving very old text is quite touching. Literally any old text.

[shytendeakatamanoir]

That's why I am so fascinated by archives.
They are absurd structures in many ways. They are bound to grow indefinitely to conserve every single trace of our pasts. Most of those documents will never see the light of the day again (because it would be armful for them.).
And most of those are MUSTY by definition.
It's the closest we have to a Library of Babel in real life.

[SleepySarahElizabethNarcolepsy]

I am a library employee and I approve this message. ^-^ The only reason I didn't get laid off was because I learned how to repair and preserve old books at my job. This allowed me to take them home to work on when the shelter in place orders started. If I had lost my job, I wouldn't be able to afford my medications. In other words, a library saved my life.

[Goblincow]

I knew I knew that voice. Simone over here in the infinite library searching endlessly for the auto-generated future works of Hemingway

[cheesypoohalo]

I'm so glad you talked about Google scanning all of those books, more people need to know about this. Yes, what Google did was illegal, and they also scanned recent books without the author or publishers permission, but I don't think what Google were doing was completely corrupt.

Scanning all the books in every library in the world, and putting all that knowledge onto the internet where everyone can access it, allowing the knowledge to live on forever... even if all we got were old and out of print releases, I'd have loved to see this be a reality, allowing old works to live on with easy access to what those pages hold.
Perhaps some things are worth breaking the law for.

[GreatFlamingEyebrows_]

My

The best narrator in the

The KING of video essays

[pooba]

I live in a small town in Tennessee and our poor little library isn’t much bigger than the Subway inside of my closest Walmart, but that building is so stoic. It’s been there almost as long as the town has been founded and I remember going past and wondering about all that was inside since I was just a wee lad. I’m much more familiar with the library at my college, where I serve as a library ambassador, and have spent many long hours staring at lines and lines of code for whatever project/s I’ve been working on inside of that huge place. I sometimes wonder if those around me grasp where they are, and the architectural design of the place. High ceilings, wide open space, a large collection of books and an absolutely enormous digital database, and most of all the stillness of it. You can hear someone drop their pencil or phone from the other side of a building that is wider than my house is long. It’s utterly breathtaking.
It was my birthday two days ago and you uploading is a real treat. Your videos make me think and more often than not bring me to tears, so thank you truly for all the hard work that goes into each and every one of them.

Also sir you have an exceptional beard.

[subprogram]

This was an excellent video! I was hooked basically from the idea of the Library of Babel right at the start and it just never stopped being fasinating after that. The Library of Babel almost seems to take the concepts of Law and Chaos and just tie them together into a colossal knot, a infinitely ordered honeycomb of absolute literary disorder. A disorder so extreme and all-encompassing that it starts to imitate order and structure again.
And then there's the rest of the video too! I loved the Duke's Archives section, gave me new reason to appreciate the zone, and it's equivilent in Dark Souls 3 too. I'm almost surprised you didn't go more into the architecture of libraries in the video, but I can see how that might have been a tangent too far in a clearly very focused work.
In short, I really liked it, and am glad you were willing to do something outside of your 'normal' areas of essay-ing for this cos it absolutely paid off for me. :D