About the Project

The Project & Conversation

Reach out to one thousand people who made a dent in the universe.


I know the names of half; these individuals appear on The List.  Don't dwell on the sequential ordering of names; it's very haphazard. Most of these 500 I have some familiarity with and a respect for their viewpoints. A handful are not publicly known individuals, but personal friends or family members. The other 500 people will be revealed as our conversation takes place — a surprise to me as well.

I am the mate and companion of people,

all just as immortal and fathomless as myself,

(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

… In all people I see myself,

none more and not one an iota less,

And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.

 — Walt Whitman, #93

I used a random number generator to select my starting point: Person #299, Hugh Prather. I spent part of my last three days in his company and concluded a letter to Hugh today. Along the way, Hugh made reference to a person in his life, back in the late 1960s, and voila, I know who I'm writing to next: Steve Andreas. He is one of the unknown "other 500" who will populate this writing experiment.

Then, I expect a bit of life experience or wisdom from Steve Andreas will provide a bridge back to one individual from the remaining 499 on my list.  And so it will cycle back and forth — a true running dialogue.

My target pace is to write two letters each week. I'll take an occasional break as needed. The project will take about eleven years to complete, by my estimate.  To be more precise, I am on Day 3 of a 4,000 day project.  I will turn 45 years old soon after it's done.

What lifelines innumerable! How full the universe is!

 — Henry Ward Beecher, #283

In any one who dies there dies with him

his first snow, first kiss, first fight …

Not people die but worlds die in them …

 — Yevgeny Yevtushenko, #154

Those who are men of speculation, whose trade it is not to do any thing, but to observe every thing, are, upon that account, often capable of combining together the powers of the most distant and dissimilar objects in the progress of society.

 — Adam Smith, #296

An envelope from Ray was like a haiku, a moment of immediacy and indeterminancy, a particularly vivid moment outside the economy, outside the machinery of our culture. It was free.

 — a friend's recollection of Ray Johnson, #458

I hope to create a bit of magic like Ray Johnson's as I send my one thousand messages out into the world.

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The words and poetry above serve as a motto and touchstone of my project.
These appear in a larger collection about people stored in my wiki Remuse.
(Which uses technology developed by Jeremy Ruston, #400.)