Experiment

Two names you don't often hear together: Thoreau and Porter. Yes, that's Henry David Thoreau and Cole Porter. If there are two Americans who could be more different, I can't think of them. Yet for some reason I found myself thinking of these two texts and tracking them down. This is in fact is how I see this move on my part. It's an experiment. And like a real experiment, I don't know how this thing is going to turn out. And as with any experiment one must recognize the possibility of failure. Thoreau gives hope that if you experiment sincerely with your life--i.e., advance confidently in the direction of your dreams--that success is assured, and that may be true, although success may be defined very differently than you originally had planned. We'll see.

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpeced in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him;or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude,nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have build castles in the aire, your work need to be lost; that is where they should be. Not put the foundations under them" Thoreau, Walden

EXPERIMENT BY COLE PORTER
Verse
Before you leave these portals/To meet less fortunate mortals,/There's just one final messageI would give to you.
You all have learned reliance/On the sacred teachings of science,/So I hope, through life, you never will decline
In spite of philistine
Defiance/To do what all good scientists do.

Refrain
Experiment.Make it your motto day and night.
ExperimentAnd it will lead you to the light.
The apple on the top of the tree/Is never too high to achieve,
So take an example from Eve,
Experiment.
Be curious,
Though interfering friends may frown.
Get furious
At each attempt to hold you down.
If this advice you always employ
The future can offer you infinite joy
And merriment,
Experiment
And you'll see