About the Author
First of all, welcome to The Architecture of the Legend of Zelda. This site is the culmination of years of dreaming, and many hours of devoted research, writing, and editing. As it is for me, I hope that this place proves a second home for you on the internet, and that it helps to enrich your life in some way or another.
The idea for this website began rattling around in my head sometime during my undergraduate studies, and was likely born of two complementary impulses: a desire to understand for myself why the locales of these games spoke so intensely to me, and an appetite to contribute something both to others and to the art that had educed such an appreciation in me. And while I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to fully square up, I certainly mean to have a go at it. So it was that in the summer of 2013, on a very languid, sultry day, I cracked open my laptop and began to consider the meaning of the Water Temple as found in Ocarina of Time. Now, I could’ve simply gone about things in a rather dry, clinical way, looking at architecture, place, and culture somewhat in the vein of the detached anthropologist, but, the more I wrote, the more I found myself leaking onto the page; the fact that this happened didn’t surprise me (after all, anyone who writes anything will inevitably face this phenomenon), but I was taken aback by the degree to which it happened. As I witnessed the continuous irruption of my values in my writing, I soon realized that I didn’t simply want to understand these locations, I wanted to understand myself through these locations, and also to help others appreciate them as I did (and do). And that, I discovered, was quite a different project.
Looking back, almost a decade on, I find myself fighting a sort of uphill battle on many fronts. As we cede more of our time, attention, and depth to our technologies, so too do we lose our ability to appreciate that-which-is. This might sound a bit like new age woo-woo to some, but to me it is a fundamental truth. There is nothing more precious in a human life than time and attention; that which we care about we make time for, and if we really care, we also wholeheartedly give it our concentration. Yet, anymore, we attempt to “enjoy” things without a sense of reflective appreciation. We fail to slow ourselves, our minds and thoughts, and live within a moment in time in which we are alone with experience itself. Instead, one new thing makes room for the next in a deleterious cycle of unending binging, ceaseless scrolling, and perpetual mindlessness. I was not — and am not — content with that way of life: momentarily interacting with a piece of artwork, quickly walking away from it, giving it nothing of myself. To truly engage with something is to give it both time and attention, as much and as single-mindedly as we can.
So, after all that old-fashioned hooey, how does this relate to this website? Well, however you ended up here, and for whatever reason, I sincerely hope you’ll stay a while. The website certainly isn’t perfect, but it is a dedicated attempt to resist the forces of speed, efficiency (is there a more baleful god than efficiency?), distraction, and superficiality. Engaged reading, insofar as I know, is one of the best whetstones for our minds that exists, and long-form reading, though hard to stomach these days, should be a frequent activity for anyone hoping to have a life of the mind. (See? Another value judgment!) The articles here are a bit long, and sometimes circuitous, and more often than not rambling, but I hope they prove enlightening, even just ever-so-slightly. My ultimate goal with this project is to hit you in such a way so that you discover or reaffirm a capacity or passion for understanding, depth, curiosity, and appreciation, and, per Bradbury, to “knock the great sloth down on his ass.”
As we say in Zen, “Life-and-Death is the Great Matter. Don’t waste time!”
Happy reading.
— Talbot
The idea for this website began rattling around in my head sometime during my undergraduate studies, and was likely born of two complementary impulses: a desire to understand for myself why the locales of these games spoke so intensely to me, and an appetite to contribute something both to others and to the art that had educed such an appreciation in me. And while I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to fully square up, I certainly mean to have a go at it. So it was that in the summer of 2013, on a very languid, sultry day, I cracked open my laptop and began to consider the meaning of the Water Temple as found in Ocarina of Time. Now, I could’ve simply gone about things in a rather dry, clinical way, looking at architecture, place, and culture somewhat in the vein of the detached anthropologist, but, the more I wrote, the more I found myself leaking onto the page; the fact that this happened didn’t surprise me (after all, anyone who writes anything will inevitably face this phenomenon), but I was taken aback by the degree to which it happened. As I witnessed the continuous irruption of my values in my writing, I soon realized that I didn’t simply want to understand these locations, I wanted to understand myself through these locations, and also to help others appreciate them as I did (and do). And that, I discovered, was quite a different project.
Looking back, almost a decade on, I find myself fighting a sort of uphill battle on many fronts. As we cede more of our time, attention, and depth to our technologies, so too do we lose our ability to appreciate that-which-is. This might sound a bit like new age woo-woo to some, but to me it is a fundamental truth. There is nothing more precious in a human life than time and attention; that which we care about we make time for, and if we really care, we also wholeheartedly give it our concentration. Yet, anymore, we attempt to “enjoy” things without a sense of reflective appreciation. We fail to slow ourselves, our minds and thoughts, and live within a moment in time in which we are alone with experience itself. Instead, one new thing makes room for the next in a deleterious cycle of unending binging, ceaseless scrolling, and perpetual mindlessness. I was not — and am not — content with that way of life: momentarily interacting with a piece of artwork, quickly walking away from it, giving it nothing of myself. To truly engage with something is to give it both time and attention, as much and as single-mindedly as we can.
So, after all that old-fashioned hooey, how does this relate to this website? Well, however you ended up here, and for whatever reason, I sincerely hope you’ll stay a while. The website certainly isn’t perfect, but it is a dedicated attempt to resist the forces of speed, efficiency (is there a more baleful god than efficiency?), distraction, and superficiality. Engaged reading, insofar as I know, is one of the best whetstones for our minds that exists, and long-form reading, though hard to stomach these days, should be a frequent activity for anyone hoping to have a life of the mind. (See? Another value judgment!) The articles here are a bit long, and sometimes circuitous, and more often than not rambling, but I hope they prove enlightening, even just ever-so-slightly. My ultimate goal with this project is to hit you in such a way so that you discover or reaffirm a capacity or passion for understanding, depth, curiosity, and appreciation, and, per Bradbury, to “knock the great sloth down on his ass.”
As we say in Zen, “Life-and-Death is the Great Matter. Don’t waste time!”
Happy reading.
— Talbot
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On Philosophies of Life:
"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy – ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness – that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what – at last – I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me."
Bertrand Russell, What I have Lived For, 1956
"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy – ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness – that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what – at last – I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me."
Bertrand Russell, What I have Lived For, 1956