The Abandoned Alphabet of Freedom: D‪.‬

The alphabet offers a bare scheme of order, and so exerts a peculiar fascination when sustained thought is too much to contemplate. It promises sense where there may be mere arrangement--dangerous, but hard to resist. Six years ago, when Bruce Mau Design in Toronto asked me to consider an alphabetical encyclopedia on the idea of freedom, I leapt at the idea. Mau had already collaborated with the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas on S, M, L, XL, an alphabetical meditation on size, a hipster's visual encyclopedia. I wanted The Alphabet of Freedom to be the same thing, only deeper. I quickly constructed a list of keywords that would appear in it, each letter entry to be a miniature essay in the triumphs, reversals, and ironies of the human quest for freedom.