Reading the essay, stumbled on Graham's Bel project. Had to look it up, so for those also curious about PG & Bel (I knew about PG's Arc, missed that he did another take on Lisp with Bel) http://www.paulgraham.com/bel.html

And the HN thread from when it was released: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231208

Thanks for sharing through all these years, Paul!

(P.S. Graham released his Lisp book freely on his site, worth a read if you haven't already.)