Over J.A. Baker

Manuscript van J.A. Baker

Via Werner Herzog las ik The Peregrine van J.A. Baker, en naar aanleiding daarvan las ik My House of Sky, de biografie over J.A. Baker, geschreven door Hetty Saunders.

Er was erg weinig bekend over Baker. In 2017 schreef Justine Jordan in The Guardian over Baker en The Peregrine. My House of Sky moest nog verschijnen.

Fifteen years ago, relatively little was known about Baker. This was partly due to the writer’s strategic development of his own mystery. In the winter of 1967, he was given an Arts Council award of £1,200. The Daily Telegraph reported on the award: “The most unusual of the [recipients] is John Baker, who lives in a council house in Essex and does not want to say which town in case the neighbours discover what he does. He has no telephone and never leaves his home.

Hetty Saunders kreeg toegang tot de archieven van J.A. Baker. Maar zelfs Saunders weet daarmee de biografie van deze teruggetrokken levende schrijver niet meer volume te geven dan zo’ 140 pagina’s. De rest van het boek deelt een selectie uit de gedichten die Baker schreef, en stukken uit de archieven.

Baker was een man die erg op zichzelf was. Hij had een paar vrienden, die hij trouw bleef.
Zijn schrijven was uiterst precies, zijn observaties zijn precies en gedetailleerd, hij is gepassioneerd en schrijft poëtisch.

Voor de focus en eenzaamheid die Baker zocht is soms weinig begrip. In The New Yorker schrijft Cynthia Zarin bijvoorbeeld

The book was “The Peregrine,” by J. A. Baker. First published in London, in 1967, by HarperCollins, and reissued by New York Review Classics, in 2004, the book is a story of obsession.”

Maar de handvol artikelen die bestaan over Baker bevestigen dat er zo weinig originele bronnen zijn en artikelen klinken als een echoput. De originele geest die bedacht heeft dat het boek een verhaal over obsessie is is niet te vinden. Obsessief is Baker toch niet; wel degelijk toegewijd.

Andere beschrijvingen gaan nog verder in hun conclusies over Baker. In datzelfde artikel in The New Yorker gaat een lezer van Baker nog verder.

T. H. White’s classic “The Goshawk,” published in 1951, and “H Is for Hawk,” by Helen MacDonald, which appeared in 2014, are contemporary additions. Both books are about the art of falconry, in which birds of prey, by means of deprivation and reward, are taught to hunt to please their owners. White was a self-confessed sadist (he told his friend, the writer David Garnett, that his sadistic tendencies had destroyed his love life because of his need to inflict punishment on those he loved); for White, falconry provided the opportunity for cruelty by proxy. MacDonald, who became fascinated with falconry as a child (at eight she asked for a leather hawk leash and hood for Christmas), trains a hawk to allay grief after the death of her father. White’s book is essential to MacDonald’s—she follows his darker story alongside her own more familiar how-to-get-over-it saga. She is dismissive of Baker’s book, finding it frightening: a desire for death and annihilation disguised as an elegy for nature.

Een verlangen naar dood en vernietiging? Het lijkt dat MacDonald haar eigen gewelddadige oorsprong voor haar liefde voor de valkerij projecteert op Baker. Baker was een gepassioneerd natuurliefhebber en schrijver. Maar hij trainde geen roofvogels en jaagde niet. Een mensenschuwe misantroop wellicht, maar ook iemand die van schoonheid hield en zichzelf diep kon identificeren met de slechtvalk, en er prachtig over kon schrijven.

Like the hawk, I heard and hated the sound of man, that faceless horror of the stony places. I stifled in the same filthy sack of fear. I shared the same hunter’s longing for the wild home none can know, alone with the sight and smell of the quarry, under the indifferent sky. I felt the pull of the north, the mystery and fascination of the migrating gulls. I shared the same strange yearning to be gone. I sank down and slept into the feather-light sleep of the hawk.

Dit is geen obsessie, maar identificatie. Geen verlangen naar vernietiging, maar naar begrip.

Waarschijnlijk heeft het boek van Hetty Saunders de bronnen uitgeput en zullen we nooit meer over J.A. Baker te weten komen. Met succes heeft hij de details van zijn leven privé weten te houden.

Pilgrimage

I will venture into the supreme evening
When cool webs of sunlight are straying to the sea
And calm sails are soothing the forelands and the speechless hill.
This staff I carry is winter madness,
I have stripped it of seasons
Down to the livid bone
The immemorial winter;
With it I will cut the shapes of infinite dreams
Or follow the fading of some glorious cloud.

(J.A. Baker)

The Sound of Waves – Tatsuo Suzuki

photo by Tatsuo Suzuki The Sound of Waves - Tatsuo Suzuki

Does it matter if you read a photobook from left to right, as we are accustomed to in the West, or from right to left? Like in Japan? Tatsuo Suzuki’s book The Sound of Waves made me wonder when I found the imprint page in the back of the book, contrary to my expectations. So I read the book in both directions (do you ‘read’ a photobook?) and found from left to right seemed the best way to experience the sequence of pictures.

The book’s title, ‘The Sound of Waves’, is so to the point. You hear the waves crashing on the beach, the sound of a band playing live in a bar, fireworks, protests in the streets, rain, the noise of a crowded city, and trains arriving at a station.

Tatsuo’s book follows a tradition of Japanese black and white photography with grainy, sometimes blurry pictures, close-ups, dense pages with little place to rest – the white space between the images is black, drawing the viewer into the book. I see Eyes everywhere, the sad eyes of the models, eyes in the crashing waves. Tatsuo Suzuki drags us through a rough night in a hectic rhythm, and we finally reach dawn (reading left to right). On the last crash of waves, the sun melts away the gloom, with care.

It’s a sensory experience Tatsuo creates. It is a coming and going of the sea, breaking waves, street smells, people marching, yelling, the sweat and sound of a fierce drummer, nearby, traffic, wailing wind, the noise of the sea, murmuring crowd, a highway, more noise.

tatsuo suzuki photo from The Sound of Waves - Tatsuo Suzuki
The Sound of Waves - Tatsuo Suzuki

The Gourmet Club van Junichiro Tanizaki

Ik las The Gourmet Club van Junichiro Tanizaki. De meeste verhalen in deze bundel werden geschreven tussen 1911 en 1919. De verhalen doen bizar modern aan.

Het titelverhaal gaat over een groep mensen die het eten van het bijzonderste voedsel tot levensdoel hebben gemaakt. Ze vinden hun meerdere in een Chinese eetclub. De eetervaring hier wordt naar orgastische dimensies getild.

Finally the various foods collected there all at once began to roll about. The ground on which they rested suddenly thrust itself up from below—it had gone unnoticed until now because of its size, but what had seemed to be the ground was in fact a giant tongue, and all those foods were jumbled together in an immense mouth. Soon upper and lower rows of teeth began slowly to converge, like mountain ranges pushing up from the depths of the earth and downward from the sky. They started to crush the foods that rested on the tongue, and the mashed foods turned into a fluid like pus from an abscess, a kind of sludge upon the tongue’s surface. The tongue licked the four walls of the oral cavity with relish, undulating like a stingray…

Zo’n scene doet denken aan de eetscenes is Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. In de film wordt voedsel op een symbolische, barokke manier gepresenteerd. Chihiro’s ouders schransen gulzig eten naar binnen en veranderen in varkens. De bizarre vraatzuchtige eetscènes van No-Face.

In een ander verhaal leeft een man te midden van poppen. Hij heeft ze gemaakt naar het beeld van de vrouw van de verteller, een bekende actrice. De vertelling wordt steeds benauwender.

Then you’ll realize that your young and beautiful wife has fled into the film and the woman who’s there beside you now is just her shell. You’ll stare at those movies in puzzlement and think, were these films I made? Could such a radiant world have come from us, my wife and me? And in the end you’ll recognize that the films are not things you two alone created, that the dancer and the wild thing were not the products of your direction and your wife’s acting skills but had been there, living within the film, from the very beginning. They represent an ‘eternal woman,’ quite different from your wife. Your wife became the vehicle for her—that’s all—the image of that feminine spirit for a while. You both are just making a living out of her, the eternal woman. I’m sure you’ll come to realize that . . .

Tenslotte dit stukje uit een meer recent verhaal van Tanizaki, Manganese Dioxide Dreams, een fenomenaal hallucinatoir verhaal. De hoofdpersoon, onder invloed van slaappillen, bestudeert met grote associatieve kracht hetgeen we liever niet bestuderen.

The feces floating in this crimson solution are not at all repulsive. At times a fecal lump will suggest the shape of something else, such as a human face. Tonight one looks like Simone Signoret’s diabolical face, glaring at me from the red liquid. I study it, reluctant to flush the water away . . . Like fluid clay, it contorts and twists and congeals again, now into the form of a sculpted, Grecian torso.

Honjok

Ik lees in “Een jaar vrij” van Karien Hoenderdos over honjok, een term die ik nog niet kende. Honjok is een term overgenomen uit Zuid-Korea en heeft betrekking op mensen die ervoor kiezen activiteiten alleen te ondernemen. Mensen die de behoefte hebben zich los te maken van de maatschappij en haar druk om in het gareel te lopen.

De maatschappelijke acceptatie van honjok is veranderd. Waar het vermijden van sociaal contact eerder werd gezien als onacceptabel en ondermijnend voor de maatschappij, ontstaat er nu meer acceptatie. De behoefte aan autonomie, om dieper met zichzelf verbonden te zijn en het leven volgens eigen waarden te leiden, wordt meer en meer erkend.

De groep wordt ontdekt als een ‘markt’ voor nieuwe producten: ander media-aanbod, eenpersoonsrestaurants, en een aanbod van voedsel gericht op eenpersoonshuishoudens – een solo-economie.

Ik moet hierbij denken aan de boeken van de Japanse schrijvers Mieko Kawakami en Sayaka Murata waarover ik eerder schreef. In hun werk worden de donkere kanten van de Japanse maatschappij weergegeven bij mensen die kiezen ervoor om zich afzijdig van de maatschappij te houden — ‘de fabriek’, zoals het in Earthlings van Murata genoemd wordt. Misschien is de Japanse maatschappij nog niet zo ver als de Zuid-Koreaanse.

Ook bij ons zien we een toename van alleenstaanden en mensen die bewust kiezen voor soloactiviteiten. Dit wordt deels gedreven door een dieper geworteld individualisme in de westerse cultuur.
Maar er lijkt ook een verschil te zijn. Waar honjok een reactie is op maatschappelijke druk van ‘de fabriek’, lijkt het in het Westen iets te zijn uit de ‘wellness’-cultuur, bijvoorbeeld hier in Happinez en hier in Flow. Zo wordt honjok een statussymbool van onafhankelijkheid.

Zoals Klinenenberg het zegt in dit artikel in Time uit 2012 :

Today, in our age of digital media and ever expanding social networks, living alone can offer even greater benefits: the time and space for restorative solitude.
This means that living alone can help us discover who we are as well as what gives us meaning and purpose. Paradoxically, living alone might be exactly what we need to reconnect.

Werner Herzog’s essential pursuit of truth

Werner Herzog wrote a book about the nature of truth titled “The Future of Truth” (De Toekomst van de Waarheid). A concept much abused these days.

To Werner Herzog, truth is a search, a quest, almost one that distinguishes us from the other, more or less intelligent animals. In this concise yet idea-packed book, he examines the truth from several interesting angles, including political, artistic, historical, and scientific perspectives. He interweaves interesting stories in his arguments, like an artist should.

He looks at people who are considered larger-than-life. Contrary to popular belief, self-proclaimed genius (my words) Elon Musk did not invent the electric car. He didn’t found Tesla. He bought that one. And he bought Twitter. With that truth, he aims to facilitate the spreading of lies. (He did found SpaceX, though.)

The word for truth in Ancient Greek is aletheia, the negation of lethe, meaning forgetfulness or oblivion. Alatheia is that which reveals what was hidden. Alatheia is like a film and photography on celluloid. There is something on it, but it has to be revealed and developed.

Art creates a truth, according to Herzog. In opera, music transforms almost the craziest, unthinkable stories into wondrous truths. (Herzog directed several operas.)

Herzog’s film Family Romance tells the story of how, in Japan, actors are hired to replace a father or husband in their real life. Actors stand in for the father of a girl, the broom for a marriage, and an employee receiving a scrubbing. After the movie was released, Japanese broadcaster NHK produced a documentary about the company that hires out these actors, referred to in Herzog’s movie as Family Romance, and about the people who hire its actors. A bizarre double world emerges in this documentary. A client of the ‘Family Romance’ service was interviewed and questioned about why he wanted the actor to take his place in real life. After the documentary was finished, NHK discovered that the client they had interviewed was also an actor who had been hired to replace the original client. The argument was that the actor could portray the client more effectively than the client himself. Because the actor can speak the absolute truth, and the real person could do nothing but lie. Still with me?

In another movie of his, Herzog plays a priest. He meets a stranger and records a confession from this stranger for the film. During the act, he fabricates several facts as a priest, which the confessor greedily accepts, and the confession is more honest and well-meant than it could ever have been in real life. Making the fake confession more truthful than a real one.

Another story unfolds in Russia during the time of Czarina Catherine II. Potemkin villages were villages created as fronts, much like movie sets, to give the Russian czarina the impression of a prosperous country. A staged world similar to the North Korean Peace Village. Or the Truman Show.

In his films, Herzog attributes celebrity quotes that could have been said, but which he fabricated. He believes that this made-up truth is also a truth: an ecstatic, more profound truth.

Another bizarre story is that of a man on death row who continued to believe in his self-made innocence to the end, even though he was guilty, believing his concoctions til the end. This story reminded me of the song “The Mersey Seat” by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. In this unsettling song, a condemned man continues to believe in his innocence until just before his execution, but the truth catches up with him.

And in a way I’m yearning
To be done with all this measuring of proof
Of an eye for an eye
And a tooth for a tooth
And anyway I told the truth
And I’m afraid I told a lie

The Electrician, by
Boris Eldagsen

Of course, AI is impossible to ignore, and Herzog explores the fake images it can generate, such as the AI-created photograph that was awarded the top prize at the Sony Photo Awards.

Herzog discusses how we can protect ourselves from being deceived by fakes. He recommends always approaching information with skepticism—assuming it might be false—and diligently verifying the truth behind any claim. He emphasizes that any request to transfer money should be treated as a red flag. In his view, the digital world is inherently unreliable.

According to Herzog, what helps us navigate this uncertainty are three key practices:

  • Education
  • Reading extensively
  • Walking regularly, with minimal distractions or baggage

In the final chapter, Herzog admits that there is no definitive “future of truth.” Instead, the search for truth remains an essential, existential pursuit.

I read the book in its Dutch translation. When I wanted to buy it for a friend in the US, I discovered—somewhat surprisingly—that the English translation is not yet available. It is scheduled for release in September 2025.

Doing difficult stuff, and finishing

Most of these self-help books are okay-ish. Yet many are superfluous encouragements.

We all know what is essential. Self-help feels like procrastination. We often read these books to avoid doing the real things.

However, explaining to people how to do difficult things is easier than doing the difficult stuff themselves.

Teaching people how to make their art is easier than the work of making art itself.

And to finish it.

Derek Sivers in How To Live:

Calling yourself creative doesn’t make it true. All that matters is what you’ve launched. Make finishing your top priority.

Seth Godin: Ship It!

Portland, no coincidences

Steel Bridge - portland
Steel Bridge Portland

I went to this conference in Portland, Oregon. I had never been to Portland. The most impressive thing about Portland during this short visit, I found, is its Steel Bridge (A rabbit hole on itself. By the looks of it, you would suppose it is a relic from an industrial past, but actually it is still in use. It has its own Wikipedia page). The Japanese Gardens of Portland seem great, but I did not have enough time to visit them. And not giving it priority, having seen the real thing in Japan itself.

aimee bender - the butterfly lampshade

On the plane back home, I finished reading my book (The Invisible Gorillaby Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons) and randomly took the next book from the stack on my e-reader: Aimee Bender’s The Butterfly Lampshade.

A girl with a mentally ill mother gets to live with her aunt and uncle… In Portland. When she visits them, she takes that same Red Line from the airport to the City Center to her aunt’s house, as I had been on that week.

There is no coincidence.

The book starts with a brilliant and moving phone conversation between the mother, the aunt, and the little girl.

the invisible gorilla by chabris and simons
View from the Portland Steel Bridge

De kracht van selectieve onwetendheid

man in een museum kijkt op zijn telefoon - foto niek de greef

Er is een interessante logica te vinden in de Buddhist Noble Truths. Ik parafraseer:

Suffering is caused by desire, attachment, and general craving. Eliminating craving reduces our suffering.

Verlangen neemt af door de oorzaak ervan weg te nemen. Onwetendheid is de hoofdoorzaak. Onwetendheid is een diepgewortelde cognitieve en perceptuele blindheid die ervoor zorgt dat wezens de werkelijkheid verkeerd interpreteren.

Onwetendheid is een interessant woord als je deze context in ogenschouw neemt. Er is onwetendheid in de zin van niet weten, wat de negatieve connotatie heeft van dom zijn, en onwetendheid in de zin van negeren of geen aandacht schenken.

We kunnen dingen negeren die we willen bezitten, interesses negeren die we hebben, zodat we ons kunnen concentreren op de essentiële dingen, en dingen negeren die we denken te moeten weten – waardoor we de meest letterlijke vorm van onwetendheid bereiken. Deze daad van selectieve onwetendheid kan bevrijdend werken en ons bevrijden van de last van onnodige informatie.

Dit concept van onwetendheid kan ook positief worden geherformuleerd als ‘selectieve onwetendheid’: kiezen waar je je op concentreert en wat je negeert om mentale rommel en lijden te verminderen.

Focus en onwetendheid

In onze ambities vergelijken we onszelf met anderen. We observeren en benijden hun prestaties en oordelen. Geen van beide is nuttig.

Robert Greene schrijft in Mastery over hoe de meesters in hun vakgebied – de mensen over wie hij in zijn boek schrijft – zich concentreerden op hun sterke punten. Deze focus op persoonlijke sterke punten geeft hen kracht en het vertrouwen om hun doelen na te streven.

…ignore your weaknesses and resist the temptation to be more like others. Instead… direct yourself toward the small things you are good at.

man jogging on deserted island - foto niek de greef

In Advice for Living deelt Kevin Kelly zijn wijsheid over zorgen over de mening van anderen:

Ignore what others may be thinking of you because they aren’t thinking of you.

Aandacht, media en onwetendheid

In de wereld van vandaag zijn we verslaafd aan nieuws. Als we naar het nieuws kijken, voelen we ons machteloos tegenover de daden van een klein aantal slechte mensen. We verlangen naar beter nieuws, meer updates. Nieuwsagentschappen reageren net als sigarettenfabrikanten: ze stemmen hun producten af op onze verslavende behoeften met een negatieve inslag, sensationele koppen en continu breaking news.

Oliver Burkeman overtuigt ons in Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals dat de media onze aandacht stelen:

The unsettling possibility is that if you’re convinced that none of this is a problem for you-that social media hasn’t turned you into an angrier, less empathetic, more anxious, or more numbed-out version of yourself-that might be because it has. Your finite time has been appropriated without your realizing anything’s amiss.

We zijn verslaafd. Maar we kunnen onszelf helpen door onwetendheid na te streven. We kunnen meldingen negeren en uitschakelen, en minder vaak nieuwsbronnen raadplegen.

Misschien zijn we beter af met een nieuwsbron die niet gedijt op actualiteit, maar op een langetermijnperspectief. Dat zal niet gratis zijn, want het is niet onze aandacht die voor deze diensten betaalt, maar de waarde die ze bieden voor ons geluk, waarvoor we in ruil daarvoor geld betalen. Deze verschuiving in perspectief kan geruststellend zijn, wetende dat we onze aandacht investeren in iets dat er echt toe doet.

All the Lovers in the Night: On Isolation and Connection

All the Lovers in the Night
Mieko Kawakami

A strange mix of loneliness, connection, and love come together in All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami.

Fuyuko is a reclusive proofreader at a publishing house. She has virtually no social life.

One day, Fuyuko comes into contact with Hijiri, who persuades her to go freelance. Fuyuko more or less befriends Hijiri and is somewhat taken out of her isolation by this friendship. Fuyuko learns to drink alcohol, but without any measure.

She meets Mr. Mitsutsuka, an older man, when she attempts to enroll them in a course. She starts meeting him more frequently after an initial reluctance. They have special and increasingly intimate conversations. A strange, affectionate relationship develops.

Not saying a word, just standing there, Mitsutsuka looked like he was waiting patiently for my tears to settle. I heard a car go by, not very far away from us. Using my palm, I wiped the tears dripping down my chin, then rubbed my eyes, covered my face, and started crying again. Mitsutsuka lifted his free hand and rested it on the crown of my head. I thought I could feel the heat of his hand entering my skin. With his palm still on my head, I asked Mitsutsuka if he would spend my birthday with me, in a voice that was almost all sob. Will you walk through the night with me? And will you listen to that song with me, just the two of us?

The character Fuyuko bears resemblance to the strangely named Natsuke in Earthlings by Sayaka Murata. Women who cannot ground themselves in this world, or at least in Japanese society, and live socially isolated lives. Where in Earthlings an unbearable burden develops in the protagonist Natsuke, Kawakami’s story is more loving, and Fuyuko manages to maintain a certain lightness and optimism.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb on the artisanal and techno-dissatisfaction

Douglas Coupland predicted that the crafted object might become the emerging “technology” of modern art. Analog experiences are where art is enjoyed.

In Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb explores technology and art from the perspective of fragility. Technology is designed to replace older, inferior technology.

Technology is at its best when it is invisible. I am convinced that technology is of greatest benefit when it displaces the deleterious, unnatural, alienating, and, most of all, inherently fragile preceding technology.
…
So it may be a natural property of technology to only want to be displaced by itself.

But not all technology disappears. The Lindy effect applies to technology.

For the nonperishable, every additional day may imply a longer life expectancy. So the longer a technology lives, the longer it can be expected to live.
…
But in general, the older the technology, not only the longer it is expected to last, but the more certainty I can attach to such a statement.

People experience new technology like a treadmill effect.

People acquire a new item, feel more satisfied after an initial boost, then rapidly revert to their baseline of well-being. So, when you “upgrade,” you feel a boost of satisfaction with changes in technology. But then you get used to it and start hunting for the new new thing.

Taleb states that this effect does not apply to classical art, as well as to analog and physical experiences. These experiences appear to be exempt from men’s hedonic decline in satisfaction.

But it looks as though we don’t incur the same treadmilling techno-dissatisfaction with classical art, older furniture—whatever we do not put in the category of the technological.
…
I have never heard anyone address the large differences between e-readers and physical books, like smell, texture, dimension (books are in three dimensions), color, ability to change pages, physicality of an object compared to a computer screen, and hidden properties causing unexplained differences in enjoyment.

The big differentiator, according to Taleb, is the infusion of the maker’s love in the created art object.

But consider the difference between the artisanal—the other category—and the industrial. What is artisanal has the love of the maker infused in it, and tends to satisfy—we don’t have this nagging impression of incompleteness we encounter with electronics. It also so happens that whatever is technological happens to be fragile. Articles made by an artisan cause fewer treadmill effects. And they tend to have some antifragility—recall how my artisanal shoes take months before becoming comfortable.

The medicine against our technology addiction is not the upgrade to the latest. The medicine is the downgrade to the analog, real-life experience, and the physical object.