Een dagenboek. Nooteboom verteld over zijn dagen in zijn Menorcaanse woning. Microscopische beschouwingen over zijn cactussen, de insecten rond zijn woning, de yucca, de ruines op Menorca.
Zorgvuldig beschreven in een nauwkeurige stijl die doet denken aan de veel minder bekende Tim Robinson die de Aran eilanden beschreef en ik leerde kennen via Boudewijn Buch.
Nooteboom schrijft over Brecht en Frisch. Over de muziek waar hij naar luistert. En dan ook macroscopische beschouwingen over de reis van de Voyagers. Over de kleine en grote dingen van het leven.
Een prachtige kruimel op de rok van Nooteboom’s universum. (naar Lucebert)
Odell wants to help us move away from the attention economy to a physical, public reality, by “doing nothing”. She shows us that doing nothing does not mean turning away from the world and live like a hermit, discarding all contact with the world. Alternatively, through turning away from the breaking-news attention seeking media, and instead focusing our attention to details in the real, physical world, we can discover a more satisfying and meaningful way of living.
What we should aim our attention at to be meaningful to the world, is our local environment. I do not know if Odell has invented the term, but she is a great proponent of Bio-regionalism: an attention, interest and familiarity with our local ecology. Which gives us valuable insights into the complex relations with other things.She herself found bird-watching an interest that lifted her attention for her local environment. It makes her drop out of the linear time, and when coming back to everyday life, see things differently.
Odell links in John Cleese – and I love that reference – in a Youtube performance on Creativity. But What I like most about the John Cleese video is this:”Pondering leads to creativity and insurrection.”
She describes uselessness as a strategy. I love this idea. The example Jenny Odell given is an extremely old ugly tree with lots of knots and bolts. How did it get this old? By being so ugly and gnarly. The tree is too difficult for lumberjacks to cut down. All trees around her have been cut down over the past centuries, but she has survived because she is useless. Another similar strategy is being too weird to be of any use. Remain weird, hard to categorize. Exercize “resistance in place” – be hard to appropriate by any capitalist value.
In social media, everything needs to be monetized. Time becomes an economic resource we can not spend on doing “nothing”. However, a sensible way to do nothing has benefits to offer: move away from your FOMO to NOMO – Necessity Of Missing Out, and a sharper ability to listen – ” Deep Listening”.
We should protect out spaces and time for non-instrumental, useless – in the sense of non-commercial – activity and thought, maintenance and care.
Odell tells us to value maintenance over productivity. Instead of productivity, value:
She quotes Epicurus: source of a troubled mind: unnecessary mental bagage due to runaway Desires, Ambitions, Fear and Ego. An answer to the attention economy could be totally turn away from society, but Odell proposes another approach: “standing apart”, in which we contemplate, and participate, look at the world with a futurist view, instead of a view dominated by perceived urgency. We should not retreat, but practice refusal, boycott and sabotage.
If we apply Cicero‘s Will, Perseverance Drive and Discipline, we can deny provocations outside the sphere of the desire attention. And improve acuity of our attention for other things.
Jenny Odell quotes David Hockney’s critique on photography as being the “cyclops view of the world, but for a split second” (paraphrasing). Instead, reality is a collage, a personal construction of images.
Reality or perception changes when you look at it rather than through it. Like Jeff Wall’s approach to photography. He reconstructs reality instead of taking a picture of it when it appear to him. In such a way he avoids his viewers to look through the picture at the subject rather than at it.
Looking attentively is like jumping into Alice’s rabbit hole. It is fun to do and revives our curiosity. Also it allows us to transcend the self and gain new understanding of things. It helps you not to marinate in conventional wisdom but to be open to change and deviating ideas.
Where (social) media throw context-poor factoids at you, researching a topic more deeply gives you a full understanding of the context of things. That is such a danger of the urgency-driven media: the lack of context they give.
It is not about doing nothing. It’s about doing the right thing, with attention, focus, discipline.
Ondergaat dagenlang het leven schijnbaar emotieloos. Kijkt naar buiten. Gaat een oppervlakkige sexuele relatie aan met getrouwde vrouwen. Zorgt op een sobere manier voor zichzelf (eten wordt altijd op een smaakvolle manier door Murakami beschreven). Zijn huwelijk is een excuus om te stoppen met het maken van schilderijen voor zichzelf en hij legt zich toe op portretten.
Maar dan komt de dag waarin de eerste stap wordt gezet in een reeks van stapjes die het leven van de man op zijn kop zet. Voortgeduwd door het onvermogen nee te zeggen, laat hij zich meeslepen in initiatieven van anderen, onbekenden.
Eerlijk gezegd wil ik wel eens zien wat er gaat gebeuren.
Als hij een onbekende vrouw in een cafeetje tegenkomt die sex met hem wil, kan hij geen nee zeggen.
Als Menshiki hem vreemde voorstellen doet kan hij geen nee zeggen.
Met alle gevolgen van dien.
Langzaam analyseert de man zijn leven en emotieloos lijkt hij zich bewust te worden dat zijn leven wordt bepaald door het trauma van het verlies van zijn op jonge leeftijd overleden zusje.
Hij is zich heel bewust van alle dingen die hem overkomen. Denkt er over na, maar steeds retrospectief. Hij onderneemt geen bewuste actie.
Als hij een schilderij gaat beginnen, overkomt hem dan. En als het af is, is hem dat ook opeens overkomen.
We werden niet zozeer gedreven door wat we hadden maar door wat we kwijt waren geraakt en nu niet bezaten.
Het nu, niet het verleden en niet de toekomst.
Dat kenmerkt Marakami misschien wel in al zijn boeken.
I am reading How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. But the book is not about doing nothing. It’s about what to do – about paying attention. Where social media captures our attention with screaming headlines, Odell advocates a deeper form of attention. In her own life, her interest in the birds around her is an example of deep attention. Previously, she saw birds flying; since she has immersed herself in them, she sees species and hears their specific sounds.
Raven
I recognize that. Since we were on the Marker Wadden and learned to tell a dozen duck and goose species apart there (Icy Duck and Casarca brought the bird watchers to orgasmic ecstasy), I’ve seen more and more specifics in my daily life as well.
I saw an Egyptian goose with youngsters yesterday. I thought Egyptian geese didn’t nest in the Netherlands, but according to Natuurmonumenten, I was utterly wrong.
Collared Parakeet
On our roof was a large crow-like bird. A raven, maybe, I thought. My son says it’s probably just a crow. But this one has such a big beak. That’s right, he says, but most of the birds we see that we think are crows are actually jackdaws (kauwen). I looked it up, and he was right; my image of crows is jackdaws, and the bird we saw could be a crow. But it was big and had a crooked beak. I stick with a raven anyway.
We have been hearing a strange sound in the trees lately. A guest of ours recognizes it as the Collared Parakeet (Halsbandparkiet). I looked it up, and it is correct. In the trees beyond, I suddenly heard many more Collared Parakeets. One day, one pops into our window in a full diving flight. We solemnly place the exotic green-yellow “parrot” in the green bin.
I read this book about David Hockney, A Chronology, a thickly illustrated book by Taschen. It is currently on sale in many bookstores.
Hockney could paint wonderfully at a young age. I sometimes mess around myself, but when I see his early paintings, I quickly throw my crap in a corner.
What I think is so great about Hockney is that he kept experimenting. He played with a photocopier and with photography, taught himself to paint with watercolors later in life, and got to work early on with a computer, iPhone, and later iPad. He made films and great set pieces and drew with pencil and charcoal.
Despite pioneering work with his photo collages, photography ultimately did not bring him the satisfaction he sought.
“The trouble with photography: it’s not real enough, not true to lived experience.”
In his experiments with photography, he bends the reality of the photograph into the reality of what has been observed.
Painting is his thing. According to Hockney, three things are essential to this: the eye, the heart, and the hand. He is a master in all three.
Ik lees Austin Kleon’s Keep Going. Het is een kunstwerkje op zich. Afgezien van de inhoud prachtig geïllustreerd met Kleon’s black-out poetry en andere illustraties.
Inhoudelijk is het een verzameling van “best practices” voor de creatieve geest, geeft Kleon zelf ook aan. Ik lees “you are allowed to change the world”, maar er staat “you are allowed to change your mind”. Ik vind mijn slogan eigenlijk sterker. Moeten we niet allemaal tot doel hebben iets te veranderen? Een status quo bestaat niet. Dan kan je het maar beter veranderen naar een staat die je zelf het beste lijkt. Anders krijg je alleen maar wat een ander bedacht heeft.
Ik denk bij veranderen ook aan “Consistency is overrated”, een zelfbedachte slogan die Scott H. Young al eens blijkt te hebben beschreven. Consistency kan een fuik worden, een net waarin je gevangen zit. Je wordt angstig om maar consistent te blijven, je kan niet afwijken, je moet je consistentie bewaren om aan de verwachtingen te kunnen voldoen. Het wordt een dwangbuis dat je er van weerhoudt te vernieuwen.
Ik schreef al eerder dat ik The Anthropocene Reviewed van John Green aan het lezen was.The Anthropocene Reviewed is een verzameling essays waarin John Greene een aantal zeer uiteenlopende aspecten van het mens-zijn onder de loep neemt. Ik hoorde een aantal van de essays al eerder via The Anthropocene Reviewed podcast.
De onderwerpen die John Green aansnijdt variëren van de grotschilderingen van Lascaux, via de Indycar races in Indiana, het QWERTY toetsenbord tot en met de beroemde foto van August Sander met de titel “Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance”, waarop drie mannen staan afgebeeld die geen boeren blijken te zijn. (Trouwens, de foto, zo lees ik op Wikipedia, dat de foto eigenlijk “Jungbauern, 1914” heet, en dat “Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance” de titel is van het op de foto geïnspireerde boek van Richard Powers.)
Green mengt in de essays feiten en persoonlijke verhalen op een boeiende, grappige en ontroerende wijze. Geweldig boek. Smaakt naar veel meer.
I am reading The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. I bought the “signed edition.” Good book, so far. But that autograph, John Green could have practiced on that a little longer.
I bought this second-hand book (cheaply). Admittedly, I was primarily interested in Fay Godwin’s photographs in the book. Her photographs of the Scilly Islands landscape are monumental. However, I find the texts from John Fowles difficult to follow.
The island atmosphere of Fowles’s text reminds me of Tim Robinson‘s books, especially those about the Aran Islands. Tim Robinson’s work provides a lot of detail on the landscape; in this book, Godwin’s photos provide a similar visual detail to Fowles’s meandering texts.
Fowles’s texts follow a historical and mythological sort of baseline. He discusses the characteristics of island communities: solitude and emptiness, independence of any legal power, a unifying feeling that sets people from the islands apart from mainlanders. Islands, withdrawn from common law and ethics, provide a unique magic. Fowles weaves a reasonably diverting story touching many topics. He mixes Homeros’ Odyssey (was it really written by a man, or must this have been a woman) with Joyce’s Ulysses, Shakespeare’s work, historical deviations, Robinson Crusoe, and other Greek mythology.
Being on the private email list of Derek Sivers has some advantages (anyone can be on the list, it is not something elitist, just go here: https://sive.rs/list). One advantage is getting early access to Derek’s new work. How To Live is Derek’s new book, he pointed me to through the email list. I bought it and read it.
As the title suggests, the book is great guidance for life. It is packed with great advice and categorized into 27 topics. The advice is sometimes contradictory, and Derek does not hide that: he gave the book the subtitle “27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion.” And I don’t care either; life is contradictory.
Much of the advice Derek has thought up or gathered in this book may have its origins in Buddhism and Stoicism, and I think it also builds on folks like Nassim Taleb (Antifragile), Kevin Kelly and Seth Godin.
The book is way too dense to summarize in any way. Here are some parts by topic that I found useful for myself.
Be independent.
Instead, do what you’d do if you were the only person on Earth.
Commit.
You and your best friends don’t decide anew daily whether you’re friends or not. You are friends, without question. You’re committed to each other, even if you’ve never said so. That’s what’s wonderful about it. Commit to your habits to make them rituals.
Fill your senses.
Never have the same thought twice.
Do nothing.
Expressing your anger doesn’t relieve it. It makes you angrier. Actions often have the opposite of the intended result. People who try too hard to be liked are annoying.
The stock market takes money from active traders and gives it to the patient.
Think super-long-term.
Imagine your future self judging your current life choices. When deciding, ask yourself how you’ll feel about it when you’re old.
We overestimate what we can do in one year. We underestimate what we can do in ten years. If you take up a new hobby at forty, or whatever age you think is too late, you’ll be an expert by the age of sixty.
Your future self is depending on you. Your descendants depend on you. Our future generations are depending on us. Use the compounding amplifier of time.
Make memories.
Remember them all. Document everything, or you’ll eventually forget it. Nobody can erase your memories, but don’t lose them through neglect. Journal every day.
Turn your experiences into stories. A story is the remains of an experience.
Derek Sivers
Master something.
Pick one thing and spend the rest of your life getting deeper into it. Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status.
Concentrating all of your life’s force on one thing gives you incredible power. Sunlight won’t catch a stick on fire. But if you use a magnifying glass to focus the sunlight on one spot, it will. Mastery needs your full focused attention.
Define “success” for yourself. Describe the outcome you want. You can’t hit a target you can’t see.
You need to understand something very counter-intuitive about goals. Goals don’t improve your future. Goals only improve your present actions. A good goal makes you take action immediately.
Once you get momentum, never stop. It’s easy to continue, but it’s hard to start again if you stop. Never miss a day.
Take tiny breaks when working to go longer than most.
Pursue your mission at the expense of everything else.
You do it for the journey, not the destination.
Let randomness rule.
Let the random generator decide what you do, where you go, and who you meet. Let the random generator make your artistic decisions when doing creative work, shaking up your usual style.
Random stuff happens. All you can control is your response. Every day, you’ll practice reacting to chaos: with dignity, poise, and grace.
Pursue pain.
Comfort is a silent killer. Comfort is quicksand. The softer the chair, the harder it is to get out of it. The right thing to do is never comfortable. How you face pain determines who you are. Be a famous pioneer.
This is the power of the pioneer: to enable the impossible, to open a new world of possibility, to show others that they can do it too, and to take it even further.
Chase the future.
Work as a futurist and technology journalist. Stay on the cutting edge of things so new they barely exist.
Old friends and family see you as you used to be and unintentionally discourage your growth.
The longer something lasts, the longer it will probably last.
The world of news is noisy because they have to hype it.
Learn.
Get out of your room and try a new skill in the real world. Go to the physical place where it’s happening, and put your ass on the line with something to lose. A vivid, visceral feeling of danger will teach you better than words.
Follow the great book.
Rules must be absolutely unbreakable. If you try to decide, each time, whether it’s OK to break the rule or not, then you’ve missed the whole point of rules.
Discipline turns intentions into action. Discipline means no procrastination. Discipline means now.
Choose the pain of discipline, not the pain of regret. Self-control is always rewarding.
Laugh at life.
They win by being playful, creative, adaptive, irreverent, and unbound by norms.
Comedy is tragedy plus time. Time belittles anything by showing it’s not as bad as it seemed. Humor does that instantly.
Prepare for the worst.
Vividly imagine the worst scenarios until they feel real (Seneca, of course). Accepting them is the ultimate happiness and security. Realize that the worst is not that bad.
Live for others.
The best marketing is considerate, and the best sales approach is listening. Serve your clients’ needs, not your own. When done right, business is generous and focused on others. It draws you out of yourself and puts you in service of humanity.
The most extreme version of living for others is becoming famous. Do everything in public, for the public. Share everything you do, even though it’s extra work.
Get rich.
Money is nothing more than a neutral exchange of value. Making money is proof you’re adding value to people’s lives.
Create your own business. Come up with a brand name that can be attached to any business. (Perhaps it’s your name.) Use it for the rest of your life on everything of quality. A recognized brand can charge a premium price, earning more than unrecognized names.
Use other people’s ideas. Ideas are worth almost nothing. Execution is everything.
Be separate—in a category of your own.
Nothing destroys money faster than seeking status. Don’t show off.
I met this young salesman. He had a good year. From the bonus, he bought his wife a Landrover for shopping. The car cost him more than 2000 euros per month. Quickly, he realized his mistake and sold the car, 10,000 down.
You only need to get rich once. When you win a game, you stop playing. Don’t be the dragon in the mountain, just sitting on your gold. Don’t lose momentum in life. Once you’ve done it, take it with you and do something else.
Reinvent yourself regularly.
Your past is not your future. Whatever happened before has nothing at all to do with what happens next. There is no consistency. Nothing is congruent. Never believe a story.
At every little decision, ten times a day, choose the thing you haven’t tried. Act out of character. It’s liberating. Get your security not from being an anchor but from being able to ride the waves of change.
Break down the walls that separate you from others and prevent real connections. Take off your sunglasses. Don’t text when you should talk.
The hardest part of connecting with someone is being honest.
Notice how you feel around people. Notice who brings out the best in you. Notice who makes you feel more connected to yourself—more open and honest.
Create.
Calling yourself creative doesn’t make it true. All that matters is what you’ve launched. Make finishing your top priority. Suspend all judgment when creating the first draft. Just get to the end.
Most of what you make will be fertilizer for the few that turn out great. But you won’t know which is which until afterward. Keep creating as much as you can.
Stay in situations where you’re forced to show your work to others.
Keep a counterweight job. Something effortless that covers your bills. Something you can do a few hours per day but otherwise not think about. It gives discipline and regularity to your life. It gives deadlines and freedom to your art.
Let the deadline of death drive you. Create until your last breath.
Don’t die.
Avoiding failure leads to success. The winner is usually the one who makes the least mistakes. This is true in investing, extreme skiing, business, flying, and many other fields. Win by not losing.
Most of eating healthy means just avoiding lousy food. Most of being right is just not being wrong. To have good people in your life, just cut out the bad ones.
Make a million mistakes.
People who avoid mistakes are fragile, like the robot that only walks. Your million mistakes will make you someone that can’t be knocked down.
Make change.
Don’t accept anything as-is. Everything you encounter must change. Preservation is your enemy. Only dead fish go with the flow. Begin by righting what’s wrong. Look for what’s ugly: ugly systems, ugly rules, ugly traditions. Look for what bothers you.
If you can fix it now, do it. Otherwise, aim lower until you find something you can do now. Make it how it should be. Don’t worship your heroes. Surpass them.
Balance everything.
All bad things in life come from extremes. Too much of this. Too little of that.
When you’re balanced, you’re unlikely to get stressed. You’ve got a stronger foundation and a resilient structure. You can handle surprises and make time for what’s needed.
Schedule everything to ensure a balance of your time and effort. Scheduling prevents procrastination, distraction, and obsession. Even creative work needs scheduling. The greatest writers and artists didn’t wait for inspiration. They kept a strict daily schedule for creating their art.
As said, these are the things I found important. The book is full of things for you. You can get the book through Derek’s site: https://sive.rs/.
