I Will Be Wolf – Bertien van Manen

I will be wolf - Bertien van Manen

I Will Be Wolf is the first book by Bertien van Manen. It is from 1975. The book exudes a wonderful freshness. Van Manen has seen Robert Frank, and I think also Eggleston. The images in I Will Be Wolf are a sort of European version of Frank’s The Americans. Less critical than The Americans, more friendly. Van Manen seems as shy as Eggleston. Photographs of people’s backs, often taken from a distance with views obstructed by poles and window columns. For me, it all works.

I will be wolf - Bertien van Manen

A History of Pictures, by Hockney and Gayford

a history of pictures

In the format of a semi-dialog, David Hockney and Martin Gayford in A History of Pictures discuss the history and various aspects of  picture-making.

Beautifully illustrated.

The most interesting thing is that Hockney seems not to have a very high regard for photography.

“… I question photography. A lot of people don’t, they accept the world looks like a photograph.

“But colour photography couldn’t get tones like those [Vermeer] as is has to rely on the dyes or printing ink. Those aren’t like paint, and never will be.”

“… I don’t know whether photography is an art. Some photographers considered themselves artists, and some didn’t
… Good photography does require intelligence and imagination but aa lot of it is very mechanical.”

Vermeer, Caravaggio, Degas, Delacrois, a few of the painters mentioned in the book that used photographic techniques for their paintings.

“Photography came out of painting and as far as I can see that’s where it is returning.”

Hellen van Meene in Huis Marseille

Panoramas of death. Strange coffins with almost dead bodies. Grandchildren stand mourning alienated next to the coffin. A dog too. In the film, a cat in the polder that doesn’t seem to want to be photographed and disappears from view. The panorama that does not want to be a panorama because it is upright. A dress blows in front of the coffin, which has been placed on a touching pair of yellow bricks so that it stays upright.

farewall 2 - helen van meene

Surely the best is the image of nothing, or of what was.

In the other half of Huis Marseille show Koos Breukels photographs of his son. Can’t stop thinking: what a brat.

Figuring

Maria Popova announced her book, Figuring. First time in my life I have pre-ordered a book. It is arriving in February 2019. Maria  Popova is the creator of one of the world’s best blogs: Brain Pickings.

Figuring

 

 

Jewelry blog

While searching for something completely different (The Cathedral Effect), I stumbled upon this blog by the Lauren B company. I has an incredible wealth of information in that blog about jewelry. It is very thoroughly done and nicely written. I have no interest whatsoever in jewelry, but this blog is really good.

How I stumbled upon this blog: there is a concept in jewelry for engagement rings called Cathedral Style Engagement Ring Setting. See this post. Geeky details, lovely

Here I am – Jonathan Safran Foer

Reading: Here I Am. 

The Mother of Witty Dialogs.

A TV Show writer predicts his crumbling family life in the stories he invents for his show (not the other way around: writes about his family life in the TV Show).

The Phoenix Project – a must-read

On the back of The Phoenix Project it says “a must read for business and IT executives”. It is.The Phoenix Project

You need data backing up issues. Not hearsay.

Your job as a VP of IT Operations:
– Ensure a fast, predictable, uninterrupted flow of planned work that delivers value to the business.
– Minimize the implact and disruption of unplanned work in order to provide stable, predictable and secure IT.

The Three Ways:

  1. Ensure a fast flow from Dev to Ops.
  2. Shorten and amplify feedback loops.
  3. Foster a culture of experimentation and learning from failure.

There is a Brent in every organization. The wizard that pieces everything together and seems to be a required resource on every project.
His knowledge must be documented, his process automated.
If he is not a Sharer but a Hoarder, keeping all information to himself, he must be fired eventually.

Four categories of work:

  • Business projects
  • Infrastructure/IT projects
  • Changes
  • Unplanned work

The theory of Constraints:

  • Identify the constraint
  • Exploit the constraint: make sure it can not waste time
  • Subordinate the constraint

Work in progress (WIP) is the BIG Killer for productivity. Get thing done.

Technical debt: when not paid down, interest grows over time. You keep paying (more and more) interest in the form of unplanned work.

A work center: man, machine, method, measures.

Start with thinking totally extreme: think improving to the extreme (deploy from once every 3 month to 10 times per day).

IT is at the core of every modern organization. Ignoring that will bring the organization in Big Trouble.

Hoarders vs Sharers. People holding information about tasks they only know how to do. Get rid of that/them.

Nice summary in the back.

Sapiens – Harari

Harari beschrijft in Sapiens hoe de mens (“Sapiens”) de laatste duizenden jaren tot het meest dominante wezen op aarde is uitgegroeid. De zoogdier Sapiens ontwikkelde cognitieve vaardigheden en daarmee communicatieve en technologische hulpmiddelen waarmee het alle andere dieren kon overheersen.

De menselijke samenleving groeit uit van een lokale tot de mondiale die we nu kennen.
Een belangrijk kenmerk van de mens is dat ze gedreven wordt door religie: de intersectie van menselijke waarden en normen en het geloof in een bovenmenselijke orde. Ook kapitalisme, humanisme en communisme zijn in die zin religies (we zien dit ook in Hariri’s latere boek Homo Deus).

Ook een veelal neutraal te boek staande instelling als de wetenschap wordt gerechtvaardigd en gedreven door een religie of ideologie, betoogt Hariri. De prioriteiten die wetenschappelijke instellingen sturen zijn religieus bepaald. In onze maatschappij is dat het liberaal humanisme, en kapitalisme.

Hariri beschrijft het kapitalisme en stelt de vraag of de basis van het kapitalisme, een altijd voortdurende groei, vol te houden is. Ook het doel van het kapitalisme: het toenemend welzijn, wordt door Hariri bevraagd: Worden we gelukkiger van meer spullen? Hariri betwijfelt dit.

De wetenschap raast door en de mens modificeert zichzelf. Ultimo lijken alle zaken die mensen ongelukkig maken te kunnen worden weggenomen. Als dat is bereikt, wat is dan het doel van de mens.

Wellicht is het Boeddhisme de oplossing: geluk is niet te vinden in externe successen, maar ook niet in het najagen van prettige gevoelens. Deze kunnen observeren en voorbij laten gaan.

M.a.w. wat willen we willen. Een goddelijke vraag, die Hariri oproept in het laatste hoofdstuk “Het dier dat god werd”.

Paul Theroux – Millroy the Magician

Why can’t I get through Millroy the Magician by Paul Theroux (while I love his travel books)? Is this novel representative of Theroux’s other novels?

I devour Theroux’s travel books: The Pillars of Hercules, The Tao of Travel, The Floating Kingdom, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, and Riding the Iron Rooster. But this novel was impossible to get through, and I wondered why.

Still, I really tried, but it just didn’t work. Is it a boring book? Not even, I guess, but the story didn’t captivate me for a moment. Events follow one another at quite a pace. Sometimes, even with the absurdist, which I find so addictive in Murakami. But the story didn’t grab me; there’s no cliffhanger, it’s humor without pain, it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere (whereas in Murakami, I find that so appealing), the reading drags on, I look out the window, I want to finish what I’ve started but it’s resisting me.

I’ve given up. I’ll just regard it as a matter of taste.

Instead, read Haruki Murakami – Hear The Wind Sing. Or Theroux’s travel books.

18 augustus 2018

Van Dog House Hotel, Abingdon bij Oxford naar Llangadoc. Bed & Breakfast bij boer midden tussen de heuvels van Wales. Poepaardige mensen.

Boer Terry heeft alleen nog vleeskoeien. Schapen werd hem te veel werk. Hij heeft twee kunstheupen. Heel mooi uitzicht over de heuvels.

In een lokaal kerkje mooi licht.