I hope NASA produce another photo of GB after the snow has melted. It'd look a little like those fragments of decomposing sponge washed up on the beach from time to time.
Last such fragment I found was on Tynemouth Long Sands: an all-but-complete seat cushion kept afloat in the wellspring by Crusoe's Cafe by the water bubbling underneath it. I fished it out, feeling the rubber-watery weight of it around my hand before dropping it like whale blubber onto the shore.
As I left, I was aware of a kid behind me, fascinated, picking it up and dropping it back into the spa.
The sea is ripe for symbols, and the sealine the place they venture into consciousness. I still remember, passing the Rendezvous Cafe two or three years ago, seeing a complete copy of the Quran furled/ unfurled in the waves, whether coming in or washing away I couldn't tell.
Showing posts with label Shelf Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shelf Life. Show all posts
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Thursday, 15 October 2009
771 - Middlemarch
After thirty eight years dodging the Nineteenth Century (although admittedly the first ten years or so of that I was more into Ant and Bee and Doctor Who), I've finally started Middlemarch.
What swung it was an acute essay by a psychoanalyst on George Eliot's observations of the interior life. But from the first page of the Preface to Middlemarch, I'm hooked.
She's so sharp about the state of women in relation to social convention, to men. Remember, this as a George: 'Some have felt that these [women's] blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favourite love-stories in prose and verse.' How many layers of irony! How relevant today!
But scarily, relevant not just about women. Something about her use of the word 'indefiniteness'. Because in reality George Eliot believes that indefiniteness is a virtue. It is definiteness that crushes Dorothea Brooke over the course of the novel: were she free to pursue her ideals and desires untrammelled, she might be another Saint Therese - instead society crushes her under a million labelled inconsequentialities and pretends that it is she who is the problem.
Dorothea's indefiniteness sounds to me like the state of the label-rejecting Hunter Gatherer. Perhaps she has been forced into this position, because no useful societal role has been offered to her save that of decoration. But it is a potent state to be in. Nowadays, however, if I'm right, we are all placed in this state - the choices open to us, on the one hand, and our impotence on a political level, on the other, press us to it. But if we are all indefinite, we are also, like Dorothea, crushable. So Middlemarch is a prophetic cry, of universal relevance.
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
778 - Gregory Bateson and the Long Professional Game
From the 1999 foreword, by his daughter, Mary Catherine, to Gregory Bateson's 'Steps To An Ecology Of Mind' (Chicago University Press):
It was not clear, even to Gregory, that his disparate, elegantly crafted and argued essays, the "steps" of this title, were about a single subject. But by the time he began to assemble the articles for this book, he was able to characterize that subject, the destination of forty years of exploration, as "an ecology of mind". The remaining decade of his career was spent describing and refining his understanding of that destination and trying to pass it on....
Until the publication of Steps, Gregory must have given the impression, even to his strongest admirers, of taking up and then abandoning a series of different disciplines; sometimes, indeed, he must have felt he had failed in discipline after discipline. Lacking a clear professional identity, he lacked a comfortable professional base and a secure income. He had also become an outsider in other ways. Having been deeply committed to the necessity of defeating Germany and its allies at the beginning of World War II, he had become convinced of the dangers of good intentions. The efforts to oppose the pathologies of Nazism and fascism, which grew out of the distortions of Versailles, had in turn created new pathologies that were played out in the McCarty era and the Cold War, and continue into the twenty-first century. In his postwar work on psychiatry and interpersonal communication, too, he began to see that efforts to heal could themselves be pathogenic. His was , for many years, a lonely and discouraging journey, characterized by a distinctive way of thinking rather than a specific concrete subject matter. It is no accident that a group of the father-daughter conversations he called "metalogues"... stand at the beginning of this volume: Daughter is uncorrupted by academic labeling and becomes Father's excuse to approach profound issues outside of their boundaries...
(pp. viii-ix)
Gregory Bateson has been adopted by Neuro Linguistic Programmers as a key influence, because he tutored the co-founders of this controversial movement, but one can see from the content of his essays that his own interests extended far beyond the modelling of human minds which inspired NLP, into anthropology, politics, ecology, communications theory and cybernetics. What I get from the above synopsis of his working life is how it bore fruit only after forty years of groundwork, how it eschewed labels, and how it rings true even now. It's hopeful and inspiring.
Perhaps in twenty, thirty, forty years time, when Storying is recognised as a phenomenon - artform, expression of personal identity, whatever - there'll be room for a footnote about early slogging in Whitley Bay.
Anyway, you've got to admit that Bateson's battling against the odds, as told above, makes a good story...
It was not clear, even to Gregory, that his disparate, elegantly crafted and argued essays, the "steps" of this title, were about a single subject. But by the time he began to assemble the articles for this book, he was able to characterize that subject, the destination of forty years of exploration, as "an ecology of mind". The remaining decade of his career was spent describing and refining his understanding of that destination and trying to pass it on....
Until the publication of Steps, Gregory must have given the impression, even to his strongest admirers, of taking up and then abandoning a series of different disciplines; sometimes, indeed, he must have felt he had failed in discipline after discipline. Lacking a clear professional identity, he lacked a comfortable professional base and a secure income. He had also become an outsider in other ways. Having been deeply committed to the necessity of defeating Germany and its allies at the beginning of World War II, he had become convinced of the dangers of good intentions. The efforts to oppose the pathologies of Nazism and fascism, which grew out of the distortions of Versailles, had in turn created new pathologies that were played out in the McCarty era and the Cold War, and continue into the twenty-first century. In his postwar work on psychiatry and interpersonal communication, too, he began to see that efforts to heal could themselves be pathogenic. His was , for many years, a lonely and discouraging journey, characterized by a distinctive way of thinking rather than a specific concrete subject matter. It is no accident that a group of the father-daughter conversations he called "metalogues"... stand at the beginning of this volume: Daughter is uncorrupted by academic labeling and becomes Father's excuse to approach profound issues outside of their boundaries...
(pp. viii-ix)
Gregory Bateson has been adopted by Neuro Linguistic Programmers as a key influence, because he tutored the co-founders of this controversial movement, but one can see from the content of his essays that his own interests extended far beyond the modelling of human minds which inspired NLP, into anthropology, politics, ecology, communications theory and cybernetics. What I get from the above synopsis of his working life is how it bore fruit only after forty years of groundwork, how it eschewed labels, and how it rings true even now. It's hopeful and inspiring.
Perhaps in twenty, thirty, forty years time, when Storying is recognised as a phenomenon - artform, expression of personal identity, whatever - there'll be room for a footnote about early slogging in Whitley Bay.
Anyway, you've got to admit that Bateson's battling against the odds, as told above, makes a good story...
Wednesday, 16 September 2009
783 - Derren Brown; Multiplicity; Storying
I've just found a quote in Derren Brown's book which puts a slant on Rita Carter's ideas about identity formation, and helps me to begin to understand how controlled character formation might contribute to the art of Storying.
Here's the (longish) quote:
It takes little reflection to see that our self images are arbitrary, and far more likely to be born out of our insecurities than our strengths. And what exactly is a self-image? Far from being abstract, let's take it for what it is: the image you make in your head of yourself when you picture who you are. You might have an over-riding self-image you refer to most of the time, and plenty of other ways of seeing yourself that are specific to certain situations: at home, meeting people, at work and so on.... You've probably left [them] to create themselves, and a lot of unhelpful bits of information have got stuck in there. Should you bother to change what's in those pictures?
The fact is that spending a few minutes playing with the content and look of those pictures can lead to worthwhile and even dramatic changes in your life. The way you see yourself defines the limitations you place on your behaviour. It's rather straightforward. People who are able to give up smoking overnight, for example, are very likely to be the ones who decide to see themselves as a non-smoker, and then behave in that new and exciting way, not worrying if they occasionally slip up; rather than the people who merely 'try not to smoke' and set up a stressful challenge that presupposes eventual failure.
Decide on a self-image you would like. Picture a version of yourself that is realistic but exciting. It's pointless imagining a super-hero version of yourself which is completely unattainable, but be sure to make it something that really appeals. Now, in the same way that you can look at a person and tell them they ooze confidence, make sure that this image of you radiates the qualities you would like to have more of. Design this self-image, and make it detailed. See this new 'you' interacting in new ways that delight you.... Wallow in it....
(pp.211-13)
Some thoughts:
1. This passage (part of a section on the uses of hypnosis and suggestibility) covers similar ground to Rita Carter, who approaches the same ideas from a neurological perspective. For example, Brown writes about an 'over-riding image... and plenty of others'; Carter speaks of major and minor personalities.
2. I'd first want to remove value judgements about helpful and unhelpful information, but think Brown's imaginative approach is accurate and useful. So is Carter's, but her focus is more systematic, using personality tests. The two approaches complement each other, and can be used to inform one another.
3. Brown makes links between image and action explicit: 'The way you see yourself defines the limitations you place on your behaviour'; 'See this new 'you' interacting in new ways that delight you...'. This is helpful in my own attempts to explore how, in the art of Storying, character and plot interact fluidly.
4. A reminder: Storying, as I define it, is an artform whereby one casts oneself, and others if they consent, in a realtime, real-life story of variable duration, just because one can. Whereas other forms of art require crossing a threshhold related to equipment, previous experience, validation by others, and a shared terminology, Storying, because it takes place entirely in the imagination, singulalry or shared, is freed from all these. This means it is political. It is perhaps particularly a challenge to people who require us to define our identities for the sake of the State, or simply our relations with others. In a nutshell, it is about being proactively and positively a Billy Liar.
5. Certain aspects of Brown's and Carter's work presume that any change is made for all time. In the case of Storying, this would certainly be true were the story to be of a lifetime's duration. But if the story is shorter - a five-minute event, even - image changes could still be made in the manner described by Brown. This might give more scope for freedom - there'd be less need to create a 'completely attainable' self image (though again, here we are in the realm of value judgements). Why not, when Storying, create a Superhero self-image? What makes a Super super is his or her embodiment of an ideal - courage, goodness, kindness, steel. Since Plato, at the very least, we've recognised the necessity of ideals. So I'd quibble about Brown's view that they are unattainable (whilst acknowledging that they are!).
This book's value is its practicality. A snotty and patronising review by Hilary Mantel (who is accurate, but misses the point) notwithstanding, it is certainly feeding my ideas. As does Hilary Mantel herself, in her brilliant novel Beyond Black, but that's another post, another day....
Here's the (longish) quote:
It takes little reflection to see that our self images are arbitrary, and far more likely to be born out of our insecurities than our strengths. And what exactly is a self-image? Far from being abstract, let's take it for what it is: the image you make in your head of yourself when you picture who you are. You might have an over-riding self-image you refer to most of the time, and plenty of other ways of seeing yourself that are specific to certain situations: at home, meeting people, at work and so on.... You've probably left [them] to create themselves, and a lot of unhelpful bits of information have got stuck in there. Should you bother to change what's in those pictures?
The fact is that spending a few minutes playing with the content and look of those pictures can lead to worthwhile and even dramatic changes in your life. The way you see yourself defines the limitations you place on your behaviour. It's rather straightforward. People who are able to give up smoking overnight, for example, are very likely to be the ones who decide to see themselves as a non-smoker, and then behave in that new and exciting way, not worrying if they occasionally slip up; rather than the people who merely 'try not to smoke' and set up a stressful challenge that presupposes eventual failure.
Decide on a self-image you would like. Picture a version of yourself that is realistic but exciting. It's pointless imagining a super-hero version of yourself which is completely unattainable, but be sure to make it something that really appeals. Now, in the same way that you can look at a person and tell them they ooze confidence, make sure that this image of you radiates the qualities you would like to have more of. Design this self-image, and make it detailed. See this new 'you' interacting in new ways that delight you.... Wallow in it....
(pp.211-13)
Some thoughts:
1. This passage (part of a section on the uses of hypnosis and suggestibility) covers similar ground to Rita Carter, who approaches the same ideas from a neurological perspective. For example, Brown writes about an 'over-riding image... and plenty of others'; Carter speaks of major and minor personalities.
2. I'd first want to remove value judgements about helpful and unhelpful information, but think Brown's imaginative approach is accurate and useful. So is Carter's, but her focus is more systematic, using personality tests. The two approaches complement each other, and can be used to inform one another.
3. Brown makes links between image and action explicit: 'The way you see yourself defines the limitations you place on your behaviour'; 'See this new 'you' interacting in new ways that delight you...'. This is helpful in my own attempts to explore how, in the art of Storying, character and plot interact fluidly.
4. A reminder: Storying, as I define it, is an artform whereby one casts oneself, and others if they consent, in a realtime, real-life story of variable duration, just because one can. Whereas other forms of art require crossing a threshhold related to equipment, previous experience, validation by others, and a shared terminology, Storying, because it takes place entirely in the imagination, singulalry or shared, is freed from all these. This means it is political. It is perhaps particularly a challenge to people who require us to define our identities for the sake of the State, or simply our relations with others. In a nutshell, it is about being proactively and positively a Billy Liar.
5. Certain aspects of Brown's and Carter's work presume that any change is made for all time. In the case of Storying, this would certainly be true were the story to be of a lifetime's duration. But if the story is shorter - a five-minute event, even - image changes could still be made in the manner described by Brown. This might give more scope for freedom - there'd be less need to create a 'completely attainable' self image (though again, here we are in the realm of value judgements). Why not, when Storying, create a Superhero self-image? What makes a Super super is his or her embodiment of an ideal - courage, goodness, kindness, steel. Since Plato, at the very least, we've recognised the necessity of ideals. So I'd quibble about Brown's view that they are unattainable (whilst acknowledging that they are!).
This book's value is its practicality. A snotty and patronising review by Hilary Mantel (who is accurate, but misses the point) notwithstanding, it is certainly feeding my ideas. As does Hilary Mantel herself, in her brilliant novel Beyond Black, but that's another post, another day....
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
798 - All Right
There's an experience I've had, and it has convinced me that everything is all right.
And if everything was not all right, somehow, after all, I'd still go down fighting for the values that my experience of all-rightness has taught me.
That is, that is-ness is at the heart of things. That all things unfold from it. That it exists before the words I conceive of in order to explain it, to myself, to others. And that love is as good a word for the existence of everything as any other.
That's it, really. From my reading, of religious experience, of philosophy and psychology, I reckon I'm in good, and I'm sure, by the time we pop our clogs, universal company.
So I've been reading Hilary Mantel's novel, Beyond Black, which gives as fine a description of cold-reading as one could hope for (not finished the novel, so there may be twists and turns along the way, but I think I know where it is heading). I've Derren Brown in my bookshelf, and analyses of brainwashing and comparative religion, Michael Shermer, Dan Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Karen Armstrong's latest - a history of not knowing God.
A couple of rows-worth of evangelical Christian books have not been chucked, though the more embarrassing among them I've relegated to the bedroom, along with my collection of poetry.
Enough books about quantum physics, molecular biology and cultural studies line the dining room for me to be clear enough that most interpretations of most things are retrievable, if I browse with a little patience.
And as a librarian, I'm a pretty skilled browser (which is itself the art of cold-reading books).
What I'm wondering is, even if spiritual or psychic experiences were illusions, delusions or frauds, given my conviction that everything is all right, there has to be a way of understanding them that credits them with value, however they come about. And if they have value, that must be enough to justify their existence.
Right?
And if everything was not all right, somehow, after all, I'd still go down fighting for the values that my experience of all-rightness has taught me.
That is, that is-ness is at the heart of things. That all things unfold from it. That it exists before the words I conceive of in order to explain it, to myself, to others. And that love is as good a word for the existence of everything as any other.
That's it, really. From my reading, of religious experience, of philosophy and psychology, I reckon I'm in good, and I'm sure, by the time we pop our clogs, universal company.
So I've been reading Hilary Mantel's novel, Beyond Black, which gives as fine a description of cold-reading as one could hope for (not finished the novel, so there may be twists and turns along the way, but I think I know where it is heading). I've Derren Brown in my bookshelf, and analyses of brainwashing and comparative religion, Michael Shermer, Dan Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Karen Armstrong's latest - a history of not knowing God.
A couple of rows-worth of evangelical Christian books have not been chucked, though the more embarrassing among them I've relegated to the bedroom, along with my collection of poetry.
Enough books about quantum physics, molecular biology and cultural studies line the dining room for me to be clear enough that most interpretations of most things are retrievable, if I browse with a little patience.
And as a librarian, I'm a pretty skilled browser (which is itself the art of cold-reading books).
What I'm wondering is, even if spiritual or psychic experiences were illusions, delusions or frauds, given my conviction that everything is all right, there has to be a way of understanding them that credits them with value, however they come about. And if they have value, that must be enough to justify their existence.
Right?
Monday, 1 June 2009
825 - Religious Technology
Just a thought: what if the religions we build were thought of as a technology? Like fire-creation, or wheels, or ladders. A social machine built when observations about subjective perceptions are applied to objective reality, perhaps, as chemistry applied, with an eye to economics, in the service of a defined need for a flame on demand, results in a match or lighter.
There's a fairly basic statement about religions in Beyond the Burning Times: a Pagan and Christian in Dialogue. Pages 154-5: "Religious traditions are different ways in which human beings have sought to come into greater relationship with the Sacred" (Gus diZerega).
But this begs the legitimate question: what is meant by the Sacred? Many people would say the Sacred does not exist - it's an imaginative overlay on the physical world. It gives us a sense of meaning, but when we say we sense it, what we are sensing is our imagination in the act of interpreting our relationship with the entirely physical world around us.
Better, surely, to interrogate ourselves as to whether the imaginative act is worth it. Perhaps it is misplaced. Perhaps, necessity being the mother of invention, and with our sense of the laws of nature removing the necessity for us to invent supernatural forces to explain the physical universe, our imagination can be directed towards more practical creations - more efficient acts of niche creation, be they home-, leisure- or work- related.
So Gus diZerega's quote is, by itself, problematic. Perhaps it's like saying that ladders and stairs are different ways in which we have sought to reach closer to the moon. In exceptional cases, maybe, we'd admit, by lunatics and artists, but otherwise, no. What they are - or what they have become -are technologies for achieving achievable ends. Cleaning windows, harvesting apples, stacking people up in tall buildings. Religions have reached for the Gods: better, nowadays, use them to instil solidarity, or motivate personal change, or if they are obsolete, use something else.
But here's the thing with technologies, we can only discover what is achievable if we are permitted to entertain the unachievable. In other words, technologies are not, in and of themselves, tethered to the practical. They are free-standing.
Like cogs applied to clockwork, bicycle gears, and automata, or like the ladder waving in the air, seeking purchase on whatever lies within reach. And maybe, although this time it cannot reach the moon, perhaps with new materials and a better understanding of gravitational forces, a moon ladder might be built. Arthur C. Clarke and many later scientists thought so. Technological spin-offs along the way start with the novel that Clarke wrote, which, for a fact, inspired me as a teenager to read, to love science, and to admire engineers.
In the same way, religion could be harvested for its spin-offs - for example, social cohesion, a sense of purpose, legal and political insights, healing (perhaps), the creation of beautiful structures and great paintings - whilst other visions, magic (perhaps), prosperity gospels, theocracies, might be put to one side until societies and science and personal skills caught up.
If it is a technology, it would be stupid to deny religion the opportunity to stand on its own simply because our present capabilities do not support all the visions the technology opens up. It would be stupid, too, not to allow religious technologists the opportunity to develop their ideas. It might well be that knowledge gained might over time be lost and found again, or cached in monasteries, or nations, or particular traditions. And foolish too not to admit that the technology could be used for the equivalent of nuclear weaponry.
Does this chase away superstition? Yes, in that technology becomes obsolete (though who'd choose between a Stradivari and a synthesiser?). Does it stamp out spirituality? No - not if the spirit is equivalent to the flame produced by the match, the apple fetched by the ladder, or the journey completed by bike.
Just as we are warmed by fire, fed by fruits, and lifted by (transported by?) transport to foreign lands, we can be sure that whatever it is that the technology of religion serves, whatever Spirit turns out to be (an everything, a nothing), it benefits us somehow, deeply, because we have built, and build still, the means for reaching and for engaging with it.
There's a fairly basic statement about religions in Beyond the Burning Times: a Pagan and Christian in Dialogue. Pages 154-5: "Religious traditions are different ways in which human beings have sought to come into greater relationship with the Sacred" (Gus diZerega).
But this begs the legitimate question: what is meant by the Sacred? Many people would say the Sacred does not exist - it's an imaginative overlay on the physical world. It gives us a sense of meaning, but when we say we sense it, what we are sensing is our imagination in the act of interpreting our relationship with the entirely physical world around us.
Better, surely, to interrogate ourselves as to whether the imaginative act is worth it. Perhaps it is misplaced. Perhaps, necessity being the mother of invention, and with our sense of the laws of nature removing the necessity for us to invent supernatural forces to explain the physical universe, our imagination can be directed towards more practical creations - more efficient acts of niche creation, be they home-, leisure- or work- related.
So Gus diZerega's quote is, by itself, problematic. Perhaps it's like saying that ladders and stairs are different ways in which we have sought to reach closer to the moon. In exceptional cases, maybe, we'd admit, by lunatics and artists, but otherwise, no. What they are - or what they have become -are technologies for achieving achievable ends. Cleaning windows, harvesting apples, stacking people up in tall buildings. Religions have reached for the Gods: better, nowadays, use them to instil solidarity, or motivate personal change, or if they are obsolete, use something else.
But here's the thing with technologies, we can only discover what is achievable if we are permitted to entertain the unachievable. In other words, technologies are not, in and of themselves, tethered to the practical. They are free-standing.
Like cogs applied to clockwork, bicycle gears, and automata, or like the ladder waving in the air, seeking purchase on whatever lies within reach. And maybe, although this time it cannot reach the moon, perhaps with new materials and a better understanding of gravitational forces, a moon ladder might be built. Arthur C. Clarke and many later scientists thought so. Technological spin-offs along the way start with the novel that Clarke wrote, which, for a fact, inspired me as a teenager to read, to love science, and to admire engineers.
In the same way, religion could be harvested for its spin-offs - for example, social cohesion, a sense of purpose, legal and political insights, healing (perhaps), the creation of beautiful structures and great paintings - whilst other visions, magic (perhaps), prosperity gospels, theocracies, might be put to one side until societies and science and personal skills caught up.
If it is a technology, it would be stupid to deny religion the opportunity to stand on its own simply because our present capabilities do not support all the visions the technology opens up. It would be stupid, too, not to allow religious technologists the opportunity to develop their ideas. It might well be that knowledge gained might over time be lost and found again, or cached in monasteries, or nations, or particular traditions. And foolish too not to admit that the technology could be used for the equivalent of nuclear weaponry.
Does this chase away superstition? Yes, in that technology becomes obsolete (though who'd choose between a Stradivari and a synthesiser?). Does it stamp out spirituality? No - not if the spirit is equivalent to the flame produced by the match, the apple fetched by the ladder, or the journey completed by bike.
Just as we are warmed by fire, fed by fruits, and lifted by (transported by?) transport to foreign lands, we can be sure that whatever it is that the technology of religion serves, whatever Spirit turns out to be (an everything, a nothing), it benefits us somehow, deeply, because we have built, and build still, the means for reaching and for engaging with it.
Tuesday, 26 May 2009
828 - Today's Found Objects
So I'm out for five hours this morning, and my haul includes:
1. A tiny glade of grass next to the Metro between Jesmond and West Jesmond: surrounded by trees and undergrowth, and covered with beer cans, but definitely a glade.
2. A moment spent with two former colleagues over coffee in Starbucks. They were about to present a bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund: Seven Stories want to create something of an oral history of Children's Literature, contextualising the books within the life stories of their readers. Francis Spufford tried something similar in his fine memoir The Child That Books Built. But this sounds like it's on a different scale. Warm and brilliant. I hope the HLF buy it.
3. A female thrush, no more than two feet away, at waist height, still for a second or two. I said 'Hello matey' and she flew back into cover.
4. The brick underarch of a Metro Bridge, from above. Roadworks had uncovered it beneath a foot of tarmac and rubble. It rose, counter to the camber, unseen perhaps for fifty years or more. Something spiritual about the way it shaped the space beneath into a hump. Brickwork can feel soft, flank-like.
5. A yellow rose bursting out of a laurel bush.
6. A realisation: how each found object I speak of stands in place of the warmth I feel for the people I am passing. I wonder why I don't speak of them instead?
7. As I plan to copy a Google-book into Word, typing - a Herculean task my guilt at the dubious legitimacy of which is only mitigated by my knowledge that the Publishers are sat on a stash of thirty hardbacks, at extortionate price, and are unlikely to reprint in paperback until they've sold the rest - a memory of my primary school teacher, Mr Preston, who used to spend his afternoons copying William stories one by one, by hand, on to Banda sheets, for comprehension tests. Mr Preston merits a blog post (at least one), so I won't say any more about him here.
8. A modicum of mellowness.
9. Time a series of found moments.
10. Whitley Bay.
1. A tiny glade of grass next to the Metro between Jesmond and West Jesmond: surrounded by trees and undergrowth, and covered with beer cans, but definitely a glade.
2. A moment spent with two former colleagues over coffee in Starbucks. They were about to present a bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund: Seven Stories want to create something of an oral history of Children's Literature, contextualising the books within the life stories of their readers. Francis Spufford tried something similar in his fine memoir The Child That Books Built. But this sounds like it's on a different scale. Warm and brilliant. I hope the HLF buy it.
3. A female thrush, no more than two feet away, at waist height, still for a second or two. I said 'Hello matey' and she flew back into cover.
4. The brick underarch of a Metro Bridge, from above. Roadworks had uncovered it beneath a foot of tarmac and rubble. It rose, counter to the camber, unseen perhaps for fifty years or more. Something spiritual about the way it shaped the space beneath into a hump. Brickwork can feel soft, flank-like.
5. A yellow rose bursting out of a laurel bush.
6. A realisation: how each found object I speak of stands in place of the warmth I feel for the people I am passing. I wonder why I don't speak of them instead?
7. As I plan to copy a Google-book into Word, typing - a Herculean task my guilt at the dubious legitimacy of which is only mitigated by my knowledge that the Publishers are sat on a stash of thirty hardbacks, at extortionate price, and are unlikely to reprint in paperback until they've sold the rest - a memory of my primary school teacher, Mr Preston, who used to spend his afternoons copying William stories one by one, by hand, on to Banda sheets, for comprehension tests. Mr Preston merits a blog post (at least one), so I won't say any more about him here.
8. A modicum of mellowness.
9. Time a series of found moments.
10. Whitley Bay.
Thursday, 30 April 2009
842 - I Am Reading
"What are you doing today?"
"I'm reading."
Underwhelmed silence. I feel slightly uncomfortable.
"It's a really great book!" I say, over-compensating. "And I'm going to blog... And shop - there's sandwich fillings we're short of."
How do I get across just what I mean by reading? Because it's not only that there is a subtext, there's an entire sub-culture signified by the word. Machiavelli, apparently, used to set a table for two, and dress up in suitable costume, before opening a book: that way he showed his respect to the author - they were eating together.
So here's a list of what I do when I read, sat in the caff with a cup of tea and a pencil in hand:
1. I am reading;
2. I am brainstorming;
3. I am creatively interacting, with the text and people around me;
4. I am performing a piece of art called 'The Reader";
5. I am using my time constructively while I wait for the Church to catch up;
6. I am inviting interruption;
7. I am promoting books, and all things bookish;
8. I am occupying a seat in the caff, thereby contributing to its appearance as the kind of place you might enjoy reading a book in (but I don't get free coffee for this);
9. I am not trashing the streets, or mouldering in front of daytime TV;
10. I am sending out love and peace vibes;
11. I am intriguing people;
12. I am blending in;
13. I am deconstructing the prevalent assumption that to be a worthwhile member of society you have to tick boxes, stress over work, and live a line on someone else's bankroll;
14. I am dancing (inside, textually);
15. I am reducing my carbon footprint;
16. I am growing neural connections;
17. I am tending my marginalia;
18. I am travelling, by ink and bleached wood-fibre, miles and miles;
19. I am a programme running on the analogue internet;
20. I am a librarian without walls...
"I'm reading."
Underwhelmed silence. I feel slightly uncomfortable.
"It's a really great book!" I say, over-compensating. "And I'm going to blog... And shop - there's sandwich fillings we're short of."
How do I get across just what I mean by reading? Because it's not only that there is a subtext, there's an entire sub-culture signified by the word. Machiavelli, apparently, used to set a table for two, and dress up in suitable costume, before opening a book: that way he showed his respect to the author - they were eating together.
So here's a list of what I do when I read, sat in the caff with a cup of tea and a pencil in hand:
1. I am reading;
2. I am brainstorming;
3. I am creatively interacting, with the text and people around me;
4. I am performing a piece of art called 'The Reader";
5. I am using my time constructively while I wait for the Church to catch up;
6. I am inviting interruption;
7. I am promoting books, and all things bookish;
8. I am occupying a seat in the caff, thereby contributing to its appearance as the kind of place you might enjoy reading a book in (but I don't get free coffee for this);
9. I am not trashing the streets, or mouldering in front of daytime TV;
10. I am sending out love and peace vibes;
11. I am intriguing people;
12. I am blending in;
13. I am deconstructing the prevalent assumption that to be a worthwhile member of society you have to tick boxes, stress over work, and live a line on someone else's bankroll;
14. I am dancing (inside, textually);
15. I am reducing my carbon footprint;
16. I am growing neural connections;
17. I am tending my marginalia;
18. I am travelling, by ink and bleached wood-fibre, miles and miles;
19. I am a programme running on the analogue internet;
20. I am a librarian without walls...
Thursday, 9 April 2009
856 - Easter Early
In case I don't blog over the weekend, I'm wondering if I can give you an Easter gift early.
And this is good: from Susan Blackmore's new book Ten Zen Questions (Oneworld, Oxford, 2009), which - to my great joy - has been classified by the publishers, on the ISBN info-panel on the jacket, as "Gift/ Zen/ Popular Science", in that order -
In other words, the Good Friday question: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). Why am I just flesh and blood? Where is the transcendence? Where is the poetry? How can I fail to die? What guarantees me? Where is Your place in the world, if we are just neurons and synapses and information transactions?
To which, the Christian I was would have said, "Wait until Easter: that's the point - He rose again. He thought He was abandoned by God, but He wasn't."
And the librarian I became would have said, "That's just a story: one among many. It's a category error to apply the dynamics of the Easter story to hard science. But don't worry. Science, and Easter, say that when I die, the library remains."
(And probably Christianity is just a story, and we are an illusion spun out of molecules. Probably there is no absolute reason why, having defined each other as bundles of interacting neurons, we should not proceed as a society to marshall each other efficiently and unpoetically, like books on a shelf, to the convenience of the greatest number and the shallowest thinking. Perhaps scare stories about challenges by the State to our fundamental identity are alarmist nonsense - they must be if our identity doesn't exist.)
But the artist I am says, "The greatest miracle is that story and science combine at Easter to create something new. And consciousness is neither a spirit, nor a synapse: it is a season. What we choose to do in that season is limited only by our imagination."
And this is good: from Susan Blackmore's new book Ten Zen Questions (Oneworld, Oxford, 2009), which - to my great joy - has been classified by the publishers, on the ISBN info-panel on the jacket, as "Gift/ Zen/ Popular Science", in that order -
This brings us to a modern version of the mind-body problem, called the 'Hard Problem' of consciousness: that is, how can objective, physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience? Neuroscientists are making tremendous progress in understanding the objective brain processes; with brain scans, implanted electrodes, computer models, and all sorts of other ways of investigating how the brain works. We can measure the electrical firing of neurons, the chemical behaviour in synapses, the processing of information, and the mechanisms of vision, hearing, and memory. We can see how information flows in through the senses, and how responses are coordinated and actions carried out.
But what about me and my conscious experiences? Where do I fit into this integrated system of inputs, outputs and multiple parallel processing systems? The strange thing is that I feel as if I am in the middle of all this activity, experiencing what comes in through the senses, and deciding what to do in response, when in fact the brain seems to have no need of me. There is no central place or process where I could be, and the brain seems capable of doing everything it does without any supervisor, decider or inner experience. Indeed, the more we learn about how the brain works the more it seems that something is left out - that very thing we care about most of all - 'consciousness itself'.
(pp. 25-6)
In other words, the Good Friday question: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). Why am I just flesh and blood? Where is the transcendence? Where is the poetry? How can I fail to die? What guarantees me? Where is Your place in the world, if we are just neurons and synapses and information transactions?
To which, the Christian I was would have said, "Wait until Easter: that's the point - He rose again. He thought He was abandoned by God, but He wasn't."
And the librarian I became would have said, "That's just a story: one among many. It's a category error to apply the dynamics of the Easter story to hard science. But don't worry. Science, and Easter, say that when I die, the library remains."
(And probably Christianity is just a story, and we are an illusion spun out of molecules. Probably there is no absolute reason why, having defined each other as bundles of interacting neurons, we should not proceed as a society to marshall each other efficiently and unpoetically, like books on a shelf, to the convenience of the greatest number and the shallowest thinking. Perhaps scare stories about challenges by the State to our fundamental identity are alarmist nonsense - they must be if our identity doesn't exist.)
But the artist I am says, "The greatest miracle is that story and science combine at Easter to create something new. And consciousness is neither a spirit, nor a synapse: it is a season. What we choose to do in that season is limited only by our imagination."
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
868 - Pip Pip Quote
This, on the fourth page, probably sums up Jay Griffith's book (but thankfully there are 314 more joyously to read):
"The Karen always know the time. Living with them for six months it became clear to me that the only person with a watch and the only person who could never tell the time was, well, myself. To the Karen, the forest over the course of a day supplied a symphony of time, provided you knew the score. The morning held simplicity in its damp air, unlike the evening's denser wet when steam and smoke thickened the air. Backlit by sun a huge waxy banana leaf at noon became green-gold stained glass, cathedralizing time. Barely one of my hours later, it was just a matt, bottle-green leaf, useful verdure, a plate for rice, a food-wrapper. Birds sang differently at different hours and while the soloists of life are always with us, the whole orchestra of the forest altered, shifting with the sun's day, all the noisy relations between birds, animals and insects, making chords of time played in all the instrumental interactions. Western time seems a thin, thin reedy peep of a thing by comparison."
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
869 - Shelf Life
All other books to the bottom of the pile - my library's got hold of this one for me!
[And here is the author's website, with excerpts from the book.]
[And here is the author's website, with excerpts from the book.]
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