Adding from the Other Side – An Interesting Braid Part 2

Reason & Pleasure : An Interesting Braid was about mixing Reason & Pleasure; it was about music, but it works anywhere.

We all have a core, an axis, a skeleton. It’s what we ARE, when we were born and culturally.

A good philosophical activity is to know ourselves better (draw your map), but also to progress by adding things from the “other side”, growing in directions we did not use much. It means : try.

If you’re a loner, it’s maybe to meet people and learn from them. If you’re very masculine you maybe have to explore your feminine brain. If you’re wise and a rules follower, you’ll love to live a little more on the wild side. Etc.

Sylvain Tesson is a well known french writer, a traveller. He wrote many books about his adventures around the planet. But one day he stopped his ass in a little house near the Lake Baikal, in Russia, in Winter. And it’s great because… it’s the contrary of “what he does” ! What is interesting here is not the “winter stuck in Russia”, but the fact that it’s written buy a traveller.

Jünger says that it’s embarrassing to see the efforts of a Master when he goes out of his domain of mastery… Maybe it is. Maybe also it’s moving, interesting, and making him more human, too. The guy tried!

Tool :

If “More of the same thing” fails, try to do the contrary. You will maybe fail, but you will learn. Our need to be disturbed is there. This tools simply says :

Do the contrary of what you do, go to the other side, see what you can learn, see what you can bring home.

 

Thanks for reading!

The Casualness Shades of Orchestras

I’m reading a book about orchestras. I liked the pages explaining how different do great orchestras really sound from one another, that’s interesting.

Try this article : World Greatest Orchestras

Cultural differences made me smile. Some American or German musicians hired by French orchestras were disturbed by our… frenchness. Instrumentalists are chatting before rehearsals, par exemple, ohlalaaaaa…

It’s a matter of shades, though. Italian instrumentalists think we are much more rigorous… Makes sense, no ?

In an American orchestra, everybody is on time, all the musicians did their homework, and nobody talks. Not a word. Riccardo Muti, coming from… Italy, was a bit surprised by this American “engine ready” effectiveness and once said to the orchestra : “You know, you can talk !”.

The author tries to be culturally fair. American or German (among others) orchestras are fast and effective, and French orchestras need more rehearsals to prepare a symphony, for example.

He says that the result is great, clean, and pretty much always the same in the United States. They do the job ! In France, orchestras are less like a perfect car and more like a living surprising entity. They do the job too, and sometimes it’s becoming amazing !

Leonard Bernstein always loves French orchestras for this reason : they follow his craziness if he tries something unusual. And… the author says than French instrumentalists are very quiet and attentive when the chief in Giulini or Haitink. Errrr…

Yes, I can link this arcticle to this other one, about following damn rules

So let’s say we can, but we don’t !

After all, the Eiffel Tower has no function, other than a symbol. The Eiffel Tower is uneffective.

I think that in France we just like to do things slightly improperly. Yesss we can cross the road out of the zebras, if there’s no car around. We really do that ! Ohlalala…

Lever : This lever is called “Obey” and has two ways. If something’s boring in your project, because it’s clean and right on the road, pull it here. Try something French. Add wine too.

Josef Krips, a great conductor, once said something like “With half more discipline, the French orchestra would become the best of the world”. Maybe you need half more discipline, then. Pull the lever there. Thank you America !

Day off with #orchestra #pluriel

How to go back to quiet silent daydreaming summers ?

When I was a teenager, let’s say in 1981, there were 3 channels on French TV (TF1, Antenne 2 et France 3). Music was on some LPs, and there was no Internet, no Pokemon Go, no cellphone. Some rare rich fathers had an Apple II. The Sinclair ZX-81 was just showing its nose…

Useless to say that when you got something “interesting” into your hands, it was amazing.

I remember that summer ! I was 15, and I got this Casio Programmable Calculator FX-702P, and I asked my parents to order a few L’Ordinateur de Poche, a magazine about these new “Pocket Computers”.

I read them, re-read them, tried every Basic program, and spent weeks trying to program a standard Battleship – not the game, just a way to “place the boats” (one the size of 4 squares, two 3 squares, three 2 squares and four 1 square – the submarines !). The memory of my Casio was too small so I had think about a way to optimize it (interlacing 2 loops, etc).

This summer I borrowed some LPs. The Blue Beatles sampler, with the lyrics, kept me busy for weeks.

I remember me as a kid watching clouds for hours in summers. La rêverie is a pretty good French word for daydreaming (we could say “dreamery”, right ?). Getting bored, at this time, at this age, was triggering imagination instead of Netflix…

Slumber or Torpor ? I think I didn’t find the good english word to translate our “torpeur”. When the sun is brûlant, days are long and quiet, tout est calme et you don’t have any mission or money to make/win. You watch clouds and just try to be happy. You play frisbee, you watch ants, you bike with friends. Les merveilleux nuages…

Lever : You really can find back this state. You just have to cut THREE things : TV, Smartphone, and Internet. Nothing much after all…

Then you will have to search in the old “real” world (books, things in attics, CDs and LPs). This provides a bouquet of another things : a slower focused brain rhythm, a hunger, a desire to create maybe, some imagination, some creativity.

It can also trigger a big boredom too. Well… C’est la vie !

 

#casio #vintage #fx702p #calculator

“In Love with a Project” – The Marbles Syndrome

“I try on stories like clothes” Max Frisch.

 

In the Abécédaire, Gilles Deleuze explains that one never desire something of someone, but rather desire an aggregate : in desiring an object, a dress for example, the desire is not for the object, but for the whole context… So there is no desire, says Deleuze, that does not flow into an assemblage, “aggregate of skirt, of the sunray, of a street, of a woman, of a vista, of a color, constructing a region.”

I like to keep this idea in mind when love in involved. Someone loves you, but in fact this person loves the project around your story. It’s a bit strange to realise that someone does not love you “as you are”, but loves all the changes and the life you could bring to him or her… Or the money and security and the house coming with the horse, too ! Pure love has its ways…

Think about it when she/he doesn’t love you anymore. The boredom maybe came because the aggregate around you isn’t very funny or doable anymore, that’s all…

I one day read an interview of Claude Chabrol, a well known director of the French Nouvelle Vague, saying that to keep his wife in a good mood he had to “invent projects”. As he had no time, had his own projects (to work on his movies), he said that he had to move to another house every seven years. Voilà !

Idioms :

• To pick up your marbles and go : Reprendre ses billes.
• Battre de l’aile (literaly : shaking a wing) = To be on the skids (or on your “last leg”, which one is better, dear ?).

Tool :

If you feel that your lover is picking up his or her marbles, your couple is on the skids. Act quickly and invent a project. It can work. A big travel, a new home, whatever. Aggregate !

(If it pleases you, forget the project and try to be a little mean-and-evil : it could help this person to hate you and go away for good. After all, you maybe want your marbles back too, hé hé !)

Thank you Gilles Deleuze !

 

“I try on stories like clothes”

Max Frisch

#fall #autumn #autumnleaves

 

 

How to stop spinning around damn rules

There are so many types of rules : inner and moral rules, the laws, the norms of a society, and even some unspoken rules !

These rules don’t interest me that much today. I want to track the way we interact with them… – for the laws of your country, just follow, OK ? C’est d’accord ? Oui.

What do you do with rules when you feel that they’re not OK any more ?

You can obey them, though, persistently, “because they are rules”. Follow morality (which says always : “Don’t”) and try to find happiness into that !

You can keep them but follow your inner new ones. You can do that for a while only, like putting a augmented reality mask built by you, on old rules.

Yes you can bend rules, just a little – I know, this sounds very French, probably (we like to cross roads out of zebras). Testing the elasticity of rules in a national sport, in my country.

You can sparkle. You follow the rules but for one second you don’t. Hop ! Once, you decide to say “Yes !”. Then back to the track, immédiatement ! Or…not.

There’s an old good book called “The Strategy of the Dolphin”. The authors divide human beings in “Carps” (no invention, total obedience, etc), “Sharks” (rebellion, agression), and “Dolphins” of course – who move elegantly, are fast and inventive.

Something’s interesting about rules : it’s when a person FIGHTS with himself or herself, between “obey the rules” and “these are not effective or useful NOW”. It’s a terrible spinning hesitation process !

Lever :

You can stop the spinning being a carp : you shut up and obey rules. Your life is simple, black and white, you follow rules, morality and orders.

You can stop the spinning being a shark : you bite the rules and you don’t care more. You just run like a fool, a rebel who doesn’t care about the others or about damages.

You can stop the spinning being a dolphin : you dance with the rules when they’re OK or not, and you adapt, you are fast and elegant. You decide your life and your actions. You are able to invent your own rules, even for a moment. Everybody wins around you, as much as possible, because you like that ! You live in movement, in colors, you are a good Queen or a good King. You can’t leash a dolphin, anyway. Bravo !

La valeur est souvent conférée. Values of things are conferred…

#bw #instagood #picoftheday #photooftheday #architecture #sky #clouds #monochrome #instablackandwhite #stairs

 

 

Enregistrer

Sick Songs of Abba & Bee Gees

Every pop music lover knows Abba & Bee Gees. Long careers, huge success, big hits, etc.

You don’t need to be a big connaisseur to notice something special about them. Behind the good music and arrangements, you can feel some melancholy. It’s maybe their secret after all ?

And sometimes some sickness too. Some nastiness maybe ? (I wanted to say “meaniness” but it does not seem to be english…).

I like to find a lever pushed a little too far in this kind of mainstream pop-music. A quiet-disturbing element, a new harsh sound, a instrumental bridge… weirdly made.

Take the first 20 seconds of Abba’s Gimme Gimme Gimme, listen loud, and admit you’ve never heard that :

Gimme Gimme Gimme

If you go from 02:50 to 3:40 in the same track, you realise that you have a mean bizarre robotic synthetic loop, before a feverish orchestra and some haunted voices… Not that common in pop music !

Bee Gee’s Liar is similar… Every line is like weirdoed by strange harmonies, risky notes, and so within a clear disco structure you’ve got a… sick piece of song, like a dark ill version of their music.

Liar

Lever : How could we call it ? You have a project, a painting, a music, a concept, and you think you’re lost, too comfortable. Take a lever, push it too far. Go 130%. Go mean, tensed, unappropriate, whatever. Add too much pepper in your soup. OK, let’s call it Lever-130.

#sky #sun #architecture #clouds

 

Dreamers in the Colors of Oz

Dorothy lives in Kansas

in a Black & White world.

One day she tornadoflies up

towards the Land of Oz

a land full of colors

and musics.

Then she’s back to Kansas.

After having met new friends

and the Wizard

Dorothy’s life will never be the same.

How do you live in black and white once you know the Land of Oz?

Yes it was a dream.

The world need dreamers, don’t you think ?

Someone said to me one day

that I was a Wizard.

I’m probably maybe more like a chimera

made of all Dorothy’s friends all together :

Tin Woodman

Scarecrow

Cowardly Lion.

All of them :

No brain. Heart stolen. Fearful.

Dancing and singing

like everyone one of us, right?

#rue #nord #france #lille #sky #blue #briques #bricks #house