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Month: December 2016
Intention of Effect Kills Effect
François Jullien is a French philosopher and sinologist. Thanks to his obsession towards “Finding resonances between Occident and China’s culture”, he invented plenty of interesting concepts. The little tool I present today is short and nevertheless terribly powerful. A seed of magic against the evil đ :
Intention of Effect Kills Effect
In poetry or on Instagram pages, in music, movies, painting, it’s when the viewer “see you coming” with your heavy intentions, your effects. It’s why bad photographers and, even worse, bad poets are so terrible !
The lowest example of this ? Romantic sunset photographies with beautiful lovers. You’re like “yeah yeah yeah…”. And when the efficiency of a poem is based on dumb smart juxtaposition of words. Welcome to the purple wind and to iridescent hopes…
Instead of being charmed, or amazed, or interested, the viewer is exhausted by his assessments.
It could be post-modern nudge effect, right ? But it will probably be more like the “smart ass effect”… Exhaussssting !
A good example ? When in a movie you get a syrupish violin-music behind a saaad-potatoed drama. You wanna poke the director on the forehead : “Hey. You. Stop that ! I got it !”.
Intention of Effect Kills Effect
Of course, this is what we all do. In every article of these little pages. On your Instagram posts. We all have an “intention”. We push like bulls. We want prove something to others.
And the audience ? If you’re lucky, they maybe will think “I see you coming, OK, do your stuff”. But the risk is that they squint their eyes and… autopinch nose, voilĂ . Hashtag LOLs are boring.
Tools :
Subtilities. Surprises. Movement. Elegance. Complexity. Smart dissonances. This is where effectiveness is. Effects from… invisible intelligence !
PS : Eeek ! I talked about this in another article called :
“Slide, mortals, don’t bear down”
Thanks for reading !
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Mindsets and Zodiac Signs
Ahhh I love to find books about “Two Concepts”. When you meet them, you’re like “Heyyyy ! Why not ? That’s interesting !”. Flowers and Self Help, or Marxism and Christians, or Movies and Architecture, Food and Parenting. Tortoises and Art. Well…
First, let’s talk about Mindsets. It’s a tricky word we don’t have in France. So you can translate it with “Ă©tat d’esprit” (state of mind) or “mentalitĂ©” (mentality ?), or “attitude”. In my mind, a… mindset is a pattern you have in your mind about a precise subject. I’m maybe wrong, but it involves something about “it’s pinned, not moving” (oui ?). For example : “I don’t like to travel”, or “The French are good kissers”, or “I’m a Taurus, therefore I’m slow”.
Haha, see me coming ?
Playing with Astrology is a very funny activitĂ©. Everyone knows it’s based on wrong calculations with the stars, but it doesn’t matter, it works pretty well. Sometimes it’s insanely exactly on spot.
But it can also create mindsets. Pisces are dreamers. Taurus are slow and stubborn. Cancers too sensible. Scorpios auto-tortured. Capricorns are cold. You can put labels on signs, and sometimes, it’s just boring : it’s just an alibi for laziness. Like a “I won’t change I’m a fucking Leo !”. Yes you can change, silly !
Tool : Make you Zodiacal sign a lever, not a dial. You can evolve and work on it…
Don’t add knots to knots, or why the Key to your dreams is inside you.
This is your face(s) this morning, when you woke up after this OMG dream. And YES, that WAS crazy. The zig-zagging plot, the foolish characters, the peek-a-booing changes. You woke up like that, shaking your head, needing a triple coffee and a good hug.
You can tell this tralala story to your spouse (after the hug). The only result will be the mirroring of these faces : you will see him becoming yellow, then he will looked flushed, then he will hold his chin like this, “hmmm… What Ze Feuque ??!”.
If your husband is not already thinking about what he’ll do today (or ready to grab a useful part of your body to comfort you), he will just say something blank, like, “Waow, you have an interesting dreambox, my love !”, and he will run outside the house to go biking somewhere. Let him go.
If you own a friendly talkative man, he will try, though. “Let’s see… Maybe it means this ? But why is MY mother involved with this mighty red-headed finch ? And what’s this panda statue about ? With a crown ? Really ?”.
Well, he will add questions to your questions, knots to the knots. Bigger eyes you have, now.
But know this (I’m a Dream Guru, as you already know) :
Your brain makes dreams in order to work on your own shit.
It means that probably EVERY element of your dream is about YOU. So if you see a baby running away, it’s probably about denying your inner child. If you see your grandmother, or a neighbour, a kid, an engine, an uncle : do NOT worry why your uncle is in there. Your brain uses the uncle for YOU. What are his qualities ? His flaws ? These are about you, you, and you. Your dream-engine uses what it knows (people and things around), but it doesn’t care. People and Symbols are used to work on you only. Pack the whole thing and make it flat, next to your own skin. Light will come suddenly.
Always interpret your funny dreams like that and they will suddenly make sense.
VoilĂ ! I’m a Wizard, this is why I know. Smouic.
Thanks for reading !
The third cut will have you on your knees
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Hey, How do YOU keep yourself together?
The title was tricky to find. I wrote, in my French way, “How do you keep standing up”, but it’s not very very good, right? “How do you keep yourself from falling apart” is better, but, hem, a bit dramatic, no?
So I ask you, readers ! How do you keep yourself together?
So many answers! You can cuddle like a cat, under the warm blanket of your family.
You can drink or use another substance (food? drugs?) to get a little rid of reality.
Sex?
You can do sports, of course, it works for many people! Run, just run. Buy the good clothes before you run, you need’em. Run after something, or after nothing, it works too. Move heavy rocks. That’s good. Be a fan.
You can try to entertain : be a tourist, watch a movie, listen to some music, cook, read a book, appreciate some form of Art. Be creative, if you can. That’s pretty noble, dear!
Oh, I forgot : work! I’m pretty sure that all workaholics are just big-worried people who run all day to forget they will die… or just the boredom seriousdom of their choices. Be a little solemn with your work. You’ll feel important. It’s VERY good.
You can also spend time with a good friend who, that’s so coincidental, tries also to keep herhimself from falling apart. Then, you both look like two wounded guys in the WWI standing up holding each other walking in the mud.
You can do like me, overthinking your shit, find pattern and structures, inventing rarely effective tools to… keep yourself together, and blog this shit out just to purge your congested head. Color it your way : University-ish, Sarcasm, Humor, Crafty. Guess what I chose today!…
Religion! Your local God fixes everything.
Help others
BUT
(because, of course, what is interesting here is that does not work, and, blah, you will fall apart, eventually)
In family paradise you slowly realize you’re drowning in your own sugar, juices and secretions. You boil to get out!
Drugs leads to oblivion, but also to stupidity and mistakes. Sports to accidents. Entertain to emptiness. Creativity to the white page. Work means time burning AND money, which can provide “some” happiness, as you know (buying is good do keep yourself together for an hour, and it also works the economy of your nation).
Friends, as human beings, stay a good solution, and they can help you to find (and do together, why not) other ways of escaping keeping yourself together. Problem is they fall in love with a Prince/Princess, and then you look like nothing in loop.
Religion is good, because it’s mainly following some damn rules. You don’t have to think much. If you feel churchy, the main problem comes from the moment you realize there’s no God (or if it exists, it doesn’t care at all). Then, you fall apart, bim.
Tool :
No tool here. Breathe. Life is short. Find your own way. Dance with all of them. Ask about others. Be kind. We all struggle, right? Don’t fall. Not today. Not today.
Thanks for reading!
“A Well Seasoned French”, or how to be an ESL is a source of poetry
Being French, learning English from day to day, is a source of poetry, of mysteries, of surprises and difficulties.
ESL is for English as a Second Language. I always liked to learn english. From my 12 years (“Andy has a dog, his name is Mustard. Andy loves his dog”), until now. I have happily a few friends today who can help me if I have questions about English.
It’s not about vocabulary (you have pretty good websites about this, my preferred one is Reverso). It’s mostly about the subtilities, and idioms, too.
(My last question, for example, was for the word “crafty“. I asked myself if it was colored negatively or not. A little girl who can repair her doll alone, she’s crafty ? Hummm… Good dictionaries gives me : sly, clever, shrewd, cunning, but nobody seems to be able to explain me the subtilities, sigh…)
What you don’t know, you English or American people, is the whole pack of complicated subtilities you have to dig when you are NOT from there.
I got an example just today :
I had a friend who’s blog was named, let’s say, A Well Seasoned Article. I loved this title so much ! You know why ? Because I thought that she built “seasoned” like :
“a preterit to Season (like summer, winter) for a poetic use”
I loved it ! I did not know, until today, that seasoned meant “flavored”, or… “experienced” (and the circle closes itself, isn’t it crafty ?).
Well, do you remember that you FORGOT that the name of the group The Police is based on police ? And that you don’t think about Washington (the man) when you say Washington (the State) ? Well, when you learn a language, you are new to many words. You realise that you can watch a watch, that “hang up” the phone is a bit illogical (“UP ? Really ?”), and that you have to dig, really, to understand the differences between Impressed, Awestruck and Dumbfunded.
More : some English words are written the way French words are. Sometimes it’s fantastic ! If in a poem you read “She sang”, you just see a woman singing, but “sang”, in French, means “blood”. Immediatly, she sings under (or to) the clouds, and these clouds are dramatically red. A whole landscape appears. Funny, right ?
Other example : pain, in French, is bread. Each time an ESL reads you have pain, you have some bread. VoilĂ .
Your language, you see ?, is a bit strange, or tastier when you’re a foreigner. Yum ! Food !
Let’s invent this tool :
If you’re blocked on a text, an article, a paragraph, translate it ! If you’re a bit lazy, you’ll have to make it simpler. If you are full of energy, you’ll search for subtilities in the “other language” : it’ll give you ideas, patterns, new lights, seeds.
The Yoknapatawpha Rule
This is not a French Tool, but an American one.
When he was a young writer, William Faulkner was fascinated by France and by planes. He wanted to be a pilot, he wanted to fight the Germans in the war.
One day he understood that, instead of searching inspiration around the world, he should write about the land he knew, his land, the South. So he invented the Yoknapatawpha County “based on, and nearly geographically identical to, Lafayette County, in Mississipi”. From this time, almost everything he wrote happened around this place.
Tool :
The Yoknapatawpha Rule states (or should I say “stipulates”, like “stipule”, in French ?) that you can write your blog with your experience. Seeds are provided by the events of your life. Of course you can dance with concepts and weave with other things. It’s just a tool, a seed provider…
Nietzsche, in another time, said the same thing in a more… grandiloquent style, but that looks good :
Il faut avoir du chaos en soi pour accoucher d’une Ă©toile qui danse
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star
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Dance of the Seeds Providers
Seeds for the mind are the little ideas from which you can grow an entire tree (then a forest, thank you dear). Most of the time, we have our own little box of seeds, or we can grab one or two, sometimes, in a magazine, in a book, in a movie.
But how delicious are the seeds provided deliberately by a friend. Imagine you’re stuck on a work, an article, a musical piece, a drawing. This person begins to ask you about this and that. If he (or she, let’s say she’s a she) is smart, she will dig with you, helping you to find the flaws, the lacking elements, the “it’s too much here”. Patterning.
One can also drop one seed. This external element can wait for a long time (or not), then it grows. It grows well and efficiently because this person is a friend, and knows you. She has this smile. She knows…
There are many ways of giving seeds. It can be very simple, like offering three words to someone who wants to write a short story. Or three pictures ? It can be the muse thing. The way you are or work as inspiration. A field for seeds !
How could I explain the bliss when you have someone in front of you who’s there for that, with a little box of new seeds in his pocket ? “Want one ? What kind ? Why ? Tell me…”
Tool is about this in both directions :
- Do you NEED a seed ? Who will you ask ? Do you have this kind of friend ?
- Can you OFFER a seed ? Who needs it ? Are you able to do this ?
Recess Time : “I don’t talk to you anymore everrrrr”
It’s recess time. Kids are running screaming everywhere. And there’s an argument, under a tree : “You betrayed me I don’t trust you anymore ever I will tell it to my mum you are very mean and I won’t talk to you anymore everrrr”. Drama.
Imagine now some more adults word in the kids mouths now : “OK, we have a problem, friend. You broke my trust, do you realize that ? Let’s talk : how do we get out of this problem? Why did you do that? What happened in your mind, silly? Is it because I didn’t want you to talk to me anymore?”.
Then, you could see the two kids talking quietly while they walk…
I heard many times about whole families on Facebook fighting about parenting or politics or a wrong picture posted on a wall. Everybody is bitter and block everyone. I heard many times about someone who decides to “I don’t talk to you anymore ever” to his own parents. Each time I’m like : Maybe you could try a letter a year? Maybe just to check if it’s not a misunderstanding? Maybe to check if the angriness has vanished into memories? Evolving towards the light? A letter to forgive, or ask for forgiveness? Oh there’s a good word, here : Diplomacy.
Lever :
In case of problem, wrong moves and misunderstanding, do you chopblock people, or do you, on the contrary, increase the level of dialog and try to understand, grow up, and climb a few stair-steps together ? Are you a shark (attack), a carp (fear), or a dolphin (elegance)?
Tool :
Do you need an enemy to regroup and feel safe? Maybe you do.
Heyyy! This is another article!
Seed : To Change is To Add, right ?
I like the idea of “seeds for the brain”, for the mind. You just find a good way to say something, or a surprising idea, and you put it into a friend’s mind. This is food for thinkers. I’ll write an article about this very soon. Tonight, the seed is :
To change, it’s to add something. It’s not to chop, or to bend (or twist, who can help me on that ? I’m French, help !). It’s to ADD.
I would love to link this seed to this article today : Why I talk to my exes.
This is what Jeanne Moreau was thinking about her ex-lovers (I translated it, so sorry for the mistakes) :
– You said one day that you would like to have a house with a room for each man you loved. Would it be a big house ?
– A normal house⊠In fact, it was mainly an image to express my desire of not losing. I hear some people, they say : “Here it is, I rebuilt my life”. I don’t know how one can rebuilt one life, we just go on. Personaly, I don’t like losing sight of someone, beyond desire, beyond sensual passion. The idea of this house, it’s to gather a treasure with all this love, which continues to live in our memories.
(Jeanne Moreau)
It’s a good seed. To change, it’s to add something. Like layers, like rooms in a house. It’s a way to grow up. We grow up, like trees ! New branches. New ways of making love. New ways of thinking. New ways of aggregating thoughts…
Is it true ? If it’s not, why ?
Why I talk to my exes
One day I found an interesting key in the diary of a French writer called Claude Roy. Something tricky which put a smile on my face, a bit like :
Try to choose someone you will love when you don’t love him/her anymore
You can interpret this in many ways, of course. One can be the sense of marriage, and how to find your second wind after a long time together (finding you “second love”).
The other one is the subject of this little article. It begins with a question :
Do you need to be friend with your lover ?
I think it depends on personalities. I do. I’m not attracted, really, to a woman I’m not friend with. I need to weave words and a bond before I can love someone ! That’s not original, right ?
So I am always surprised to see broken couples becoming enemies. Love is broken, good. Where’s the friendship, then ?
Of couuuurse everybody will say the contrary. “Don’t talk to your ex !”. Google this and have fun : “Ex Girlfriend Quotes”. Drama Drama !
I do talk to my exes, almost everyone of them. Why ? Because they ARE good persons ! An interesting mind stays interesting and passionnante, even out of your bed !…
I don’t see why, after a break up, somebody would become somebody else… “I don’t love you anymore, good : let’s talk”.
Exes are the best friends, because the seduction process is behind you both. You have a new life, and what’s left is the most delicious bond of friendship. After all, maybe this bliss was the whole purpose of your meeting ?
c’est d’aimer de prĂ©fĂ©rence qui on aimera toujours lorsqu’on ne l’aimera plus
Constantly Random is an Instagram flaw
Instagram is a great funny app to use and to watch.
I noticed that if you want many followers, you have to be… persistent. If you take pictures of street art, or portraits of homeless people, or pot plants in black and white, dancers in NYC or “I see beauty in dirty ruins”, macro insects or abstract pieces of wood minimalism, you will get many followers.
If, like me, you take “constantly random” pictures and you wander in all kind of “styles”, you’re done. Many people won’t understand what you’re doing, and the few followers you get will quickly unfollow because they dislike you post a happy bee after a blu-ray movie, a wall texture before a black & white dead tree, a HDR sky next to a symmetrical French architecture.
There are some tools, dials and levers to pick, here.
Dial : What kind of spirit are you ? Are you, like a deep-sea diver, exploring a small territory, or are you, like a bee-air forager, smelling and exploring all that you find (from the art of warfare to linguistics, electronic music to Prussia history, American painters to Russian short stories) ?
Lever : Where do you put the lever, from “I show what I love to show” (with the random effect consequences) to “I focus on one thing only” (with the purpose to be more readable and get more audience) ? What is your blog about ? Food ? Or poetry, images, weather, books, music and politics ?
Tool : Play this game : try to find the hidden pattern behind the apparent randomness. Yeah, dear, bend over this caldron and detect it. The forager bee draws interesting patterns in the air.
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Don’t think about the color “Blue” for a minute…
ONE
Let’s imagine I dislike George Michael. I hate his music. So here I am building a web page about that : “I hate GM !”. I write daily articles about everything I hate, his nose, his voice, his life, etc.
Until I realize I hate George Michael and I’m thinking about him all day long. I harvest things for my blog. I hunt. I spit words. I am obsessed by someone I don’t want to think about. Smart !
TWO
Don’t think about the color “Blue” for a minute…
Mmmhhh ?…
THREE
As I’m constantly reading slices of books, I one day read something in my sofa, from Nietzsche, and two hours later, in triangles of sun (see picture below), from AndrĂ© Suares (I will find the quotes soon and put it there). Both were talking about people banning sex from their life. They were both noticing that when you do that, you have like a black hole in the center of your brain, thinking about sex constantly.
Work for a Temperance Movement, become an activist : you will be in a position where you talk about… alcohol and sex constantly !
Tool :
If you hate George, just don’t pay attention to him. Breathe. If you want to think about the color blue, think of it, it’s not that dramatic. If you want to have a drink, just relax and have a glass of wine. If you need peace, don’t build a block castle : listen to some Royksopp and dance with what’s around. Dialog. Or not. Solemn drama or dolphin casualness ?
I suggest Coming Home.
The Flight Excites the Hunter
a french toolbox 