Faire à manger (to cook), Faire pipi (to pee). In France, we “faire” a lot…

In France we make love, but we also make food (faire à manger), make some jogging (faire du jogging), and we make some boat too (faire du bateau).

I really don’t know why we French do this, the “faire” thing, and I wonder if there’s another language with this mess.

More : we all know that our “way of thinking” in the world is like built in the language. What does it imply?

A few more examples to play with :

• Faire du gringue : to flirt.
• Faire fi : to ignore.
• Faire du vélo : to bike.
• En faire une maladie : to have a fit (oh?).

Strangely enough, in France we say “prendre une douche”, like in English “to take a shower”. Italian people, though, “fare una doccia” : to make a shower”!

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : francescasomavilla

“Amor Fati” is a Love of Fate #Tango ! #SequereDeum

Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.

William Shakespeare

Amor Fati what?? Wait wait wait, don’t worry. Latin in involved, but it’s easy and useful.

Let’s translate : amor fati says “love of fate”.

Wikipedia “Amor Fati” : It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one’s life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary, in that they are among the facts of one’s life and existence, so they are always necessarily there whether one likes them or not.

And in fact, you’ll find all kinds of “shades” about “accepting reality”, in literature, in reality, in books :

If you’re an amputee after an accident, you can go from terrible distress to grey resignation to “what do I do, now”, to… you know where I’m going, right ? Aren’t we all fascinated by people who blossom AFTER a terrible event?

It’s just an example, but you got me : Amor Fati contains Amor : “one sees everything that happens in one’s life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary“. Of course, it’s not “necessary”, but, as says Shakespeare, you can embrace it, though.

Seeing life as a Tango, a continuous creative almost oriental dance, is just a thing that we can consider. It is certainly not resignation, but the love of what is given to us. Even if it’s hard. Use this tool with a combination of Propensity, and… you’ll see!

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart

Marcus Aurelius

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amor_fati

Thanks for reading!

<< Confine yourself to the present >>

Marcus Aurelius

Instagram : charlottabramow & amcaptures

 

 

“Do you, Herf, take Bosha to be your wife?” – “Absolutely!”, or “Hell, yesss!”?

“Do you, A, take B to be your wife?”, I think it’s the way this guy asks you that in church, right.

But you HAVE TO answer “I DO”, right?

What if you could answer what you want?

• Oui
• Hell YESSS!
• OMG, of course…
• Why not?
• Yep
• Ohlalaaaa
• Obviously!
• …
• What do you think?
• No. Yes! Just kidding
• Interesting question…

What would you add?

 

Instagram : birdsnakes

 

Aaron Nakahara’s Digital Art

I’m just an ignorant in this field, but I often wander on DeviantArt to discover digital artists. There are masters, there are thousands of interesting artists. And sometimes, in the middle of bunches of good ones,  your eyebrows never stop to get up. Like “Heyyyy”…

Aaron Nakahara – Cobaltplasma is one of them.

There’s a good path to follow to begin : explore his favorites in Deviant Art : http://cobaltplasma.deviantart.com/gallery/. You’ll find artists with a talent for : faces, drama, landscapes, darkness or colors, space, energy or perspective. This “door” could be enough to explore the whole website : explore their favorites’ too, and you have your own pathway into this, out of “popular” things, etc.

Him? I like his freedom and the part of casualness you smell in his fast sketches. His sense of exaggeration is amazing! His lines…

He writes a little text under some of his drawings, I invite you to read them.

It makes me wonder : will this guy become a master in finished pieces, or in his “30 mn” sketches?

Thanks for reading!

http://www.denjin108.com/

https://www.artstation.com/artist/cobaltplasma

https://www.instagram.com/cobaltplasma

The Serendipity Moment

The “Serendipity Moment”, it’s when you search something, then you accidentally find something else, and you realize that what you found is more important than what you were looking for in the first place…

But… are you ready for this?

“Chance favors only the prepared minds”, says Pasteur…

So it would be here : “searching something but keeping your mind opened enough to be able to notice an interesting “something else””?

Ohlalaaaa!

Bonne journée ! Bonnes trouvailles ! Thanks for reading!

Instagram : iza_goulart

“What are amulets?” – Don’t expect salvation from an external principle

What are talimans, amulets? Don’t expect salvation from an external principle

This intriguing assertion comes from Friedrich Georg Jünger, Ernst Jünger’s brother. It’s like a warning against a useless tool.

And apart from medical issues maybe, I like to keep it in mind. If you want to stop smoking for example, you can use patches or pills or therapy or whatever, but the solution comes from you : discipline. The rest is nothing. You’re in charge. Take care.

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : tombeeducamion

When a poet laughs of a painting (in relief!)

William Carlos Williams, recalling his first viewing of Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase : “I burst out laughing from the relief it brought me! I felt as if an enormous weight had been lifted from my spirit for which I was infinitely grateful”.

Art advance can open paths for other arts. If you’re interested you’ll study the links between WC Williams and Duchamp. BUT you even don’t have to, to activate some ideas.

Duchamp’s abstraction is about decomposing the movement, of course, but there’s also a game with the title. If the title was “XY-56”, your mind wouldn’t have been engaged the same way, right? What would be the same in poetry? What can this bring to a poet? A game with a title? A decomposing symbol/word/frame process? A sense of freedom, and daring?

Tool :

Whenever you feel stuck or not, it could be interesting to explore “other fields”. Maybe if you’re a musician you should study avant-garde architecture, and if you blog, maybe you could read about strangeization? You’re a manager? Why wouldn’t you read anthropology, then?

Thanks for reading!

Umberto Eco & the Open Work

Umberto Eco wrote an entire book about the idea of Open Work. I just present you here this idea, as a seed, that a “work” has an openness.

A work “appears” like this or like that, but has a number of ways of being read (seen, viewed, watched, decoded, interpreted, appreciated, contemplated, analyzed). This seems obvious for the sheet music, the score, or for a play, right?

1. There’s maybe an “obvious” openness, a prescribed way to read a work, but it can be a little more vague, like a set of possibilities – until complete crypticness : find what you can, if you dare to do it, then.
2. Some elements are often chosen by the artist to let the audience appropriate the work their way, but not “that” their way. Symbolic novels are obviously made for this purpose (Kafka is an example given by Eco).
3. Opened or not, some people do what they want with a piece of work. It’s a whole decision, it requires culture, or tools, or ways of finding things.
4. Some works, this way, can be enriched by a clever spectator, who would be delighted by elements, details, structures… the artist himself ignore!
5. In classical music or theater, there’s a place between the work (the score) and the audience. The players (or the actors) have a big role about “how they see it”. But after that level, the audience will also interpret things…
6. We probably want to find bonds between the work we study and our own searches, flaws, experiences…
7. Add yours in the comments, please?

 

Tool : If you work out of the “artistic field”, in blogging, marketing, conversation, fashion, coaching, I’m sure you consider many parameters. You can make a list, right? Timeline, colours, variety, energy, waits, etc, there are many levers to pull. But have you considered the “openness” of what you propose?

 

Thanks for reading!

“Nommer un objet c’est supprimer les trois quarts de la jouissance du poème, qui est faite du bonheur de deviner peu a peu : le suggérer . . . voila le rêve”

“To name an object is to suppress three-fourths of the enjoyment of the poem, which is composed of the pleasure of guessing little by little: to suggest . . . there is the dream”

Mallarmé

Instagram : jacopo.rigotti

Axes, Axis, Axles : “Become who you are”

Among all the empty phrases we find everywhere in the Self Help garden rubbish, I love this one :

“Become who you are”

You could examine this for hours just for having fun, like in front of a stupid golden loop, an exploding immobility, a… mysterious goal. Because, oui, bien sûr : how the hell could I become another person but who I am? Google it if you want, you’ll find the habitual waste : sunsets, roads, inspirational landscapes…

But Okayyyy, there’s something right into it. Which is this : we grow up, we become adults, and when we reach the middle of our life, where we know ourselves more :

• Some parts of us became soft and rotten, they went to pieces and fell.
• Some other parts became more solid, muscled.

A double process! From this process, some axes cleared and appeared, voilà. This is or these are your strong lines. I can be to “find love”, to be a wife, to take care of others, to be a parent, to work, to travel or to be creative. Your find, one day, your dominant trait. You became who you are… or at least,  you know more… what you would like to be!

There can be, I’m sure, some inferior axes : being famous, to be entertained continuously (bonjour kidults!), piling money, or to “appear happy” in the social media selfies big dumpster. Whatever : comes a day you know what is your main Axis.

The uncompleteness we all know (“something’s lacking in my life, but what?”) could ensue from the gap between what we do and what we should do, according to our axes. “Become who you are” could be a way to fill in this gap…

One could imagine that we invent some false axes : the real one then could show up suddenly after a shock or a crisis.

Take the exemple of the Sylvia Plath syndrome, a person who absolutely wants to publish a book. One day, the book is there, and the axis disappeared immediately : it leaves this person completely indifferent. We could call this the “So what” disillusion. This needs another article, right?

Axis disappearance. Axis revelation. Axes are maybe like milk teeth : you have some when you’re young, then another one emerges when you become an adult. Become who you are. Okayyyyy…

Thanks for reading!

“Chance favors only the prepared minds” #quote #Pasteur

"Chance favors only the prepared minds"

Le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés

 


L. Pasteur

#Montessori misinterpretation mess

Nooo it’s not an article against Montessori education, which is great!

Here’s the core of it, copy/pasted from Wikipedia :

Montessori education is fundamentally a model of human development, and an educational approach based on that model. The model has two basic principles. First, children and developing adults engage in psychological self-construction by means of interaction with their environments. Second, children, especially under the age of six, have an innate path of psychological development. Based on her observations, Montessori believed that children who are at liberty to choose and act freely within an environment prepared according to her model would act spontaneously for optimal development.

It’s a very interesting approach, and one of the key word of it is AUTONOMY. Many parents interested by Montessori buy books to understand and use it at home, but some of them just heard about it, or read an half-page article, and they just clicked on two concepts they adoooore :

• My child (who is already “ahead of others”, of course) will be even better.
• My child will be more autonomous, and… I will have peace.

This second point is the problem here. Autonomy is very important in this education, but not in the way “he is happy alone and I will have peace to do something else”!

It’s more : freedom to choose and activity and the rhythm, self-discipline (“I notice my mistakes”), experimenting, etc. There are… books about that!

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : jesusssauvage

#chairs #minimalism #minimalist

from Instagram: http://ift.tt/2l3U5cE

Paul-Jean Toulet, #French #poetry #poem

Toute allégresse a son défaut
Et se brise elle-même.
Si vous voulez que je vous aime ;
Ne riez pas trop haut.

C’est à voix basse qu’on enchante
Sous la cendre d’hiver
Ce coeur, pareil au feu couvert,
Qui se consume et chante.

Paul-Jean Toulet

 

I try a translation :

All glee has its fault
And breaks up itself.
If you want me to love you;
Do not laugh too loud.

It is in a low voice that you delight
Under the winter ashes
This heart, like the covered fire,
Who consumes and sings.

Instagram : hallieartwork

 

Incompetence or Cruelty?

When you have to work with people, groups, companies, you encounter…  failure. Something went wrong somewhere, from your manager, or during a delivery, or in whole projects. This is a mess. You got the wrong thing, you’re under a stupid decision, you have not enough, or too much, etc.

This moment when you fall on your ass, saying :

“Are they really stupid or they’re doing it on purpose?”

…is interesting. Because from there you can do many things. You can act, you can try to fix, you can report and feedback,  you can become sarcastic, you can realize it’s too late, you can laugh, or cry, or lament, or have revenge, or to be in rage, or resign…

What I say in this case is :

Incompetence or Cruelty?

And sometimes, we REALLY wonder, right?

Thanks for reading!

Nuns & Bicycles : Robert Vickrey, American painter

Robert Remsen Vickey (1926-2011). He seems obsessed by nuns, bicycles and children. His main quality for me is Strangeization, (“a way to avoid the boredom of “I’ve seen this” in art… by adding strange things“), like on this first painting above : a nun is running away, towards an intriguing colored fence. When you see this, your eyebrow climbs a little, wondering what’s happening here… That’s exactly the point!

Thanks for reading!

The Art of Inside Sidestepping – “Social Dilettantism Protection Tent” #INTJ

This is a whole box of tools about Inside Sidestepping. I evoked it in an article about how to disappear in oneself for a short moment : Waldgänger. It’s about “staying where you are, but you don’t believe anymore”. An exercise INTJs love to do !

In love, at work, at a meeting, within a group of friends : you can use that everywhere. Suddenly you’re out. Suddenly you see how things work, and you become a watcher :

• It’s not rebelling, it’s about watching, and feeling differently
• It can be protection, sheltering
• Suddenly you don’t play the game, or you do “as if”, and you watch
• You let yourself be thoughtful, pensive, undecided
• The others don’t know you’re in your tent
• You can invent, build, and destroy your tent in a second
• You stay there, but you don’t believe, you’re a dilettante, a dabbler
• You can be sarcastic or ironic, or not – it’s not required
• Suddenly, things are not that serious, and they even can become surrealistic
• Being there is a recovery, a resumption, an escape, a relief
• It’s a way to survive, to have fun, a way to stay zen
• It can lead to a positive form of hypocrisy, a mask game
• Sidestepping is like asking to yourself : “Who’s misled here?”
• You can go back in the game in one second

You decide it, or you can be put there : if you’re pregnant, or sick, you go on living in the world but the way you see it is different. Your “inside sidestepping” carries on, for a long time.

Feel free to add ideas in comments. Thanks for reading!

Instagram : danurbel

 

 

 

The Rilke Syndrome – Premature #INTJ Familiarity Problem

You’ve been there before, I’m sure : you meet someone who listens, or seems to understand your preoccupations, and you realize you can maybe really talk with this person… and then you scare this person with your intensity (or your long emails).

I found this paragraph in a 1903 letter from Rainer Maria Rilke to Lou Andreas-Salomé. I did my best and tried a poor English translation :

… I always fall straightway, with all the weight of my passion, at the bottom, and I scare people, as would make a premature (almost unseemly) familiarity, by approaching at once the most secret and deepest layers; It is a fault, not to say a coarseness, of which they wonder, and to me a fault, a mania which excludes all real contact (that is to say, useful and fertile) with them;

So I decided to call this the Rilke Syndrome.

It triggers questions, right?

• What happens when you realize that? Embarrassment?
• How to avoid it without becoming a “thinker on an island”?
• What happens when the other person clicks?
• How to link this syndrome to sapiosexuality? (Sapiosexual : a person who is sexually attracted to intelligence or the human mind before appearance.)
• What are the signs you are doing it?
• You INTJ or Enneagram 5, should you ask about your partner before deep talking, before revealing yourself as a fool?
• What energy pushes you to think-vent like that in front of someone? A kind of relief? Why?

 

“If you shut your door to all errors, truth will be shut out.” #tagore #quote

“If you shut your door to all errors, truth will be shut out.”

 

“Si vous fermez la porte à toutes les erreurs, la vérité restera dehors.”

 

– Rabindranath Tagore –

Loops over Loops : What are Frippertronics? #Guitar #Fripp #ambient

Robert Fripp is an English guitarist, member of King Crimson. He worked with Brian Eno or David Bowie. Sometimes he has a really weird way to weave notes…

Wiki says : Frippertronics is an analog delay system consisting of two side-by-side tape recorders, configured so that the tape travels from the first machine to the other, allowing the sound recorded by the first machine to be played back later on the second, thus causing the delayed signal to repeat while new audio is mixed in with it. The amount of delay (a few seconds) is controlled by increasing or reducing the distance between the machines.

Voilà. It’s like a painter who would paint OVER his own work, continuously. The music speaks, then goes away, then goes back while the instrumentist plays over it, etc. Today it can be done digitally, of course!

Here’s an example at the beginning of a Peter Gabriel song :

Of course you can visualize the effect, like an eternal balancing loop. If you click towards the end of the song, you’ll hear this “cloud” of looping sounds…

David Sylvian uses it a lot, in the Splendid album Gone to Earth. The balancing decors of Healing place is made of Frippertronics :

 

Well, you’ll find more on YouTube!

My question is coming : why is it so rare today to hear this good “trick”? And if I enlarge this question it becomes a structure and a tool :

As a creative person, do you know (or would you like to search for it?) someone who invented a good rare way to invent in your discipline? In what area? Architecture? Poetry?

What tool would you pick up in order to use it your way?

What could a musician like Tim Exile do with a set of continuously vanishing loops?

What could be a darker way to Frippertronic? Listen to the guitars-weaving behind :

Thanks for reading!

 

 

“Go forth on your path, as it exists only through your walking”.

Avance sur ta route, car elle n’existe que par ta marche.

Saint-Augustin

Go forth on your path, as it exists only through your walking.

Augustine of Hippo