Pink Floyd, MBTI & other Zodiac like games

ONE

The problem with Astrology is when people use their sign as a way to be lazy, to be a handful, to be an asshole. “I’m not even sorry I can’t do nothing I’m a Scorpio you know?”.

Zodiac : lazinesses or challenges?

TWO

The problem with other human-sortings like MBTI is different. People use it to swagger like idiots. “I’m an INTJ, I’m great, I’m unique, I’m VERY rare, I’m an empath”.

Let’em boast, will you?

#INFJ & #INTJ : The Tango Feeling/Thinking

THREE

You’re a smart person and you probably all this is “magic thinking”. It’s a categories game, and these are vague enough to appear magic : “Oh fuck it’s EXACTLY SO ME!”.

Not a big deal. Finding your Zodiac sign or your MBTI is a pretty accurate way to think about yourself, about what you like and dislike, about the way you could evolve.

“The noble man improves his qualities, not his flaws”

…said a wise man somewhere. Oui?

FOUR

If you realize it’s a game, a classification name in which you try to push yourself down a hole, a basin, you can use ANY other structure to think about who you are.

This morning I talked with a colleague about a GREAT documentary I DVD-burned for him about the Making of Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd. It’s very interesting, of course, to hear these guys telling how they wrote “Money” or worked with Alan Parsons.

But I said to him : “I’m Richard Wright, of course!”.

FIVE

Wright is the guy on the right. He’s quiet, he’s shy, he’s the keyboards player. He bright calm, fields of sounds.

Waters is the tortured guy, the tortured thinker, a great bass player and an original singer. He’s the soul of Pink Floyd.

Gilmour is the handsome singer, handsome guitar player. He has “this” sound. And a splendid voice too! He seems the strong soul Waters probably needed to channel his too many ideas.

Mason is the drummer (on the left). And as usual he’s funny, smart, fast, the relaxed watcher of the mess. He wrote a great, great book about the group.

SIX

See me coming?

You can play this game with other groups, with the Beatles, with the Police (which is a great trio for Types : Sting the leader, great bass player, fantastic voice, Copeland the crazy energetic drummer, Summers the smart and cultivated older guitarist. And they made reggae music with that! Who else?

SEVEN

Tool : find a classification in a group of types, a baseball team, a choir, a team. Find who you are. And begin to think : Why are you this person? Can you learn from him/her? What are his/her patterns, tools? What does he/she BRINGS to the structure? Who do you need to complete a group?

You go!

Thanks for reading!

My Archetype? Koala. With glasses…

My Archetype? Koala. With glasses…

More like my Animal Totem, right?

Therefore I’m slow and sweet, I’m quiet, I’m a reader. And I want to cuddle!

But my Astrological animal is the Taurus.

(With glasses?)

Oh my.

Therefore I’m stubborn, strong, gentle, trustful and steady, and slow to move. But when it begins you can’t stop any Taurus. You have to work a lot to make him angry. I love nature. Gimme a tree and some sun and a book and I’m in paradise.

But the ascending of this spectacled beast is Gemini.

Therefore this Taurus has some balloons in his back. It fastens his head. It brings casualness and some speed. Conversation skills too.

But MBTI says I’m INTJ or INFJ. It depends. I love (it’s the subject of a dozen of my blog articles) to think I’m bifaceted, a balance seeker. Think/Feel. INFTJ, voilà. Introvert for sure. Empathy : too much…

But Enneagrams says I’m 5. The Observer. Everybody runs, therefore I stay quiet. “Replacing experience with concepts” (oh, this is what I do here!). Terror : incompetence…

 

Oh well. I’m a mess. Like all of you, right?

Have a nice day!

 

 

 

Zodiac : lazinesses or challenges?

This is just a microthing about Astrology. If you think Astrology is nonsensical, you should not read that, it could bore you a lot, et j’en serais fort désolé…

We all have our ways to consider Zodiac. From 0 to 100, you believe in this or not. This is not my point here. It’s just about this question :

You were born one day, therefore you’re a Cancer, a Virgo or a Capricorn, etc. What do you do with this? How do you use it?

1. Do you use it in sorry statements, to be lazy, like “I’m a Taurus I’m slow, you know…”?
2. Do you use it to feel challenged, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, to become a better person?

I talked longly one day with a person who knew this field pretty well, who told me about people’s “Birth Charts”, with this smiling sparkle in her eye : some people with perfect harmonious charts were having terrible or failing lives, and some others with… complicated charts were living an interesting, challenging life.

Naaah you can have fun and say this is a good proof that all this is bouleshit for bored ladies. This is not kind! Stop that, I’m blogging! 🙂

In a way, who cares, after all : my pleasure here is to go back to the questions and the 1/2 pattern I am asking after them…

Dials : What, in our days, could be our Big Statement Bouleshit Mistakes? When do we say “I’m like that and I can’t change”? Why? What if we began to play “Unpinning Mindsets”? What if… sometimes… we needed to stop saying “I don’t do that, ever”?

Thanks for reading!

 

Instagram : bodylanguage

Pecking ways & means of apprehend a work of art

Choose a painting, a photograph, a poem, a symphony. You pay attention. But what are the ways and means of choosing, then knowing, apprehend this work of art?

I wrote an article already about the braid between reason & feeling : you can just “I like it”, or begin to dig knowledge around it, and, of course, weave both.

In French we have a verb for “to peck”, like a hen beaklooking for seeds : picorer. Then it begins to be tricky, because we made other words from it :

• Picorer : to peck.
• Picoreur : “the one who pecks” -> pecker.

Well, I checked, and found out that a pecker in something else, right? And that “to peck” means also to “kiss lightly”. I appreciated the English metaphors, but I’m embarrassed now to say that a way to discover art is to be a pecker!

I admire those (I call them the divers) who explore a little square. Instagrammers who takes HDR pictures of beautiful lands (or black and white portraits of homeless people in Alabama). Bloggers about vegan food or cheetah high heels. Callas (or The Beatles) only lovers. Crime novels specialists. They dig dig dig like dwarves in the mine. They’re great!

I’m a pecker (un picoreur). Let’s take a picture of the sky, then a minimalist low angled light on a roof, then a golden swan for sale on a table. Let’s listen to Puccini’s Tosca, then Brian Eno’s Apollo Atmospheres & Soundtrack, then Dave Brubeck’s Lost Waltz. Let’s read a short story of Chekhov, Calvin & Hobbes and a whole book about Duke Ellington’s life. In the same day.

I wonder if it’s linked, this way of microdiving in things, with the appetite to know “how it works”, “when it’s been composed”, “who are other artists around”, “what was he thinking at this time”, etc.

Books and the Internet : you can read about Brubeck’s life, watch an Eno interview, buy a second hand poster about Puccini’s opera.

Some will say it’s my sign : Taurus (patient, artistic, methodical) Gemini ascending (fast, curious, restless). I don’t believe in this, but it’s funny, right?

Tool/Dial : are you a diver, or a pecker?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

“A model is a lie that helps you see the truth” – H. Skipper

“A model is a lie that helps you see the truth” is a quote by Howard Skipper, an American doctor.

Here I try to extend this pattern, replacing “model” by cousin ideas : “pattern”, “structure”, “map”, etc.

So what? A “model” is not the real world, it’s a construction made to help us to understand the real world.

A MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY, right? A map is a LIE, it doesn’t give you changes, colors, moods, light, temperature and life. But it’s a useful, thought, for a purpose…

You can be very serious while modeling things (in Science) and an architect will build models (in cardboard or on computers), but you can also be a little casual “just to see what you’ll see”.

For example you can see each of these things : a school, a couple, or a battle, as : a machine, a living creature, a computer, a kingdom or a business company. If you “apply” your model, you’ll rule out something, but you’ll find interesting things too. Then, trash the model. Because it’s a LIE, of course!

A model is a construction made to help us to understand the real world.

It can be using a structure and also “a way to explain how it works”, moves and evolves. Let’s use the model of “a business company” to study “a married couple”. Who’s the CEO, how does the money flow, what are the goals, etc…

It can be more like a skeleton, a complex map of “what it is”, or a single archetypal word :

• Mauss studied suicide or gift and made entire books about these. A way to search for “what is common”, the “fundamental characteristics”.
• Simmel studied the bridge : it links two territories, it is a territory itself, it “shows itself” as a bridge, and it is a “will of connection” (over a river, for example).

Yes, this leads to Archetypes (Jung)

a statement, pattern of behavior, or prototype (model) which other statements, patterns of behavior, and objects copy or emulate

To Forms in philosophy (Plato)

pure forms which embody the fundamental characteristics of a thing in Platonism

and to the most precious diamond : the Symbol.

a symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different concepts and experiences.

(All quotes from Wikipedia – I bolded some words)

Questions :

Who’s right? Skipper who uses the word “lie”, or Plato and Jung who seem to seek a “pure form”? Is all this a search for a link, common aspects in different things, or are these just tools to explore a concept , moving aside difficulties and details? Are you more interested in details, or structures? Why do we say that there are only a few ways to tell a story (Google : Seven Basic Plots)? What are the “order” games like MBTI, Zodiac or Enneagrams? Is a symbol the tiniest and more radioactive possible model?

Let’s say you’re introvert, fast, jealous, a father, a murderer or a valet. Is it a lie, because it’s true but way too simple (and a label on your face) – then you list the subtilities, the movements, the reasons, etc -, or is it a funny truth which could lead you to make decisions, or find other archetypes to think about?

You can also read : Ecceity

Yeahh, overthinking, I know…

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

In #French #Zodiac, a Virgo is a… Virgin, oops!… ( #language & #astrology )

Well, that’s true. In English you have a very poetic way to name zodiac signs. In French we stay closer to… to what, after all?

A Virgo is a Virgin in France, une Vierge. So you can imagine the embarrassment of a Virgo when she’s asked, and the smart smiles of the guys, haha.

What else? Aries is un Bélier (a Ram). Leo is just a Lion. Libra : Balance (it’s Scale, yesss). And Pisces are Poissons (Fishes, yep).

How about your language?

I’m a Taurus. Hi! I post the positive keywords, OK? The negative? Well…

Thanks for reading! Bonne journée !