Fellini Roma / Sternfeld Rome after Rome

Joel Sternfeld (born 1944) is an American photographer I love. He made this book, “American Prospects”, which is maybe the greatest photography book I own!

His last one is about Rome, he focuses “on the ruins of grand structures”, putting these in relation with… today!

The editor says : “with a clear warning: great civilizations fall, ours may too”. Yeah, but I disagree. What I see is a continuous presence of the past, in ruins of splendid architecture, the today-reality invaded with the ordinary (people and their “things”, who seem to ignore the past). There’s no warning here, though it’s probably a little sarcastic…

Each photography has the “sense of the place”, shows a spotmood, but it’s also like a game : spotting where is the old villa, the aqueduct, weaving an ugly link between the old past and the now…

Here are some examples.

This one is a masterpiece :

https://www.moma.org/artists/5656

***

I’m French and I can say I’m obsessed with three countries : Russia, Italy, and the USA. I’m currently finishing a long study of Fellini’s work.

• Antonioni/Fellini/Visconti & other trios to operate on…
• Efforts & Arts : watching Fellini’s movies
• Freud, Jung, Symbolism and Fellini

Fellini’s Roma (1972) is a strange movie, let’s ask Wiki (I bolded the bold) : “It is a homage to the city, shown in a series of loosely connected episodes set during both Rome’s past and present. The plot is minimal, and the only “character” to develop significantly is Rome herself.”

Kaleidoscopic it is : a traffic jam (one of the most incredible scene I’ve seen in my life!), a guesthouse, brothels, a vaudeville theatre, streets, tunnels, catacombs, a liturgical fashion show, tourists… “The film concludes with a group of young motorcyclists riding into the city and a melancholic shot of actress Anna Magnani, whom the film crew met in the street”.

And again, the constant weaving between the past and the now, the ruins and the typical Italian “energy”, gives an interesting energy. Again, the old stones seem alive, watching us in silence…

***

OK you know me : I extract a tool here, which is “In a piece of work, of art, you show two different things and you let the audience weave between both”. Where (poetry, photography, teaching, marketing)? How? What appears? What for? What do you want? Nostalgia? Denunciation? Shock? Thinking?

Have fun! Thanks for reading! Stay home!

JP

Passive-Aggressive? Fine!

ONE (behavior)

“Passive-aggressive behavior is characterized by a pattern of passive hostility and an avoidance of direct communication”, says Wikipedia.

One specialization of this is the Malicious Compliance, intentionally inflicting harm by strictly following the orders of a superior. This is bad, I know! But who could tell that they’ve not been there?

Here’s a story for you : In France, a few decades ago, during a very cold winter, a private, during his military service, was freezing his arse off at the entrance of a base, shift time. Imagine him holding his rifle, taping his foot on ice and snow. At one moment the base’s big boss nasty general came with his car and parked near the front desk, asking the duty little soldier this : “Private! Come here! My windshield is full of ice. I order you to throw a full bucket of hot water on it, at once!”. Of course, the little soldier opened the faucet and waited for the water to be boiling hot (malicious complicance!) before sparging it (at once) on the glass – which, of course, exploded immediately.

There’s a joy into this, right?

 

TWO (words)

What we see daily, what we read daily, is passive-aggressive tone in words. This is very common these days. You just have to say something gentle, knowing (hoping?) that the other side will understand it’s sarcastic.

“Thank you for cleaning the table! It’s very kind!” to someone who did not, for example – instead of saying : “I’m sad that you didn’t clean it, we should talk about organization”.

The easiest passive-aggressive sentence is pretty common, it’s :

“Fine!”

or

“Whatever!”

…both mean exactly the contrary, right?

 

I really often read passive-aggressive speech on social medias. “Honestly he’s sooo talented it’s so amazing I’m so impressed”. A laughing emoji can help us realize this person writes the contrary of what they think.

“Oh what a great (function) he is!!”…

 

Curiously, there’s no joy (at all) in writing the contrary of one thinks. It says : “I’m too weak to fight, and I’m afraid to say my truth”. It says : “As a matter of fact I don’t want to fix or change anything”. Passive.

 

THREE

But maybe one day someone will grow up, and won’t answer “Fine!”. They’ll answer : “This is not fine, let’s talk about it and decide together something”.

Maybe one day someone will grow up and answer : “I don’t like this, I’m not amazed, nor impressed – let’s find out why”. But now there’s a problem : it’s that the readers are SO used to passive-aggressive tone that they’ll think one just said the contrary! Damned!

 

Using a passive-aggressive behavior or tone in front of someone is to acknowledge the other one is stronger than you.

• It’s why it’s a joy when you use it in front of stupid hierarchy. Because it gives you a way out, a way to “win”.
• It’s why it’s sad in front of people around you. Passiveness means you acknowledge the other one is stronger, or, at least, that you don’t want to fight.

 

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

50 crisis is not 40 crisis. And some movies.

Happy new year (and decade)!

And sorry for my terrible English…

 

50 crisis is not 40 crisis. Tatata. We shouldn’t mix up these. This is not the same thing AT ALL.

(I know, age is just a number and a convention… But here’s my article though)

The middle age (or mid-life) crisis is a big one, it’s when you get 40. First of all, you feel you’re suddenly OLD (according to your youth’s criteriums). People around you divorce and make a big crisis, a depression, etc. You’ll buy books, it’s the midlife crisis, voilà.

The 50 years old crisis seems different, less dramatic, but in fact is maybe much more a big deal. It’s bigger. It gets deeper. It breaks much more things. Now you don’t laugh anymore (even sarcastically).

I played with the IMDB keyword to remember or discover some movies about this subject. After all, art often tells us things, right?

Mid-life crisis (40 years old), gives Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen) – “Life is a little unsatisfying”, driven by nostalgia, A Single Man (Tom Ford) around the idea of suicide after a loss, 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini) about a director who don’t have ideas anymore, Groundhog Day (“My job is so boring”). American Beauty (Sam Mendes) is pretty cruel, The Bridges of Madison County (Clint Eastwood) is around having an island in time (a few days) to break the grey. Then stay the memories. Sideways : travel and drink wine! The Big Chill : reunite with old friends and talk (when one of us dies). Hannah and Her Sisters (daring adultery). Pierrot le Fou (quitting everything and being crazy).

Crisis, boredom, marriage explosions. It’s classical, and the solutions (or at least : tries) are numerous : fleeing, daring, breaking, change…

 

50 years old crisis seems to give more intense crazy things (Birdman), drastic funny changes (Fried Green Tomatoes), wandering in absurdity & disillusions (Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola), visit the past to remember its craziness (Broken Flowers), dealing with many problems (Wonder Boys), dramas & desperate fly away (Husbands), be surprised by an epiphany (Another Woman, Woody Allen), playing with destruction and suicide (The Arrangement, Kazan), talking about the emptiness & fail of everything (La Terrazza). Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams, Twice in a Lifetime…

 

Hugo said 40 is the youth becoming old, and 50 is the youth of the old age. Menopause for women doesn’t help, for sure!

What is it?

1. Transition.
2. Maybe harder if not much evolved in the past decades.
3. A tendency to look at the past, instead of future.
4. Absence of new projects.
5. A feeling of emergency.
6. Perturbations (loss, divorce).

 

Movies are interesting because they show what people try to do. From entertainment (buying a big car, trying new sports) to depression, suicide, love, waiting, traveling, breaking patterns, talking, finding sidekicks…

Somes ideas? Other movies? At fifty, will you roar, think or cry?

 

Voilà! I’m 53. It’s 2020. Merry Happy New Year!

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tyutchev, Russia, Reason & Faith

Fyodor Tyutchev (1803-1873) was a Russian poet.

I need him here for a poem which says that you can not understand Russia with reason : you can only believe in Russia.

It’s a structure for the mind, a way to deal with reality.

 

Here are a few attempts to translate the quatrain :

Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone,
No ordinary yardstick can span her greatness:
She stands alone, unique –
In Russia, one can only believe.

You can’t understand Russia with your brain,
You can’t measure it with the standard instruments:
She has a particular status –
In Russia you can only believe.

Russia is understood not by the mind,
Nor by a common rule.
She has a special stature of her own:
In Russia one can only believe.

Russia cannot be understood by the intellect,
nor can it be measured by the common measure;
it has its own particular form,
you can only have faith in Russia

Don’t try to get it with your mind,
Don’t try to fit in your dimension:
There is no Russia of your kind –
Here your belief is only mention.

Russia is a thing of which
the intellect cannot conceive.
Hers is no common yardstick.
You measure her uniquely:
in Russia you believe!

 

Where do we use this structure? In love maybe. In some decisions, or changes (“Do I want to have kids with this person?”). When something’s too big for your own experience.

It’s a bit oriental, right? Let go reason : embrace…

 

Thanks for reading!

Joseba Eskubi

 

 

 

Умом Россию не понять,
Аршином общим не измерить:
У ней особенная стать –
В Россию можно только верить.

Astronomers, astronauts, Hopper’s letter and the banality of life

In an old French movie we hear :

• “Deux intellectuels assis vont moins loin qu’une brute qui marche”.
• (“two sitting intellectuals don’t get as far as a walking brute”)

I read this and I smiled, because, darn it, I’m one of the two sitting guys!

So, well, listen : I went to my mother’s house this week-end and I helped her in her gardening activities : I weed-eatered a big part of the garden to prepare it for tillage.

Happily, her string-trimmer was on batteries, and lasted like 15 minutes before I had to stop. Phewww.

I hate to “do” these things. I hate DIY and odd jobs. It’s awful! I feel sad, and dirty, I’m bored. I am terribly bored. I want to be after. I want to go home.

In a garden, I want to read a book, to have a conversation, to take photos, or watch the buzzing world & butterflies.

I’m a cat person – in MBTI I’m INTFJ and my enneagram is 5 : The Observer – I’m perceptive, I watch and think, instead of… doing things.

Reading, writing (in the morning), eating, sex (evenings), taking photos – my entertainment thing is NOT linked to displacement – which, for me, is a dumb way to kill the banality of life.

And but yeah, Hopper’s letter :

…how life works. It’s moving. Always moving, whether you like it or not. And, yeah, sometimes it’s painful. Sometimes it’s sad. And sometimes… it’s surprising.

Maybe I fear surprises? Why is that? Always moving? Nope.

Make mistakes, learn from ’em, and when life hurts you, because it will, remember the hurt. The hurt is good. It means you’re out of that cave.

Mmmmh I think I prefer the cave, now. Hurt not good. I’m OK!

Have a nice day!

What moves forward continuously/by stages

What moves forward continuously or by stages : a structure to watch for a moment.

• Does it move continuously or by stages all the time, continually?
• Do we find interruptions in the movement?
• Or plateaux?
• What about crescendoes & decrescendoes?
• What about accelerations in the movement? What types?
• Are stages announced by a sign?
• Do we have to prepare for each?
• Is the movement propelled, or does the movement energy comes from the inside?
• Is the movement linked with a blossom, a sheaf? Division?
• What about a combination of movements, like moving forward AND climbing?
• What about competition between two movements, side by side?
• Are stages just a growing, or a change of nature?

 

Where do we follow this? Music structures? Growing of plants, or animals? Geology? Revolutions, or other social movements? Love or lost of love? What kind of becomings do we find? Adulthood?

Thanks for reading!

 

Coming back, enriched

This is not much of an article, but you know me : when I have a pattern in mind, a little tool or the piece of a map, I have to write about it.

My pattern here is about someone who comes back, enriched.

Enriched with experience, of course…

1. You have a restaurant and your cook partner goes to France for a YEAR. He learned things, because when he comes back he’s different. He knows more things. He shows you. He has different ways…
2. You lover quits you, it’s a real break-up. She met someone else… But it doesn’t really work, thus she’s back in your arms… with new caresses and techniques. You notice. Does she notice you noticed?
3. A midwife quits your country to improve her skills in… India. What happens when she’s back?
4. You’re a painting teacher, and you… etc…
5. A son comes back home after he…
6. In a company, a manager comes back with team after a month with the CEO…

See my pattern? You can draw overthinking mind-maps about this :

• Do you have to go away to “come back”, of can you do it innerly? You’d have “enriched” by your researches, and “enriched” by the fact of being elsewhere…
• Is it dangerous and where is it?
• What about the noticement? You are suddenly and mysteriously enriched therefore others know something happened… somewhere else.
• Can enrichment be disguised, hidden into a false impoverishment?
• What is “resistance to change”, here, for both parts?
• The change is always happening because we grow up, so is this article about a disruption? Like : Not “more” or “more intense”, but “more complex”, or “different”?
• Why is this weaving comeback/enriched interesting? Why come back, after all? Enrichment elsewhere as steam to stay out and not coming back, ever. Enlightenment?
• What’s the difference between this and “move forward/enriched”?
• What are the risks and ways of failure, here?
• Is the comeback a way to compare? To triumph?
• What if the comebacker doesn’t realize how much it’s a big deal for whom discovers these squirting “new knowledge”?
• Do you know other stories?
• How to link this with “the return of the prodigal son” pattern?
• What the fuck do we do with returners? Admire them? Be jealous? Kill them? Smack’em go away where you come from, idiot, them? Unnoticing politely their progress?

Thanks for reading!

Strangeization of Mainstream : Soldiers (ABBA song)

Eight and final studio album : The Visitors.

“Soldiers” is a strange song, a frightening one. A strange 6/4 drum beat, gorgeous and modulating synth strings (appreciate the fantastic out of tonality/back to it B -> Bm while “In the pale moonlight”), a haunting guitar, a splendid round bass line…

Well, it’s the best Abba album for me. A twilight. They knew it would be the last. It’s this fantastic braid of abba-istic gorgeousity AND risky or sad harmonies and lyrics. Sick songs…

The tool here is a recipe :

1. Take a mainstream form : people expect something
2. Add complexity or unexpected moods you never find normally in THAT form

 

It’s an old structure : do not add intensity, but complexity. Where will you do that?

Thanks for reading!

 

Let’s call this Strangeization of Mainstream…

A Matter of Levers

Sick Songs of Abba & Bee Gees

F♯m Do I hear what I C♯m think Im hearing
F♯m Do I see the signs I C♯m think I see
D Or is it just fantas E y  F♯m
Is it true that the C♯m7 beast is waking
F♯m Stirring in his restless C♯m7 sleep tonight
In the pale moon B light Bm
F♯m In the grip of this c C♯m7 old December
F♯m You and I have reasonE to remember

Do I hear what I think I’m hearing
Do I see the signs I think I see
Or is this just a fantasy
Is it true that the beast is waking
Stirring in his restless sleep tonight
In the pale moonlight

In the grip of this cold December
You and I have reason to remember

Soldiers write the songs that soldiers sing
The songs that you and I don’t sing
They blow their horns and march along
They drum their drums and look so strong
You’d think that nothing in the world was wrong
Soldiers write the songs that soldiers sing
The songs that you and I won’t sing
Let’s not look the other way
Taking a chance
Cause if the bugler starts to play
We too must dance

What’s that sound, what’s that dreadful rumble
Won’t somebody tell me what I hear
In the distance, but drawing near
Is it only a storm approaching
All that thunder and the blinding light
In the winter night

In the grip of this cold December
You and I have reason to remember

Soldiers write the songs that soldiers sing
The songs that you and I don’t sing
They blow their horns and march along
They drum their drums and look so strong
You’d think that nothing in the world was wrong
Soldiers write the songs that soldiers sing
The songs that you and I won’t sing
Let’s not look the other way
Taking a chance
Cause if the bugler starts to play
We too must dance

Soldiers write the songs that soldiers sing
The songs that you and I won’t sing
Let’s not look the other way
Taking a chance
Cause if the bugler starts to play
We too must dance

Ikigai

Inner volcanoes/Inner glaciers

I found this little tool in a Walter Murch book (“In the blink of an eye”). Murch is a film editor, a kind of genius – he’s the guy who edited Apocalypse Now. He quotes an Ingmar Bergman paragraph, who explained something about… Igor Stravinsky.

Stravinsky wrote a lot about interpretation, performance.

As he had a volcano inside, he was preaching moderation. And then he couldn’t tame his volcano, and some concerts were… fiery – which was very surprising for his readers!

Murch tells that we seek balance in our lives.

1. Therefore when we realize we have a volcano somewhere inside us, we try to temper the eruptions!
2. And the one who has a glacier inside will advise passions unbridling.

The danger, tells Bergman, is to read Stravinsky the wrong way : to moderate the glacier, or to wind up the volcano.

I think of this Polish idiom : “One shouldn’t butter the butter”.

 

I knowww it’s not a tool, it’s a seed for overthinkers…

When do we have to think this way? What are our volcanoes? What are our glaciers? Do we handle balance? Do we do it the correct way?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

Gary Larson about choice

from Instagram: https://ift.tt/2JYQLfg

Let me fall into a quiet clean living space

Inner Travels are cheaper!

Some guys are astronauts, some other astronomers, right?

1. The guy who silently watch stars in his telescope sighs : he dreams he had the nerve to go.
2. When the rocket launches, the other guy swears he should have stayed on solid ground.

In French, for “on solid ground” we say “sur le plancher des vaches” : “On cows’ floor”.

One explores the world and is disturbed by events, insecurity, unknowns, surprises, propositions, and danger and fear – one wants to go home, dreams of silence.

One lives into a quiet clean living space and sighs – though telling they’re happy & shielded, one wants to hunt, know, meet and explore.

Let’s quote the always funny Schopenhauer :

Oh, dang!

What to do what to do?

Tango? Try one then another? Find a way to do both? Explore from your quiet place? An astronomer in a rocket? A quiet moving exploring solid shielded bubble?

Thanks for reading!

The Bourgeois Citizen

What’s the destiny of the bourgeois citizen, today, in Occident?

This citizen is hung between freedom and rules, between individuality and links, between pressures and liberty, between imagination and duties, between work and dreams.

It rubs and scrapes. There. In between.

There’s a fracture between the demands and the possibilities.

Impossible satisfactions.

Where are the levers?

unappeased brain ardors

unappeased brain ardors

 

 

“A Room with a View” & nuances

Early 1900. A young English (and passionate) woman visits Italy with her chaperon cousin. In the hotel she meets George, a quiet English young man who gives her a kiss. Back to England, she is to be married to Cecil, an inhibited tight ass aristocrat. Of course, the young man and his father find a house not far. “Lucy begins to tell a series of lies, mostly to herself, about what and who she really wants for and in her life”.

A Room with a View. I love this movie and I watched it many times. At the very beginning you understand that you’ll have fun with the shock between upper class English demeanor and the call of life of sunny Italy.

I was amazed how Forster (who wrote the book) draws footbridges within the two universes. Lucy’s family is wealthy and well educated, but fun-loving (her brother is a light hearted music lover). Forster is anticlerical but his priest character is very smart and funny.

You constantly feel the forces of life and daring possibilities moving strongly under the polite British maneers : the fiery writer character who loves to get lost in the city of Firenze, the cousin Charlotte who struggles between rules and what she likes (or liked), Lucy’s family, the way she plays Beethoven, etc. One of the pleasures of the film is to see the pile of lies needed to keep a “respectability”, until the whole thing crashes down…

This scenario should be studied a little more. I wrote this article because of this tool/structure :

1. Find two opposite universes A and B.
2. Show where are the doors and potential bridges between them.
3. Show possibilities, desires, will to discover and explore.
4. Show what part of B exists already in A (and vice versa).
5. Have fun.

This structure can be used for the two faces of yourself, two merging companies, a new couple… what else?

What about the “Ahh screw it!” moment?

Thanks for reading!

Passages, Modulations, Transitions

I love Bertrand Tavernier, a French movie director. One day, as I was watching a movie, something bothered me – but I didn’t find what it was. Then I found.

Transitions.

Movies are made of scenes, and this guy – within many other qualities – knew pretty smartly how to pass from a scene to another. It was so cleverly done!

Paul Valéry says that passages and modulations are the most subtle and fine and sharp secrets the of Arts.

Then he give examples from mother nature, a river, a stem, openings, mountings : there are thousands of types of transitions in nature and life, and it’s most of the time near to perfection.

You see me coming, right?

One could be interested in the “entre-deux”, the “between two”, the middle, the in-between. Studying transitions is another thing. It’s about the movement, choices maybe, combination, says Valéry, of action and matter.

I agree : talent for transitions is one very subtle secret of any art.

Where to apply this? Novels, poetry and writing? Modulations and other changes in music? Life (where to?)? If you work on a project (marketing, teaching, traveling), do you think about transitions?

• Link? Plug? What else?
• Split in two?
• You’re a teacher : where and what kind of transitions do you see?

Mhhh next time I’ll talk about EMERGENCE.

Have a nice day!

Fight Club vs Le Bon Bock – Rebellions

Hi everyone! You know me and my tendency to find common structures in things.

Yesterday I was reading about Le Bon Bock (1873), a painting (now in Philadelphia) by E. Manet, which was a big success after the dramatic events in Paris (the Paris Commune, 1871, see here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune). It’s been seen as a Type, a sort of philosopher, happy to be quiet, thinking, having a pipe and a good beer.

Then I got questions from my daughter about the Fight Club movie (1999), a huge source of disagreements at the time. I made a web page (in French : https://www.maison-page.net/FC.html), my theory was that the film was a way to dismiss, back to back these two attitudes :

1. Being a stupid “capitalist consumer” happy donkey, the unthinking bored dork whose motto is : “Buy things, obey the rules and shut up”.
2. Being a dumb nihilist : the excessive-behaviored “useless anarchist” who needs the system (because he wants to “change” it).

What’s the point?

Well, for me, both (the painting/the movie), each in its era, says the same thing implicitly.

Manet painted a guy who is refractory to any form of domination – showing a way out of the boring back-to-back Fight Club criticism. The world is maybe absurd, but there’s a third path, out of the opposition : dumb consumer/dumb rebel.

Waldgänger uses the forest is an article where I explained what is this “Forest Goer” : you stay in the world, but you don’t believe in its bullshit anymore. You step aside… inside your mind. You don’t “quit”, you don’t rebel : you watch and don’t believe in what to see.

Inner retreat. You need it sometimes!…

Thanks for reading!

Coding & Composing : What are your lost Kingdoms?

I call a Lost Kingdom an activity you loved in the past, and you don’t do anymore today.

For me it’s coding (I programmed a lot when I was maybe 15) and composing (from 20 to 25). Today, it’s over.

But :

• In 1993 I had to learn HTML because I wanted to have a clean code for my http://www.maison-page.net – it was delightful, and I have to say I felt this really weird feeling to put on these old shoes. Coding is building something, with immediate tests and gratifications. It’s a little mathematics too. Logic. It puts your brain in a grid of logic, building, making tools. I love it so much! De facto, my page was and stays very fast. Sorry, no PHP or Java here…
• Five years ago I bought a midi keyboard and began to work with GarageBand. It amazed me, gave me pleasure, and I composed maybe 20 or 30 new tracks. And I remember now… not the music, but the state I was in when I was working on them.

 

The idea of Lost Kingdoms leads me to this idea. Some activities push us in different states. You can play Lego, have a clever conversation for hours, write a poem, take your cam in the countryside, watch a mantis praying, build a cabin in your garden : it’s a “way of thinking”, and your brains knows and recognizes it. Your grow from this.

Lamenting on Kingdoms lost is useless, I agree. Go back to it. Or find new ones : learn an instrument, travel Italy, begin Chinese or horseback riding (question : why not simply “horse riding”??). Bake new cakes . Put your brain in new grids. It’s good, believe me.

 

Thanks for reading! Have a nice day!

 

Instagram : teget

 

 

“The beginning of all changes, the first step, consists in putting an end to a false activity” Zizek

The beginning of all changes, the first step, consists in putting an end to a false activity

S. Zizek

I like this quote (I did my best for the translation), because it shows what could be “another window”. Every book, every wise person, every self help quote will say : Do the first step, or don’t talk -> act, or dare, or move out of your comfort zone, etc… This one is like a… smart preamble.

Therefore it’s a little tool for us. Each time we know we have to move forward, maybe we have to think about it.

What is a false activity? Are we lured? Who judges that? How can I know? Instinct or Reason? How will we stop it? Is it the condition for a start? What if this activity was important?

Where to apply this tool? Job? Couple? Life? Hobby? Sports? Creativity?

How, then, will the “change” expected by Zizek unfold? Taking the place of the false activity? Growing from it? Seeing things which where hidden by its falsity?

What else?

Thanks for reading!

 

Instagram : rsa_dark

From Wrong Promises to Constellations Seeking

Be afraid of your own big statements! They are often linked & enchained to Big Promises. And promises are promises, it’s forbidden to be casual with these, right?

That leads to a funny assessment : what do we do with wrong promises? MMhh, double-bind, right? Whatever I choose, I’m done.

I shouldn’t have promised, because…

• It’s unreachable
• I was drunk
• It was stupid
• I put other people in it
• I changed my mind
• I have new elements
• It’s boring
• It’s a cage
• Haecceity (I’m dancing, I’m alive, I’m changing all the time)
• I forgot life is complex
• I’ve changed
• I held it for long enough
• I lied
• It’s not true to my ideas
• Adaptation
• Someone told me to think
• I got a proposition
• I want to undergrade my promise
• Assuagement
• Fuck it

 

Voilà. Fine. Now what?

Inspiration. Try to stay a creative thinker, find new ideas (and people who think like you), have good conversations around them, peel off clothes (after you’re done with the ideas). Connect to radioactivities. Ask questions. Twinkle. Be a firefly.

Have a nice day!

 

Instagram : teget

 

 

Organizing Withdrawal

In my 22th Chronicle I talked about Pasolini and Didi-Huberman (an Italian director and a French philosopher), about the fireflies – the persons who, in dark times, arrange, create, install glimmers, little lights.

It’s about resistance : it’s discreet, humble, unnoticed by the majority (who run on highways, into the big neon lights of consumerism & productivity). Fireflies. They’re in the woods, along small paths and trails…

Fireflies disappear maybe because we don’t know how to see them anymore, say philosophers, but, well, obviously, they really disappear…

Maybe there’s a way to “organize the retreat”? 

In military vocabulary, a withdrawal is a “type of military operation, generally meaning retreating forces back while maintaining contact with the enemy” (wiki). There’s something included in this : it must be organized, held, kept in order, “in contact with the enemy”. If you lose this idea, it’s rout.

I should find a book about this concept! Retreating seems a negative thing, but we are here on a field where we have to find the positive aspects. Military speaking, I found this list here about withdrawal – https://www.virtuescience.com/why-retreat.html :

• To pretend weakness
• To make time to observe enemy
• To make time to recover
• To make time to plan
• To lead enemy to more favourable area
• To evade attack
• To lessen force of enemy blow
• To delay battle to a more favourable time
• To defuse conflict
• To wear out opponent

When I was in my Napoléon time, I was fascinated by Ney, Marshal of the Empire. In Russia he commanded the “rearguard”. Interesting to study, if you fancy it…

 

What about fireflies?

Glow-worms’ signals are intermittent and fine, minuscule, fragile. The tiny is the place of resistance. A singularity which also could make the forgotten… intelligible again. A firefly as an example?

Organizing the retreat is to BE a firefly, or to help them, maybe also to show those who whistle there are no more fireflies that they are wrong. It’s about “something is staying”. They glow in darkness. If you don’t see them anymore, it’s because you don’t want to follow their signals…

But I’m sure you do see them. I’m sure you’re one of them…

When, when you’re in the Crowd, do you step aside to glow-resist? When you meditate? When you create? When you throw an invisimagical moment? When you do “a little of the contrary”? When you have some unexpected two seconds behavior? When you show a thing of beauty? When you don’t follow, you disobey? When you…

 “A thing of Beauty…”

You can also read :

Seeing to Finesse amid Chaos
The “Titanic Octet” state : stop panicking & arrange twinkles

 

Thanks for reading!