Carpenter or Marquetryier?

In an article about a group the journalist called one musician the carpenter and the other one the expert in marquetry.

• 

• 

It’s obviously an article subjet “in itself”, a tool, a choose your weapon one.

• A photographer likes textures, and another one thinks “composition”, lines and balance.
• A poet thinks “long story” and parts, another one thinks about how he would associate words to spark an interesting meaning.
• An orchestra director works on the big picture, and another one on timbre.
• A teacher sees a course as a progression, or focuses on elements which…

Wait, isn’t the ideal tool to choose to be the both, each time?

Rarely we are lucky enough to have a McCartney who writes the whole Hey Jude song, AND a Lennon who says hime to keep the great, confusing, fabulous nonandverysensical phrase : “The movement you need is on your shoulder”.

Pure marquetry!

Therefore we have to tango between details and big lines, between a spoken sentence and the scenario, between a minute and a life’s choice…

“The movement you need is on your shoulder”, hmmm what does that mean? It’s maybe the subject of another article, right?

Thanks for reading!

So let it out and let it in
Hey Jude, begin
You’re waiting for someone to perform with
And don’t you know that it’s just you
Hey Jude, you’ll do
The movement you need is on your shoulder
La-la-la, la, la
La-la-la, la, mmh

The Uncle Albert’s trick – juxtapose, juxtapose, juxtapose

ONE

“Uncle Albert – Admiral Halsey” is a Paul McCartney’s song from the album RAM (1971). Here’s a little text I found on songfacts :

McCartney combined pieces of various unfinished songs to create this; in the later years of The Beatles, they did this a lot as a way to put unfinished songs to good use. As a result, “Uncle Albert – Admiral Halsey” contains 12 different sections over the course of its 4:50 running time. This jumble of musical textures, comic character voices, sound effects and changing tempos turned off a lot of listeners, but many others thought it was brilliant. The song wasn’t released as a single in the UK, but in America it became McCartney’s first #1 hit as a solo artist.

Oh, lovely, isn’t it?

I love this song, because it prevents you from drowning after one minute of a “cool seventies slow” with noises, surprises, changes. A big smile gets bigger all along : “Is Macca silly?”. Yeah!

TWO

There’s a famous Medley at the end of the Beatles album “Abbey Road”. McCartney says that they wanted to create a sort of “opera structure”. Lennon despised it, though. It’s considered today as one summit of the group.

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

THREE

When you listen to that (structure, noises, guitars), you think about Pink Floyd, who created in the Seventies like the epitome of this structured, fractured tracks sticked together in long classical-music-like “movements”.

Some examples : Pink Floyd “Pigs” (11 mn), Supertramp “Fool’s Overture” (11 mn), Genesis “Firth of Fifth” (9 mn).

FOUR

The pleasure is bigger than the juxtaposition of tracks, you get pleasure in transitions (closing door, opening door), in contrasts, you get it in subsequent modulations, you build like a “little travel”, like through the rooms of a big surprizing house…

Lennon is funny, when he says it’s a very practical to dispose of music you don’t know what to do with!

Lennon is COOL because he uses this game, in a fractal way, in other songs like Did A Pony, sticking words together (like Dylan, he says) to see if something appears, AND sticking two different song together to make a new song.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juxtaposition : Throughout the arts, juxtaposition of elements is used to elicit a response within the audience’s mind, such as creating meaning from the contrast, an abrupt change of elements. In film, the position of shots next to one another (which montage is) is intended to have this effect.

FIVE

So here we are, on the path of Progressive Rock! But there are differences. Prog rock wants to build long pieces – maybe with “parts” -, and they are damned serious!!

McCartney and The Beatles constructions are more like… medleys. This + this + that. And they have fun!

https://afrenchtoolbox.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/the-juxtaposition-principle/

SIX

My principle/tool is :

• Choose the elements you already have and want to get rid of (things must probably be of the same nature (music + music))
• Juxtapose – stick!
• Be conscious of transitions
• Choose the order of parts
• Don’t take it too seriously
• Try, try, try

Whether you use it in poetry, novel writing, music, have fun!

Thanks for reading!

Here’s MGMT, 12 minutes of

Mike Oldfield, 24 minutes :

Dots & Arrows, States & Movements

This morning I read over My Archetype? Koala. With glasses…, an article about different boxes I stay in.

I’m a Taurus, Gemini ascending. In China I’m a Horse of Fire (please kneel)! In MBTI I’m an INFJ for almost sure. And I’m a 5, The Observer, in Enneagram.

In some of these disciplines, from the “Dot” you represent, they talk about directions, the forwards. My Taurus “becomes” Gemini. My 5 have inner tendencies, etc…

So I have an idea for a book – and as I will never write it, I give it to you :

Make a big LIST of your qualities and characteristics.

From EACH item, draw two arrows.

1. One is your TENDENCY, the natural evolution of the item. Yes it can be bad : poor you, what to do what to do!
2. Two is about EFFORTS you should make (it’s maybe the contrary of One but it doesn’t have to).

(because of course if you use your “name” (Scorpio ENFP blah blah) to be a lazy “I’m like that take it or leave it”, it’s wrong, you should go to hell now. Allez!

• If your brain is Black & White, you’re analytical, you obey rules and you use your reason – but sometimes you should use Colors, take risks and use your intuition and listen to your fantasies.
• If you’re slow, you can get stuck, but you could also choose to move fast (and you know you can).
• If you live in a place you could visit another country all in a sudden.
• If you’re churchy, everything linked to pleasure is more or less forbidden or guilty – shup it up today and you go girl!
• If you’re a Taurus you’re slow and you like your quiet home – go outside and take fast decisions. If you’re a Capricorn, well : you’re also a Wolf, go run with the wolves!
• If your life and brain is structured too much, use some tools to bypass your mess : alcohol, sex, and sounds!
• Shut up words : music will talk to you without them and… free something.
• What is forbidden? Why? REALLY?

See?

Ok what do you need to evolve? Someone else? A long time? A shock? Intuition? How is the path himself? What tools do we need?

You’re welcome!

Thanks for reading!

(sorry for my English, it’s getting worse and I hope you don’t laugh too much)

Photo : Eve Arnold

The Dam & The Bridge : “At the same time” as an Ambiguity Force

I own a book named “About Ambiguity in Architecture“, by Robert Venturi. The title itself is promising, right?

There’s a Wikipedia page about Ambiguity.

It’s not the “vague” meaning here, but a way to be this and that “at the same time”.

At a very simple level, we all understand that. A gallery is a room and a corridor, and a dam can also be a bridge. In the same way, a road can also be a frontier, right?

Then, when you have this “tool”, you can begin to play.

Ambiguity as a force, not a weakness.

• Is “double function” the same as “at the same time” (obviously not)? Explain.
• At the same time : function of signification?
• Double function now, or at different times?
• Something can be esthetically pleasing and useful at the same time, right? But what other and more surprising uses/couples can you invent?
• What if you show there’s an ambiguity? Why? How?
• How a contradiction could be a strength?
• What happens when something is tragic and funny?
• Can a friend also be a lover?

Hmmm?

What’s your field? Teaching? Photography? Poetry? Blogging? How would you apply all this? When is it a game? A path to progress? When is it a danger? Do you have to explain ambiguity? What if you don’t?

Have fun. And a nice day! Thanks for reading !

 

“The struggle of maturity is to recover the seriousness of a child at play”.
Nietzsche

Non Finito : Inchoateness in #Art

There’s a Wikipedia page about sculpture : Non Finito. We could begin with this.

Non finito is a sculpting technique meaning that the work is unfinished. Italian in origin, it literally means “not finished”. Non finito sculptures appear unfinished because the artist only sculpts part of the block, the figure sometimes appearing to be stuck within the block of material.

An unfinished piece of Art can be caused by the death of the artist, obviously, but now it’s also an esthetics purpose. You can imagine many ways of reading it :

• Showing you a little of the act of creation
• A failure, fatigue
• No more money/no more inspiration
• A refusal to decide it is “done”
• A way to say it could be improved indefinitely
• Impossibility to find perfection
• Something finished or “too beautiful” is exhausting, disagreeable
• It makes the audience think and wander within the “what could have happened”

 

In some fields, the “never finished” thing is constant : there are, for example, no finished Cathedrals in France. And I should explore it about Orson Welles, for example, who constantly seemed to be away and off with the idea of finishing and editing a movie.

Of course, there are problems with that concept. The “unfinished” thing can make the artist appear as a smart-ass doing is “non finito” thing. If it’s a trend to do this, what’s the point?

“This can be finished later” : some composers (or theater plays writers) constantly work on their stuff, and Proust, the French writer, is well known for his “quillings” : he added and added hundreds of little papers, adding fragments of texts to the existing text, and, as says Wikipedia : Proust died before he was able to complete his revision of the drafts and proofs of the final volumes.

In fact, it’s difficult for an artist to know, therefore to decide, when a piece of art is DONE. Some artists, like the painter Turner, decided to come back to work after a long time, and to put it further. Thus, you can finish is… many times.

Of course, this makes you think about the way it’s done. You can work back on a poem, even on a movie, but it’s harder to do it on an album – I read an interview of Peter Gabriel who was telling that he would love to redo some of his CDs. It can be remixed, remastered, but the record companies would unlikely allow him to change them really.

Mike Oldfield did it with Tubular Bells. He said in an hilarious interview that the original album was full of mistakes and flaws, so he redid it completely with a perfect sound and digital recording. Decades after the 1973 one, the new version was a success, but after a few months, the good old one was back on the shelves…

Tools & Dials :

What about YOUR art? How do you blog? How do you write? When do you know it’s over? Do you ask someone? Do you think about it if you paint?

Thanks for reading!

(So sorry for my bad English)

Instagram : pleasesoft

 

 

 

 

 

“Ways of hiding intentions”, the Humor example

I read an interview of François Damien, a Belgian actor who just directed his first movie, a comedy. He talked about the editing process, saying he was afraid of comedies, in which each part “has to be funny”, which is boring and dangerous.

He said, therefore, that each time he felt “a will to make people laugh”, he cuts the sequence, then concluding with this : “Humor must be an accident. Thus even you build it, you have to build it like an accident”.

You can also read :

Intention of effect kills effect

I do agree with him. When the audience notices you “want” to make them laugh, most of them won’t! Or maybe they do, if they’re polite, haha…

Tool :

What does that mean? That humor is like elegance (don’t show off, make it a feeling)? How will you do to “not show” you’re preparing something? A sudden thing (the accident type)? Something climbing under? A complexity, detected only by smart brains (and then you put your audience in your pocket)? What else? What’s the speed dial, in humor?

Have a nice day!

 

 

 

Dexterous Swinging Between Two Properties

…du balancement adroit de ces deux propriétés…
…of the dexterous swinging between these two properties…

I found this great tool, this “pattern” in a Paul Valéry‘s notebook. He was a poet and a philosopher and was, here, thinking about the process of consciousness.

(I won’t translate it here, but let’s say he talks about the swinging between consciousness and unconsciousness, the first one as an engine to drive the production of the other one).

If you’re a psychoanalyst, it’s interesting, you’ll try to link this with Freud’s theories, etc. But with my cheap structuralist mind, I operate on it – to extract its minitool :

dexterous swinging between these two properties

Swinging means you go from one thing to the other one, and vice-versa. Dexterous means you know your doubletool, you are a pilot of it. You just have to find the field where to use this.

• Reason and Instinct?
• Skills and Attempts?
• Talking and Listening?
• Passion and Casualness?
• Fast and Slow?
• Following orders (or rules) and Following your mind?
• Control and Let go?
• Fight and Flee?

 

Find other examples. You have now your two “aspects”.

Then think about a “dexterous swinging” between the two.

Then, apply your wooden tool to your field : photographer, poet, soldier, writer, blogger, designer, architect, gardener, who knows… What do you find?

You are GOOD in playing your TWO FACETS. What does that mean? How do you play that? Can you teach it? How do you think it? Can you apply your method to other fields?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Instagram : ashleymcky

 

Your Field : Topology & Radars

What’s your field? You’re a CEO? A poet? A photographer? A blogger? A cook? What do you do, what do you explore, what is your field, your… territory?

You probably like to “Think about your art”, where things are not that obvious. A map is not the territory, but it helps you : “A model is a lie that helps you see the truth”. Why would you study your own field? Make progress? Extend your possibilities? Detect dangers or mistakes? You feel stuck? Going too fast? Other reasons?

Do you think about your art when you’re working on it, or after? Alone or with another person? What happens?

You can also read :

• think-about-your-art-or-how-to-kill-your-i-know-my-job-pinned-mindsets/
• a-model-is-a-lie-that-helps-you-see-the-truth-h-skipper/

When you work, what radars should you use? What model? Do you draw? Do you imagine? In fact, it’s a good opportunity to use topologic or other fields vocabulary, and tools…

• If you dig, what is a lode? How do you find it? What do you do with it?
• What if you were stuck in the narrow neck of an hourglass? What does that mean? Do you have to wait? To push?
• If you find grains and rocks, are there a pain, a chance, a luck?
• What could be a compass, in your field? A magnifying glass?

Other ideas of tools to use to study your own activity?

Take these jobs : clockmaker, a topology specialist, a miner, a gold digger, an entomologist. List their tools, their concepts. Then apply on your field. How do they use it? What happens? A nugget? A change? A new map? Vectors? Paths?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

When you deeply desire a hard-working loneliness – but

We all of us have been there, even you, bloggers, right? :

You are busy at work, or you’re at a party, or you’re on a date.

You would LOVE to be totally wise & oriental and “fully live the moment”. But you are not.

You have things to do, but you deeply desire a hard-working loneliness, well you will at least have all the time necessary to : write your article, explore your ideas, paint, or begin your first novel.

Yeah, you see me coming : When you have the chance to be in this moment, alone, quiet, with a few hours free, you… do nothing. You procrastinate. You wander, take a nap, have a lazy poolsplash, you don’t even try to begin (or if you do, your hand stays in the air holding its pencil while daydreaming about elephants or printers. Strange statue!).

And therefore you are a bit angry against yourself because you spoil your time, and you feel this ugly emptiness I would call self-wtf.

Dial/Lever : What does that mean? Are we strong inside but lazy in action? What could we do to fix that? Discipline? Daily same-hour schedules, like Stephen King and other writers? What if we decided to stop everything “at once” when we wish to have time. Abandon job? Date goodbyeing? Party flight? Just to write at once? Why not. What are YOUR solutions?

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : itspeteski

 

Sad Heart, Merry Spirit : Chronicle 9

I read in a Claude Roy diary, as he’s around 70 years old, that he would like to reach this season, this state : “Le temps du cœur triste et de l’esprit gai” – the time of the sad heart and the merry spirit.

Here I have a vocabulary problem : is “gai” happy, merry, gay, jolly? I don’t know. I chose merry.

But I’m very fascinated by this “goal”, from an aged author I liked very much. As if he knew he could never heal his heart. But, knowing this, building his own happiness, a “merry spirit”. This touched me, a lot.

 

Just read an article evoking Robert Osborne, a TCM Television Presenter who just died at 87 years old. It is told that Olivia de Havilland had with him :

One phone call a week, for decades.

Awwweeee! (-> this was the sound of my merry spirit). I wish I had a friend so close that she would call me once a week until I die at 87. Like a whatever-happens-I-want-to-talk-with-you. Awwweeee again (my merry spirit if very merried by this idea).

 

I read (but where, is it Casanova or Jünger?) about the Venice Purse, a knack which says that when you have to go to a “dangerous” place (which was Venice at the time), you needed to have two purses, one with a little money in case you’re robbed, attacked, knocked out, and another one with the main part of it – well hidden.

It’s just funny to know, but then you realize that when you travel abroad you really have to think about what you do with your passport, the amount of money you have with you, etc. I wonder what this concept can tell us about life in general : Be cautious? Watch the exits? Don’t put all your eggs in the same basket? But also : GO to places where you need to think about the Venice Purse, right?

Venice, in French, is VENISE. A perfect word to say : Venizzz. Elegant as a swan, right? Venice is more like braking at the end. No good. French better, sorry.

 

Elmore Leonard says somewhere about novels writing : “If it seems written, I rewrite”.

What a beautiful idea, right? Writing Style Dissimulation Efforts.

And a paradox many artists know well : work, work, work, until nobody sees you worked. It’s an interesting goal, and the path itself is enthralling too. How to reach?

There’s a balance to find, I suppose. It means you have the eyes to know when it’s not OK, when it is OK. Experience.

Well I have a vocabulary problem again. When do you use “enthralling“, dear? Can you say that about a person? How is it radioactivitied? Thrilling? Fearful? Exciting? Or more like “plainfully satisfying”?

 

I watched the Iowa episode of Aerial America yesterday. It’s amazing how many times I hear “French” in these. Detroits and Illinois were “frenchised” words, and how Iowa is a piece of this territory called Louisiana, the US bought to the French 214 years ago.

These TV programs tell me how BIG are the United States. Tonight I’ll watch Illinois, following the path of Bill Bryson’s book across America in car (cf Fixin’to traveling in the USA).

 

OK, it’s too long. I seize the run-up since a few weeks (is “seize the run-up” a good title?), like making the most of an epistolary energy…

I stop here. Next Chronicle next week. Here’s le hug by Ze French :

Have a nice day!

 

Knacks for #creativity & Art Homework

I told my daughters a few tricks when in school they have to invent something and have no idea, in Art for example.

The first one is to play with a face. You can draw this and that, a bridge or a house or a butterfly, that’s cool, but if you take a face and make it weird, you’ll have a bigger impact. Like melting, or too big eyes, or a mouth on a forehead. It’s too easy : one day she copy-pasted her own eyes on her cheeks, 8 times like a spider, and got a 20/20 (you’d say A+ in US, I think), best note of her class.

The other trick is meta. “If you don’t know what to tell, tell about you not knowing what to tell”. So one day she had to write a story and had not clue of a beginning of any story. So she wrote something about a teen in a classroom writing a story. Then… the rest came fantastically easily.

Well, if you don’t know what you could blog about today, tell us about you about blogging, or your blank page, OK?

Thanks for reading!

 

Both Sides NOW

I begin this article with this fascinating song by Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now. The singer wrote it when she was very young, and I find interesting that she, with great maturity, talks about both sides of life, like… knowing the disillusions of life before they really come…

One of the little “structures” of my blog is made of this : if there’s a side A, I’m interested immediatly in the side B (means : the contrary of the other one). For example, if I read a great quote, I often wonder if there’s another one saying the contrary.

But, also :

I like to imagine a third path. Something “outside the box”.

After Side A or Side B, one of the good game is to imagine a third side using BOTH. Maybe I hate choices, so when I have to choose between two things, I often choose both of them. So there! Voilà ! Et toc !

We are constantly moving, mutating, changing, chasing things. We are like inventive machines, mutable engines, trying to connect to reality, to… grapes of possibilities. Labels don’t work : they fall. We just fear boredom, which is death.

Being mature, but also keeping having “new eyes” for things. Steady, but unpredictable. Writing a lot, but casually. Weaving opposites in an interesting braid. Being INTJ but also INFJ (feeling, but thinking). Being visual, but with words. Understanding that action needs to dare, but knowing that it’s OK to wait. That you have to be positive, but accept your part of shadow. That in front of a problem there are many ways to choose from. For self help, I’ll always look for the “It’s always more complex” books. Baking two cakes is often the solution. We are fast, but we are slow. We are smart, but sometimes idiots. We watch Marvel movies, and also Kurosawa. We read Deleuze’s philosophy books, and also Peanuts. We want to live !

It’s a real trait. You have it too, right? Or… Maybe I’m too French? Tell me.

Have a great day!

Photography : Dieppe in Normandy

 

Both Sides Now

Joni Mitchell

Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all

Moons and Junes and ferries wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I’ve looked at love that way

But now it’s just another show
You leave ’em laughing when you go
And if you care, don’t let them know
Don’t give yourself away

I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From give and take and still somehow
It’s love’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know love at all

Tears and fears and feeling proud,
To say “I love you” right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I’ve looked at life that way

But now old friends they’re acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed
Well something’s lost, but something’s gained
In living every day.

I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all

I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all

Readiness & Availability VS Habits & Goals

Just seeds, ideas. Fight them. Or dance.

The habit pulls apart : you know something so much that you’re cut from it. The force of habit separates you from things.

The goal you’re staring at… can cut you from what’s happening now, next to you. Each time you say “I must”, maybe you lose something.

Whitehead says : “We think in generalities, but we live in detail”

Readiness & Availability, these are two English words I love together. Habits, Goals and Rules, they tend to kill me. French casualness? What happens NOW?

You can read : The Propensity of Things

Thanks!

Undug Fields of a Second Talent

A few years ago I read a great book by Patti Smith, “Just Kids”, she was a very young woman coming to New York City at the end of the sixties, and meeting Robert Mapplethorpe. It was a surprisingly tender though intense book! There were like two creative babies.

Smith was then sure to be a poet, and Mapplethorpe a graphic artist. They had a love affair, created together “mixed arts” like little totems or dreamcatchers, and the end of the book shows three changes :

• Smith understands she should sing her poetry
• Mapplethorpe understands he is a good photographer
• And that he is gay

The rest is the legend, of course.

This article is about this mild “Wrong Way Up“, when you’re sure to be good somewhere, ignoring that your golden road is elsewhere, in another life, another art, another discipline, another field.

I remember one day a Russian instagrammer. She was pretty and her main activity was to take selfies, or posing as a model. From time to time, say 5% of her photos, she took pictures of what she saw : trees, people, skies, streets. And well, you can guess : these pictures were AMAZING. Instagram is full of good photographers, but to have a real original sense of photography, color, moods, is very rare. It was so good that I wrote her something like “Okey your body’s great, but you have a fantastic EYE for photography, do you realize it?”. She answered very kindly that it was just for fun, not her field, and that she was a model.

Curiously, I wonder about that “trait” about me. I have this blog you’re reading now (It’s really an exercise (I’m French), a therapy, a way of standing, etc), and also a casual Instagram account. Both are quite unsuccessful because I post with too much diversity.

See : Constantly Random is an Instagram Flaw.

All this is very humble, though this blog is very important for me. A friend of mine has many times tried to convince me that I should focus my energy on my pictures.

This dial is disturbing to watch. What about you? Do you have a field, undigged (OK undug) and opened to the winds? Are you too casual with a hobby you could be better at? Why would we ignore this? Who could we ask? What do we have to do to understand, to wait? To meet a revealing someone?

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : bodylanguage

Fecundity of Limits

If you’re a creative person, you encountered the “Fecundity of Limits” concept, obviously. Fruition. I’d distinguish :

1. the limits you choose yourself
2. the limits given to you by someone in charge
3. the limits you encounter while you’re building your stuff.

Choosing your own limits is such… a pleasure. It’s about preparing your work. Paint something with 3 colors only. Write a book in a month. Travel, but no more than 5 miles a day.

Limits coming as instructions can be a relief. Many actors talk about the freedom you have while you have to obey strict orders. It’s about unfolding inside a frame : perfect for certain personalities.

The limits you encounter are parts of the building process. Your technical shortfalls is a good example. You then move forward “within” your capacities – trying maybe to push them back. The budget can be a limit. You’ll discover the others while you work : It’s a stream, a current!

Tool : Choose, change them, ask someone for limits (as seeds), think about them while your create, and then… forget your feedback : you’re in the flow, a good one!

Thanks for reading! Work well! Travaillez bien !

Working with what you have… today

When I was 25 I complained to a friend of mine who was 40, a painter. I was composing music slowly and in a bitter way because I was missing instruments, equipment, etc. I had a Macintosh, a mic, a synth, a reverb and a flute.

In art or life, sometimes we feel stuck, therefore we don’t do anything, because we “miss something”, we don’t have enough of this or that : we just wait, bored like a lonely koala in the taiga.

So we just “watch a goal”, a state or a line where, at last, we will be able to begin.

THEN we will have enough time, enough money, enough energy to do it!

I will… paint, compose, be happy, invent, write, blog, learn, the day I will have this or that, blah blah blah…

This is procrastination, laziness & threnody. Sometimes it’s useful to wait, though…

My friend told me I was silly, and, as a painter, that if she only had a pen and paper she would work. “Do something with your flute and your keyboard, instead of complaining, silly!”.

Okey. Watch around. Pick up a tool. Begin. To begin : begin, as they say. Now. That’s true!

…unless you don’t work for another reason, using this syndrome to do nothing. Rhoooo this is baaaad!

Bonne journée!

Instagram : taranewton1

The “Titanic Octet” state : stop panicking & arrange twinkles

The beginning is this : when you’re in a group, in a system, when everyone panics and runs, trying to save the situation from a complete wreckdisaster.

Imagine you’re working in a store in December. It’s crowded like hell. You need forty employees to make it work, but there’s a flu epidemic and you have ten persons on board. Donc, so, yes : it’s a disaster and everything is falling apart. Everybody runs to (try to) save the day. Mais c’est la catastrophe !

It can be fun, funny, at least sarcastically funny, right? When people begin to laugh (inside their belly, or really) because it’s all crazy, right?

This article is about AFTER that state. When you now know that the boat will sink, you and your colleagues stop trying to plugseal all holes. You take your instruments and you all quietly begin to play.

When you can’t save the situation, and after you laughed watching many little panics and disasters around you, there’s an understanding : you reach a quiet place where you feel like a zen tree in the middle of a storm.

Then, in this calm, you arrange sparkles where you can : a smile, a five-seconds quiet dialog, a treasure. You do your 2% of good thing in the middle of the catastrophe. It’s not about resistance anymore, it’s about humming, life poetry and micro-elegance :

…offering glimmering moments for those who can notice it…

Breathe! Thanks for reading!

Arthur Rimbaud & Glenn Gould : The “Big Less” Temptation

Rimbaud was a French poet who had a huge influence on Arts and Literature, but stopped writing at 21. He became a merchant, mostly in Africa (in coffee trading, for example!), and died at 37.

Gould was a Canadian pianist who stopped giving concerts at the age of 31 and became an eccentric hermit in recording studios.

Different destinies, but a similar pattern : at one moment, they stopped completely something they succeeding in, they closed a door.

Rimbaud stopped writing. Many wondered why : The artist had said everything? He wanted to explore another face of his personality? He had a secret wound? Dead wordsourcespring?
Gould didn’t stop making music, but never came back playing in concert, and he explained himself about that.

I write this because I wonder if sometimes we should consider a similar flip. A combination of levers & dials, studying what’s good in our life, considering that insisting (even in different ways) could be, from now, a failure : it’s maybe time for a closure?…

 

The Big Less is about considering to close a part of you which… works. Why would you do that, like “I park it”? Why would you stop what works? You feel you miss something? It’s too easy? You reached a plateau? I works but the wrong way? You lost a goal? You need to experiment to enrich? Fresh air? You need to get smaller to go faster? A fresh start to go elsewhere? You’re afraid of some ticking-over routine? Is it a bad idea? Why?

And who knows what will happen after some years? Maybe you’ll realize you needed the big disturbance of it? Maybe a bigger room will open? A secret path will appear? Maybe you’ll make good Bach records, or trade coffee?

Have a nice day!

Wishes, Willpower, Drive : the “I want to eat the world” state

The “I want to eat the world” state is a strange disease. I think we all cross this state at different parts of our life :

• When you’re a teen.
• When you’re about 20 years old.
• When you really fall in love for the first time.
• When you ineffectively want to express something through art or writing.
• In midlife crisis after you watched your life and said “Now what?”.
• Under intense boredom.

You feel FILLED of energy, wishes, willpower, drive, but there’s also a huge frustration.

This frustration comes from a powerlessness, an incapacity to find a way to unfoldblossom this strength. You want to eat the world, but how?

Because :

• You have the drive but not the purpose or the goal.
• You have the drive but not strength enough (or any more).
• You have the drive but you’re stuck in the cages of your own life.
• You don’t have enough time, or money, or anything : you lack.
• You never find where to apply this energy.
• Everything you try fails.
• Your heart is burnt to the ground and your tired.
• You feel you’d need some help, but you get zero.
• I boils inside without any apparent way out for this steam.

So what now what? Well, nothing! Either you find, or not. Try ways to explore, to steampipework something. Begin things and watch. Ask around you. Invent goals for this energy.

If it fails, well, just watch and feel it boiling inside. That’s the acceptorian oriental way…

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : bodylanguage

 

 

 

 

Writing in another language

I’m French. I write in English. Why? Here’s what I see :

• Blogging in English forces me to me short and simple.
• So it’s like pendrawing instead of oil painting. Water instead of wine.
• I constantly check (and thus learn) vocabulary.
• So I have to think about the French vocabulary too.
• I am not distracted by any search of French “Style”, and it’s a relief.
• I quit my well known ground, to find another babyway to walk on another soil.
• Writing in French is like “too easy”, it flows fast (as I type) from ideas to words.
• Writing in English is more like building a little plane-model with unusual words. It’s slower, and a pleasure too.
• There’s a playing child pleasure into it.
• As it’s not my “tongue”, I feel really more chilled out when I write here.
• Therefore I can focus on my little tools, not “How to say that in French properly”.
• I invent words with a smile.
• I make mistakes on purpose… with a smile.
• I know and feel that I miss something, and I have to ignore it, and let go.
• I can speak English, but I’m also quite lost in it. I explore, then.
• I learn constantly about American culture, just by watching the way this language expresses things.
• Idioms are different, and each time it’s like finding a jewel.
• It’s probably an exercise for “one day write in French”, with new eyes and muscles-of-the-brain gained from writing in another language.
• It can also be a way to voluntarily lose bad habits in my own language.

 

Beautiful books are always written in a sort of foreign language, said Marcel Proust. That’s a great seed for the mind, don’t you think? It’s about style. When I’ll “write back” in French, I’m sure I’ll be richer, then, because of my English exploration years…

Merci!

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