Bloggers/Writers : Let it rest!

Bloggers/Writers : Let it rest!

I read an interview of Arcadi Volodos, a pianist.

He says that when he works on a record, he makes it during the night. When it’s done, the tapes are abandoned for a few weeks.

Then he listens to them, weeks later, with a new ear. Sound montage, then? The less possible.

When you write on something, it must flow. The beginning is sometimes hard, but then, here you go! When it flows, it’s so good, right?

Si vous pataugez dans la semoule (if you “wade in semolina”), you get nowhere (fast or slow). Let it rest, then. Forget it. Write some else. Go for a walk (these times : around your room).

Drafts are gold. Forget about all of them. Let them rest. For weeks.

One day you open something, you…

1. wade in more
2. have a spark

 

I don’t know how it works. Maybe you have a new eye and you wonder how you could be stuck like that. Maybe it’s magic. Maybe your brain works alone when you sleep, haha. The reason why it works sometimes is a mystery, there you and me don’t care about it. So there.

 

Have fun!

https://afrenchtoolbox.wordpress.com/tag/writing/

Don’t think about the color “Blue” for a minute…

ONE

Let’s imagine I dislike George Michael. I hate his music. So here I am building a web page about that : “I hate GM !”. I write daily articles about everything I hate, his nose, his voice, his life, etc.

Until I realize I hate George Michael and I’m thinking about him all day long. I harvest things for my blog. I hunt. I spit words. I am obsessed by someone I don’t want to think about. Smart !

TWO

Don’t think about the color “Blue” for a minute…

Mmmhhh ?…

THREE

As I’m constantly reading slices of books, I one day read something in my sofa, from Nietzsche, and two hours later, in triangles of sun (see picture below), from André Suares (I will find the quotes soon and put it there). Both were talking about people banning sex from their life. They were both noticing that when you do that, you have like a black hole in the center of your brain, thinking about sex constantly.

Work for a Temperance Movement, become an activist : you will be in a position where you talk about… alcohol and sex constantly !

Tool :

If you hate George, just don’t pay attention to him. Breathe. If you want to think about the color blue, think of it, it’s not that dramatic. If you want to have a drink, just relax and have a glass of wine. If you need peace, don’t build a block castle : listen to some Royksopp and dance with what’s around. Dialog. Or not. Solemn drama or dolphin casualness ?

I suggest Coming Home.

The Flight Excites the Hunter

 

 

“Let’s pretend” and other as if games

Kids made a hut in the garden. They joyfully scream stories like “Now we’re pirates ! We’re on a boat yeyy ! Oh, look : a whale is coming !”. Then it’s a castle in the desert, a cow-boy fort, etc.

When we become adults, we love and we have to play that game, differently. Instead of pretending to be pirates, managers gabbledygook empty glorious words to a groupe of inner-sarcastic employees. Instead of yelling in the garden, two friends rejoining after a long time fight and misunderstanding suddenly hug and cry together, forgetting their ruins, sobbing projects about strength and sparkling cleanliness. Friends again and forever ! And just spend five minutes in a political meeting, just to taste this energy…

As if, pretending, call it what you want. We all do that, and when we speak this way, we’re like kids : “Yeah, we are strong !”, “Yeah, we will beat them all”, “Yeah, it will be simple and beautiful !”, “Our company is the best !”. Hip hip hip hourra. Do you feel the heat in your heart, when you’re on that path ?

Tool :

Uplifting ! That’s a good english word I learned recently. We all need it from time to time, after a crisis. Suddenly it makes things simple, or more likely d-o-a-b-l-e. Of course it’s not simple, nor even doable, probably, but we have to overshadow this. Let’s pretend we’re strong and OK and that we are on the good path ! Reality sweeping under the carpet…

The secret subtility behind this is : How much we all screaming kids BELIEVE in this shit ? Reason, we all know in the deep, is there in parenthesis. “Dinner is served, kids !”, we all fail, and snap, there’s no castle in the desert, it’s just our f… garden.

Why do I think of Goya, at this time ?

“Dreams of reason produce monsters”

 

Sudden Absurdity Syndrome

We all are the same : we need to be busy !

Some of us work so much, though, that they don’t have to think about it. Some of us just watch anything on TV, très bien, très bien. In France they say “Je me vide la tête” (“I empty my head”), which is probably necessary, right ?

But yeah, passion, it happens. You plunge into a universe and you let you got eaten by it.

Some people can collect anything around a pop group (Beatles, Yes, Dylan ?) or a historic event (from la Révolution Française to Alamo or Gettysburg), a composer (Puccinophilia ?). Good and interesting way to keep you busy !

To build a “things” collection is also a perfect activity. You explore, you read, you collect, you compare, you write in forums,  you watch your collection : coins or stamps, forks/knives/spoons (pick one), old magazines about cactus or guns. Even wine corks collecting works !

I used to collect stamps when I was a kid. It was merely a social thing : some kids around me were doing the same : sharing was cool ! The stamps… well…

One day, I watched my stamps, in three big albums. And in one second, plop, all of it became absurd – I realised what I was doing : collecting colored paper rectangles with teeth shapes on the border, normally used to send letters. Not much.

Every human activity, you’re right, can be reducted to absurdity : just watch what it is in reality. After all, soccer is made of two dozens men in shorts running on grass after a balloon…

Tool/Dial :

Pray to be spared by the feeling of realising what you’re doing. If you manage to keep it out of your brain, you’re safe. You’ll be comforted by people on elegant forums who do the same. Combinations, there, are very cool : “Chairs and Coffee”, or “Knives and Daisies”, whatever. It seems cool, no ? Good !

Beware, because if you really watch the eye of people you meet, you will probably see the absurdity sparkling in it. People are polite, but they laugh inside, and this sarcastic invisible light could really contaminate you :

“Oh you collect spoooons, that’s sooooo greaaaat !” (hahaha – or wine corks, show me all of them).

(of course, this happens because these people don’t really understand WHY collecting this shit is interesting for you : stamps are beautifully engraved, etc). A knife, to cut things. WTF.

The Sudden Absurdity Syndrome is when the bubble explodes. You realise where you are, on this planet, collecting “screwdrivers and lemon juice”; you like to take and share pictures of this, and, even if the screwdrivers are perfectly crafted in Titanium 2.0, it plopped in your head (“WTF am I doing ?”) and you’re done. You’re done. You’re megadone.

The same blindness is in everyone of us for other things, love, job, sports. I watched, a few years ago, a kitesurfing guy, at the beach. He was good ! But later I saw him sitting on the sand, like stunned. He was probably just tired of jumping in the air over the sea like that, but I imagined the Sudden Absurdity Syndrome. “WTF am I doing ?”, etc…

Our Sysiphian condition is infinite.

For myself…

After all, what am I doing here ? Collecting shelves of books I won’t (for the most part) read, and here, blogging ideas as “tools”, in dozens of articles nobody read…

 

Bag of Knots

One day you realise that there’s a day behind you, which you don’t understand at all. A day full of arguments or misunderstanding or bad behaviour or errors. It’s a Bag of Knots. Un “Sac de Nœuds”, voilà. You, with your ability of thinking and deconstructing and put things in order, you dream or you think that you maybe could open the Bag of Knots and watch the knots inside and pick one or two of them. There are strings, visible strings. Knots. Dark places and cores in the middle of the knots. You could fix that, after all. Deknotting by deknitting. Getting things better, and straight. With enough time and method, you could do it. But you don’t, because it’s a Bag of Knots. Let it be. Sitting here in the shadow. Full of misunderstandings. Give up. It’s too much, too complicated. You could fix it, but you won’t. It is what it is. You don’t have the steam. You want to watch in front of you. You don’t want to deknot. Let the bag closed. There’s no deknotting.

(OK, it’s “unknot”, I’m french, sorry 🙂

Tool : Some problems can not be “fixed”. Stop examining. Just draw a black circle on your map. You’ve been there and you failed. What doesn’t kill you…

#oldchairs #chairs #chaises

 

Une Américaine à Paris…

OK I’m french. My english is a frenglish, it’s rusty and wobbly, et voilà. Try me, though. I’ll do my best. I promise. If sometimes it’s too bad, just laugh at me or roll you eyes.

I was once in Paris with an American lady, who seemed constantly amazed by the pace of the city, the taste of la baguette (is French bread really that better ?), cheeses and saucisson, the light on the roofs of Paris, the open skies over La Seine and the way kids are running laughing playing together after school in a warm evening, after school, in le Parc Monceau.

There wasn’t a day without me saying “You knowwwww…”, the only way I found to tell her that, errr, we are cool, we don’t play the rules that much, we like to do nothing, the french wine is cheaper than in California, and we love the word “promenade”…

Woody Allen explained this a little in his movie Midnight in Paris. Owen Wilson was a bit like my friend : American, but fascinated by the douceur de vivre of France.

I would like to thank John Oliver for his little hilarious speech about France : http://www.newyorker.com/culture/sarah-larson/vive-john-oliver

“France is going to endure. And I’ll tell you why. If you are in a war of culture and life style with France, good fucking luck!” – good example with the croquembouche “That is a French freedom tower!”.

Yum.

What’s up ? The Sky. So don’t #prayforparis : just come, breathe, venez visiter la France !

 

“Drunkenness as a triumphant irruption of the plant in us.”

“Drunkenness as a triumphant irruption of the plant in us.”

Gilles Deleuze