How to build an Anthology?

How to build an Anthology? #Jazz

Maybe you remember, I wrote an article about the fact that one book-lover could read only prefaces.

Imagine you have three hours free in a place full of books. You can pick one, or you can pick two dozens, reading prefaces only. That’s what I’d do, I think…

Yesterday I bought a book, “Jazz en 150 Figures”. It’s a great hardcover book, not about stars of this music, but about creative jazz.

This, alone, could be an article :

Choose a field (poetry, photography, history, etc), and don’t look for stars, but for creators. I reckon that they’re sometimes the same – but let’s focus on lesser-known explorers.

The foreword is one paged. The author asks What is an anthology? – to tell us, of course, what his book is NOT.

1. It’s not a dictionary, concerned to be exhaustive – and being objective, boring.
2. It’s not a kind “Who’s who“, telling for example that a tired aged musician is as great as himself as a young explorer.
3. It’s not an Almanach of an elite, made from a list from stardom status.
4. It’s not a chronological retrospective.
5. It’s not a ecumenical overview submitted to different kind of quotas.
6. It’s not a chory monstrosity which tries to make an impression.

So here I am reading this book randompagely, discovering names like Jimmy Lions, Grachan Moncur III or Roscoe Mitchell… with YouTube.

Tools here are multiple :

• Buying a good anthology, as a map do discover a universe you don’t know at all, or almost.
• Thinking, when you build something, about what it should not be.
• Reading prefaces only why not? Go to a library, then.
• Which domain to dig, for creators?

OK, I’m now writing something about Ran Blake – you know him? Me neither!

Thanks for reading!

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/50-greatest-jazz-albums-ever/

https://www.jazzwise.com/features/article/the-100-jazz-albums-that-shook-the-world

https://www.senscritique.com/top/resultats/Les_meilleurs_albums_de_jazz/193105

Miss Delicate Spider, Page 31

“One or Six but not Two” (the buying bookseller dilemmas)

Booksellers or often books buyers. They are visited by editing companies sales representatives, who present them books they’ll sell a few months in advance.

For example, these weeks of September I order Christmas books…

This is something you can teach (there are a few “principles”), but mostly, you need a few years of experience to be a good buyer.

Flaws are obvious : you can order too many books, or too few. You can have a crush for a book which dismally fail, or you can hate a… future hit.

When you order books, you logically have to think about… where you’ll put the books when they are delivered later.

You order none if the book is impossible, or too complex for your customers, or… if you really disagree with the subject – which is rare, because most booksellers have this phrase in mind (often told as a Voltaire quote but it is not) :

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it

1. You order one if you need one on his shelf : you have to have it, but you don’t need to “show” it on a display (specialized books, unknown poets…) or you don’t have the room.
2. You can show books on long lecturns (then you order 4 or 5 – one on the shelf (you HAVE TO), the others in sight), or on tables (then it’s a stack : 6 or 8), or on front displays for big authors or probable success books : 10, 20 or more.

 

Booksellers have private jokes. One is “You never order two!”. Why? Because it would be one on the shelf and an orphan volume you effing don’t know what to do with.

In fact, you sometimes do it (when you have to put it aside for you or a customer, when you’re pretty sure you’ll sell one quickly, etc)…

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20, 25…

Never 7 or 11 or 13, or 17 books ordered. Why? Who knows?

I endeavor to once order 7 books during each appointment I have with a salesman. It’s a lucky charm, and it makes people smile. “Seven are you suuure?”. Yep!!

My instinct knows when to do it : in front of an improbable lovely book, the oblique one, the unexpected one. This job is very cool, you know?

One or Six, not Two, nor Seven. Could be a rhyme, right? In which other territories do we have “holes” like these. Numbers, but “you’re not supposed to use this one”. 13th stairs? What else?

Thanks for reading!

(Picasso : Boy with a Pipe)

 

 

The Reader

I took this picture around 1990. I suppose I vicariously felt like this guy, reading alone in summer. Digital photography didn’t exist at this time. I “burnt” the whites on purpose : I love this error-effect…

Luxury is insular, said Jünger…

 

Have a nice day!

Books on a Bench : #serveyourself #📚

We have more and more “Boîtes à dons” (donations boxes) and other Books-Boxes in the city, but I prefer give mine on bus benches, or in parks. I let a note : “Free, serve yourself”.

Usually if I have to come back there (after errands for example) I see people exploring the pile or I see… nothing.

Have a good day!

JP

from Instagram: https://ift.tt/2JU6WKu

Conversation, Essays, Eyes

You’re alone in the quiet, at home. You grab a book.

If it’s a novel, it’s perfect : you get into a dream. You see things…

Tonight I wanted a conversation instead. So I picked a book from Siri Hustvedt (The Shaking Woman) and a glass of Chardonnay.

I opened the book in the middle of random (it’s something I love to do) and read great pages about how a new born baby and his mother stare at each other. This deep each other’s look means so much, so many things happen. A bond is building. An intelligence is blooming…

(I remember I did this, with Lili and Eliette, my daughters)

Hustvedt explains that if a mother talks to a baby and waits a little, the baby answers – in his own… voice.

An essay is like having a part of a conversation. The part where you just listen. Just choose your partner well! It’s OK – even if you miss the partner’s questions, the slow ping-pong of spirits.

And the eyes…

I wrote this. Now I’m back to my chair. Bidou the cat on me knees. Hi Siri!

Conversation.

Thanks for reading!

Drawn up Ping Pong : Slow Motion Conversation

Stand up Blogging : “What begins commands” & Lost Branches

There are many ways to blog. You can write a novel chapter by chapter, or you can “react” to news in the world, or comment fashion, or new trends in food. You’re good.

My article talks about bloggers who needs ideas and inspiration. This is what I try to do, and I like this way, because it puts your brain in alert. You glean…

Gleaning in loop : the “Gathering Seashells” Type

Finder Keeper Sharer, “What is my blog about?”

Blogger’s Words Horniness & consequences

You read a magazine, you talk with a friend, you got and email, you have a walk around the block, you bake, or you take a shower : Bim! (this is the sound of an idea coming to you).

Bim!

(The symbol is a bulb over your head, right?)

You hurry to sit in front of your computer. You click on “Write”, while your brain is already organizing things…

What begins commands. We all have our patterns, and when you start you more or less know where you’re going.

My tool here is :

Dial : Beware of “What begins commands”, because it’s too easy. You follow one path but :

1. you could lose branch points
2. you could ignore good bypasses
3. your steam can hide possibilities.

Lever : Stand up, for blog’s sake! Finish your article if you’re too excited, but at one point, don’t publish. Stand up. I mean for real! Stand up and go away. Open a window. Wash a cup and a fork. Pet a cat. Breathe.

 

 

Flaubert, the French author who wrote Madame Bovary, had “un gueuloir”, a “scream room”. He was walking and yelling his texts in this room. It’s crazy? Not that much. You’ll have to find your own way. Just do something else while you think about your article or your page. Maybe print it and take a pen. You’ll find ideas, “furthers”, new branches, words, style nuggets, inversions, interesting bypasses, etc.

OK, go back writing now, you fool 😅

Thanks for reading!

 

Essays & Acknowledgments (& Types)

I read much more essays than novels, therefore I read introductions, prefaces, and… acknowledgments. I read them, because the list – and the way the author presents the list – tells something.

There are Types :

1. The assistant (who helped to gather or organize informations)
2. The editor (who brought energy and I-believe-in-yous)
3. The colleague (who pointed out problems in the text or provided ideas for chapters)
4. The spouse (for his/her unfailing support)
5. The friend (who helped blossoming with his/her constant questions)
6. The friend (and his/her potential enthusiasm)
7. The influencer
8. The predecessor (“this essay takes over from…”)
9. The ignorant (towards whom (oh crap, is this even English?) the author had to explain, therefore helped to think “readers”)
10. The collaborator (who provided elements or parts of the essay)
11. The spellchecker (can be the friend or the spouse, ha)
12. The leader (who asked the author to write for a bigger project, for example)
13. The muse (just being him/her – radioactive influence)
14. The Obi Wan Kenobi figure (a master who can propel you with a single sentence)

 

Who else?

 

Do you have any of these for your… blog? Would you need one? Why?

 

Have a nice day!

 

 

“Write a book!” & fiddlesticks answers

We all know someone who has new ideas AND who is great in thinking & expressing them. Thus we harass her/him this way : “Write a book!“.

More, these thinkers are exhausting, because along the conversations you have with them, you realize (and they too – pardon my French) that they have not one book but two or three books ready in their stubborn head.

But it’s worse, because life is life, people around are not very supportive, one run out of gas, one is empty, tired, parked or/and forgotten. Therefore no writing and no books – even if you whisper “Fiddlesticks!” to their busy bee ear, bzz bzz…

I just discovered “Fiddlesticks” (I suppose it sounds vintage and probably southern, right?) and I like it so much I’ll put it everywhere in this blog for a few days, sorryyy…

– Fiddlesticks!

 

What is worse indeed?

• The person who really deadly WANTS to write a book and never writes it?
• The person who writes a book, which is published and nobody buys it?
• The person who has success with a published book – which is crap?
• Or a thinker full of ideas and visions, who verbalizes them when you’re present, and writes nothing, and will die with the whole package?

 

Endearing, but “people should come to their own realizations”…

When do you begin?

 

Have a nice day!

Blogger’s Words Horniness & consequences

Yesterday I wrote an “inspired” long article about Genesis and Progressive Rock. I was listening to Firth of Fifth and I was very excited.

But after finishing it, and publishing it, I stayed unsatisfied, I knew it was written in a rush, the building was not OK, something was bothering me. So I polished it endlessly, adding this, cutting that, quoting lyrics… I was like “Yes, but”.

Happily, later in the evening I had an idea to prolong it. I found tools, ideas, common patterns. Thus I fixed my article, I added a paragraph and published it.

I read over it this morning : it was all bouleshit – despite all the dressings I had added there and here. I trashed it immediately.

 

Every blogger knows that there are two kinds of “words horniness”.

1. When you’re in the flow, you write fast and clear, and that’s delightful. You go girl.
2. When you’re excited and you go in many directions at the same time, happy like a fool : you don’t hold your wheel vert smartly (or you invented three wheels and you don’t know what to do with them), you have good ideas but the result is too long, you ask yourself if you shouldn’t divide it in more articles based on this one, you run after a structure you feel you’re about to find, etc.

It’s like a rush. You’re too excited, you look like a leaping mountain baby goat.

 

It’s really like when you have this : “Let’s pretend” and other as if games…

When you feel this little nausea after you just say with someone you “want to believe it’s true but fuck it’s really not” : “Yeah, we are strong !”, “Yeah, we will beat them all”, “Yeah, it will be simple and beautiful !”. Yeahhhh.

 

Every serious author knows this : you have to be cautious with “inspiration”, it can loose you into nothing.

Sloterdijk wrote : “To be sovereign is to choose what will you be overwhelmed with”, which contains the idea of sovereignty : you decide what you do with energy. You canalize it, you organize it.

Baudelaire wrote : “It is impossible for a poet not to contain within himself a critic. Therefore the reader will not be surprised that I consider the poet as the best of all critics”. This is exactly my point. Inspiration alone is nothing. You have to study and change what your write. And if you’re a genius, it’s the same!

Valéry wrote a lot about this aspect. He says that to write you have to find the “singing”, the little wind, easy to handle, the good temperature – But nervous freedom, fury or impetus are waste and loss. Stay a child, let it spurt, hear the gods, but then be a chief, take your brain, your tools, watch and clean it, build your thing. TAME.

 

OK, I trashed my article. But I liked it, in a way, this ugly child… Therefore, I re-published it, thanks to WordPress, in the past. November 1st. My bad.

 

Thanks for reading! Have a nice day!

 

 

Reading Kundera in a crowded football stadium

I had a friend who was a teacher. She was a book lover, a quiet person you could meet in an art gallery or in a library.

She was in love with a guy who loved soccer. She was intrigued and decided to go watch a match.

I suggest you go on YouTube to 4’00” and listen to it loud…

She went there with a book, a Kundera book. She was not interested in the game, but in the festive atmosphere. 

At one moment, the whole stadium stood up (because of a point, of course). Screams! The guy next to her, then, excited and yelling, said to the reading lady : “Sorryyyyy”.

She smiled.

Listened.

Kept reading…

 

Have a nice day!

Bollaert is the RC Lens Stadium, North of France. Well…

Colors of Saul Leiter, #Photographer

Saul Leiter (1923 – 2013) was an American photographer. He worked for fashion magazines and remained unknown until late in his life.

He photographed the streets of New York in color, when everybody considered that black & white was the only serious way to be a photographer. He captures moments, empty quiet seconds, he likes to play with frames, complex reflections, blurry lights. Each photo is charged in mood : heat, melancholy, waiting, thinking, sudden snow magic, thinking, loneliness…

Google his name! Thanks for reading/watching.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Le Dénicheur” is the Hit Uponer

I work in a bookstore. Yesterday a guy asked me where to find books about dance. I showed him a little shelf under a table.

– Ah ah, he said in a smile, well hidden, right?
– Yes, I answered, but not the way you think it is.

You can show books in a bookstore in many ways.

1. Big news are on front displays
2. New books are on tables
3. The “regularly stocked books” are on shelves
4. What booksellers put on shelves under a table are those books which people come to buy

 

Yes of course, Medieval poetry, or books about dance are not in the top selling lists. But books about wedding or competitive exams training are good sells and they ARE under tables. People don’t come along in a bookstore hit uponing like “Oh, a book about how to become a customs officer, I’m suddenly interested!”. Wedding organization books are all the same : you come in order to find these. Therefore it’s not useful to put it at eye-level height. Voilà.

With this man, we talked about les dénicheurs.

A nest is called in France “un nid”. Thus “un dénicheur” is someone who removes birds (or eggs) from a nest. As it’s pretty rare to have this strange activity, for the verb “dénicher” (it could be : “To denest”), we French all understand “To hit upon”, “To unearth”.

Here we are!

In a store, are you the Mainstream Type, following marketing and medias, buying best sellers and prized titles, overpresented books under spotlights? Or are you the Unearthing Type, called also the Hit Uponer, forgotten corners prone, exploring the deserted alleys of Anthropology, International Situationism or Avant-Garde Jazz?

Probably both, right?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

 

A slightly of the slighties damaged book stays a book

A ruck. A crease!

Drama.

I’m a bookseller. I have this conversation daily :

– Do you have another one?
– Let me check (beeep). No. Why, do you need a second one?
– No, but this one is slightly creased.
– Where?
– Here.
– Ohhh…

And, well, you need a microscope to see it.

A flaw.

Terrible.

Drama!

“But you know, I’m a little obsessive about these things”, etc…

(This for a pocket book which’ll be destroyed in a backpack next week, or brokenspined in the sand on its belly two days later)

Think about it a minute. Isn’t it… Isn’t the importance of a book in the flow of words you’ll read in it?

In fact, it’s horrible : No book has zero flaw. NONE. It’s a living thing. Like you. You have flaws too. These little wrinkles, awweeee…

Let me ask wiki :

A book is a series of pages assembled for easy portability and reading, as well as the composition contained in it. The most common modern form of book is a codex volume consisting of rectangular paper pages bound on one side, with a heavier cover and spine, so that it can fan open for reading.

 

– But you know… I’m…
– OK, I order another one for you.
– Thank you!

By the way, what’s this book about?

 

Have a nice day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Benefits of annotating your books

Wood pencils. 5B is my preferred grading. It’s gorgeous bold.

Annotating. What for?

1. It’s easier to find back interesting ideas after a while, OK.
2. It’s interesting to discover, if you reread the book, that the ideas you underlined before were maybe not “that” interesting now, and that you did not notice some greater ones in the middle. The book didn’t change. You did.
3. Each annotation is like a micro time-capsule which someone (your kids? an unknown person?) will find one day in the future.
4. Annotating shuts off the solemnity, putting instantly the book out of the wrong-way-up idea of collecting perfect objects, making the book just what it should be : a text container, a tank of ideas , and certainly not a “precious thing”. Putting some life into it.
5. Linking some parts of the books with your experience, with other books.
6. Finding the “big picture” – at least linked to your own life.

 

I have my own code. I circle a A, it’s an idea for an article. I slice a square, it means I have to find the book quoted here. Etc.

What about you?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Bovary 2 #quotes

“At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

 

Instagram : sarah_feldmann

Minimalistic Bookporn : when you read prefaces only

There are 2 types of houses : with books, or empty of.

Imagine you have a couple of days in an apartment full of books.

Of course, you have your own books in your backpack. These are like air, or food, right?

 

One strangeodd way of spending a few hours alone in this place is :

Read prefaces only

 

Pick up books in a random way – be fast and casual, like a little girl with daisies.

Read prefaces only. Mais oui !

– What for, mister Becausewhat?

1. It can bring you a urge desire to read the rest of the book
2. You’ll discover authors you don’t know
3. If a preface is written by another person, your brain will try to understand this link between both
4. It’s knowledge feast & debauchery
5. It’ll provide seeds for your hungry mind
6. You’ll associate this place with exploration and pleasure (and?)
7. It’s a good way to lose yourself (and you need to, right?)
8. Discovery (of fields you ignore)
9. Maps & new ways of thinking, drawing paths
10. Seeds for subsequent conversations with the books owner
11. Inspiration (take notes, silly)
12. Extending your knowledge

 

Voilà! What did you find? How did you choose? Did you ask for indications from your host – for the day after? What happened then?

Thanks for reading! Have a nice week-end!

 

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

#Books #Bag

“You and your books!”, a story of Words & Maps

25 years ago a friend of mine suddenly attacked me with this phrase : “You and your books!” – “Toi et tes livres!”.

It was very clear : I spent too much of my time reading books (instead, probably, of “living my life”, meeting people, thinking by myself, talking to her, who knows?).

I was a bit shocked. I thought about it for a few days then I wrote her a letter (no email, in the eighties). My main idea, in this answer, was that books were not papernothing, but more like a meeting with a person who spent months or even years to elaborate it.

You don’t need to have a Master Degree in Linguistics to know that our link to the world is made of “events, and how we judge them” (past, now or future), and for that purpose, we use… words. At times, I wonder if books were not just a way to draw maps for my life…

Each book can be seen as a possible “conversation” with the author? Or… an inner travel?

Thanks for reading!

Freedom & Hungriness : exploring a domain “in a roundabout way”

Imagine you want to explore the life of Abraham Lincoln, or the D-Day. You can do that the proper way, reading a biography or watching a good documentary. But I like to find other path, in a roundabout way, finding another door, another color, being a little casual and inappropriate.

Take the Lincoln example. You can :

• Read about someone’s around : his wife, a general, his murderer.
• Read about what happened after him, or the American life before him.
• Find pictures on the web about him, his life, his handwritten letters.
• Read a diary of somebody who knew him.
• Find everything about his opponents.
• Explore one month only of his life and the country’s life too.
• Find a Lincoln forum on the web and spend months exploring, reading questions and answers of specialists.

Tool :

Casualness in knowledge exploration is a possible way.

Thanks for reading!