The Geometric Mind and the Spirit of Finesse: Pascal

The Geometric Mind and the Spirit of Finesse: Pascal was a French philosopher. He played with these to ways:

Geometric Mind: “the skill or capacity for demonstrating truths already found, and of elucidating them in such a manner that the proof of them shall be irresistible”. Thinking with principles, causes and consequences. Also, geometry separates things, draws lines.

Spirit of Finesse: “The intuitive mind, with its instinctive twists and turns, lucky hunches, and inspired guesswork”. Intuition. You feel things, but it will maybe not clear for others. Finesse embraces things.

Excellence needing both, of course!

It’s about “to adapt your mindset to the problem”. You need to have the “right” view not to think wrongly on… known principles. One way of thinking helps the other way.

Then we can have fun with it. What do we prefer? Are we able to tango with both? What does it bring? What do we lose? How to communicate with one type of spirit?

Have a nice day!

—–

See also:

Bake two Cakes

Both Sides Now

Bothness

Second One Aside

My daughter told me that she wanted to create “another” Instagram account to post, this time, only good pictures, like according to the ancient laws of this social media, which was: one picture (not many), square, no video, no story.

It is a tool for this page, right? I call it on the spot : “Second One Aside”.

• You have a house, a home, but you rent a small apartment downtown, to write. It’s cool, alone, quiet, and in the middle of the city life.
• You read a great big book, but you begin a small essay aside, to make the first one last longer, to make a pause, to breathe, to invent the pleasure to go back.
• You’re married, but you have a lover or a friend you like to walk with because it’s another body – another brain.
• You have a passion, a hobby, but you have another one aside. As a photographer, you paint, for example. The other craft brings you joy, a distraction, but also teaches you other things, it… enhances you.

It’s infinite! Where’d you apply that? Where’s/what’s the “second one aside”, and what could it bring?

Thanks for reading!

The Binomial Tango

This little article is about the fact that between two artists you often choose the “obvious” one, but sometimes you come back to the choice and pick up the other one, because… Let’s see.

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When I was 30 I watched Fellini‘s movies in awe, with a smile, and a question mark above my head. He looked like a clever silly artist, full of exaggerations and weird images, cf Satyricon. And I also watched Antonioni‘s movies, like Eclisse. This guy seemed much more serious, full of clever questions about incommunicability in couples and deep thoughts about the sense of life.

More than 20 years later, I still adore Antonioni and I often watch his movies, but I prefer, by far, Fellini today. I explored his worlds, read a lot about his work, analysis, and interviews, and I realized the… richness of all of it. The baroque, the myths, the fragmented aspects of reality. It’s vast, clever, sensitive…

So, I see the “obvious” choice in many things, today. Because we change and we age, of course, we go deeper. We understand deeper the idea of efforts, which lead to extensive discoveries.

=

I have another example with the double-headed Beatles, Paul McCartney and John Lennon. I read a lot about them, I listened and dismantle their music. And of course, I preferred Lennon! He’s stronger, takes more risk, he’s the fool who wrote the Walrus (while McCartney wrote Yesterday). Lennon is spicy, Macca is sweet. Voilà.

But the more you dig, you realize that McCartney is stronger, is a better musician. He wrote Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, which is a splendid masterpiece, very quietly though.

So I always loved Brahms, who is strong, heavy, very Taurus, with earthian symphonies and concertos, and I didn’t like Schubert, whose music is closer to Mozart. But today Schubert’s Great is unreachable. I eventually found out the nuggets, the colors, the subtleties in this…

=

The structure here is simple:

We often have choices between similar things. One seems obvious, and we choose this one. But sometimes we reconsider things and we bend over the other one, to find out that its treasures were maybe hidden, too subtle, or complex/difficult. It’s a tango!

What are your examples?

Thanks for reading!

Trifonov, Ware, hands & interior design: Chronicle 65

I decided to explore a bit much the field of Graphic Novels. I don’t really read comics but I own some “milestones”, like Spiegelmann’s Maus, Clowes’ Ghost World and Burns’ Black Hole.

So I found some Chris Ware (I bought Rusty Brown, and ordered Building Stories). I downloaded things and read a 21 pages chapter of Building Stories – (“(god…) Sometimes I Really Hate It Here“) and I’ve been flabbergasted.

Not astounded with virtuosity or avant-gardy marvels, but by the profound understanding of human life, the delicate way of showing body postures, the smart page layout (which loses you just a bit, enough to keep you focused). So, like with Chekhov’s short stories, I feel like… poisoned by the intelligence of it all and deeply touched by the facets of humanity in it.

Yeah that’s toxic, delightfully toxic. I read a little about Chris Ware (who is my age), and also found a multi-authors book named “The Comics of Chris Ware – Drawing Is a Way of Thinking“, which makes me smile, and then I smiled more, because of this “Introduction: Chris Ware and the “Cult of Difficulty”. Awww!

It’s slow reading…

Attacking Mazzuchelli’s Asterios Polyp. The character is an architect. We see him teaching something about “Linéaire/Plastique”, and my jaw opened, because I read the same day an article about Linéaire/Pictural, a fondamental opposition in Arts (I screenshot both books down there).

It’s clearly a good seed. It’s an art historian named Wölfflin who wrote 5 “principles” in arts, the first being : From linear (draughtsmanship, plastic, relating to contour in projected ideation of objects) to painterly (tactile, observing patches or systems of relative light and of non-local colour within shade, etc) -> Wiki.

You can google “linear painterly” and play – you find these facets :

• Sculpture/Painting
• Drawing/Coloring
• the artist showing reality/the artist showing his idea of reality
• Classic (the object as it is)/baroque (the object as it appears)
• things as they are/things as they become
• line/shape
• functional/decorative
• to draw/to think
• etc

Yeah, good seeds for conversations lovers…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_W%C3%B6lfflin

On Belgian radio I heard about Daniil Trifonov, a young and intense Russian piano player (I heard about him many times before), and I thought about “crazy artists of today”, like these graphic novels writers. Introverts, lost in their own minds, something like “too intense”, overthinking and working, therefore secreting marvels and “different” things instead of becoming alone and silly.

Here he is with Gergiev in an always-modulating shostakovich concerto :

Yesterday at work I talked with a thirty-something woman about her career : studying arts, working in interior design, feeling bored about all of it, and working, then, in food business…

Eventually, recently she helped friends to move and to… decorate their home. BUT this time she was not in front of ideas and pencils and computers, but with her hands, doing/making things. An epiphany! And we laughed, because she was coming back to the beginning, but in another way, understanding by doing – like some scholar finding concepts fixing motorcycles!

oOOo

All this is chekhovian and about the previous article of this blog (returning to things): Life’s not easy but we can/should stand up – it’s the subject of “(god…) Sometimes I Really Hate It Here” and of Asterios Polyp.

The artists and the pianists work like crazy and produce big things, all with their… hands.

Have a nice day! Thanks for reading!

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

What will you explore in the next 10 days?

What will you explore in the next 10 days?

 

• The best albums of Arvo Pärt? (or what’s the best version of Brahms 4)

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/feature/top-10-arvo-part-recordings

• Willa Cather‘s life? (or how Tennessee Williams is adapted in movies)

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

• Why the black in Pierre Soulages paintings? (or Picasso in the 1930s)

https://www.artsy.net/artist/pierre-soulages

• What does Aldous Harding sing? (or Rose Elinor Dougall)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvYnfuCRhq6PRYK2MltekXA

• Is it the moment to explore Francis Ford Coppola‘s movies? (or Truffaut’s)

All 24 Francis Ford Coppola Movies Ranked From Worst To Best

• What are the elements of the Battle of Kursk? Waterloo?

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

 

Who else? Pinker? Kundera? Losey? Plath? Masina? Hosoda? Pinter? Doisneau?

What else? Poetry translators’ difficulties? History of Roma? Nietzsche’s last books? Russian cinema? French musicals? Brasil’s cooks? Best Puccini’s operas?

How do you get out of “reacting” in front of what’s talked today?

How to do it? Web searches? Biographies? Books? Documentaries? YouTube?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

“What’s the point?” : Anhedonia, a reduced wanting

I needed to be in my fifties to hear about this concept of “anhedonia“, a diverse array of deficits in hedonic function, including reduced motivation or ability to experience pleasure. (Wikipedia).

Inability to experience pleasure, but also reduced

1. motivation
2. anticipatory pleasure
3. consummatory pleasure

Well : the wanting and the liking are reduced. A big lost of interest!

This preliminary itself is interesting : it’s NOT depression. It’s just what we call in French “à quoi bon ?” : what’s the point, what’s the use, what good would it…, etc…

Association with boredom, a will to stay in bed, a will to sleep all the time! You can feel this even without being sad!

If one makes, in a good movement, an effort – like me with this article – one will stop very soon, because… what’s the point, right?

It’s sometimes a bit surprising, because in the past you LOVED to do it, right?

Then there’s probobly a seek for… oblivion. Video games? Stupid sports? Alcohol?

It can be helpful, after all, and more if you feel guilty! (because in our societies, one has to be busy, right?).

Anything vain will maybe help, like driving your car in the night, anywhere, for hours, with music.

And there are the old tricks : call a friend, get drunk, pick up a randombook, listen to some music, trance (go dancing?), shopping. It can work!

But most of the time, you don’t care about all this anymore… either!

Of course here I don’t talk about “major depressive disorders”, where you stay in bed crying or in catatonia for months.

No, it’s just the “not in the mood now”, a social detachment, random indifference…

We’ve all been there, right? Our mind like a Steve Reich music…

I am also convinced it can be linked to a loss. When you’ve been at war, for example, you’re into a “mode”, and then when you’re home you’re just… not bored, but not valued, not understood, alone, and you don’t understand what people do anymore. And lifting weighs seems suddenly… what’s the point?

What happens after a break up?

Wiki says : “There is no validated treatment for social anhedonia.”. Voilà !

I just found another word to explore : “Avolition”.

How do you deal with that? What if it becomes a constant mode? How to get out?

For me :

• I do a little step anywhere. It can trigger…
• A good book. There’s no better trick.

Thanks for reading!

QEHT : https://qeht.photo.blog/

Hello everyone!

I’m happy to present you my new blog, all about photography :

https://qeht.photo.blog/

It’s about “variations in photography”, the way I search for… the perfect way to show a place, something.

I invite you for a little visit. Have fun!

I’ll go on writing in this Frenchtoolbox blog, of course.

“With money, what’s better, to buy experiences or things?”

I hate rhetorical questions, like “With money, what’s better, to buy experiences or things?”

It’s more complex than that! For example, you can buy a cam, or a bike, and have great moments in life with them…

Voilà. But last month I was offered a choice by the company I work with, something like $150 : coupons to buy things (in different stores), or coupons to buy experiences (like traveling, hostels, etc).

Waow! It became like the fulfillment of an artificial question!

I chose the second one. Traveling. Hotels. Train tickets. Etc.

After all, about “things”, I just bought a new cam, this one (and I’m so happy with it) :

It becomes this article : sometimes, life forces you and pushes you into weird or rejected choices.

We’ll travel. And I’ll take my cam 🙂

(I’m a cheater, when I have to choose within two things, I take both)

• Both Sides NOW
• Experiences or Things? (oh hell, I already wrote this article)
• Choose both, silly.

Thanks for reading!

Musical Genres & Gorgeousities

Musical Genres & Structures : that was a lovely title, right? I changed it though…

It came to me in the shower, thinking about my “Best Albums of 2018” researches.

1. I found many musics, soul, rap, indie rock, folk, metal, jazz…
2. I found many shades of complexity, from simple to fractured or dissonant.

So I can draw an orthonormal coordinate system :

• Horizontal would be “Complexity” (fractured, dissonant, too much something (too slow, too molten))
• Vertical would be “Pleasure”.

So it becomes a cloche, a bell, a dome.

On the left, things like Cat Power, Wanderer. Choose anything, you’ll be “Ah, OK”. A “gorgeous” voice, some quiet melancholy, piano, etc. Predictible thus boring. And everybody LOVES her. It’s not the genre (I am very found of Vienna Teng), but the absolute no invention/no surprise. Harmonically poor. Lazy structures & production. “She is art”, I read on YouTube. MMmmmh she’s not.

On the right end of the cloche, Sophie lost me. Too dissonant, too fractured. I need more structure, even in a multi-layered complex harmonically track like this. Like in the proliferant Tim Exile‘s Family Galaxy

So what’s in the bell?

Esperanza Spalding, 12 Little Spells makes me focus : What’s happening here? Go to 1’40”, or just listen to the intro. It’s like Science put into folk or soul. Harmonically risky (exhausting), it’s all about to lose me, but as it’s constantly snakily keeping me back into pleasure (modulations). Typical : I maybe dislike, but I wanna go back to it, and I’ll finish poisoned and in love.

Oh OK I love gorgeous soul, a bit sophisticated like Blood Orange or The Internet “Hive Mind”. It’s not risky, it’s just well done. Ah, I found this : “…is making me wanting to wear some lingerie and just dance on front of a mirror” – I’m not a girl but I understand this well. The modulation (0’40”), the bass, the production…

I kept AAL, US Girls, Let’s Eat Grandma and Mistsi… All in the cloche, not too predictable, but far from avant-garde either.

I wanted to finish this article with the idea that “I seek complexity in music”, more than simplicity, but I think that’s wrong.

I do love Annie Clark’s St Vincent, which is complex pop, but my two loves are Blonde Redhead and Röyksopp, which are skilled musicians with gorgeous harmonies. Hmmm… complex chords and modulations? Mike Oldfield, where are you?

I do prefer Bartok and Stravinsky than Mozart, and I explored the oceans of complexity of Mahler, a lot, but the composers I love most are Puccini and Brahms. It’s less complicated than Boulez, but it’s harmonically gorgeous.

It makes me think again about that : why do people love music? Energy? Lyrics? Warmth? Being in love with the singer? Virtuosity? Remembrance?

If you had to choose your best albums of 2018, what would you seek? One genre only, or one structure (like : great lyrics, big energy, danceability), which you could find anywhere?

Tool :

Choose your field : movies, books, sports. What is your coordinate system? What does it become?

Thanks for reading!

After / Other / Anti

This is a little triple-branched structure I propose you, as a set of leverages or as a dial. Weapon of choice.

Take progress, change, movement. I give you three roads :

1. AFTER
2. OTHER
3. ANTI

 

Well that’s easy :

1. You move forward on the same road.
2. Or you change what you’re doing (or the way you move).
3. Or you attack the ancient road.

 

Mmmhh. It’s something any artist thought about. Knowing the old masters, he can :

1. Start from where they are and go further.
2. Do something else (disruption?).
3. Do the contrary.

 

It’s a funny toolset, right? My pencil case…

Where will I put it? What’s the ground here? Changes? Choices? Decisions? Movement? Avant-Garde? Invention?

Then, where to apply? Marketing? Art? Poetry? Teaching? Management? Science?

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Movements in a line (and amounts of possibles)

A Fortnite/Gurushots pattern

A Fortnite/Gurushots pattern

ONE

I don’t play games anymore (though I spent hours online with Myth in the nineties) but I like to read about this world from time to time.

I often fall on this hated pattern : “You have to pay to play, then you have to pay to increase your powers in order to win”.

The feeling to be a cash cow is pretty unpleasant for people…

TWO

Fortnite is this big success online game who has more than 200 millions users. It’s probably a great game, but I’m sure the main reason is because

1. it’s free to play, anywhere, on a PC, a Mac, a phone
2. the things you can buy online (because every company needs money, right?) are only cosmetic (clothes, dances, etc), and they don’t affect at all the way you win or not.

It appears that when people don’t feel they’re cash cows, when then don’t feel the pushing hand in their back (“buy, buy, buy, or you won’t win”)… they buy. They pay. They give money. Fortnite wins hundreds of millions every month.

THREE

I just saw a similar pattern with GuruShots, which is a photographers social media, based on challenges and competitions. You post your best pictures, then you expect to be “liked” by the community : it’s very fun, fast and crowded, and it pushes you to be creative.

There, you get more views (and likes) when you just posted a picture, or when you use littles tools (boosts to be more viewed, swapping less viewed pictures, etc).

You get some of these tools at the end of challenges, and you can buy them.

They made one mistake : your tools-rewards are no distributed according to the level you climbed in a challenge, but a bit randomly. But well : it’s pleasant to get them, then to think about where and when you’ll use them to be effective.

It’s simple : participate, take good pictures, and get rewards.

Of course, the people who buy these tools in costly baskets are the one who win. There, you feel the pushing hand in your back (“Give us dollars and win”), and there you don’t pay, because you’d like to win “without this cheat” (but is it?).

But well, it’s a game, it funny, and it’s a kind of balance you have to play with. And that’s true : it makes you think about what is a good picture.

Now they changed the rules : you never get rewards-tools anymore at the end of a challenge, you gain them with “missions”, which are mainly to… vote for other pictures. I have to choose 60 good photos (therefore to check around 3-400 daily, in order to get one of these tools. But :

• It’s too much work for me.
• I lost the excitement to get them at the end of each challenge.

Therefore I can choose this :

1. Abandon and quit the game (bye!)
2. Go on playing without any support-tools (which is a “no action” mood – you lose a big part of the excitement)
3. Buy tools (feeling a bigger hand pushing you in my back to do it)

I’m on 2, running towards 1 and quitting.

This is the Fortnite pattern they could follow :

One should be able to win because their pictures are good, or because they have fun using the pictures pushers tools, or because they pay. That’s fair! You should be seen, given rewards and likes (because this is all we like in a photography social media) according to the quality of your work (and not because you voted/watched hundreds of picts). This needs oils, a multiple threads forum (or ways to chat) to connect photographers, and less pressure to “spend money”, a pressure which is now ten years obsolete.

FOUR

Is this pattern usable elsewhere? What about this feeling people have to be cash cows? How to kill this feeling and make them happily give money though? What could be the science of studying where/when to pay? You pay to enter? Inside the game? To get useless but pleasant things (like in Fortnite) or power? Where to think about this science? Marketing, business, game, school, fashion, blogs, medias?

Thanks for reading!

 

There are two people on this picture…

I wanted to write “There are two persons on this picture…”, is it incorrect, too formal?

I talked yesterday with a smart grandma whose son-in-law “just bought a bid deal camera”. We laughed, because the guy always took photos of his daughter, asking her to stop moving or to strike poses.

“It’s not the proper way to photograph a kid”, she smiled…

Indeed! Kids are so alive and funny to watch : you just have to be there around and ready, watching.

This lady was pretty aware and skilled, she had a camera for years and took many pictures around the world. Hence we talked a bit about people who don’t really know what they do…

Hence, thus or therefore? I found https://painintheenglish.com/case/4452/ and now I don’t understand that much…

I took this picture of my Eliette in 2009, she was eight years old, and the way she held her stick was so…

I affirm there are two people on this picture. The one you can see, and the photographer, the observer, the watcher, the guy who is focused and ready, who lets go and watches out for…

For what?

For what “happens”, or for what he wishes to capture (and to show)? There a dial to watch here…

I always have in mind : Intention of effect kills effect, though I think I can count of other people’s indulgence.

The watcher or the future watcher (who can be the person on the photography, right?) will have to decide where to place the dial : to guess who is on the picture and what does she think, but also : what did the photographer wanted to show? What did he see? Why?

Thanks for reading!

Experiences or Things?

I had a friend who loved to separate concepts. You only could be a “giver” or a “taker”, for example. Which one are you?

These rhetoric traps were funny to detect, as a sign of…. whatever.

Useless it is to say you can be a giver here AND a taker there, AND differently all along the day, useless to say it’s a constant process : life, movements, dance.

With money, should you buy experiences or things?

As if you have to choose between both…

I’d buy experiences AND things. And things which could bring you a great experience : typical : a DVD, a book. And things bought WHILE you’re living a great experience. Etc etc etc.

The constant adaptive dance of life is really great to process and to unfold…

Experiences can make you grow, or give you memories, they change you if they are important. Things can be offered, can trigger experiences, can be source of pleasure. A bottle of Chardonnay wine (thing) is able to illuminate a great experience (the greatest conversation ever, in a summer night). Etc.

The tool and dial and lever here are really easy :

Each time someone summons you to choose between two concepts (it’s very common in companies, in hierarchies), close your mind or catch the double and juggle like with plastic poos : it’s a trap, enclosing you (or trying) between two artificial pincers which don’t even exist. Get out of here, and remember that life is NEVER simple. It’s subtle, fluid, complex, and a joy to activate.

Have a nice day!

Watzlawick wrote somewhere that when something is bad…

Watzlawick wrote somewhere that when something is bad, the contrary is not necessarily good.

The idea of “choice” is really a problem, right?

1. If you INSIST, you’ll maybe fail : “More of the Same Thing”, when insisting is a failure
2. If you QUIT, you’ll maybe fail too. Or succeed. You have to try!

There’s this : if you walk on one path, you’ll never know what you could have discovered on the other one. One just imagines (convinces oneself) it’s the good choice.

In a way, it’s understandable. A choice, and you close a part of your brain. It’s simpler.

The Frenchness in me is a bit mischievous, and tells me that in front of a choice, I’d choose both – “Bake Two Cakes”, or the dangers of segmentarity

But the crux (I just learned this crux word, and I’m happy!) of these problems is Haecceity.

Insist on A and Quit B, and you just close possibilities, that’s all.

Life is not made of A or B, but to plug with possibilities, it’s constantly moving along the day, along days. Therefore big choices (apart of choices like “I quit smoking”, which is obviously clever) are maybe mistakes : one should always be prepared to play with propositions of life. Don’t you think?

But some days, we are tired, I agree.

Have a great day!

Einstein quote “Everyone is a…

“Consider other doors, gallivanter!” — a french toolbox repost

Sometimes you’re less interested by the works than by the theories, discussions, struggles, articles and letters by those who invented it or studied it. Imagine you’re interested in cubism, or new wave music. You can study the paintings and listen to OMD’s albums, but you could also dislike all of it, and at the same time […]

via “Consider other doors, gallivanter!” — a french toolbox

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!

“Intentions vs Dispositions” & Widenings

ONE

Bourdieu explains this concept (which is a GREAT dial to watch) in his conferences about Manet.

To make is short, he says that when an artist “makes” something (a movie, a painting, etc), audience and critics talks about his/her INTENTIONS.

As if artists knew exactly what they do and the impact their work will have!

Kundera said that sometimes he receives a thesis written by a student about his books, and explains that he had no idea all these ideas were in them !

TWO

Bourdieu opposes Intentions to Dispositions. Manet’s work is not “a crystal clear intention to have this impact”, but it’s more like a bouquet of tendencies, an aggregate of his childhood, his education, training, his time, his friends, his changing or searching personality, his work too, the building of it, etc.

THREE

I think we can watch this pattern, widening it to human relations in general. There, it plugs to the second agreement. People don’t do thing with big “intentions” towards you, but they deal with their own dreams and values, linked to you or not.

FOUR

It’s linked with the idea of Umberto Eco & the Open Work, and Intertextuality (“the meaning of a text does not reside in the text”). In short : the audience reacts, but they probably don’t get the “intention” of the author (if there’s one). The audience builds its own system of reactions, according if necessary to the imagined, supposed “intentions” of the author.

Same in life, right?

FIVE

Disposition is the “tendency of”, the trend. A human being will is a complex system, a changing aggregate. You watch, then, the… Propensity. The natural tendency to move this way, to act that way.

You have no idea how a scandal it’s been for Manet’s work : Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe, and Olympia. Bourdieu smiles : maybe someone asked the painter, one evening in spring, on a terrace in Paris with a beer “What do you do this day?”. “I paint”.

SIX

“Haecceity” !

Endless Amendments : Reality

SEVEN

We’re not islands, but we are, in a way.

Intentions do exist, yes, but for ourselves. I love this example (from Kundera again) : the intention of knowing.

CONCLUSION

Watch someone act (crazy or not). Understand it with dispositions (the whole system this person is in, education, wounds, life, milieu, changes, desires), not with intentions.

 

Have a great day!

 

 

 

 

Greta Gerwig & Sacramento

My daughters were delighted : they went to the theater and watched the first Greta Gerwig movie : Lady Bird. They loved it!

So I told them about the director, Greta Gerwig, who wrote a movie with her boyfriend, a film about New York, a film I love so much, in the middle of Woody Allen (around Annie Hall) and J.-L. Godard. This freedom, this black & white…

We watched Frances Ha together and it was fantastic!

In Frances Ha, a 27 years old woman, is living a bohème life in New York city. She’s a dancer, changing roommates all the time, meeting people, trying to live and find her path and dreams.

At one moment, she has to go back to Sacramento, her parent’s home. Lady Bird, indeed, takes place there. It’s (or course), where Greta Gerwig grew up…

In both films, we see something :

The character tries to “fit” where she’s from. California wealthy all-the-same little houses, with an American flag on the front porch, right? It’s christmas. An uncle plays the trumpet (or another instrument). Everybody is religious (and probably have guns), and the grass is well cut.

Horror.

You can see her TRYING to fit, though. She’s from there, after all!

She doesn’t fit and has to go back to NYC quickly. There she meets wealthy people (a lawyer, etc), and doesn’t fit at all!

 

Well, that’s all. It made me think a lot about this kind of people, who are absolutely BORED in front of “normal persons”, normal life, the “house and car and husband” choice, and commuting, etc. They would die quickly. They need to be in their element, sophistication and exploration, opportunities and art. ART. Out of it, they wither.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Lady Bird : “In 2002, an artistically inclined seventeen-year-old girl comes of age in Sacramento, California.” – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4925292/

Frances Ha – “A New York woman (who doesn’t really have an apartment) apprentices for a dance company (though she’s not really a dancer) and throws herself headlong into her dreams, even as the possibility of realizing them dwindles.” – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2347569/