Fruitful Constraints in creativity & the wall of “I don’t know this”

I wrote an article about Fruitful Constraints & Creativity in 2017. Here it is :

It’s an old tool many artists know : many constraints are fruitful. Mainly because a constraint is a problem calling for a solution, therefore you have to move, to be creative.

All jobs and activities have constraints : budget, environment, other people, time, space, your skills, your tools.

If it’s too loose, though, you feel a freedom, which can be messy. You can not catch anything. Stuck. You maybe need to tight something up, to find “your” freedom within a new frame.

Brian Eno invented the Oblique Strategies (mainly for musicians) as a card game. You pick a card and you have to obey (sometimes it’s terrible!). Some directors are well known to tell the actors to follow precisely something (the dialogs, or the places they have to move on the set, etc) before shooting. Some digital artists sometimes go out in a park with a pencil and a notebook. A photographer can go outside with the limit of 20 pictures taken, not much. And G. Perec wrote an entire book without the letter “e”.

Constraints are fruitful. You probably have many disposable levers for these. A poet can obey : write something in alexandrine; without any letter “p”, in less than 5 minutes. You may have to present a project in ONE minute only, and… with no words. What are your levers?

You can pull a lever to Zero, it’s the Total Constraint. For example, you’re a photographer and you go out without any camera. Just your eye. You’ll feel the need, you’ll feel your brain simmering. As you can only watch and… think, you’ll maybe have bursts of ideas (instead of taking pictures). Take notes!

Of course it’s an example of “Amor Fati”, being content with what happens to you, even if it seems bad. Embracing fate : every constraint, if you can’t avoid it, should (and will have to) be danced with.

 

Today I’d like to extend this. If “constraints in Arts” is a well known concept, what about life, or culture?

Obviously, it’s linked to the idea of “Comfort Zone”. Let’s take movies, or music…

If one listens to the music they love, good to them. But how do we discover other musics, in fields we’re not used to dig? We have to think, make efforts, find a way and a place, informations. Then we begin, and our brain is surrounded with constraints : we don’t necessarily feel pleasure, there are things we don’t get, and our lazy head pushes us to stop.

It’s the same for painters we don’t like, movies we usually avoid, etc.

Out of our comfort zone, we have to make efforts, we must use an amount of curiosity, we must find or draw maps. In fact, we build, we extend, we grow.

The wall of “I don’t know this” can be an obstacle. Do we skip over, making efforts and feeling the fecund constraints of the undiscovered, or do we go back to the mellowness of what we already love?

Is the real new fruitful for us? How?

If exploring is sometimes unpleasant, is it worthy to fight the unpleasantness (OK : displeasure) and why? You have to invent new tools to think? You could find pearls and emeralds and gold?

What haven’t I explored until now?

 

Thanks for reading!

Trent Parke

Sea/Snow/Sky and their French friends

I opened a book about Proust and found this : “Le temps n’est pas passé sur le hall du Grand Hôtel de Cabourg au bout duquel on voit, par la porte-fenêtre, la mer”.

“Time has not passed on the hall of the Grand Hotel of Cabourg after which one sees, through the French door, the sea”.

Obviously, the author made a tracking shot for the eye, from the hall to the large window then the sea…

In French, “la mer” arrives deliciously at the end of the phrase, opening it to the vast sky. As you know, words have a genre in French, the sea is a she…

I said to myself that “la mer” sounds opened and grand and clear, a bit unlike “the sea”, which brakes a lot with its “S” – “Sea” sounds to me like a solid string.

Then I thought about the snow. Snow sounds GREAT for fallen, thick snow. But when it flies from the sky in magic light meandering flakes, I prefer the French one : La neige !

“Sky” is great for the sky. It sounds big and clear. The French word is “le ciel“… it’s more pale…

Pépite is greater than nugget. L’Or is brighter than gold. But wood is good, it’s sounds like wood. We say “bois“, alright. Some other words are cool in both languages : l’acier (steel), both are solid and almost blazing, right?

 

Of course, this means nothing. I touch here the infinite, fractal and subtle differences between your native language and the learned one. I can get the words, but I can’t really get their radioactivity, or tiny ones, through movies and conversations.

What do I see on this picture? Curtains/Rideaux. Plates/Assiettes. Clouds/Nuages. Candles/Bougies.

Candle makes me see the flame. Bougie makes me feel the wax. Ahhh it’s complicated!!

 

Thanks for reading!

(and sorry for my bad English)

 

When the pleasure is in the comparison

ONE

I just watched Seven Samurai (Japan, black & white, 1954), then The Magnificent Seven (1960).

It’s a big pleasure watching both, but each time it’s very different. Kurosawa’s movie looks very odd, because of the culture, the language and the well known Japanese actors’ intensity. The US one is much more easy and comfortable, with stars (Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner…).

But there’s a “side-pleasure” : you compare. The stories the paces, the ends, the bad guys, the fights…

TWO

Traveling! Tourists have many ways of being tourists : in a group, alone, moving around and visiting, or staying in one city (choose Paris, OK?) and walk “going whichever way the wind blows” (we say “le nez au vent” – nose in the wind).

It’s beautiful or not, deceiving or marvelous, you take pictures or you chat with your spouse. But you have to admit :

The pleasure, again, is in the comparisons game.

THREE

There’s a game I love : learning another language. It’s absolutely full of delights. Culturally. Translating. Discovering idioms. Trying to find out where translated words don’t really fit, match the other language. Finding similar words… or traitors (a library (bibliothèque) is NOT a librairie (bookstore) in France…).

It is, constantly, a game of comparisons.

FOUR

I strongly think that a big part of our inner life is linked to the world with the concept of Analogy. We endlessly get informations with our senses (about places, culture, and people, everything we meet) and then we braincompute them with what-we-already-know with analogy.

Then, we compare. Then, we decide.

This decision can be : run away, explore, smile, talk, anything.

OUTRO

Where else does it happen to you? Where could you trigger a “game of comparisons”? How is it an enrichment? Where is the effort? What about memories? Analogy with them?

Thanks for reading!

 

Delicious Toxicities

I thought a lot yesterday after my article, about the fact that some artists, some stories, some movies are disturbing, or hard to understand, or even toxic to us. Some persons too!

I talked a lot about this idea, which is like an obsession to me.

I could listen to Abba all day but sometimes I feel I have to explore Mahler, even if it’s very complicated. I have to read, to listen many times, it’s a mess. I need to make efforts. I have to work.

I watched Mission Impossible 6 and it was such a pleasure. But I need to watch Manchester by the Sea, and Ladybird, and Phantom Thread, and Bergman’s Persona – I needed 3 evenings to finish this last one. Efforts : it was like a puzzle for the mind, it was complicated.

“Pourquoi faire simple quand on peut faire compliqué”, say the French. Why being simple when you can be complicated?

How come I want to explore things which need… efforts? I don’t know. Exploring is a good feeling. And I love structures : I dream to watch every movie of 1960 just to have an idea of the mood of the era. I will attack Miles Davis one day. I promise.

Mahler is hard. Proust is hard. Bergman is hard. Bacon (the painter) is hard. And learning a new language too!

I don’t think it’s about efforts, even if it’s needed. It’s about exploring. Extending something. Enriching? Of course, one solution is to quit, or to give up on these beginnings. But I won’t : I need to be disturbed, I beg.

Why? Because it changes things in you. Progress, it’s about. Evolving.

It’s like when I see a new challenge in Gurushots. I have to take a steampunk photo, and I don’t have any pictures of that. I have to invent one. It’s… a challenge – I had great fun.

 

Thanks for reading!

Happily, the challenge today was “Green”. Not to hard :

 

 

 

The Insisting Many Angles Exploration Tool

Imagine you want to explore a part of history. The US Civil War, for instance.

First you have to find your “entry level”. Political? Military? Daily life in the country? Chronology? What happened before? Slavery?

Then what do you read? Documents from the era? Historians? Biographies? Novels happening at this time? Hmmm…

What is the size of your magnifier? Do you watch structures and big pictures, or do you focus on one day in the war?

 

I discovered that my best way to explore a field is to gather a few books and to focus on one little element.

It can be a sole day in the war, or one battle only, or one person of the time. But it can be one “element”, for example : railroads during the Civil War, or the way this war has been represented in movies along the century.

Then : insisting. Many angles. Many sources. Etc. And little by little you’ll find… a fabric, a texture, something…

Then you’ll know if you have to go on, and which way. Another “zoom” or a big synthesis, whatever.

Have fun. Thanks for reading!

 

“Consider other doors, gallivanter!”

 

 

Not “Evil vs Good”, but “Chaos vs Order”

Many mainstream movies have this pattern : “Evil vs Good”, and a good villain is funny, right?

Today I’ll play a cross-game with another pattern : “Chaos vs Order”.

It can be similar : “Evil brings Chaos, and Good brings back Order”.

But of course you’re like me, sensing, that the contrary is true, and probably more interesting…

Evil = Order, like the First Order in Star Wars, and the perfectly aligned Nazis army.

Order means “every rule obeyed”, and that’s a bit 1984…

Yesterday I watched “A little Chaos“, a charming little film (directed by Alan Rickman!) : chaos brought by an inventing gardener hired by Le Nôtre – while Louis XIV was building Versailles, in France.

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

“Something uniquely French”? Order, but with a little chaos, or a casualness, maybe a slice of disobedience (to the rules), effortless elegance, imperfections embrace. Yeah, that’s the Parisian Elegance…

 

Well, I have this in mind since I saw “perfect gardens” – my brain was craving for fantasy! There’s a wiki for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_garden_types –

 

Well, is it an article? Beginning with cinema, then France, then gardening? In what other fields of the human activities do we have to find our own frontier, balance, between chaos and order? In rocket science, 100% order, right? Art of Battle : 80%? What is discipline? What and where is invention? Can we have both at the same time? Differences of nature, quantity, places?

Have a nice day!

 

Waterbudding & Recombinations : To learn is to unlearn?

It came in a conversation.

There are two ways of learning :

1. One is to pile up knowledge. Your culture gets bigger, like a balloon.
2. One is to unlearn.

 

We all stacklearn! We know more. At the same time, as the skyscraper grows, maybe the first floors vanish. That’s OK. You know more this and you know less that – because it lost it accuracy, or whatever.

 

To learn-unlearn seems to be cleverer, right? Our new knowledges have an effect of what we already know.

• Ideas recombines!
• They struggle to find their place!
• They fight. They dance!
• They cut old branches!
• They water buds!
• They add features to the engine!

 

Heyyy I found the final word for this article :

 

Them with an open book is a student

Them with three open books is a thinker

 

 

Have a nice day. Thanks for reading.

 

Photos : Galen Rowell

“What’s bitten him?”

ONE

If you like to explore knowledge and history of men, you probably, like me, from time to time choose a field and dig it completely with excitement – you draw maps, you read, you try to find your own gold nuggets.

What’s bitten him?

John Ford’s cinema, or Kurozawa, or Brian de Palma. Or a painter : Hopper or Da Vinci, or Monet. Music ? Ravel or Shostakovich? Churchill, Lincoln, a French king? An architect, a poet? Faulkner?

Exploring is a joy. Books, conversations, documentaries, Internet. It’s like a map or a puzzle you complete little by little.

At one moment, “vous avez fait le tour”, as we say in French, you finished to turn around it : all angles. You have your little trunk, full of treasures. From time to time you like to complete it, to add a book…

TWO

But some fields, some characters are continents, it’s too much, too complex to examine all angles… Why?

• Because the subject is too big. Choose Puccini or Orson Welles, you’ll be OK. But study the US Revolution, Napoléon, or the Italian Renaissance, and you’re dead.
• ..
• Because the subject has too many links. It happened to me with the US Civil War. I read about Lincoln, slavery, battles, Indian natives, daily life at this time, consequences in Europa, “just after the war”, black problems in the XXth century…
• ..
• Because a personality or his art is too complex to understand completely. Manet in painting (a constant flow of paradoxes and possibilities), Mahler in classical music (not that “hard” to listen, but with so many facets and complexities), probably Proust in literature…
• ..

THREE

All this is a bit fractal, too : you can pick up a very tiny subject and explore it very well and so precisely that it becomes… infinite.

• A tiny subject can be an “dot”. One movie director from Norway. The diary of your grandmother. An unknown painter from Provence.
• It also could be a slight slice of a big event. One day in Germany during the WWII. A single battle of the Revolutionary War.
• Something besides. You like Stravinsky? Then you could study his influence.
• A much less known artist, or political man, or geographic place. Try Koechlin in French music. Or the guy who helped Lincoln with trains during the war. Study the city of Baku, in Azerbaijan.
• Choose another angle. Instead of exploring Tolstoï, read about his wife. Don’t study Communism, but the Mccarthysm againts movie makers, the life of John Reed, or daily life in USSR’s during collectivization.
• Move a cursor : don’t read about the Russian Revolution but how was the daily life there twenty years before.

There’s a danger of being stuck for your whole life : the subject your chose is so enthralling that you’ll never quit it.

FOUR

What subject(s) did you choose? Why? Did it end quickly or did you stay for years? Do you wait to have more time to attack a big one?

Thanks for reading!

“Don’t lose your inner child and stay a child… from time to time, OK?”

– I wanna watch Thor Ragnarok!
– No : tonight it’s Stalker, by Tarkovsky…
– Oh noooooo… Pffff…

 

ONE

“Don’t lose your inner child” seems a splendid advice. The spirit of childhood is almost a superpower!

Everybody understands that : the capacity to marvel, curiosity, a genuine sense of happiness, love of simple things, ability to lose yourself into an activity, gathering ideas like shells…

I hope you kept it. And if you don’t, your own children can show you : you just have to watch them play, together or alone, 100% focused…

“Garder son âme d’enfant” (to keep your child’s soul”)

 

TWO

But there’s a difference between keeping your inner child and… staying a child in your head. Refusing to be an adult. Fleeing responsibilities. Bottle-feeding mainstream teen medias, which makes you an obedient larva…

You’ll be a perfect consumer!

 

THREE

Don’t lose your inner child, AND grow up as an adult, using this spark in your eye. From time to time :

1. Explore Arts you don’t know
2. Stay away from mainstream entertainment
3. Be autonomous in your search
4. Stop “reacting” to medias all the time
5. Let your “cultural comfort zone” behind
6. Study and draw maps about what you’ll explore
7. Draw your own path
8. Try adult things

 

– Yes, but I wanna watch Thor!
– OK, but tomorrow, it’s Tarkovky.
– Okey! Can we read some Garfield in bed?
– Nope : we go on with this Manet biography.
– Pffffffffff…

(Yes, it was a dialog between me and myself. Yes I watched Thor yesterday, and Stalker today. So there!)

 

Thanks for reading!

STALKER is a treasure: an invitation to go on a mental ride with a poet and philosopher. A film that makes you wonder more about yourself yet without making you anxious. The few existing films like STALKER are the reason why cinema is called “art”! (IMDB comment)

 

 

Chains of Movies Wandering

There are so many ways to choose a movie! As some say, Netflix‘s robots are clever enough to suggest you new movies you’d like. Good.

As I don’t really move with the times, I like to choose, therefore I don’t watch any “Channels”. So I build “chain of movies”.

This game says : choose a movie, then find any link to another movie which will be the next.

Some chains are obvious : same director, or same year. Those are easy (all Bergman’s movies, all 1961 movies, all Ava Gardner movies) but you quickly dead end, right?

Chose directors of photography – you can then talk or think about the light in the movies. Reading books, watching the bonuses… Culture.

One of my best travels : Adaptations of Tennessee Williams plays at the cinema (Entertainment made a page on this : http://ew.com/gallery/tennessee-williams-movies/ )

Increase freedom : invent a new link after each movie.

From the last Star Wars you can watch Looper (same director), or Paterson (Actor : Adam Driver). After Patterson, another Jarmusch : Only Lovers Left alive… Ending in Morocco… Hmmm?

Stay with an Actress a few movies long (Emily Blunt). Stop with Edge of Tomorrow. Appreciate the light (Dion Beebe is the Director of Photography). Therefore watch Collateral (double link: Tom Cruise), the great Memoirs of a Geisha (music composed by John Williams : great! – He’s old therefore you can explore the past : go to Sugarland Express).

Choose the composer, but also the State. Thus, you could spend a month watching movies happening is West Virginia or… Tuscany, right?

 

OK, t’was my game. It’s an artifice to discover movies you wouldn’t have thought of.

What’s the tool, toolbox blogger?

Mmhh… How to organize things to get lost on purpose… in order to discover newness. OK.

 

Have a nice day!

Jean-Pascal

 

 

Snow in America

When your comfort zone is in Mainstream Children Marketing, you live in PARADISE

Why do I feel a slight nausea when I see BB-8 with a Santa Claus Hat or the death star covered with snow?

The concept of Comfort Zone is useful. Inside this (we all need that, right?), we’re easy and happy, like a sleeping baby. We have all we need, that’s COOL. You absolutely don’t have to explore the outside : it’s unknown, maybe dangerous, blah blah blah, and you could discover things…

If you’re an adult and you love Harry Potter, Disney, Star Wars and all the marketing around it (Pop Figures, Lego, etc) and you have plenty of money, I see you live in total and uninterrupted paradise. For your own happiness, you just have to visit stores. Then, as a good target you are, you’ll go from one “Oh! Ah!” to “Woaw that’s cool! I want it!”.

EVERYTHING there is ready for you and for your bliss : Lego Star Wars Advent Calendars, Harry Potter Hogwarts Houses Goodies (scarves, tee shirts, etc), Disney Consumer Products (you’ll find plenty of elements of their targeting processes on the web, for example here : https://www.marketing91.com/marketing-strategy-walt-disney/ ). I told you : it’s paradise!!

Happiness in idiocy is exactly what the system needs from you. Consent, obedience, servitude.

As long as you’re smiling with this new Falcon Millenium Lego or this Avengers Captain America doormat ($86 51 + $4.49 shipping on Amazon, today) or this very cool Disney/Pixar Cars 3 Ultimate Florida Speedway Track Set ($179.74 & FREE shipping – 36 customer reviews), you’re OK. Life is a beauty! There are “822 results for Toys & Games : “Jack Skellington” on Amazon. Havem all?

“Come on! Live with your time!”

Yes, well : NO. I have another comfort zone, which is, in culture, I hope, a little larger. I’ll watch the new Star Wars for sure, and Blade Runner 2049 was great, but this week I read an interview with Lenny Bernstein about the Rite of Spring, tweets by Taleb, articles by Serge Daney or Pasolini, talked about dreams or creativity about Valéry (poet), realism (or not, cf Sorolla) in Zorn’s paintings, Sander’s links with Walker Evans (photographer), or symbols analyzed by Durand (anthropologist who liked Bachelard). Tonight I’ll probably watch… The Servant, by Losey. A good way to think about this, right?

And I’d hang myself if I had to watch cartoons while I coffee in the morning!

Argh! Bloody hell! I just realized that my comfort zone was… to expand mine.

Lazy me.

Trapped. Me moorings awweeeee.

 

Have a nice day!

 

 

 

When you ask a stranger about your country…

When you ask a stranger about your country, you probably trigger a good conversation. Cultural differences are infinite, and an attentive person will probably be amazed by daily things you don’t notice anymore : the way people talk to each other, the way stores are organized, the houses, the sky, churches, markets, TV, the way people walk, or dress according to their age, food, car, driving manners, books’ colors.

I love this kind of conversation, mainly because it’s interesting for both camps. Your friend from abroad will, in a way, give you new eyes to see your own country. Disillusions or amazements with all the shades between, all this make you think…

Therefore you want to hear more, you both laugh and smile, you compare with what they have to say about their country. How is it different? Why? Is it good? How is the wind? The air? How do men watch women? Do people talk to each other when they wait in line? How is politeness, manners?

You will want to visit the other side, right?

But sometimes I ask too much. I’m like “Hey hello! Do you like it here? What did you notice?”, and I get “Nathing. Everything’s normal. It’s cool”. Well. OK!

Have a nice trip!

Have a nice day! Bonne journée !

Isn’t there a little tool here? When and where, in our lives, would we need to have “fresh eyes”? How can we get that? Alone or with a friend who’d play the stranger? Why do I think about the frog in boiling water?…

“Please glance and tell what you see…”

Feeling the air of Waterloo & other oblique explorations…

Hey, explorer…

Choose a knowledge-field you don’t know at all, and begin to dig to find your gold. This is what you like to do, right?

Japanese cinema, French classical music, British painters of 19th Century, US Civil War – what else?

Voilà : you have your unknown territory ready. Your hungriness will do the rest. Yum!

You need help, right? A compass, a guide, a book, a web site, friends, a lecture… It’s easy to find some. Find a map. Draw your map.

What we often do is to see what’s essential. Kurosawa and Ozu for Japanese cinema. Ravel and Debussy for French musicians, etc. You read the most important books, and that’s OK. An afternoon on the web will help to find the list…

Here I propose some more oblique ways to do that.

• Find documents against. People who dislike, or say the contrary of what it’s commonly said. I once read about the French Revolution : next to the great books I piled on my table, I put a book written by a Royalist, an historian whose motto was “Revolution : a wrong mess!”. He was a good writer, though, and I learned a lot from him – though it’s pretty rare to find this “music” in our times.
• –
• Explore little branches of the tree. After decades of exploration, I knew the great composers and their important works : Brahms, Bartok, Prokofiev and more. Then I spent years to explore the same field, but under the stars : Roussel, Martinu, Walton and Sibelius. And thanks to the previous “normal” exploration, I had so much pleasure!
• –
• Find other ways to explore :

• Instead of reading history books about an era, try to read books written by witnesses. Instead of trying to find the big picture, choose one person, a detail. One painter’s life. Instead of reading, go to lectures, watch them on YouTube. Find the minor things, what’s considered failures, and study hows and whys…

• Explore what’s difficult : Mahler instead of Beethoven. Avant-garde photography.
• –
• Explore what’s hard because documents are rare, or the field very small.
• –
• Explore what you think you dislike : Consider other doors. Baroque music. Swedish movies. History of Prussia. Try to see if you find surprise-gold.
• –
• Go on site. This is totally different. Feeling the air of Waterloo. Find Vermeer’s city. Watch the sky…
• –
• In between two fields. Instead of studying Portugal or the new America, study the boats, the travels, the movements, agreements, trades. Learn what happened between two territories : producers and movie makers, Napoleo and United Kingdom…

 

What territory will you find? Butterflies? African masks? Dante? Religions in India? Story of the city of Philadelphia? Bridges of Budapest?

Do you have other ideas to find doors, bridges, territories and maps?

Then, what vein of gold will you find? What doors, what ways? Will you wake up in the morning with this delicious urge : dig more, know more, learn more?

Thanks for reading!

 

Instagram : genevievealicegarner

 

 

 

Every bookstore is the result of its clientele

One day I saw an interview of a celeb journalist and TV show presenter, a person I like very much, directing good shows and a pretty good interviewer herself. She was asked why TV was so full of trash. I saw her face changing, she was really upset, then answered something very surprising : TV broadcasts were so bad because “It’s what the audience wants!”.

She continued on this mode, telling something like “If people were watching operas, literature documentaries and great movie classics, all trash TV would broadcast in front of nobody, then would disappear for ever, then we would have great TV everywhere!”.

Her anger was noticeable, and that’s why I remembered it clearly. When smart people complain, you listen. Then, you wonder, right?

Because of course this all seems to be too good to be true, and it’s easy to counterattack. People watch trash TV because it’s prepared and broadcasted to them, etc.

 

So, there’s a balance here to find. After counterattack I have to admit that we all have a responsibility here, nonetheless. It’s like when I hear someone complaining about dense traffic… from a car. I have to answer to this person that he is a brick of it.

In some countries, if you are stuck into a traffic jam, you get a ticket! Which, in a way, is fair : you’re a part of it, it’s your fault!

OK, there’s a balance to find…

 

I work in a bookstore, and I’m confronted with this “structure”. The axiom could be :

“Every bookstore is the result of its clientele”.

You can be appalled, but it’s true. For a part, at least.

Yeah, there are other dials to watch. You need to have serious booksellers on board. And you often have to sell tons of “best sellers” on end displays… to be able to present entire tables of great books (your choice) in the store. Etc.

In a serious bookstore, all kind of books are bought then presented on tables and shelves. Employees, then, watch (weekly) closely the sales, then books are reordered. Never sold volumes (for months) are a bit dirty or torn, and therefore sent back to editors, and this is it : little by little, the customers, by the way they act and buy, model and form the store.

You just need a year or so to adjust, understand and change your store to adapt to your clientele. If you have an architecture school a street away, your architecture department will grow, you’ll have rare books, theory books and even anthropology books for the thinkers around. A visitor will pass and will be in a awe : “Oh wow, what a great architecture choice you have!”. Yessss it’s thanks to the bookstore employee, but mainly because he found the clientele, too. It’s a dance, a tango.

There’s a balance to find.

There’s a split of responsibilities in front of trash TV, in traffic jams, in poor supplied bookstores. Suppliers, of course, but audience too.

Do you meet this structure too, in your job, in your life? Don’t hesitate to comment, here.

 

We have an old idiom in France, about couples : “L’homme propose, la femme dispose”. It’s something like “the man proposes doings, the woman makes the choice” – I’m sorry for the translation, it’s almost impossible to do it, but you got me, right? Tango.

 

Thanks for reading!

(Really sorry for my English today. Have a nice day!)

 

“To Eat Alone”

Some recent events in my life made me a lonely man, and therefore a lonely eater.

When I was a father in a family, I was really happy to have dinner-togetherness, to cook for my tribe, to talk, listen, laugh, and feel the family’s energy around the table.

I’ve been very skeptical when I read about how Americans were losing these daily gatherings of all the big cats around the table. “Everyone is having snacks when they want, everybody’s picking things in the fridge, watch TV or eat in bedrooms”, they said. My feelings were like between “it’s not true, it’s impossible” and “oh these Americans!”.

When my daughters were little, some days I went home late, it was almost time to go to bed : I told them stories, kissed them goodnight, then I was happy to have dinner with their mother, but also alone.

I remember good summer evenings. Two cat babies sleeping, mother cat watching a movie, and me papa cat, with a cassoulet, two slices of bread and half of a bottle of Bergerac wine, eating on a tray, on my bed, in front of a wide open double-window (or should I say “French door”, really?), watching and listening birds and trees in the dusk, sshhh.

Not working on thursdays, I remember I was happy to have meal time alone, eating in silence in the kitchen, listening to the rain outside. On my table : a candle, a corner lamp, and a magazine (about movies). Maybe some Brahms chamber music too. Bliss!

Now I eat alone, but I don’t snack. I never snack, and I’m always questioning my snacking friends in America, opening different little colored bags to crinch crunch and croonch while we Skype. I’m like “Where’s your plate, dear?”. They know I eat alone, thus they’re somewhat amazed by HOW I’m eating alone. Well, that’s nothing special, but I… I’m sorry… I can’t snack. It would kill me under a blanket of depression. It’s almost : “I’m French therefore I need a plate”.

I know better, OK : I have more time, in France. We work less, we move less (distances are… different here – I go to work by bike), and… errr… I think we think that food time is worth it, too : I eat alone but it’s cooked, sliced, prepared, organized. Just a bit. I need it.

Awweee sorry for my bad English. I’m wobbling, I know it. Pardonnez-moi !

Have a nice day! Bon appétit !

 

 

 

 

Babette’s Feast, a Frenchization

In a remote 19th-century Danish village, two sisters lead a rigid life centered around their father, the local minister, and their church. They take in French refugee, Babette Hersant, who agrees to work as their servant. After winning the lottery, Babette wants to repay the sisters for their kindness and offers to cook a French meal for them and their friends on the 100th anniversary of their father’s birth. It proves to be an eye-opening experience for everyone.

As they say, Babette’s Feast is “still the gold standard of food movies”. I use it here because I find it’s a good example of… well… the reasons why people love the French – when they do 🙂

Babette is the perfect example of the Intruder/Revealer type. She disturbs a system, here a rigid grey life, with her “way of being”, which is here the love of food, et la gourmandise.

Nothing is the same after her…

Gourmandise is the French word for “love of good food”. I think you don’t have this word in English, which is maybe cultural (Mayflower spirit?). It’s like a positive, smiling way to talk about… greed. Yum!

On this pattern, there’s another movie, with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp : Chocolat.

I agree : this spirit can be a bit disturbing for obedient Anglo-Saxons. Each time I’ve been in France with an American friend, this person was like amazed (in many ways : surprised, annoyed, afraid) about our freedom, our “not following the rules that much” ways, our casualness, our inefficiency too – and the food. The food, always, and again.

Here (like in other countries like Italy), c’est un Art de vivre, an Art of living. And we fight for that! Many of our cheeses are and will stay forbidden in America : not “safe” enough, not enough disinfected, sanitized…

Here I pity the French who live in America : they’re all missing… the cheese! And also, I will now search for “cultural differences movies”, where Anglo-Saxon’s culture irrigate our exhausting Frenchiness.

 

Tool : what from other country’s culture thing do you need in your job, in your life? What if you ask a Japanese expert about your company? What for? Where are the axis of progress?

Have a nice day!

OK, here’s a little Camembert to say goodbye.

 

 

 

Pecking ways & means of apprehend a work of art

Choose a painting, a photograph, a poem, a symphony. You pay attention. But what are the ways and means of choosing, then knowing, apprehend this work of art?

I wrote an article already about the braid between reason & feeling : you can just “I like it”, or begin to dig knowledge around it, and, of course, weave both.

In French we have a verb for “to peck”, like a hen beaklooking for seeds : picorer. Then it begins to be tricky, because we made other words from it :

• Picorer : to peck.
• Picoreur : “the one who pecks” -> pecker.

Well, I checked, and found out that a pecker in something else, right? And that “to peck” means also to “kiss lightly”. I appreciated the English metaphors, but I’m embarrassed now to say that a way to discover art is to be a pecker!

I admire those (I call them the divers) who explore a little square. Instagrammers who takes HDR pictures of beautiful lands (or black and white portraits of homeless people in Alabama). Bloggers about vegan food or cheetah high heels. Callas (or The Beatles) only lovers. Crime novels specialists. They dig dig dig like dwarves in the mine. They’re great!

I’m a pecker (un picoreur). Let’s take a picture of the sky, then a minimalist low angled light on a roof, then a golden swan for sale on a table. Let’s listen to Puccini’s Tosca, then Brian Eno’s Apollo Atmospheres & Soundtrack, then Dave Brubeck’s Lost Waltz. Let’s read a short story of Chekhov, Calvin & Hobbes and a whole book about Duke Ellington’s life. In the same day.

I wonder if it’s linked, this way of microdiving in things, with the appetite to know “how it works”, “when it’s been composed”, “who are other artists around”, “what was he thinking at this time”, etc.

Books and the Internet : you can read about Brubeck’s life, watch an Eno interview, buy a second hand poster about Puccini’s opera.

Some will say it’s my sign : Taurus (patient, artistic, methodical) Gemini ascending (fast, curious, restless). I don’t believe in this, but it’s funny, right?

Tool/Dial : are you a diver, or a pecker?

 

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!

 

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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